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More "Excellence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... probably never be opened to them otherwise. From our experience in one of the branches of the Cleveland Public Library, where club work has presented great difficulties, I know that, given a leader who understands, girls whose standard of excellence has been met by boarding- school stories, can be interested in studying and reading in their club the plays of Shakespeare or in listening to extracts from Vasari's "Lives of the painters" or Ruskin's ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... Calphurnia home, One giues him a paper. 1660 What hast thou heare that thou presents vs with, Pre. A thing my Lord that doth concerne your life. Which loue to you and hate of such a deed, Makes me reueale vnto your excellence. Caesar laughs. Smilest thou, or think'st thou it some ilde toy, Thout frowne a non to read so many names. That haue conspird and sworne ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... was before their eyes, lying on the deck of the Catamaran. That was the albacore,—a fish whose flesh is equal in excellence to that of any taken out of the ocean. But the flesh of the albacore was raw; while that of Snowball's stock, if not cooked, was at least cured; and this, in the opinion of the Catamarans, rendered it ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS, now in the occupancy of Lord Palmerston. Possesses advantages rarely to be met with. From its connexion with the continental powers, Eau de Cologne, bear's grease, and cosmetics of unrivalled excellence, can be procured at all times, thus insuring the favour ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... Stern, uncompromising, unloveable and unloved, an object of fear rather than of affection, John Calvin stands out the incarnation of his own Deity; verifying one of the noblest and truest sentences ever penned by man:—"As the man, so his God. God is his idea of excellence, the compliment of ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... what is agreeable to the eye as well as pleasant to the taste, and therefore we love to have our bread made of the whitest and finest of the wheat. Attaching superior excellence to what thus pleases the eye, we call the good Scotch bannock an inferior food, and the wholesome black bread of the north of Europe a disgusting article of diet. When our experience and knowledge are local and confined, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... which but few artists, in their delineations of the "thorn-crowned head," can successfully depict. It had been brought from Spain many years before by her father, with a cabinet picture of Mater Dolorosa, which now hung over it. Both were invaluable, not only on account of their artistic excellence and age, but as mementos of her father, and incentives to devotion. Thither she now went to offer the first fruits of the day to heaven in mingled thanksgiving and prayer. Almost numbed with the intense cold, she felt inclined to abridge her devotions, but she remembered the cold, ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... helpful resource. Straight as an arrow, her shoulders the perfect curve, bosom and hips full-moulded to the ideal of ripe girlhood, she could not make a gesture which was not graceful, nor change her position without revealing a new excellence of form. Yet a certain taste would have leant towards Miss Hannaford, whose traits had more mystery; as an uncommon type, she gained by this juxtaposition. Miss Derwent, despite her larger experience of the world, her vastly better education, was a much younger ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... relieved at this answer; but, nevertheless went on to urge the excellence of the ale as a ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... cities, castles, and villages, all well peopled and rich, the inhabitants being all idolaters and subject to the great khan. At the end of these three days journey, we come to Quinsay, or Guinsai, its name signifying the City of Heaven, to denote its excellence above all the other cities of the world, in which there are so much riches, and so many pleasures and enjoyments, that a person might conceive himself in paradise. In this great city, I, Marco, have often been, and have considered it with diligent attention, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... between Christianity and Paganism; by which indeed Paganism may be to some extent purified and exalted, but Christianity defiled and depressed. For Christianity, in its essence, is that which beckons and urges onward, not to excellence only, but to perfection. Of course its march is always in advance of the present. By such union with Paganism then, or Judaism, its essential characteristic will disappear; Christianity will, in effect, perish. You may suppose, accordingly, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... native. "It is inconceivable," he concludes, "that an introduced art could have developed at so rapid a rate that in seventy years, probably less, for this art would hardly have been introduced the first day, such a high pitch of excellence could have been attained ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... forget their lessons and simply and unconsciously make use of all the advantages of their training. Even when the education is finished, and the prima donna has made her successful debut, continued daily repetition of primary exercises is necessary to maintain excellence and insure the progress that every performer desires. Our best singers to-day are as diligent students of the technique of the voice as are the tyros struggling with ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... position explains this phenomenon. The pretty town overlooks a salt-marsh, the product of which is called throughout Brittany the Guerande salt, to which many Bretons attribute the excellence of their butter and their sardines. It is connected with the rest of France by two roads only: that coming from Savenay, the arrondissement to which it belongs, which stops at Saint-Nazaire; and a second road, leading from Vannes, which connects it with the Morbihan. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... in the Hotel de Ville is supreme. If you are ever in France you should see it. It has been copied often by American architects. Infinite thought and skill were brought to bear on all the iron work door-handles, lanterns, and so forth. The artistic excellence of this work has not been equaled since this period of the Eighteenth Century. The greatest artists of that day did not think it in the least beneath their dignity and talent to devote themselves ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... beauty and excellence of the Homoeopathic system of medicine consists in the ability to treat patients successfully thereby, without making well organs sick, or aggravating existing diseased action, or creating an opposite diseased state, as you do when you give a cathartic remedy ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... you describe, you too well know her wond'rous Brightness, her commanding Excellence, where ev'ry Star seems glitt'ring in her Person, and ev'ry Science cultivates her Mind; no Swain but kindles at her vast Perfections, Sighs at her Feet, and trembles to approach her; but then a baneful Mischief thwarts our Transports, and while we feast us with luxuriant Gazing, that bug-bear ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... understands knows the difference between mankind, and I'm sure it can be no great sacret to the Lord, when it is so well known to a poor fellow like myself. There's a plenthy of fellow-cr'atures that has a mighty good notion of their own excellence, but when it comes to r'ason and thruth, it's no very great figure ye all make, in proving what ye say. This chapel is the master's, if chapel the heretical box can be called, and yonder bell was bought ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... vainly search for in the meagre pages of Sallust and Appian, in the captious criticism of Dion, and even in the pleasant anecdotes of his friendly biographer Plutarch, his amiableness, his refined urbanity, his admiration for excellence, his thirst for fame, his love of truth, equity, and reason. Much indeed of the patriotism, the honesty, the moral courage he exhibited, was really no other than the refined ambition of attaining ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... doctor, "I have grown to love you as a son, and to esteem you as a man. I have lived long enough to value solid integrity far beyond wealth or birth, and when that integrity is adorned and enriched by high talents, it forms a character of excellence not often met with in this world. I have proved both your integrity and your talents, Traverse, and I am more than satisfied with you—I am proud of you, ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... presenting them to the public more than sixty years after they were originally written, think that they will prove of general interest, not because they lay claim to literary excellence, but because they present a simple, unexaggerated picture of the everyday life in the navy a century ago, and give us an insight into the characters of the men who helped to build up the sea power of Great Britain, and to bring her to her present ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... quickly the ferocious fanaticism of the Saracens was transformed into a passion for intellectual pursuits. At first the Koran was an obstacle to literature and science. Mohammed had extolled it as the grandest of all compositions, and had adduced its unapproachable excellence as a proof of his divine mission. But, in little more than twenty years after his death, the experience that had been acquired in Syria, Persia, Asia Minor, Egypt, had produced a striking effect, and Ali the khalif reigning at that time, avowedly encouraged all kinds of literary pursuits. Moawyah, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... improvements, we intend to assure that our vigilance, power, and technical excellence keep abreast of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... "boys", the young professor of English literature gave his enthusiasm, his idealism, his love of all that was fair in art and the world of books. His enthusiasm inspired them with a love of artistic excellence, which, neither in his own work, nor in that of his pupils would tolerate anything commonplace. Before coming to Thornbrook, he had written "The Truce of God," first published as a serial in the United States Catholic Magazine, established by John Murphy of Baltimore, ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... to note his superiority with the sneer, "they call this man as good as me," Bacon, in one of his finest antitheses, draws a contrast between the love of Excellence and the love of Excelling. Carlyle is possessed by both; he had none of the exaggerated caution which in others of his race is apt to degenerate into moral cowardice: but when he thought himself trod on he became, to use his own figure, ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... Poesy. In the Life of Dryden Johnson refers to this passage as a "perpetual model of encomiastic criticism," adding that the editors and admirers of Shakespeare, in all their emulation of reverence, cannot "boast of much more than of having diffused and paraphrased this epitome of excellence." ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... and the marksman equaled and perhaps surpassed the pilot. Captain Galliot, who is a specialist, has called him "the thinker-fighter," thereby emphasizing that his excellence as a gunner arose from meditation and preparation. The same officer adds that "accuracy was Guynemer's characteristic; he never shot at random as others occasionally do, but always took long and careful aim. Perfect weapons and perfect mastery of them were ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... Paris and his lady attended the old man, whose advanced age, his excellence in the use of the French language, which he spoke to admiration,—above all, his skill in applying it to poetical and romantic subjects, which was essential to what was then termed history and belles lettres,—drew from the noble hearers ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... their first captain, they had made but few determined forays against the Spaniards. The greater number of them were French cattle hunters dealing in boucanned meat, hides, and tallow. A few hunted wild boars; a few more planted tobacco of great excellence, with a little sugar, a little indigo, and a little manioc. Among the company were a number of wild Englishmen, of the stamp of Oxenham, who made Tortuga their base and pleasure-house, using it as a port from ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... a lion just caught, or rather polar bear, having only then returned from a trip to the arctic regions, in which his ship had covered itself with glory; a young lady who had written a novel, and another who had written a poem, both unpublished, but both understood to be of a mysterious excellence; and others not necessary to mention. Even for these great people the chance to see a genius off his guard was not to be resisted. He seemed to be so soundly asleep that they might safely approach him. They tiptoed toward ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... simple style; and that nothing whatever is known about its internal sense, and for this reason it is not believed that so much wisdom lies hid in it. The angels said that although the style of the Word seems simple in the sense of the letter, it is such that nothing can ever be compared to it in excellence, since Divine wisdom lies concealed not only in the meaning as a whole but also in each word; and that in heaven this wisdom shines forth. They wished to declare that this wisdom is the light of heaven, because it is Divine truth, for that which shines in ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... being clever, still less as being famous; but we valued her as one always kind, sympathising, and amusing. To all this I am a living witness, but whether I can sketch out such a faint outline of this excellence as shall be perceptible to others may be reasonably doubted. Aided, however, by a few survivors {3} who knew her, I will not refuse to make the attempt. I am the more inclined to undertake the task from a conviction that, however little ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... itself. Christophe's sentimentality, his noisy outbursts, his facile emotions, used sometimes to exasperate Olivier, to whom they seemed absurd. Not to speak of a certain worship of force, the German conviction of the excellence of fist-morality, Faustrecht, to which Olivier and his countrymen had good reason for ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... the former students, with an "exhibition," as it is called, in which the graduates of the year have an opportunity of showing their proficiency in the various branches taught. On that occasion prizes are awarded for excellence in different departments. It would be hard to find a more interesting ceremony. These girls, now recognized as young ladies, are going forth as missionaries of civilization among our busy people. ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... by the excellence of the roads in Brittany, as indeed throughout France; in no instance does the French administrative talent more fully display itself. The roads are of three classes: the "routes imperiales," under the care of the Government; "departementales," kept ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... sustained excellence this year is most impressive are Katharine Fullerton Gerould and Wilbur Daniel Steele. Lincoln Colcord's two stories show qualities of artistic conscience reenforcing an imaginative substance so real that another year or two should suffice for ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... life at the palace-gates, and to practise his nobles in martial exercises he would lead them out to the hunt whenever he thought it well, holding the chase to be the best training for war and the surest way to excellence in horsemanship. [35] A man learns to keep his seat, no matter what the ground may be, as he follows the flying quarry, learns to hurl and strike on horseback in his eagerness to bring down the game and win applause. [36] And here, above all, was the field in which to inure his colleagues ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... Ellen joyfully allotted the whole morning to the examination and trial of her new possessions; and as soon as breakfast was over and the room clear she set about it. She first went through the desk and everything in it, making a running commentary on the excellence, fitness, and beauty of all it contained; then the dressing-box received a share, but a much smaller share, of attention; and lastly, with fingers trembling with eagerness she untied the packthread that was wound ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... us neither the half nor the whole. The stage is ultimately the touchstone of dramatic excellence. But if it is to be such a touchstone, it must have an audience with a penetration of intelligence and a soundness of taste such as had long ceased to characterize Roman audiences. The Senecan drama has lost touch with the stage and ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... planned as a pleasant surprise for the hosts. Du Moustier took a small helping himself and divided the rest among the others. The chronicler adds, "I can attest to the truth of the story and the excellence ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... made the acquaintance of Buffalo Bill, the famous hunter, and some Indian chief and cowboys in his troupe, men in whom natural instincts are combined with a Barnum and Bailey business sense, and real excellence with the actor's vanity. Willy's especial friend, whom he had been very eager for Frederick to meet, was a well-known acrobat who had jumped from the Brooklyn ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... I had another proof of the excellence of my faithful aneroid. Its needle pointed imperatively to "Change." This, in fact, I had already decided to do, but to a less careful man the instruction must have been of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... furnished the robe par excellence, few of which pass through the hands of the taxidermist nowadays. Their place has, in some degree, been taken by the Galloway and other cattle hides, which also make a practically one piece robe of good weight leather. These are too heavy for economical dressing by hand, but the ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... that the constitution provided for its own abrogation, and that the act of destruction could at any time be legally and regularly accomplished. The absolute humanity, justice, and morality of slavery, its excellence as a social institution, and its efficiency in maintaining order and insuring progress, must be fully established and universally admitted, in order to enlist the powerful motives of self-interest on the side of the projected revolution. And finally, it was necessary to show that the divine ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... two, with which he did his best in court. Still, he was far from being the successful pleader he hoped to be, for law, of all professions, is one which demands time and industry for the attainment of any degree of excellence. It is rarely that a young lawyer can go to sleep and wake to find himself famous; he must crawl rather than run. With diligence and punctuality, and observance of every chance, in time the wished-for goal is reached, ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... sixpences that go from pocket to pocket. Therefore I want, before I go further, to make this one distinct point, that the New Testament righteousness is no theological, cloistered, peculiar kind of excellence, but embraces within its scope, 'whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are fair, whatsoever things are of good report'; all that the world calls virtue, all which the world has combined to praise. There are countries on the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... and "the natural of his pleasant wit," are alike judiciously commanded. One of Puttenham's best qualities as a critic is that he never speaks without his book; and he comes very near to discovering Chaucer's greatest gift when noticing his excellence in "prosopographia," a term which to Chaucer would perhaps have seemed to require translation. At the obsoleteness of Chaucer's own diction this critic, who writes entirely "for the better brought-up sort," is obliged to shake his ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... extraneous sources. She received all her inspirations from Chaldaea—her civilisation, her manners, the implements of her industries and of agriculture, besides her scientific and religious literature: one thing alone is of native growth, the military tactics of her generals and the excellence of her soldiery. From the day when Assyria first realised her own strength, she lived only for war and rapine; and as soon as the exhaustion of her population rendered success on the field of battle an impossibility, the reason for her very ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... or discernment, and, for this reason, these ones who are speaking have a desire to know how the matter will present itself in your eyes. Which is it the more commendable and honourable for a person to train to a condition of unfailing excellence, human beings of confessed intelligence or insects of a low ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... wonders, and let me entreat them to remember the immense responsibility which rests on their shoulders. According to the example they set, so may the benighted natives be brought to perceive the beauty and excellence of true religion, or they may remain in their present darkness. Let me ask you a question: Who will be answerable for the ignorance and crimes of the poor natives— they who have never had the light presented to them, or you who might, by your example and precept, have offered it to them ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... to be forgotten by four persons; two others remembered it to their last days on account of its amazing excellence. A dozen persons were crowded into the little dining-room; no one went forth upon his travels with an empty stomach. No such profitable harvest had ever been reaped by the farmer. Dauntless and Anne ate off of a sewing-table in the corner. Mrs. Van Truder deliberately refused to ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... us, of whom I happen to be one, take up the study of naval architecture as an amusement; and those who, like myself, belong to the Engineer corps, are to some extent qualified by our technical education to achieve excellence in the art. I can assure you that some of the officers in my corps have turned ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... I mingle such grave reflections as these with my narratives. It becomes me, in my present way of thinking, to do so, when I see, in Miss Harlowe, how all human excellence, and in poor Belton, how all inhuman libertinism, and am near seeing in this abandoned woman, how all diabolical profligacy, end. And glad should I be for your own sake, for your splendid family's sake, and for ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... seriously warn any parent anxious about the choice of a school not to attach much weight to the apparent excellence of arrangements. Some of the worst schools have these arrangements in the highest perfection. They cannot afford to have them otherwise. Neat cubicles and spotless dimity have beguiled an uninterrupted sequence of mammas, and have kept alive, and even flourishing, schools which are in ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... Bibliotheca, 118, 130) passes a severe censure on the immorality of certain passages in the works of Tatius, and would scarcely have omitted to inveigh against the further scandal of their having proceeded from the pen of an ecclesiastic. "In style and composition this work is of high excellence; the periods are generally well rounded and perspicuous, and gratify the ear by their harmony ... but, except in the names of the personages, and the unpardonable breaches of decorum of which he is guilty, the author appears to have closely copied Heliodorus ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... its footing, but now more visibly in vain. The rhymed scenes in these plays are too plainly the survivals of a ruder and feebler stage of work; they cannot hold their own in the new order with even such discordant effect of incongruous excellence and inharmonious beauty as belongs to the death- scene of the Talbots when matched against the quarrelling scene of Somerset and York. Yet the briefest glance over the plays of the first epoch in the work of Shakespeare will suffice to show how protracted ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... criticising Pragmatism (as he conceives it) in the McGill University Quarterly published at Montreal, for May, 1904.] that our trust is at any rate UNTRUE WHEN IT IS MADE, i. e; before the action; and I seem to remember that he disposes of anything like a faith in the general excellence of the universe (making the faithful person's part in it at any rate more excellent) as a 'lie in the soul.' But the pathos of this expression should not blind us to the complication of the facts. I ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... its vogue. After Sue and Dumas, Balzac is (with the exception, perhaps, of Madame Dudevant,) the best known, and most read, out of France, of all the living French novelists. We hold him much over-rated, but his great fertility, and the real excellence of a few of his books, have made him a widely-spread reputation. His early efforts were less successful than those of Sue; and his first thirty volumes scarcely attained mediocrity. At last he made a start, and took ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... though not the first, place. Technical excellence in needlework, as in all other artistic crafts, is a question of the worker's perseverance and her ability in the use of tools. In embroidery these are few and ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... communicating true visions of future events to those worthy of the gift. And to become worthy a combination of innate and acquired powers is necessary together with the grace of God. The faculties chiefly concerned are reason and imagination. Moral excellence is also an indispensable prerequisite in aiding the development of ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... distinctions cooperates, in a very powerful way, with the contempt of the born gentry, to degrade these professions; and this double agency is, a third time, reinforced by those political arrangements which deny every form of state honor or conspicuous promotion to the very highest description of excellence, whether of the bar, the pulpit, or the civic council. Not "the fluent Murray," or the accomplished Erskine, from the English bar—not Pericles or Demosthenes, from the fierce democracies of Greece—not Paul preaching at Athens—could snatch a wreath ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other. At the short intervals since these conversations, when I could justifiably abstract my mind from public affairs, the subject has been under my contemplation. But the more I considered it, the more it expanded beyond the measure of either my time or information. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... of Nantwich, Middlewich and Northwich were in active operation at the time of Edward the Confessor, and at that date the mills and fisheries on the Dee also furnished a valuable source of revenue. Twelfth century writers refer to the excellence of Cheshire cheese, and at the time of the Civil War three hundred tons at L33 per ton were ordered in one year for the troops in Scotland. The trades of tanners, skinners and glove-makers existed at the time of the Conquest, and the export trade in wool in the 13th and 14th centuries was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... the whole gang,"—I hardly felt complimented by the word,—"and whatever he gives you, he'll give you good. Don't look forward to variety, but you'll have excellence. And there'sa nother rum thing in his house," proceeded Wemmick, after a moment's pause, as if the remark followed on the housekeeper understood; "he never lets a door or ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... particularly that which in the West Indies is called the Jamaica Plum. Our men gave it the same name; it has a pleasant tartish taste, but is a little woody, probably only for want of culture: These plums were not plenty; so that having the two qualities of a dainty, scarcity and excellence, it is no wonder that they were held in the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... us was in proof of the truth of what has here been said. The Signor Soranzo was a man of great natural excellence of character, and the charities of his domestic circle had assisted in confirming his original dispositions. Like others of his rank and expectations, he had, from time to time, made the history and polity of the self-styled Republic his study, and the power of collective interests and specious ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Catholic saints did not fly through the air, nor were their hearts pierced with supernatural darts, as the mendacious hagiology of their Church would have us believe; but they have a better title to be remembered by mankind, as the best examples of a beautiful and precious kind of human excellence. ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... I about? Am I not all this time arraigning my own heart?—I know I am, by the remorse I feel in it, while my pen bears testimony to her excellence. But yet I must add (for no selfish consideration shall hinder me from doing justice to this admirable creature) that in this conversation she demonstrated so much prudent knowledge in every thing that relates to that part of the domestic ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... you shall be provided, as well as with a mounted guide for the road. Le fils de son Excellence," said he, with emphasis, bowing to the major as he spoke; who, in his turn, repaid the courtesy ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... remarks as to the degree of Mr. Macready's genius; and now, as I recognize here many who are devoted to literature and art, I will ask them if I am not right in this doctrine—that the true measure of the genius of an artist is the degree of excellence to which he brings the art that he cultivates. Judge of Mr. Macready by this test, and how great is that genius that will delight us no more; for it is because it has so achieved what I will call the symmetry of art that its height and its breadth have been often forgotten. We know ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... performing an elaborate duet. It was one of her most irksome duties instructing these children in music, who would never attain to more than mechanical excellence. When they had arrived at the final crash, with not more than half a bar between them, Bluebell was summoned to sing. The gentlemen came in from the dining-room at the last verse, and, after a slight pause, she began another unasked. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... place. "Mamma, if you were queen," says he, "And such a book was writ for me; I know 'tis so much to your taste, That Gay would keep his coach at least." "My child, what you suppose is true, I see its excellence in you; Poets whose writing mend the mind, A noble recompense should find: But I am barr'd by fortune's frowns. From the best privilege of crowns; The glorious godlike power to bless, And ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... countenance of my old friend. Was not the last noticeable publication in post-classical literature the "Rasselas" of Dr. Johnson? Had not all those well-disposed people who hailed it as the brightest combination of literary and moral excellence which a mere modern could produce,—had they not lived and died in respectable allegiance to the Homeric personality? To say nothing of a mystical admiration of the Greek hexameters which he could not construe, Colonel Prowley was a diligent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... constitution, designed to beautify and beatify man. To cultivate and improve it is an essential part of education. The highest civilization known in Christendom is but the result or product of good taste. Even religion and morality, in their highest excellence, are but, so far as society is concerned, developments and demonstrations of cultivated taste. There may, indeed, be a fictitious or chimerical taste without Poetry or Religion; but a genuine good taste, in our judgment, without these ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... brought Beltane into his humble dwelling where was a coffer wrought by his own skilful fingers; and from this coffer he drew forth a suit of triple mail, wondrously fashioned, beholding the which, Beltane's eyes glistened because of the excellence of its craftsmanship. ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... strung of all excellences the mean man hunts for faults and never an excellence; in a palace all compact of jewels it is the ant ...
— The Tattva-Muktavali • Purnananda Chakravartin
... the law-giver. Christ made known only such sacraments as He Himself could partake. But He could not receive either penance or extreme unction because he was sinless. The institution of a new sacrament belongs to the power of excellence which is competent for Christ alone: so that it must be said that Christ instituted such a sacrament as confirmation not by making it known, ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... celebrated for its honey; Olinthian honey was held to be superior to all other, except that of Hymettus. The bees are of a special kind, which work hard, and go out in wind and slight rain; but the excellence of the honey was probably due to the rosemary blossoms, on which they feed by preference, only visiting other flowers when these have been completely rifled. Of late years the inhabitants have cleared a great part of the land in order to cultivate vines or chrysanthemum, so the yield of honey ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... in advocating a favorite subject to appropriate all possible excellence, and endeavor to concentrate every doubtful auxiliary, that we may fortify to the utmost the theme of our attention. Such a design should be utterly disdained, except as far as is consistent with fairness; and the sophistry of ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... means of securing respect and good care of library books is for libraries to maintain higher standards of excellence in respect to intelligent repairing and binding, to discard promptly a book which is to any extent mutilated or which is so soiled as to make it seem unwarrantable to ask a boy to wash his hands before ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... and divers were the magic virtues that were in Cuchulain [11]that were in no one else in his day.[11] Excellence of form, excellence of shape, excellence of build, excellence [W.661.] in swimming, excellence in horsemanship, excellence in chess and in draughts, excellence in battle, excellence in contest, excellence in single combat, excellence in reckoning, excellence in speech, excellence in ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... did owe for the excellence of the Expeditionary Force, such as it was in point of size, and much of what we have since owed for the excellence of the great armies that we subsequently raised, was due to the unbroken work of the fine Administrative Staff, developed in those ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... drinking the froth out of a pop-bottle, and equally as exhilarating. Like other sots, the more the literary bacchanal drinks the more he thirsts— appetite increased by what it feeds upon. We can forgive Byron and Boccaccio the lax morals of their productions because of their literary excellence, just as we wink at the little social lapses of Sarah Bernhardt because of her unapproachable genius; but Du Maurier's book is wholly bad. It could only have been made worse by being made bigger. It is a moral crime, a literary abortion. The style is ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... is a tender of cattle, Supreme; and he owes his peculiar aptitude to the fact that his parents, for twenty generations back, were engaged in similar work. The same may be said for the younger of the two women; she is small, but we owe much of the excellence of our crops to her ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... Atkinson, Keohane, and Dimitri made their way to Cape Evans via the Castle Rock, Glacier Tongue route, as described in the earlier part of this narrative, but, as it happens, under almost unparalleled conditions, for they sailed over the ice, riding on their sledge, such was the excellence of ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... but that he report How much this virtue unto thee is pleasing, To him I leave; for hard he will not find them, Nor to be boasted of; them let him answer; And may the grace of God in this assist him!" As a disciple, who obeys his teacher, Ready and willing, where he is expert, So that his excellence may be revealed, "Hope," said I, "is the certain expectation [67] Of glory in the hereafter, which proceedeth From grace divine and merit precedent. From many stars this light comes unto me; But he instilled it first into my heart, Who was chief singer unto the chief captain. [72] Hope they in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... said and what she felt might not be the same; that persons who have no great command over language are obliged to make one word do duty for a dozen; and that, if his wife was defective at one point, there were in her whole regions of unexplored excellence, of faculties never encouraged, and an affection to which he offered no response.' There is more philosophy in the cunning way in which those happy lovers in the lane accommodate their strides to the comfort of each other than we have been accustomed to suspect. It is done very easily; it is done ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... peonies expanded like tropic blooms, and the heart of each peony was a sixteen-candle-power electric lamp. No other two cinemas in the Five Towns, it was reported, consumed together as much current as the Imperial de Luxe; and nobody could deny that the degree of excellence of a cinema is finally settled by its consumption ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... modesty, may have influenced, to a considerable extent, his moral nature. The erect form of man, by freeing the hands from all locomotive uses, has been necessary for his intellectual advancement; and the extreme perfection of his hands, has alone rendered possible that excellence in all the arts of civilization which raises him so far above the savage, and is perhaps but the forerunner of a higher intellectual and moral advancement. The perfection of his vocal organs has first led to the formation of articulate speech, and then ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Such a child may be sometimes recognized by the neglected appearance of his teeth and finger-nails, the "high-water marks" about his neck and wrists, the dust on his clothing and shoes, his untidy hair, etc. In fact, he seems to have adopted as his life motto the paraphrase, "There is no excellence about ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... "O, thus she stood, even with such majesty, when I first wooed her. But yet, Paulina, Hermione was not so aged as this statue looks." Paulina replied, "So much the more the carver's excellence, who has made the statue as Hermione would have looked had she been living now. But let me draw the curtain, sire, lest presently you ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... master. During three years he had made golden use of his opportunities. He was remarkable among his fellow-students for his indomitable perseverance, and his power of concentrating all his thoughts upon his work. He experienced a desire to attain excellence for its own sake, not for the petty ambition of excelling others. Thus he became very popular among his associates, and excited their admiration without ever awakening the jealousies of wounded self-love. Though he had determined to devote his life to art, from the conviction that it ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... is one creed, and only one, That glorifies God's excellence; So cherish, that His will be done, The common ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... have dwelt on the essential characteristics of the introduction and have shown what it should be like when completed. No one but an expert writer, however, can hope that his argument, in either introduction, discussion, or conclusion, will attain any considerable completeness and excellence without first passing through a preliminary ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... without any Regard how they are applied. The Gifts of Nature and Accomplishments of Art are valuable, but as they are exerted in the Interest of Virtue, or governed by the Rules of Honour. We ought to abstract our Minds from the Observation of any Excellence in those we converse with, till we have taken some Notice, or received some good Information of the Disposition of their Minds; otherwise the Beauty of their Persons, or the Charms of their Wit, may make us fond of those whom our Reason and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... society to which I myself hereditarily belong, namely, the Lower Orders; but their appearances are like angels' visits—in the obvious, as well as in the conventional but remoter sense. I can count no less than three men of this stamp among my ten thousand acquaintances. When the twofold excellence of such ambidexters is not stultified by selfishness, you have in them a realised ideal upon which their Creator might pronounce the judgment that it is very good. Move heaven and earth, then, to multiply that ideal ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... memorial, and that he tacitly consents to it, they also, are satisfied with it. As this same memorial has been circulated throughout the whole of China, everybody has learned of our innocence and of the excellence of the law of God, which was dwelt upon at length in the memorial. Accordingly, as they inform us from here, a great number of literati and mandarins have become friendly toward Ours, and wish them to spread the holy gospel to the most ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... under a hill, and is built in many ways by many men. As to who is the best builder of trenches there can be little doubt, and any British soldier would probably admit that for painstaking work and excellence of construction there are few to rival Von Hindenburg. His Hindenburg line is a model of neatness and comfort, and it would be only a very ungrateful British ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... French lady to me, whose husband's collection of old pictures had brought unexpectedly low prices in the auction-room,—"How can you be so senseless," she said, "as to attach yourself to the study of an art in which you see that all excellence is a mere matter of opinion?" Some of us have thus come to imagine that the laws of Nature, as well as those of Art, may be matters of opinion; and I recollect an ingenious paper by Mr. Frederic Harrison, some two years ago, on the "Subjective Synthesis,"—which, after proving, what does ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... this time attained, may contend in the public examination for the Newcastle scholarship, just before the Easter holidays, and it is a great testimony to a boy's ability and industry if his name appears among the nine select for their excellence. This time, 1843, Coley, who was scarcely sixteen, had of course but little chance, but he had the pleasure of announcing that his great friend, Edmund Bastard, a young Devonshire squire, was among the 'select,' and he says of ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... James's powder; and other simple and compound medicines of great potency, who carry on their diabolical trade on an amazingly large scale. Indeed, the quantity of medical preparations thus sophisticated exceeds belief. Cheapness, and not genuineness and excellence, is the grand desideratum with the unprincipled dealers ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... a "cordon bleu," etc., while our girls are at school, far away from domestic comments, deep in the agonies of algebra perhaps; and directly they leave school, in many cases they marry. As a preparation for the state of matrimony most of them learn how to make cake and preserves, and the very excellence of their attainments in that way proves how easy it would be for them, with their dainty fingers and good taste, to far excel their European cousins in that art which a French writer says is based on "reason, health, common ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... the fine effects of their two vigorous, strenuous outings. Each had taken on weight slightly, though there was no superfluous flesh on any of the six. They were bronzed, comparatively lean-looking, trim and hard. Their muscles were at the finest degree of excellence. ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... vulgar man is hopelessly excluded. They are all around him; but he has no eyes to see, no taste to appreciate, no heart to respond to them. "All things excellent," so Spinoza tells us, "are as difficult as they are rare." The vulgar man has no heart for difficulty; and hence the rare excellence of art and beauty remain ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... essay writing, from Addison to the successors of Johnson, which had formed one of the most original features of our national literature, would now fail in its attraction, even if some of those elegant writers themselves had appeared in a form which their own excellence had rendered familiar and deprived of all novelty. I was struck by an observation which Johnson has thrown out. That sage, himself an essayist and who had lived among our essayists, fancied that "mankind may come in time to write all aphoristically;" and so athirst was that first of our ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... that Speaks sharp affection, when my words fall flat; I reade you like my mistresse, and discry In every line the quicknesse of her eye: Her smoothnesse in each syllable, her grace To marshall ev'ry word in the right place. It is the excellence and soule of wit, When ev'ry thing is free as well as fit: For metaphors packt up and crowded close Swath minds sweetnes, and display the throws, And, like those chickens hatcht in furnaces, Produce or one limbe more, or one limbe ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... that the labourers in the book-field of our own country are not numerous. Touchstone's remark, 'a poor thing, but mine own,' might, on the worst view of the case, have suggested greater diligence at home; but on a wider view English book-work is by no means a 'poor thing.' Its excellence at certain periods is as striking as its inferiority at others, and it is a literal fact that there is no art or craft connected with books in which England, at one time or another, has not held the primacy ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... the showing made by all three companies," said Captain Putnam after the drilling and marching were at an end. "Companies B and C have done very well indeed. But for general excellence the average of Company A is a little above the others, so the prize must go ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... Richard was held to be the prophet of the Armagnacs and the men-at-arms really believed that this evangelical preacher had caused the beans they gathered to grow; thus had he provided for their nourishment by his excellence, his wisdom and his penetration into the counsels of God, who gave manna unto the people of Israel in ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... off, struck silent by a wholly unexpected display of energy on the part of Tots, who had suddenly hurled a piece of chalk at him from the other end of the room. It hit him smartly on the shoulder, leaving a white patch to testify to the excellence of ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... This comparative excellence is to be referred to the very general acquirement of what we call "art cultivation" among American women, and this, in conjunction with a knowledge that her social world will be apt to judge of her capacity by her success or want of success in making her own surroundings beautiful, determines ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... Having drawn his young excellence up to the bank, it Appear'd that himself was all dripping, I swear; No wonder he soon became dry as a blanket, Exposed as he was to the count's SON and HEIR. Dear Sir, quoths the count, in reward of your valour, To show that my gratitude ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... would!" Sarah agreed, still questioning Caroline with her watery, appealing eyes. In Caroline, Sarah saw her salvation, and snatched at it. Caroline could no nothing well; she had no excellence; all that Caroline could do Sarah could do better. And yet Caroline, by the mysterious virtue of her dry and yet genial shrewdness, and of the unstable but reliable equilibrium of her temperament, was the skilled Sarah's superior. They both knew it and felt ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... called Effroc. The legend related that a Duke of Effroc had been drowned at the foot of the wall. Certainly the water there was deep enough to drown a duke. At low water it was six good fathoms. The excellence of this little anchorage attracted sea vessels, and the old Dutch tub, called the Vograat, came to anchor at the Effroc Stone. The Vograat made the crossing from London to Rotterdam, and from Rotterdam to London, punctually once a week. Other barges started twice a day, either ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... "The excellence of one's technic depends upon the accuracy of one's understanding of these subjects and his skill in applying them to his interpretations at the keyboard. Mechanical skill, minus real technical grasp, places the ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... main source of literary recreation in reading: the great books of all time on which one generation after another has set the seal of excellence so that we know them certainly to be worth reading. There is a wide and varied choice, and it is amongst the old books that the surest and most lasting recreation is to be found. Some one has said, "Whenever a new book comes out ...
— Recreation • Edward Grey
... to carve the Venus of Milo out of mottled pumice-stone. Still he did not regret to-night the freak of fancy that had brought him to the Lake House, since it had led to his meeting a woman who was to him a new and beautiful revelation of the rarest excellence and grace. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... father, William Moy Thomas, whose name was introduced into the case, was for many years past one of the most esteemed and admired of our profession, owing to his knowledge, fairness, judgment and excellence of style. The Court of Appeal upheld the verdict, and Punch's record of long existence without a verdict against it for libel is spoilt. Its licence, the licence of a ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... thought would do the most good for Siwash. It was a team that I wouldn't have hired to chase a Shanghai rooster out of a garden patch, but the blind and happy Faculty didn't stop to reason about its excellence. It held a meeting the night before the Muggledorfer game and suspended nine of the men for inattention to chapel, smoking cigarettes during vacation and other high crimes. The whole school roared with indignation. Bost appeared before the Faculty meeting and almost shook his fist in Prexy's ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... with two or three thin, yellow, miserable looking daughters, so timid that they dared not look up, made their appearance. Virginia soon put them at their ease; she waited upon them with refreshments, the excellence of which she endeavoured to heighten by relating some particular circumstance which in her own estimation, vastly improved them. One beverage had been prepared by Margaret; another, by her mother: her brother himself had climbed some lofty tree for the very ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... what excellence was he possessed that her life should so abandon itself at his feet? In what had he proved himself generous or capable of the virtues that subdue? Such reasoning led to self-mockery. She was no longer the girl who questioned her heart as ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... character be cleared from all stain—if not a whisper taint his name, and his true excellence be known to all—oh, may we not hope? mother, mother, you will not be inexorable; you will not, oh, you will not condemn your child to misery!" exclaimed Emmeline, in a tone of excitement, strongly contrasting with the hopelessness ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... letters of the great Roman orator, merit points to those of the philosopher Seneca. He, too, cultivates and enjoins an easy and unstudied diction. So great is the excellence of his letters; so nearly is their beauty allied to the beauty of our Holy Scriptures; so does he seem to anticipate the morals and teachings of our Christian dispensation, that it is almost reprehensible to speak ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... to him the signals of his triumph; and he smiled with satisfaction as he surveyed this lovely woman, so long acknowledged to be the beauty par excellence of the imperial court at Vienna. Margaret allowed him to take her hand, and stood coldly passive, while he covered it with kisses; but when he would have gone further, and put his arm around her waist, she raised ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... hidden fear of decline. They knew current rumours well enough; they agreed with the opinion that since his 'Village Wedding' the painter had produced nothing equal to that famous picture. Indeed, after maintaining something of that standard of excellence in a few works, he was now gliding into a more scientific, drier manner. Brightness of colour was vanishing; each work seemed to show a decline. However, these were things not to be said; so Claude, when he had recovered his ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... gasped at the thought of the young enterprising spirit thus caged for nine weary months, and to whom this bare confined space was still the only resting-place. He could not look by any means delighted with the excellence of the arrangements, grant it though he might; and he was hurried on to the vast kitchens, their ranges of coppers full of savoury steaming contents, and their racks of loaves looking all that was substantial and wholesome; but his eyes were ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ungraciously made, only prove the rigor of the rule. Practically, to all but members of noble families, and men distinguished for military, naval, or political services, or eminent lawyers or clergymen, the House of Lords is unattainable. Brown may reach the highest range of artistic excellence, he may achieve world-wide fame as an architect, his canvas may glow with the marvellous coloring of Titian or repeat the rare and delicate grace of Correggio, the triumphs of his chisel may reflect honor upon England and his age; the inventive genius of Jones, painfully elaborating, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... subsequent philosophies borrowed from it, as it in its later developments borrowed from them; and thus along with them it formed the mind of the world, for further apprehensions, and yet more authentic revelations, of divine order and moral excellence. ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... to find in a vast and profound inventor, a writer also who bestows immortality on his language. The English language is the only object, in his great survey of art and of nature, which owes nothing of its excellence to the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... be as willing to see her brother bear hardships in the London streets, as she had herself been to dismiss Owen the first to his wigwam, Honor took the more homely view of arguing on the health and quietness of Turnagain Corner, the excellence of the landlady, and the fact that her own cockney eyes had far less unreasonable expectations than those trained to the luxuries of Beauchamp. But by far the most efficient solace was an expedition for the purchase of various amenities of life, on which Phoebe expended ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... visits to Paris he lodged in a dingy hotel of the Latin Quarter, the chief merit of which was its nearness to the cheap and excellent restaurant where the two Americans had made acquaintance. But Garnett's assiduity in frequenting the place arose, in the end, less from the excellence of the food than from the enjoyment of his old friend's conversation. Amid the flashy sophistications of the Parisian life to which Garnett's trade introduced him, the American sage's conversation had the crisp and homely flavor of a native dish—one of the domestic compounds for ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... nut contest the past year have been unsatisfactory. The nut crop was a failure over quite a portion of the country covered by the association. The number of nuts sent in was not over one-tenth of those received in 1920 and no nuts of notable excellence were received. Were it not for the fact that this year promises to be a great year for nuts in the northeastern United States, one might think that the nut contests had outlived their usefulness. They have, however, brought ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... feel the majesty,— By heaven, I'd almost said the holiness,— That circles round a fair and virtuous woman: There is a gentle purity that breathes In such a one, mingled with chaste respect, And modest pride of her own excellence,— A shrinking nature, that is so adverse To aught unseemly, that I could as soon Forget the sacred love I owe to heav'n, As dare, with impure thoughts, to taint the air Inhal'd by such a being: than whom, my liege, Heaven cannot look on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... gathered to such an extent that it is difficult to see her plainly through the mass of it. Much has been cleared away; much remains. Mrs. Oliphant's dreadful theories are still on record. The excellence of Madame Duclaux's monograph perpetuates her one serious error. Mr. Swinburne's Note immortalizes his. M. Heger was dug up again the ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... in conversation, she wields a powerful influence over many minds of a peculiar order; and through the few mediums whom she selects to represent her characteristics, she displays a calmness and coolness of reasoning and an excellence of judgment such as few are able ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... after the matutinal muffin, without exposing the mind to the cruelties of a Maynooth debate, or the body to the tender mercies of the novel mode of ventilation. I find the theatres much more amusing, not from the excellence of the dramatic performances, but from their sheer and gross absurdity, which, without actual experience, is almost too monstrous for belief. The fact is, that a new Cockney school has arisen, ten times more twaddling and impotent than the ancient academy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... on sliding over the surface of this opening paragraph, begins to think there's mischief singing in the upper air. 'No, reader, not at all. We never were cooler in our days. And this we protest, that, were it not for the excellence of the subject, Coleridge and Opium-Eating, Mr. Gillman would have been dismissed by us unnoticed. Indeed, we not only forgive Mr. Gillman, but we have a kindness for him; and on this account, that he was good, he was generous, he was most forbearing, through twenty years, to poor Coleridge, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Mad ambition parleying with the devil, in the guise of a woman lost to all virtue save a desire to aggrandize her husband and herself. These have a pretence of history; but Hamlet, with hardly that pretence, stands alone supreme in varied excellence. Ambition, murder, resistless fate, filial love, the love of woman, revenge, the power of conscience, paternal solicitude, infinite jest: ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... say that everything that means, intelligence, experience, and hard work can suggest, to continue the school at its present high grade of excellence, will be afforded by those who are, and who will be, intrusted with the charge; and it is proper to add that the school has benefited greatly by the untiring efforts of Mr. Samuel C. Bennett (son of Judge Bennett), who is ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... Much of his life was deformed by inquietude and disease, and it terminated at middle age; he composed in a language then scarcely settled into form, or admitted to a rank among the cultivated languages of Europe: yet his writings are remarkable for their extent and variety as well as their intrinsic excellence; and his own countrymen are not his only, or perhaps his principal admirers. It is difficult to collect or interpret the general voice; but the World, no less than Germany, seems already to have dignified him with the reputation of a classic; to have enrolled him among that ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... "redskin" from the "paleface," were his arms, his trinkets, and his "firewater." He could appreciate whatsoever gave him superiority in war, gratified his childish vanity, or ministered to his brutal appetite. But the greater comfort of the white man's house—the higher excellence of his boat—his improved agricultural implements or extended learning—none of these things appealed to the Indian's passions or desires. The arts of peace were nothing to him—refinement was worse than nothing. He would spend hours ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... first began to give trouble to the Inner Nation, they relied on the strength of their ships and the excellence of their guns. It was therefore proposed to build large ships and cast heavy cannon in order to oppose them. I represented, however, that vessels are not built in a day, and pointed out the difficulties in the way of naval warfare. I showed that the power of a cannon ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... eighteenth, and the man of the eighteenth for the nineteenth, and most of us would be out of place in the world of a hundred years hence. But all higher minds are much more akin than they are different: genius is of all ages, and there is perhaps more uniformity in excellence than in mediocrity. The sublimer intelligences of mankind—Plato, Dante, Sir Thomas More—meet in a higher sphere above the ordinary ways of men; they understand one another from afar, notwithstanding the interval which separates them. They are 'the ...
— Sophist • Plato
... achieved success in politics and agriculture. They were given for sea rescues, for heroic deeds by firemen and school-patrol boys, and for outstanding community and civic work. Within our time they have been given as trophies for excellence in athletics, automobile ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... Swannington Railway; after which, at his father's request, he was made joint engineer with himself in laying out the London and Birmingham Railway, and the execution of that line was afterwards entrusted to him as sole engineer. The stability and excellence of the works of that railway, the difficulties which had been successfully overcome in the course of its construction, and the judgment which was displayed by Robert Stephenson throughout the whole conduct of the undertaking to its completion, established his reputation as an ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... excellence betray; O could I Write in thy Immortal Way! If Art be Nature's Scholar, and can make Such vast improvements, Nature must forsake Her Ancient Style; and in some grand Design She must her Own Originals decline, And for the Noblest Copies follow ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... to which He conforms; and that whatsoever things are fair and lovely, and good, and pure down here, those things are fair, and lovely, and good, and pure up there; that He is the Archetype of all excellence, the Ideal of all moral completeness: that we can know enough of Him to be sure of this that what we call right He loves, and what we ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... certain rich dry-goods merchant in the United States who had made a large fortune for those days, and while he knew nothing about art, he wanted to spend his money for fine things. So he employed people who did understand the matter to buy for him many pictures whose excellence he, himself, could not understand, but which were to become a fine possession for succeeding generations. This was about 1860, and this man, A.T. Stewart, bought two of Fortuny's pictures at high prices. "The Serpent Charmer," and ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... the King's Theatre. Sir Robert Howard and Dryden's heroic tragedy, The Indian Queen, was produced at the Theatre Royal in mid-January, 1663. It is a good play, but the extraordinary success it attained was in no small measure due to the excellence and magnificence of the scenic effects and mounting. 27 January, Pepys noticed that the streets adjacent to the theatre were 'full of coaches at the new play The Indian Queen, which for show, they say, exceeds Henry VIII.' On 1 February he himself found it 'indeed a most pleasant ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... there, rough and ready; but by steady attention to all the details, and by careful inspection when passing the "piece-work" (a practice much in vogue there, but which I discouraged), I contrived to raise the standard of excellence, without a corresponding increase of price. My object was to raise the quality of the work turned out; and, as we had orders from the Russian Government, from China, and the Continent, as well as from shipowners at home, I observed that quality was a very important element in all commercial ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... high, your primary tendency will probably be to fancy him a great deal cleverer, wiser, and better than, he really is, and to imagine that he possesses no faults at all. The over-estimate of his good qualities will be the result of your seeing them constantly, and having their excellence much pressed on your attention, while from not knowing so well other men who are quite as good, you are led to think that those good qualities are more rare and excellent than in fact they are. And you may possibly regard it as a duty to shut your eyes to the faults of those ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... doctrine of the highest Self,) and has on that account no force to prove what is not proved by any other means, (viz. the supereminence of Kapila's knowledge.) On the other hand, we have a /S/ruti-passage which proclaims the excellence of Manu[259], viz. 'Whatever Manu said is medicine' (Taitt. Sa/m/h. II, 2, 10, 2). Manu himself, where he glorifies the seeing of the one Self in everything ('he who equally sees the Self in all beings and all beings in the Self, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... that too, at its simplest and best; and especially when the humour is shot with it—is worthy of a better epithet than excellent. It is supremely touching. Imagination, fancy, wit, eloquence, the keenest observation, the most strenuous endeavour to reach the highest artistic excellence, the largest kindliness,—all these he brought to his life-work. And that work, as I think, will live, I had almost dared to prophesy for ever. Of course fashions change. Of course no writer of fiction, writing for his own little day, can permanently meet the needs ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... finish their course, there is a grand reunion of the former students, with an "exhibition," as it is called, in which the graduates of the year have an opportunity of showing their proficiency in the various branches taught. On that occasion prizes are awarded for excellence in different departments. It would be hard to find a more interesting ceremony. These girls, now recognized as young ladies, are going forth as missionaries of civilization among our busy people. They are many of them to be teachers, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... author has been more elaborately slandered on principle, or more studiously abused through envy. Smarting dullards went about for years, with an ever-ready microscope, hunting for flaws in his character that might be injuriously exposed; but to-day his defamers are in bad repute. Excellence in a fellow-mortal is to many men worse than death; and great suffering fell upon a host of mediocre writers when Pope uplifted his sceptre and ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... House. These concessions, varied slightly by subsequent patents from Richard II. and Henry IV., form the entire foundation to the tale of Chaucer's Laureateship.[6] There is no reference in grant or patent to his poetical excellence or fame, no mention whatever of the laurel, no verse among the countless lines of his poetry indicating the reception of that crowning glory, no evidence that the third Edward was one whit more sensitive to the charms of the Muses ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... bucks at the bath—at the bland, tight-waisted Germans—at the capering Frenchmen, with their lacquered mustachios and trim varnished boots—at the English dandies, Pen amongst them, with their calm domineering air, and insolent languor: and envied each one of these some excellence or quality of youth, or good looks, which he possessed, and of which Warrington felt the need. And every night, as the night came, he quitted the little circle with greater reluctance; and, retiring to his own lodging in their neighbourhood, felt himself the more lonely ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... throughout the East. As a prize—whether for ransom or dishonor—richer than the churches and the palaces, and their belongings, be they jewels or gold, or anointed crown, or bone of Saint, or splinter of the True Cross, or shred from the shirt of Christ—to him who loves her, a prize of such excellence that glory, even the glory Mahommed is now dreaming of when he shall have wrenched the keys of the gates from their rightful owner dead in the bloody breach, would pale if set beside it for comparison, and sink out of sight—think you she will not be hunted? Or that the painted ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... "That's awfully good: 'If your war-ships aren't any better at lifting things—' Oh, I say, really," he protested, "that's awfully good." He seemed to be afraid I would not appreciate the rare excellence of my speech. "You know, really," he pleaded, "it is ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... books which by their excellence are able to commend themselves to entirely different persons.... The man beginning work for 'Greats' will always be told that he must read this; and if he do so, will be rewarded by having the relations of the different parts of his reading marked out with masterly ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... of the great Roman orator, merit points to those of the philosopher Seneca. He, too, cultivates and enjoins an easy and unstudied diction. So great is the excellence of his letters; so nearly is their beauty allied to the beauty of our Holy Scriptures; so does he seem to anticipate the morals and teachings of our Christian dispensation, that it is almost reprehensible to speak of them at all, without setting forth their extraordinary charms of style and thought, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Thy virtue makes me vile; And what should move my heart inflames my soul. O marvellous world, wherein I play the villain From very love of excellence! But for him, I'd be the rival of her stainless thoughts ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... used in conjunction with a running noose, as shown in Fig. 56, while a few turns under and over and around a cleat, or about two spiles, is a method easily understood and universally used by sailors (Fig. 57). The sailor's knot par excellence, however, is the "Bow-line" (Fig. 58), and wherever we find sailors, or seamen, we will find this knot in one or another of its various forms. When you can readily and surely tie this knot every time, you may feel yourself on the road ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill
... kingdom. Animals, also, were to be found there,—among which the llama, with its golden fleece, was most conspicuous,—executed in the same style, and with a degree of skill, which, in this instance, probably, did not surpass the excellence of the material.21 ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... Giotto, relating the way in which he had held himself in drawing his circle, without moving his arm, and without compasses. Whence the pope, and many intelligent courtiers, knew how much Giotto overpassed in excellence all the other painters of his time. Afterwards, the thing becoming known, the proverb arose from it: 'Thou art rounder than the O of Giotto;' which it is still in custom to say to men of the grosser clay; for the proverb is pretty, not only on account of the accident ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... unquestionably one of the safest and most commodious sea-boats in the world. She is probably not the fastest, especially with a strong head wind and sea, because of her great bulk and the area of resistance she presents both above and below the water-line; but for strength and excellence of construction, steadiness of movement, and perfection of accommodations, she can have no superior. Her wheels never missed a revolution from the time she discharged her New-York pilot till the time she stopped them to take on board ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... curiosity has been small, was a disappointment. The room had been nicely furnished once, but the carpet and the furniture showed signs of much wear, and the pictures of which Norris had spoken proved to be several of a remarkably "loud" sort, but of no real artistic value or excellence. ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... of art definitely addressed to depraved tastes; and, secondly, in a more subtle way, by really beautiful and useful engravings which are yet not good enough to retain their influence on the public mind;—which weary it by redundant quantity of monotonous average excellence, and diminish or destroy its power of accurate attention to work of a ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... as the cheroots were lit, Mellish spoke like a man; beginning with his cholera-theory, reviewing his fifteen years' "scientific labors," the machinations of the "Simla Ring," and the excellence of his Fumigatory, while the Viceroy watched him between half-shut eyes and thought: "Evidently, this is the wrong tiger; but it is an original animal." Mellish's hair was standing on end with excitement, and he stammered. He began groping in his coat-tails and, before the Viceroy knew what was about ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the Black Forest, woven around the mysterious legend of the Wehr Wolf. The plot has to do with the later German feudal times, is brisk in action, and moves spiritedly from start to finish. Mr. Fiske deserves a great deal of credit for the excellence of his work. No more ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... began mentally to criticize her manner to himself. It had been very sweet, that warm, that full, that ready declaration of love. Yes; it had been very sweet; but—but—; when, after her little jokes, she did confess her love, had she not been a little too free for feminine excellence? A man likes to be told that he is loved, but he hardly wishes that the girl he is to marry should fling herself ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... order in her memory, all that yet remained precious in this great ruin. Probably no English writer that ever has made the attempt could have done this more perfectly. Though Lady Byron was not a poet par excellence, yet she belonged to an order of souls fully equal to Lord Byron. Hers was more the analytical mind of the philosopher than the creative mind of the poet; and it was, for that reason, the one mind in our day capable of estimating him fully ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... respectability was intense, and at the same time broad-minded. To be an established subscriber to the Burial Club was evidence of good character and of social spirit. The periodic jollities of this company of men whose professed aim was to bury each other, had a high reputation for excellence. Up till a year previously they had always been held at the Duck, in Duck Square, opposite; but Mr Enoch Peake, Chairman of the Club, had by persistent and relentless chicane, triumphing over immense influences, changed their venue to the Dragon, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... said, "You must come, Father MacTurnan, for a walk. You must forget the misfortunes of those people for a while." He yielded, and we spoke of the excellence of the road, and he told me that when he had conceived the idea of a playhouse he had arranged with the inspector that the road should go to the ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... to, in order to carry my point with this charming creature; and yet after all, how have I puzzled myself by it; and yet am near tumbling into the pit which it was the end of all my plots to shun! What a happy man had I been with such an excellence, could I have brought my mind to marry when I first prevailed upon her to quit her father's house! But then, as I have often reflected, how had I known, that a but blossoming beauty, who could carry on a private correspondence, and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... The excellence of her tones, and the lambent fluidity of her transitions, if I may be allowed the phrase, were made by her art quite subservient to the expression, and owed their chief value to the share they bore in producing it. Possibly there was a little too much of the dramatic in her singing, ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... hills and waters. Ay, gape at me, And think me bitten by some evil tooth; But as a quiet stream at the cliff's edge Breaks its smooth habit into a loud white force, So this delight the earth pours over me Leaps out of women with such excellence, It seems as I must brace my sinews to it,— The comely fashion of their limbs, their eyes, Their gait, and the way they use their arms. And now My eyes have a message to my heart from them Such as thou only through a blind skin hast. Therefore I came back here;—I scarce know why, But ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... produces, except perhaps in the case of the pecan. But Mr. Bixby's labors, continuing the work begun by Dr. Morris, have reached such results that I think he will be willing to say that we have nearly reached the limit of natural excellence in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... the Nord has long been conspicuous in France for the number and the excellence of its educational institutions. The statistics collected by M. Baudrillart show that it stands side by side, in this respect, with the Department of the Seine. Of the 663 communes which make up the Department of the Nord, only three in 1881 were without a school. The department contains ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... of Madame d'Avrigny—the house in all Paris most addicted to private theatricals. This reproduction of a forgotten play, with its characters attired in the costume of the period in which the play was placed, had had great success, a success due largely to the excellence of the costumes. In the comic parts the dressing had been purposely exaggerated, but Madame de Nailles, who played the part of a great coquette, would not have been dressed in character had she not tried to make ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... Ah, it were sacrilege to thus befoul The mighty soul whose penetration deep Hath by selection brought this galaxy Of excellence to lead this groping state In paths which lead to freedom ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... newspaper writer recently said of him that "while his contemporaries were fighting stubbornly, with varying luck, Toombs took his honors without a struggle, as if by divine right." This was no more true of Toombs than it is true of other men. He seems to have reached excellence in law by slow degrees of toil. Hon. Frank Hardeman, Solicitor-General of the Northern Circuit, was one of the lawyers who examined Toombs for admission to the bar. He afterward declared that Robert Toombs, during the first four or five years of his practice, did not ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... first invitation, in consonance with these facts, is almost always suggested by his excellence or notoriety in some department of life that may or may not be allied to the platform. If a man makes a remarkable speech, he is very naturally invited to lecture; but he is no more certain to be invited than he who wins a battle. A showman gets his first invitation for the same reason that an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... size, form and color as well as taste that may be found anywhere. The tree has not had an orchard try-out yet. If it proves to be a good bearer with the other qualities suitable for this climate and soil condition, it will enter the field high up in the standard of excellence. ...
— Walnut Growing in Oregon • Various
... of absence make A noble task time, and will therein strive To follow excellence, and to o'ertake More good than I have ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... much honour and friendship." Something of all this was doubtless in Duerer too; but in him it was refined and harmonised by the sense and serious concern, not only for the things of to-day, but for those of to-morrow and yesterday; the sense of solidarity, the passion for permanent effect, eternal excellence. These things, in men like Pirkheimer, still more in Erasmus, and even in Rabelais and Montaigne, are not absent; but they are less stringent, less religious, than they are in a Duerer ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... of his instructions, Coates, an object-lesson for those who decry the excellence of British Army ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... me to thank the staff of the University Press, its compositors, its proof-readers, its clerks, and its managing officials, not only for the technical excellence of their work, but for the way they have co-operated so as ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... the man was a philanthropist, that he might be an excellent man of heart and indifferent of taste. He must be. But I was prone to be influenced by things of this sort, and felt depressed at the thought that so much of royal excellence should weigh so heavily in the wrong scale of the balance of the applied arts. I turned my back on the room and gazed at the blazing white ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... other? Which was bad then, and which was good? All men who happen to be in authority assert that their authority is necessary to keep the bad from oppressing the good, assuming that they themselves are the good PAR EXCELLENCE, who protect other good people from ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... had an equal in things of that kind. Nay, he was so excellent in all his actions, that he blotted out the stain (if stain it was) left to him by his father—blotted it out, I say, not only by the excellence of his art, wherein he was inferior to no man of his time, but also by the modesty and regularity of his life, and, above all, by his courtesy and amiability; and how great are the force and power of such qualities to conciliate the minds of all men ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... burst of laughter followed, partly of derision and partly of delight in the excellence of the joke. The King was stung. He ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of by the ancients. The wool of Tarentum and Brundisium was also famous, and at the former place were considerable dye-works. These two towns acquired importance in very early times owing to the excellence of their harbours. Traces of a prehistoric population of the stone and early bronze age are to be found all over Calabria. Especially noticeable are the menhirs (pietre fitte) and the round tower-like specchie or truddhi, which are found near Lecce, Gallipolli and Muro Leccese ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... on both sides of the tooth: evidently the action will be slightly impaired, for which reason the backlash should be reduced to a minimum. Precisely what is the minimum is not so easy to say, as it evidently depends much upon the excellence of the tools and the skill of the workman. In many treatises on constructive mechanism it is variously stated that the backlash should be from one-fifteenth to one-eleventh of the pitch, which would ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... invite a prince from his palace, merely for the pleasure of contemplating its beauty and excellence; but only add the rapturous idea of property, and what allurements can the world offer for the loss of so glorious ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... Professor Tyndall, is an interesting and instructive little volume, admirably printed and illustrated. Prepared expressly for this series, it is in some measure a guarantee of the excellence of the volumes that will follow, and an indication that the publishers will spare no pains to include in the series the freshest investigations of the best scientific ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... his head tolerantly. The excellence of the cigar and the soothing qualities of the whisky-and-soda had worked upon him, and he was feeling ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... very foolish," she went on, half-apologetically. "Having chosen their lover for his suitability they usually allow the natural propensity of their youthful minds to invest him with every ideal of excellence. That is a fatal error committed by the majority of women. We ought to be satisfied with him as he is, rather than imagine him what he never ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... in what was constantly present to her mind as her conquest of the Cardiffs. She measured its importance by their value. Her admiration for Janet's work in the beginning had been as sincere as her emulation of its degree of excellence had been passionate, and neither feeling had diminished with their intimacy. In Lawrence Cardiff she felt vaguely the qualities that made him a marked man among his fellows, his intellectual breadth and keenness, his poise of brain, if one might call it so, and the ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... affect us in the same way as an act of mercy. The adventitious qualities of wisdom and power may be considered in themselves; and even the strength of mind which this immovable goodness supposes may likewise be viewed as an object of contemplation distinct from the goodness itself. Superior excellence of any kind, as well as superior wisdom and power, is the object of awe and reverence to all creatures, whatever their moral character be; but so far as creatures of the lowest rank were good, so far the view of this character, as simply good, must appear amiable to them, ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... as good sense to make it), a proud man would be as rare as in reality he is a ridiculous monster. But suppose a man, on this comparison, is, as may sometimes happen, a little partial to himself, the harm is to himself, and he becomes only ridiculous from it. If I prefer my excellence in poetry to Pope or Young; if an inferior actor should, in his opinion, exceed Quin or Garrick; or a sign-post painter set himself above the inimitable Hogarth, we become only ridiculous by our vanity: and the persons themselves who are thus humbled in the comparison, would laugh with ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... fancying it had only caught temporarily, tried to force it, and in so doing the spring broke, and the handle turned uselessly round and round in his hand. This was a streak of bad luck, and no mistake! The rod was not his, and what was worse, it was (so Cripps said) a rod of extraordinary excellence and value. Loman had his doubts now about this. A first-rate top-piece would bend nearly double and then not break, and a reel that broke at the least pressure could hardly be of the best kind. Still, Cripps ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... laws, which guard the peace of our little community, been called in, to check the excesses of his turbulent passions, by supplying the weakness of more ingenuous motives. Still this person discovered, in the midst of this wreck of moral excellence, a few remaining qualities, on which charity might fix the hope of his recovery to virtue, usefulness and happiness. But these were few, and mostly of a negative kind. He was not addicted to profane discourse. He allowed himself ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... ever a feeling of sadness connected with the closing of school. Owing to the excellence of the institution, there were pupils attending Fulton Academy from many distant places. But with the coming of the holidays this youthful band, who had daily assembled at the pleasant old Academy would be scattered far and ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... and he passes oftener from the abstractions of his science into the regions of life and character in which all must feel interested, however slight their acquaintance with the subtleties of metaphysical speculation. The extraordinary excellence of Professor Stewart's style has been recognised by the highest authorities. Robertson was perhaps the best English writer of his day. The courtly Walpole, on ascertaining that he spoke Scotch, told him he was heartily glad ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... you not see the attractive headlines in 'The London Gazette,' Sir Percy? 'The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel unmasked! A gigantic hoax! The origin of the Blakeney millions!'... I believe that journalism in England has reached a high standard of excellence... and even the 'Gazette de Paris' is greatly read in certain towns of your charming country.... His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, and various other influential gentlemen in London, will, on the other hand, be granted a private view of the original ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Harriet, that Sir Charles is supposed to be one of the finest dancers in England? Remember, my dear, that on Tuesday—[Lord help me! I shall be then stupid, and remember nothing]—you take him out yourself: and then you will judge for yourself of his excellence in this science—May we not call dancing a science? If we judge by the few who perform gracefully in it, I am sure we may; and ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... fallen through after all. Schoneck has just written to me that he has broken with the director, Wallner, because the latter refused to carry out his undertaking as to the excellence of the ensemble. ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... for a legacy. However, if I were to die any time before this poor boy is a man, one of the things that would pinch me most sorely would be the being obliged to leave his mind unmade to the degree of excellence of which I hope to make it. But another thing is, that the only prospect which would lessen that pain would be the leaving him in your hands. I therefore take your offer quite seriously, and stipulate merely that it shall be made as soon as possible; and then we may perhaps leave him a successor ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... mal-administration; for every word in it breathes suspicion. It supposes that men are but men; it confides in no integrity; it trusts to no character. It annexes responsibility, not only to every action, but even to the inaction of the powers it has created. I will risk my all upon the excellence of this bill. I will risk upon it whatever is most dear to me—whatever men most value—the character of integrity, of present reputation, and future fame; these will I stake upon the constitutional safety, the enlarged policy, the equity and wisdom of the measure. Whatever, therefore, may ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... artist, born in London; was distinguished as an artist from his early youth; produced a succession of works of eminent merit, and attained the highest excellence as a painter of portraits, to which department he devoted the last years of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... influence, he had never succeeded. Every person that he imagined could sway the governor-general was treated with delightful consideration; but a look blacker than a raven's wing was the reward of every one who ventured on familiarity not up to his standard of excellence. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... a Production, she always disposes Seeds proper for it, which are as absolutely necessary to the Formation of any moral or intellectual Excellence, as they are to the Being and Growth of Plants; and I know not by what Fate and Folly it is, that Men are taught not to reckon him equally absurd that will write Verses in Spite of Nature, with that Gardener that should undertake to raise a Jonquil or Tulip without ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... was, if wanted, tea and coffee, crackers and cheese; simple fare, of unvarying excellence, and from each and all, into the little cashbox, ten cents for these refreshments. From the club members this came weekly; and the club members, kept up by a constant variety of interests, came every week. As to numbers, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... a new and infallible method of which Madame Moronval was the author. Besides all this, every week there was a public lecture, to which friends and relatives of the pupils were invited, and where they could thoroughly convince themselves of the excellence of the system pursued ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... the lead in a country whose coasts were fringed with sailors. Their greatness was but the result of an excellence in seamanship ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... little Alexander had already begun to be called. "Boy" par excellence, for even at that early period of his existence he gave tokens of being a most masculine character, with a resolute will of his own, and a power of howling till he got his will which delighted Nurse Campbell ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... of Queensland. He had endeavored to be good to the men with whom he had dealings. He had not stinted their food, or cut them short in their wages, or been hard in exacting work from them. And this was his return! Ideas as to the excellence of absolute dominion and power flitted across his brain—such power as Abraham, no doubt, exercised. In Abraham's time the people were submissive, and the world was happy. Harry Heathcote, at least, had never heard that it was not ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... he made during these years in the schooner Grenville were admirable. The best proof of their excellence is that they are not yet wholly superseded by the more detailed surveys of modern times. Like all first surveys of a practically unknown shore, and especially when that shore abounds in rocks and ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... since then the drama has had more recruits of power than has poetry, and it is a question as to which of the two is greater as art. There is no doubt, however, but that the drama has made a stronger and wider appeal, whatever its excellence, than has the verse, and it is therefore of greater significance for its time than is the poetry, whatever the ultimate appraisement will be. Of the men I have written of here, Mr. Yeats and Mr. Russell are to me poets before they are dramatists, ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... even for the devoutest Wagnerian disciple to hear such a concert, perhaps, without leaving the hall in indignation, perhaps even without a protest. All the concerts were of uniform excellence, and the Easy Chair is a competent witness, at least so far as attendance is concerned, for it heard all of the Lind concerts in New York except the first. During the second season an unknown name appeared one evening upon ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... the mark, for he himself would not have been so uncharitable as to deny that others preached the same Gospel and yet met with no corresponding success. The truth probably is that, although he attained to super-excellence at no point, he was really great at many. And, behind this extraordinary combination of remarkable, though not transcendent, powers was an intense conviction, a deadly earnestness, a consuming passion, that made second-rate qualities sublime. ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... depending less upon situations than upon dialogue. The First Act, with the situations still to come, was the best. I have not had the good fortune to read Miss EDGINGTON'S novel, but one might be permitted to assume, from the excellence of much of the wit, that, whatever the play may in other respects have lacked of subtlety or refinement, such defect was no fault of hers. What Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY himself thought of it all I cannot say, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... all the comfortless, miserable lodgings they had been obliged to put up with for a long time past. The landlord, whose double, or rather triple chin testified to bountiful fare, and the ruddy tints of his face to the excellence of his wines, seemed to be the incarnation of ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... affection for our Sunday school Pupils, and it is hoped that it may serve a similar purpose in the hands of other teachers. It has been said, that "He who gives his thought, gives a part of himself." It was this idea that suggested the offering we now bring. We do not claim for it especial excellence. We are aware that its pages have not uniform merit. When we state that they are from the pens of twenty-five different teachers, few of whom are accustomed to write for the public eye, we offer the only apology for the imperfections ...
— Our Gift • Teachers of the School Street Universalist Sunday School, Boston
... throughout so dignified and dispassionate that it had the grace of something remote in time and place. It was when the narrative ended and the critical comment began that the artistic values made themselves felt. Ricker had been free in his recognition of the excellence of Maxwell's work, and quick to appreciate its importance to the paper. He made the young fellow disjointed compliments and recurrent predictions concerning it when they were together, but there were qualities in it that he felt afterwards he had not been just ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... time is sunk, France knows how oft my fury she hath drunk; By Edward third, and Henry fifth of fame Her Lillies in mine Arms avouch the same, My sister Scotland hurts me now no more, Though she hath been injurious heretofore; What Holland is I am in some suspence, But trust not much unto his excellence. For wants, sure some I feel, but more I fear, And for the Pestilence, who knows how near Famine and Plague, two Sisters of the Sword, Destruction to a Land doth soon afford. They're for my punishment ordain'd on high, Unless our ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... sense; nay he has even a kind of love to him, or something like it,—love made up of gratitude for past favors, and lively anticipation of future. Voltaire is, by nature, an attached or attachable creature; flinging out fond boughs to every kind of excellence, and especially holding firm by old ties he had made. One fancies in him a mixed set of emotions, direct and reflex,—the consciousness of safe shelter, were there nothing more; of glory to oneself, derived and still derivable from this high man:—in fine, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... improved in the point of excellence. It was now admitted to be good—a rare honour for trade! The coal-mining boom was at its height, and colliers, in addition to getting drunk, were buying American organs and expensive bull-terriers. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... ordinary methods have accomplished. No, replies Cheve: they are exceptional organizations. The methods have not produced them. They have, on the contrary, arrived at their proficiency despite the methods, while thousands fail who might reach a high degree of excellence but for the obstacles presented by a false system to a clear understanding of the theory of music, which in itself is so simple and precise. In the study of harmony especially, says the same authority, does the want of a clear presentation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... rebuilt at Rome. The king thus wrote to him: "You have constructed fine edifices; you have, moreover, disposed of them with so much wisdom that they equal those of antiquity, and serve as examples to the moderns; and all you show us is a perfect image of the excellence of your mind, because it is not possible to build correctly without good sense ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... no claim to great artistic excellence (being possessed of a decided leaning towards drawing as a child, he was taught to play the violin as a matter of discipline,) he prefers to make his own maps and sketches because he knows exactly what he wants to say and cannot possibly explain this meaning to his more proficient brethren ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... to inquire whether excellence in pen drawing consists in thus dispensing with its recognized conventions, or in otherwise taxing the technical resources of the instrument. This involves the question of Style,—of what characteristic pen methods are,—a question which we will ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... all that I had seen, I had no idea of a painting like this. I was lifted off my feet, as much as by Cologne cathedral, or Niagara Falls, so that I could neither reason nor think whether I was pleased or not. It is difficult, even now, to analyze the sources of this wonderful power. The excellence of this picture does not lie, like Raphael's, in a certain ideal spirituality, by which the scene is raised above earth to the heavenly sphere; but rather in a power, strong, human, almost homely, by which, not an ideal, but the real scene is forced ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in the announcement that the general excellence of BIRDS will be maintained in subsequent volumes. The subjects selected for the third and fourth volumes—many of them—will be of the rare beauty in which the great Audubon, the limner par excellence of birds, would have ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... had been said of character in the campaign that both candidates brought out the clergy to give them certificates of excellence. In October a meeting of clergymen of all denominations was held at the Fifth Avenue Hotel to greet Blaine. The oldest minister, Burchard by name, was asked to deliver the address, and while he spoke Blaine thought of other matters. He thus missed a phrase which other hearers caught and which the ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... lugubrious countenance, and ponderous or lamentable voice, you make your appearance with a smile and a joke, punch the reader playfully in the ribs, and say, as it were, "Ha! ha! I've a good thing to tell you!" Although I have many imitators, some of whom have attained an excellence in the art which may be considered classic, yet I may fairly claim to have originated this branch of literature, and, while it retains its present unbounded popularity, my ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... Marquis de Montcalm, was a member of the ancient nobility of Languedoc, in the south of France. He was a scholar, a soldier, and a landowner. He could write a Latin inscription, fight a battle, and manage a farm—all with excellence. His was a fruitful race. His wife had borne him ten children, of whom six had survived. He was sincerely religious, a family man, enjoying quiet evenings at home. In his career, as no doubt in that of many other French ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... reserved for women that are chaste and devoted to their husbands. Asita, however, at this point, O chastiser of foes, lost sight of Jaigishavya, that foremost of ascetics, who, rapt in yoga, vanished from his sight. The highly blessed Devala then reflected upon the power of Jaigishavya and the excellence of his vows as also upon the unrivalled success of his yoga. Then the self-restrained Asita, with joined hands and in a reverential spirit, enquired of those foremost of Siddhas in the regions of the Brahmasatris, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... capable of manufacturing first-rate mathematical instruments. And yet, on the other hand, let the inevitable results of applying the principle of the division of labor to the fine arts be considered. Mechanical excellence attained at the cost of artistic deadness is and must be the result. The individuality, the soul of the artist, the expression which his cunning hand can put into his work, is found to have been lost, evaporated in the process. What is the special value, of which the world has heard so much ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... can expect to equal, much less to excel, the original. The excellence of a translation can only be judged by noting how far it has succeeded in reproducing the original tone, colors, style, the delicacy of sentiment, the force of inert strength, the peculiar expressions ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... face beneath, with its clear blue eyes, red lips, and pure complexion, the pink and white that reminds one of a sweet-pea or ocean-shell, had struck me as very lovely from the first; nothing to support this ground work of excellence had I discovered, however, either in the form of the head, which was ignoble, or the expression of the face, which was both timid and defiant, or the tones of the voice, which were shrill and harsh by turns—yet, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... they would grow up to something better. In all this she was ever urged on higher and higher, trying new feats of technical skill, drawing forth even finer tones and continually advancing towards the higher standard of excellence she had set for herself. In all this she met with obstacles and difficulties. She could not have instruction from others. There were none in the country who could teach her anything and her concerts broke in upon her time seriously. She was studying for public ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... T. Elyot's Defence of Good Women and like Cornelius Agrippa's Nobility and Excellence of the Female Sex, witness a genuine appreciation of woman's worth. Some critics have seen in the last named work a paradox, like the Praise of Folly, such as was dear to the humanists. To me it seems absolutely sincere, even when it goes so far as ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Carlingford, even with the drawback of the old shop-people among whom she lived. How strange it was to see her in the dress of which Mrs. Sam Hurst had raved, and of which even the young Nonconformist vaguely divined the excellence, putting her daintily-gloved hand upon old Tozer's greasy sleeve, walking home with the shuffling old man, about whose social position no one could make the least mistake! He turned with them, with a sensation of thankfulness ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... a chance to land; and it was almost always difficult. Much knack and enterprise were early developed among the seamen of the service; their management of boats is to this day a matter of admiration; and I find my grandfather in his diary depicting the nature of their excellence in one happily descriptive phrase, when he remarks that Captain Soutar had landed 'the small stores and nine casks of oil WITH ALL THE ACTIVITY OF A SMUGGLER.' And it was one thing to land, another to get on board again. I have here a ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been credited with the invention of the alphabet. We know now that 1000 years before the Phoenicians began to write the Cretans had evolved a system of written characters—as yet undeciphered—and a decimal system for numbers. A correspondingly high stage of excellence had been reached in engineering, architecture, and the fine arts, and even in decay Crete left to Greece the tradition of mastery ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... individual delinquent. We shall hope for the indulgence of our readers, therefore, in taking this opportunity to inquire a little more particularly into their merits, and to make a few remarks upon those peculiarities which seem to be regarded by their admirers as the surest proofs of their excellence. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Excellence in a profession, and success in business, can be attained only by persevering industry. None who thinks himself above his vocation can succeed in it, for we can not give our attention to what our self-importance despises. None can be eminent in his vocation who devotes his mental energy to a pursuit ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... repeated performances. It is true that the people like best the songs as well as the symphonies which they know best; but even this rule has its exceptions. It is possible to grow indifferent to even high excellence because of constant association with it. Especially is this true when the form—that is, the manner of expression—has grown antiquated; then, not expecting to find the kind of quality to which our tastes are inclined, we do not look for it, and though it may be present, it frequently passes unnoticed. ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... to mention that which everyone knows? Why dread to sound the abyss which can be measured by everyone? Why fear to bring into the light of day unmasked wickedness, even though it confronts the public gaze unblushingly? Extreme turpitude and extreme excellence are both in the schemes of Providence; and the poet has summed up eternal morality for all ages and nations ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... affected the minds of more men," says Rhodes, "than any speech delivered on that side of this question in Congress."[440] Senator Houston had it translated into German and extensively circulated among the Germans of western Texas. Even Edwin Croswell congratulated him upon its excellence. It again directed the attention of the country to his becoming a presidential candidate, about which newspapers and politicians had already spoken. Montgomery Blair's letter of May 17, 1873, to Gideon Welles, charges Seward with boasting that he had "put Senator Dixon up to ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... in entering the professions and other departments of business heretofore occupied largely by men, the women of to-day should desire to accept the same conditions and tests of excellence with their brothers, and should demand the same standard for men and women in business, art, education, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... shouldst also, touching his feet, represent me as hale unto that foremost of the Kurus, Bhishma, in whom are combined bravery, and abstention from injury, and asceticism, and wisdom and good behaviour, and Vedic learning, and great excellence, and firmness. Saluting unto also the wise, venerable, and blind king (Dhritarashtra), who possessed of great learning and reverential to the old, is the leader of the Kurus. Thou shouldst also, O Sanjaya, enquire, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... world. The Parisian board of public instruction has moreover stamped the work of M. CHAILLY with their approbation, and fixed it as the standard text-book of the French medical schools. This is a promise of excellence which a diligent perusal of the work will fully confirm. Professor BEDFORD, the American translator, who has performed his duty as might be expected from his high character and prominent position, as Professor of the flourishing medical school of the University ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... sanitary excellence is that matters of this kind are placed entirely in the hands of the police, who rigorously carry out the orders given to them on such points. It is devoutly to be hoped that a similar system will ere long be in vogue in the towns of our ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... elegiac verse, or even pieces of almost pure description. If I had held to the strictest sense of lyric, this book would never have been compiled; for I suspect nothing will strike the reader more forcibly than the fact that, despite the excellence of the poems included, there is a notable lack of unconsciousness—of pure singing quality. Such things as Pinkney's "Health" and Holmes's "Old Ironsides" are the exception. The poems are composed cleverly, but they do not quite sing themselves to their own music. ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... from the first that the rhythmic training at Hellerau has an importance far deeper and more extended than is contained in its immediate artistic beauty, its excellence as a purely musical training, or its value to physical development. This is not a denial of its importance in these three respects. The beauty of the classes is amazing; the actor, as well as the designer of stage-effects, will come to thank M. Dalcroze ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... to reveal their pearly excellence. She took his hand, and rubbed the back of it on her downy cheek, and laid the palm on her soft, thick locks. Even yet she did not see that anything was the matter, confident in her still young beauty, and in the fact that he now knew for certain ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... concern, he would cry out aloud against canting, and protest that he thought there was very little gross wickedness in the world, and still less of extraordinary virtue. Nothing, indeed, more surely disgusted Dr. Johnson than hyperbole; he loved not to be told of sallies of excellence, which he said were seldom valuable, and seldom true. "Heroic virtues," said he, "are the bons mots of life; they do not appear often, and when they do appear are too much prized, I think, like the ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... essence, on account of Its eminence, is in like fashion taken as the proper type of each thing contained therein: hence each one is likened to It according to its proper type. The same applies to the universal form which is in the mind of the angel, so that, on account of its excellence, many things can be known through it with a proper ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... ring off my finger by day or night, except for an instant at a time, to wash my hands, since she died. I have never had her sweetness and excellence absent from my mind so long. I can solemnly say that, waking or sleeping, I have never lost the recollection of our hard trial and sorrow, and I feel that I ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... artistic, literary, or musical pleasure being derived from form and mode of expression, it possessed a special and unique interest in proportion to the efforts made and the difficulties surmounted in attaining that form and expression: thus, woman introduced a new standard of excellence. ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... (considering the want of such means as we haue,) they seeme very ingenious. For although they haue no such tooles, nor any such crafts, Sciences and Artes as wee, yet in those things they doe, they shew excellence of wit. And by how much they vpon due consideration shall finde our maner of knowledges and crafts to exceede theirs in perfection, and speed for doing and execution, by so much the more is it probable that they should desire our friendship and loue, and haue the greater respect ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... but imperfectly acquainted. Though probably known to many of our readers, we think it likely that the writings of Mr Helps are yet unknown to many others, who might profit by the study of them, and more or less appreciate their excellence. Under this conviction, it is proposed to notice them in the present pages; and we have little doubt of being able to substantiate their claims to consideration. To readers who require of a book something more than mere amusement, or a passing ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... come to the third form of free-love, the free-love theory par excellence, which is held today by many Socialists, and an increasing number of radical men and women of various schools of thought. According to these neither the state nor organized religion should have aught to do with the control of the family ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... intelligence that no one could ask him a question that he was unable to answer. Kvasir then traversed the whole world to teach men wisdom, but was at length treacherously murdered by the dwarfs, Fjalar and Galar, who, by mixing up his blood with honey, composed a liquor of such surpassing excellence that whoever drinks of it acquires the gift of song. When the AEsir inquired what had become of Kvasir, the dwarfs told them that he had been suffocated with his own wisdom, not being able to find any one who by proposing to him a sufficient number of learned questions might relieve him of its ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... turquoise rings, carbuncles, Persian amulets, and Circassian daggers. While looking over some old swords the other day, I noticed one of exquisite temper, but with a shorter blade than usual. The point had apparently been snapped off in fight, but owing to the excellence of the sword, or the owner's affection for it, the steel had been carefully shaped into a new point. Abou-Anteeka asked five hundred piastres, and I, who had taken a particular fancy to possess it, offered him two hundred in an indifferent way, and then laid it aside ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... means of supplying the food convenient for it, and a hundred books may he had where even one work of art of the right sort is unattainable, seeing such must he of some size as well as of thorough excellence. And in variety alone is safety from the danger of the convenient food becoming the ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... been usual to depreciate modern languages when compared with ancient. The latter are regarded as furnishing a type of excellence to which the former cannot attain. But the truth seems to be that modern languages, if through the loss of inflections and genders they lack some power or beauty or expressiveness or precision which is possessed by the ancient, are in many other respects superior to ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... Constitution twenty-eight. Through this whole term the Government has been what may emphatically be called self-government. And what has been the effect? To whatever object we turn our attention, whether it relates to our foreign or domestic concerns, we find abundant cause to felicitate ourselves in the excellence of our institutions. During a period fraught with difficulties and marked by very extraordinary events the United States have flourished beyond example. Their citizens individually have been ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... Even those praiseworthy persons who devote their time to temperance, missions, tract-societies, seem more like men of business than apostles. They lay their charities before you much as they would display their goods, and urge their excellence and comparative cheapness to induce you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... artists were surpassed by Timanthes, according to the ancient writers, who relate that he engaged in a trial of skill with Parrhasius, and came off the victor in it. The fame of his picture of the "Sacrifice of Iphigenia" was very great, and its one excellence seems to have been in the varied expression of its faces. The descriptions of this great work lead to the belief that this Pompeian wall-painting, from which we give a cut, closely resembles that of Timanthes, which no ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... appreciation of certain circumstances, delightful and valuable in themselves, without which whiteness cannot be present: in human beings, good health and youth and fairness of life; in houses (oh! the white houses of Cadiz, white between the blue sky and blue sea!), excellence of climate, warmth, dryness and clearness of air; and in all manner of household goods and stuff, care, order, daintiness of habits, leisure and affluence. All things these which, quite as much as any peculiarity of optic function, give for the healthy mind a sort of restfulness, of calm, ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... the inhabitants corresponds with the excellence of the climate. Gouts, rheumatisms, and even colds, are very rare, and fevers not frequent. The most common complaint is a dysentery, towards the latter end of ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... informs us that he played all his first year, and implies that he did little study during those which followed. To a certain extent the comparative excellence of his preparation turned out a disadvantage; the rigid training he had received enabled him to accomplish without effort what his fellow-students found difficult. Scholarship was at so low an ebb that ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... his life into it. The sharper and better the tools, the finer the character of the work. If experience has been observed and retained, and previously acquired knowledge is ready for service, and hand and mind know how to use books, and the student is in good condition physically, then the excellence of that girl's work in the class ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... don't know; he sounds to me like a sloppy, watery sort of fellow; happy, perhaps, but if there be red blood in him impossible. Be not disheartened by ideals of perfection which can be achieved only by those who run away. Nature, that 'thrifty goddess,' never gave you 'the smallest scruple of her excellence' for that. Whatever bludgeonings may be gathering for you, I think one feels more poignantly at your age than ever again in life. You have not our December roses to help you; but you have June coming, whose roses do not wonder, as do ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie
... justly-celebrated poem may be found a few rhymes[370] which the critical precision of English prosody at this day would disallow, cannot be denied; but with this small imperfection, which in the general blaze of its excellence is not perceived, till the mind has subsided into cool attention, it is, undoubtedly, one of the noblest productions in our language, both for sentiment and expression. The nation was then in that ferment against the court ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... daily surround it, it must be exceedingly difficult to fulfil. But, whatever difficulties may have lain in the way, or however, on account of the necessary weakness of human nature, the best individuals among the Quakers may have fallen below the pattern of excellence, which they have copied, nothing is more true, than that the result has been, that the whole society, as a body, have obtained from their countrymen, the character of a ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... were protracted to an unusual length. The country was in a most excited state, and party feeling ran fearfully high. Nothing was talked of but the two trials, par excellence, to wit, that of Whitecraft and Reilly; and scarcely a fair or market, for a considerable time previous, ever came round in which there waa not a battle on the subject of either one or the other of them, and not unfrequently of both. Nobody was surprised at the conviction ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... propensities the steam to bring about the desired results. According to his views of man, our emotional faculties are of a higher or more God-like order than our intellectual powers. The intellect being the hand-maid to the emotions, to feel the force of truth is higher in mental excellence than to perceive it. Depth of emotions is the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... regarded some few years ago, nor the persecutions to which they were exposed. He had been from youth the victim of the state of feeling inspired by the reaction of the French Revolution; and believing firmly in the justice and excellence of his views, it cannot be wondered that a nature as sensitive, as impetuous, and as generous as his, should put its whole force into the attempt to alleviate for others the evils of those systems from which he had ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... is called the Jamaica Plum. Our men gave it the same name; it has a pleasant tartish taste, but is a little woody, probably only for want of culture: These plums were not plenty; so that having the two qualities of a dainty, scarcity and excellence, it is no wonder that they were held in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... Falsehood Bulrush, Indiscretion Bundle of Reeds, Music Burdock, Touch me not Bur, You weary me Buttercup, Childishness Butterfly Orchis, Gaiety Butterfly Weed, Let me go Cabbage, Profit. Gain Cacalia, Adulation Cactus, Warmth Calycanthus, Benevolence Camellia, Red, Excellence Camellia, White, Loveliness Camomile, Energy in adversity Carnation, Striped, Refusal Carnation, Deep Red, Poor me Cardamine, Paternal error Candytuft, Indifference Canary Grass, Perseverance Campanula, Aspiring Carnation, Yellow, Disdain Cardinal Flower, Distinction Catchfly, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... not sure that Chicago does not in a measure do the same, though not in a like degree. As regards the climatic advantages of New York and the capital of California, there cannot be two opinions. New York is certainly not a nice climate, while I believe there is none on this earth to equal in excellence that of San Francisco. Still, the inhabitants of a city are not ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... the portrait of a celebrated actress. "That is very taking and stylish; and it is just what I should like to have done with my Peachie." This graceful sobriquet was generally understood to bear testimony to the excellence of Mrs. Porcher's complexion. "Now, if we wanted a gentleman guest or two more at any time, a picture postcard of her like this, just slightly tinted, in answer ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... half a year Amu-an-shi—who is the Prince of the Upper Tenu—sent for me and said: "Dwell thou with me that thou mayest hear the speech of Egypt." He said thus for that he knew of my excellence, and had heard tell of my worth, for men of Egypt who were there with him bore witness of me. Behold he said to me: "For what cause hast thou come hither? Has a matter come to pass in the palace? Has the King of the two lands, Sehetepabra, gone to heaven? That which has happened ...
— Egyptian Literature
... cunning, or combine together to work in couples or in packs by the same selective process; and the hares on their part might acquire means of concealment or stratagem to elude their enemies; but, on both sides, the improvement would be progressive until the highest form of excellence was reached. Viewed in this light, the wonderful perfection of mimetic forms is a natural consequence of the selection of the individuals that, on the one side, were more and more mimetic, and on the other (that of their enemies) more and more able to penetrate through the ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... men just mentioned. The rise of the novel in this century is hardly more remarkable than the way in which that novel almost wedded itself—certainly joined itself in the most frequent friendship—to the letter-form. But perhaps the excellence of the choicer examples in this time is not really more important than the abundance, variety, and popularity of its letters, whether good, indifferent, or bad. To use one of the informal superlatives sanctioned by familiar custom it was the 'letter-writingest' of ages from ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... upon earth that fully and absolutely deserves the character of schismatical, it is your Drummond secession. Yet not only is this noble and holy woman in it, but even my own narrow experience has supplied me with other types of singular excellence and elevation within its pale; and the considerations hereby suggested are ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... reabsorbed into the system. Oh, the foulness of it all! The spirits of the departed, as well as the still incarnate patients, demand of the healing art safe and sane hygienic methods of cure. The enema, regularly and properly used, is the remedy par excellence. ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... Sixth has been dignified with the title of philosopher; and the union of the prince and the sage, of the active and speculative virtues, would indeed constitute the perfection of human nature. But the claims of Leo are far short of this ideal excellence. Did he reduce his passions and appetites under the dominion of reason? His life was spent in the pomp of the palace, in the society of his wives and concubines; and even the clemency which he ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... Co-operative Stores; from the outset they had announced a warm desire to benefit the town of Troy. This pretty drawing-room was one of the results, and it only wanted a certain number of cheques from the Honourable Frederic to make the excellence ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... digressions (one only excepted) there is a master-stroke of digressive skill, the merit of which has all along, I fear, been over-looked by my reader,—not for want of penetration in him,—but because 'tis an excellence seldom looked for, or expected indeed, in a digression;—and it is this: That tho' my digressions are all fair, as you observe,—and that I fly off from what I am about, as far, and as often too, as ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... of inglorious peace Brock had now been serving on in Canada, while his comrades in arms were winning distinction on the battlefields of Europe. This was partly due to his own excellence: he was too good a man to be spared after his first five years were up in 1807; for the era of American hostility had then begun. He had always been observant. But after 1807 he had redoubled his efforts to 'learn Canada,' and learn her thoroughly. People ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... land, and yet it may not follow that the mental-life to be met with in the sea is psychologically superior to that which occurs on dry land. If, therefore, we represent by comparative shading degrees of psychological excellence, it is evident that the theory of Monism must entertain the three possibilities indicated diagrammatically in Figs. 5, 6, and 7. It makes no difference what the comparative areas of x and z may be, or whether x be uniformly shaded throughout its extent. All we have so far to notice is ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... best beloved. But after a while she said:—"'Twas the deed of a disloyal and recreant knight; for if I, unconstrained by him, made him lord of my love, and thereby did you wrong, 'twas I, not he, should have borne the penalty. But God forbid that fare of such high excellence as the heart of a knight so true and courteous as Sieur Guillaume de Cabestaing be followed by aught else." So saying she started to her feet, and stepping back to a window that was behind her, without a moment's hesitation let herself drop backwards ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Stanway herself appeared never to be doing anything. That astonishment was Leonora's pride. As her brain marshalled with ease the thousand diverse details of the wonderful domestic machine, she could appreciate, better than any other woman in Hillport, without vanity and without humility, the singular excellence of her gifts and of the organism they had perfected. And now this creation of hers, this complex structure of mellow brick-and-mortar, and fine chattels, and nice and luxurious habit, seemed to Leonora to tremble at the whisper of an enigmatic ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... that winter and left you in a wretched dilemma with your men in March on the railroad. We would forget that episode in which your men figured, and remember rather the comradery of the fall days with them and the inspiration of your soldierly excellence. To you, ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... of special excellence, which ought to be in the hands of all boys. It is as readable as it is instructive, and as elevating as it ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... atrophy. To develop it should be man's constant object, and in its light when pure all things are understood and peace is obtained. The phrases of the Great Learning "to complete knowledge," "investigate things," and "rest in the highest excellence," are explained as referring to the Liang Chih and the contemplation of the mind by itself. We cannot here shut our eyes to the influence of Bodhidharma and his school, however fervently Wang Yang Ming may have appealed to the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... Architectural Exhibition. The exhibition itself is quite small comparatively speaking, including only three hundred and twenty-five numbers, but, as the illustrations in the catalogue show, is widely representative and of a high grade of excellence. The contributions are very largely confined to members of the two societies under whose management the exhibition is held. This tends to give a somewhat local character to the exhibition as a whole. Still there is a sufficient number of important contributions from outside ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 04, April 1895 - Byzantine-Romanesque Windows in Southern Italy • Various
... buttery, having rapped to give notice of her presence, and with a compliment to Miss Mason on the excellence of her butter, she asked whether that lady could supply her with a few more pounds next week; then her eyes falling on the little figure on the doorstep, she said: "By-the-way, Miss Mason, your niece is to be one of Effie's guests to-day, is she not? Can you, as a great favor, ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... eventually worked his ruin. As an organizer he was unquestionably efficient. His great achievement which secures him a creditable place in American history was the conversion in the autumn of 1861 of a defeated rabble and a multitude of raw militia into a splendid fighting machine. The very excellence of this achievement was part of his undoing. It was so near to magical that it imposed on himself, gave him a false estimate of himself, hid from him his own limitation. It imposed also on his enemies. Crude, fierce men like the Vindictive leaders of Congress, seeing this miracle take place so ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... revelation had connection, close or remote, with the famous quartette club, he kept well away from it after this reminder, beginning, when he resumed his seat, to discourse upon the comparative excellence of wood and coal fires, of ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... them their most striking effect of novelty at the first view. Their brilliant and various colourings—so unlike our sombre brick-work—is the next cause of the novel impression they produce. The general strangeness of the effect is completed by the excellence of the pavement, which is of stones, shaped like those of our best London carriage-ways, but as white as marble in all weathers, and as regular as the brick-work of a house-front. The uniformity of the "Place" is broken (not very agreeably) by the principal public edifice ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... face of his visitor. He looked honest, and the little tailor had a good deal of confidence in the excellence of human nature. ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
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