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More "High-sounding" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Marie, "she won't see the humor of it. Good God, what a thing to happen! You know well enough what she'll think of me. At five o'clock this afternoon," he said, bitterly, "I left her with a great many fine, high-sounding words about the quest I was to give my days and nights to—for her sake. I went away from her like a—knight going into battle—consecrated. I tell you, there were tears in her eyes when I went. And now—now, at midnight—she sees me riding a galloping pig in a street fete ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... portions of animals might possess wonderful virtue for the healing of diseases of the corresponding special parts of man. We ourselves, however, within a little more than a decade, had a phase of opotherapy—how much less absurd it seems under that high-sounding Greek term—that was apparently very learned in its scientific aspects yet quite as absurd as many phases of old-time therapy, as we look at it. We administered cardin for heart disease and nephrin for kidney trouble, ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... noble a composition as ever was seen; I care not by whom the other may be. There is more beauty, and less affectation, about this picture than you will find in the performances of many Italian masters, with high-sounding names (out with it, and say RAPHAEL at once). I hate those simpering Madonnas. I declare that the "Jardiniere" is a puking, smirking miss, with nothing heavenly about her. I vow that the "Saint Elizabeth" is a bad picture,—a ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... torture mixed with a feeling of unendurable disgust. But Darvid avoided high-sounding phrases, and would never think or say: torture, disgust. That was a manner of speaking for idlers and poets. He, a man of iron industry, knew only the words vexation, trouble. What is he to do now with that woman? Throw her out like a beast which, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... officials throughout the country was soon to be ordered; sycophantic scholars were busily preparing a volume poetically entitled "The Golden Mirror of the Empire," in which the virtues of the new sovereign were extolled in high-sounding language. A recondite significance, it was said, was to be given to the old ceremonial dress, which was to be revived, from the fact that every official would carry a Hu or Ivory Tablet to be held against the breast. The very mention of this was sufficient ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... written constitution or civil compact; and, what was more important, they also showed the common-sense American spirit that led them to adopt the scheme of government which should in the simplest way best serve their needs, without bothering their heads over mere high-sounding abstractions.[26] ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... same 'scientists' want to replace the natural condition of free competition by crazy systems which, no matter by what high-sounding names they are called, are nothing but a despotic paternalism. Naturally, I'm not criticizing labor courts, injunctions against men proven to be striking unjustly, or those excellent unions in which the men and the boss get together. But I ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... his shoulder, in the shape of rifle and ax; Jemima, with her whole paternal inheritance close at her heels, in the shape of an unshapely, gigantic negro youth, destined in after years to win for himself among the Red warriors of the wilderness the high-sounding title of "The Big Black Brave of the Bushy Head." With brave and cheerful hearts, which the pioneer must maintain, or sink, they had gone to work, and cutting out a broad green patch from the vine-inwoven forest, had erelong, in the midst of the sunshine thus ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... I e'er took delight in thy praises, 'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases, Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover She thought that I was not ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... He spake impassion'd, and to earth cast down His sceptre, weeping. Pity at that sight Seiz'd all the people; mute the assembly sat Long time, none dared to greet Telemachus With answer rough, till of them all, at last, 110 Antinoues, sole arising, thus replied. Telemachus, intemp'rate in harangue, High-sounding orator! it is thy drift To make us all odious; but the offence Lies not with us the suitors; she alone Thy mother, who in subtlety excels, And deep-wrought subterfuge, deserves the blame. It is already the third year, and soon Shall be the fourth, since with ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... striving for the succession to the Dragon Throne and launching desperate attacks on the Great Wall of China) to receive from the Dalai Lama, as well as from the lesser Pontiffs of Tibet and Mongolia, high-sounding religious titles, prove conclusively that dignities other than mere possession of the Throne were held necessary to give solidity to a reign which began in militarism and which would collapse as the Mongol rule had collapsed by a mere Palace revolution unless an effective ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... already emerged from the age of theology and was now emerging from the age of metaphysics into the age of positivism; the three ages coexist, and although antagonistic they lend one another mutual support. High-sounding positivism, whenever it ceases to deny and begins to affirm something, whenever it becomes really positive, is nothing but metaphysics; and metaphysics, in its essence, is always theology, and theology is born of imagination yoked ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... appears so new and so real to us as when we stand at the side of this lowly cradle. Here are no high-sounding doctrines, no hard words, no terrible commands, no far-off thunders of a new Sinai, no rumblings of a coming Judgment. Here we see Jesus, and Jesus only. Jesus showing Himself in our very own flesh and blood; submitting Himself to the weakness of ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... the Modern Universal History (vols. i. and ii.) have compiled, in 850 folio pages, the life of Mahomet and the annals of the caliphs. They enjoyed the advantage of reading, and sometimes correcting, the Arabic text; yet, notwithstanding their high-sounding boasts, I cannot find, after the conclusion of my work, that they have afforded me much (if any) additional information. The dull mass is not quickened by a spark of philosophy or taste; and the compilers indulge the criticism of acrimonious bigotry against Boulainvilliers, Sale, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... period, many were the marvellous remedies which were advertised, and keen was the rivalry among empirics, in their efforts to outdo their brethren in the selection of high-sounding names for their vaunted panaceas. Among the latter were to be found such choice nostrums as rectifiers of the vitals, which were warranted to supply the places ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... slavery inflicts upon our own people are manifold and obvious. It practically aims to enslave not merely another race, but our own race. It inserts in its bill of rights some very high-sounding phrases securing freedom of speech; and then practically and in detail puts a lock on every man's mouth, and a seal on every man's lips, who will not shout for and swear by the divinity of the system. It amuses the popular fancy with a few glittering ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in power and was never stronger than it is to-day. Canada, Australia, and the other governing colonies (S625) have since responded by actions as well as words, and "Imperial Federation" has become something more than a high-sounding ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... 600,000 livres upon his benefices, ran in debt above a million, and thought to dazzle the city and Court of Vienna by the most indecent and ill-judged extravagance. He formed a suite of eight or ten gentlemen, of names sufficiently high-sounding; twelve pages equally well born, a crowd of officers and servants, a company of chamber musicians, etc. But this idle pomp did not last; embarrassment and distress soon showed themselves; his people, ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... a mistake," smiled Mrs. Campbell. "They are Marmaduke and Charlemagne. My nephew's children named them, which accounts for their high-sounding titles. I am glad you like Marmaduke and Charlemagne, Peace. We think they are very intelligent animals. Jud has succeeded in teaching them ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... said his critics, it is to attempt in this day to oust a Mexican dictator by mere rhetoric and high-sounding phrases! ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... fishing folk engage in barter. Cartier's heirs ask for a monopoly of the fur trade in Canada, but the grant is so furiously opposed by the merchants of the coast towns that it is revoked until the Marquis de la Roche, who had been a page at the French court, again obtains monopoly, with many high-sounding titles as Governor, and the added obligation that he must colonize the new land. What with wars and court intrigue, it is 1598 before the Governor of Canada is ready to sail. Of his two hundred people taken from jails, all but sixty have obtained their freedom by paying a ransom. With these ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... elders—Joseph Smith, Sr., Joseph Smith, Jr., Hyrum Smith, Samuel Smith, Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Knight. The first conference was held at Fayette, Seneca county, in June. A special "revelation" at this time made Smith's wife "the Elect Lady and Daughter of God," with the high-sounding title of "Electa Cyria." In later years this lady became disgusted with her husband's religion, and refused after his death to leave Illinois for Utah. She remained in Nauvoo, and married a Gentile named Bidamon. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... immediately engaged a schooner, known by the high-sounding name of the Great Alexander. Her skipper's name was Ebenezer Crump. The craft was not unlike an Irish "hooker;" her great beam showed that she was likely to carry her canvas well. That very evening the judge ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... broad their phylacteries,[1129] and enlarge the borders of their garments, and love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi." The high-sounding title, Rabbi, signifying Master, Teacher, or Doctor, had eclipsed the divinely recognized sanctity of priesthood; to be a rabbi of the Jews was regarded as vastly superior to being a priest of the Most High God.[1130] "But be not ye called Rabbi," said Jesus to ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... well, she was unaccustomed to do at all, and what she attempted, she was incapable of. And she was unhappy, because all her natural tastes had been thwarted, and her natural feelings suppressed; and of her acquired habits and high-sounding pursuits she had no capacity for enjoyment. Her love of classic and scientific lore, her delight in libraries, and museums, and choice intellects, and literary circles, was a fiction; they gratified nothing but her vanity. Her small, narrow, weak, and dependent mind, was ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... nothing to do with them. They were two bodies—two miserable and cold and sick and tormented bodies; and with yet a third body, utterly helpless and dependent upon them—in defiance of all the most high-sounding ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... incurred the hatred of the Marchesa by marrying the very man whom the latter had picked out for herself, namely, the elder of two brothers, and the Marchesa had reluctantly consented to marry the other, who had a much less high-sounding title and a far smaller fortune. She had revenged herself in various small ways, and had often turned her brother-in-law's wife to ridicule by representing her as an ascetic mediaeval saint, in contorted attitudes ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... question puzzled him, for he was far too good-natured not to have answered it at once if he had been able. I told the story to my brother officers, who were amused by the comparison with the Grand Llama, and we sometimes called the major by that high-sounding title afterwards. ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... having forty-six brass guns and as many swivels, but they had parted company with her about three months before, and supposed she had got to Acapulco by this time, as she sailed better than this ship. Our prize had the following high-sounding name Nostra Senoria de la Incarnacion Disenganio, commanded by the Chevalier Jean Pichberty, a Frenchman. She had twenty guns and twenty pattereroes, with 193 men, of whom nine were killed, ten wounded, and several sore scorched with gun-powder. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... the other, they answered for rhyme. By way of proving its progress, he showed us a composition by a man who was deaf and dumb, in praise of Morosofia, who, merely by the use of his eyes and hands, had made an ingenious and high-sounding piece of eloquence, though I confess that the sense was somewhat obscure. We went away filled with admiration for ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... Jansoulet's by the swarm of foreigners, Turks, Egyptians, Persians, Tunisians. I do not mention the Corsicans, who were also very numerous on that occasion, because, during my four years of service at the Caisse Territoriale, I have become accustomed to pronouncing those high-sounding, interminable names, always followed by the name of a place: "Paganetti of Porto-Vecchio, Bastelica of ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... not seem to be running away. The ebb came again, at length, however, and then we made sail, and began to turn down with the tide. It was near sunset before we got a view of the two or three spires that then piloted strangers to the town. New York was not the "commercial emporium" in 1796; so high-sounding a title, indeed, scarce belonging to the simple English of the period, it requiring a very great collection of half-educated men to venture on so ambitious an appellation—the only emporium that existed in America, during the last century, being a slop-shop ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... brethren arranged along the walls, as if they stood in chapel at their devotions! On the floor thirty or forty light boxes looked like orange chests, with custom-house hieroglyphics on their lids; but they were marked with proper and even high-sounding names, and were in fact the coffins of barons, counts, and prelates, transported here to have the benefit of the air, and there accordingly they lay unburied, to profit by the antiseptic qualities of the soil. We looked at a baron or two, and saw something like ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... Baratpoor. We passed a place which was overgrown, in broad patches, with misshapen stunted bushes—a rare occurrence in this part of the country, where wood is scarce. My driver bestowed upon this tangled brushwood the high-sounding name of jungle. I should rather have compared them with the dwarfed bushes and shrubs of Iceland. The country beyond this woody district had a very remarkable appearance; the ground was in many places torn and fissured, as if in ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... memory of the heyday of that other land, where, in my babyhood, like the kings of Bagdad, I had a hundred bay horses in their stables, each bridled with a coloured woollen string, and stalled in the palings of the garden, and each with his high-sounding name, and princely lineage, and his thrilling history, and where I had a thousand black cattle at pasture in the ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... the ardour and constancy with which he had clung to his faith—"in that purpose my mind never waxed old; in that long interval of time it never cooled"—he remarks that it was then "forty years since he put together a youthful essay on these matters, which with vast confidence I called by the high-sounding title, The Greatest Birth of Time." "The Greatest Birth of Time," whatever it was, has perished, though the name, altered to "Partus Temporis Masculus" has survived, attached to some fragments of uncertain date and arrangement. But in very truth the child was born, and, as Bacon says, for ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... quite deny that I feel a half mischievous delight in reducing to despair, "'<———-ce peuple de rivales Qui toutes, disputant, d'un si grand interet, Des yeux d'Assuerus attendent leur arret.>' " (which, of course, means me) keeps one perpetual reply to all their high-sounding praises and eulogiums of such or such a lady. 'She is well enough, certainly; but the comtesse du Barry excels her a hundredfold': then follow such shrugs, such contortions of countenance, and such vain efforts to repress the rage ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... he turned up in Paris in January of this year, he having obtained a passport for France on the strength of his credentials and on the representation that he wanted to go abroad to interest European financiers in that high-sounding Korean development scheme of his—which, by the way, is purely imaginary. He hung about Paris for three months. How he found out about the document which the army officer was bringing home, and how he found out that the officer—in order to save time—would travel on ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... fastening her hands in the lapels of his coat. "I thought you'd have a high-sounding handle.... ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... be precise, it was during the summer of 1903—I was paying what must have seemed like an interminable visit to my old friend John Saunders, who at that time filled with becoming dignity the high-sounding office of Secretary to the Treasury of His Majesty's Government, in the quaint little town of Nassau, in the island of New Providence, one of those Bahama Islands that lie half lost to the world to the southeast ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... beings, and that is why, instead of restraining their individuality, it prolongs and develops it."[37] Democracy is, in the view of Sorel, the regime par excellence, in which men are governed "by the magical power of high-sounding words rather than by ideas; by formulas rather than by reasons; by dogmas, the origin of which nobody cares to find out, rather than by doctrines based on observation."[38] Lagardelle declares that syndicalism is post-democratic. ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... me worthy of investigation, like any other delusion, if by resolving it we may arrive at conditional truth. It is because one man is afraid of another that these restraints—justice, truth, and what else you will—have received these high-sounding names, have been stamped as characteristics of the gods, and placed under the protection of the immortals; nay, our anxious care has gone so far that it has been taught as a doctrine that it is beautiful and good to cloud our free enjoyment of existence for the sake of these illusions. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to high-sounding thoughts, to sentimental dreams, and melancholy subtleties, it has been assumed that his character is one nourished with the poet's own heart's blood. A thousand times the noble sentiment of duty has been dwelt upon, which it is alleged he is inspired with; and on account ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... England. The present King's Chapel, with its sombre granite walls and its gently-lighted interior, suggests to the mind an impression of independence of time rather than of age. One reads on the walls, to be sure, such high-sounding old names as Vassall and Shirley and Abthorp, and on a tomb in the old graveyard near by one sees the inscriptions commemorating Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts and his son John, governor of Connecticut. But King's Chapel ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... the first time, Legendre, a butcher of Paris, appeared at the bar of the Assembly, where he vociferated in oratorical strain the imprecations of the people against the enemies of the nation and crowned traitors. Legendre decked his trivial ideas in high-sounding language. From this junction of vulgar ideas with the ambitious expressions of the tribune sprung that strange language in which the fragments of thought are mingled with the tinsel of words, and thus the popular eloquence ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... country to country, like the knight- errants of the days of chivalry, seeking for glory and honours, not by the sword, but by learning. This Vanini was a somewhat vain and ridiculous person. Not content with his Christian name Lucilio, he assumed the grandiloquent and high-sounding cognomen of Julius Caesar, wishing to attach to himself some of the glory of the illustrious founder of the Roman empire. As the proud Roman declared Veni, Vidi, Vici, so would he carry on the same victorious career, subduing all rival philosophers by the power of his eloquence ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... the demonstration of his unpopular position begins to be manifest. The candidates, unflinching in their efforts, mix with the medley, have the benefit of the full exercise of free thought and action, hear various opinions upon "the Squire's chances," and listen to the chiming of high-sounding compliments. While this clanging of merry jargon is at its highest, as if by some magic influence Romescos makes his appearance, and immediately commences to pit sides with Mr. M'Fadden. With all Romescos' outlawry, he is tenacious ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... trowsers ample enough to please a Turk. Upon their turbans or caps were the distinguishing badges of their respective corps—a half-moon, a lion, the sun, and various other devices. The regiments were not numbered as with us, but adopted some magniloquent high-sounding title suggestive of their valour in war, fearlessness of ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... some three to four thousand Chinese, officered by 150 Europeans of almost every nationality and often of doubtful character. By the indomitable will of its commander this heterogeneous body was moulded into a little army, whose high-sounding title of "Ever Victorious" became a reality, and in less than two years, after thirty-three engagements, the power of the Taipings was completely broken and the rebellion stamped out. The maintenance of discipline was a perpetual struggle, and at one time ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... things of which slavery has deprived the black is a name. A slave has no family designation. It may be for that reason that a high-sounding appellation is usually selected for the single one ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... one high-sounding title after another was announced, the personages owning them followed, and the place was quickly half-filled with noble folk and finery. But Tom was hardly conscious of the presence of these people, so wrought up was he and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the seventeenth century lived to see the birth of a new science, which took, in its infancy, the high-sounding name of 'Theory of the Earth.' Starting from a small number of facts, badly observed, connecting them by fantastic suppositions, it pretended to go back to the origin of worlds, to, as it were, play with them, ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... will be fruitful of wrong to others; and it must cause misery to the man who feels it. It will not be any the less fruitful of wrong and misery if, as is often the case with evil motives, it adopts some high-sounding alias. The truth is, gentlemen, that each one of us has in him certain passions and instincts which, if they gain the upper hand in his soul, would mean that the wild beast had come uppermost in him. Envy, malice, and hatred are such ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... far the most important of them, Ludwig was not by any means the only competitor for Lola's favours. Men of wealth and position—the bearers of high-sounding titles—with politicians and place-hunters, fluttered round her. It is to her credit that she sent them ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... high-sounding title to the new captain, the lieutenant opened his eyes a little; but he asked no questions, for he had learned as he came on board that Captain Pecklar ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... who is our heroine, when we shall come to her, had been entrusted, somewhat unwillingly, to her aunt, Juliet St. Leger Temple; Juliet never wrote her name only in full, as above. She was proud of her maiden name. St. Leger was romantic, high-sounding, aristocratic. Temple—well, Temple had been well enough in the early days of her courtship. She thought she loved John Temple so very profoundly that she would have married him even if he went by Smith or Jones. She had ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... bales sprinkled mayhap with the ashes of Aconcagua. There "crashes a sturdy box of stout John Bull;" and Russia, Tunis and Canada roll into close neighborhood with him and each other. A queer and not, let us hope, altogether transitory show of international comity is this. Many a high-sounding, much-heralded and more-debating Peace Congress has been held with less effect than that conducted by these humble porters, carpenters and decorators. This one has solidity. Its elements are palpable. The peoples not only bring their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... Latournelle and Madame Mignon. Modeste looked as though she were at the theatre, in an attitude of enthusiasm for an actor,—very much like that of Ernest toward herself; for though the secretary knew all these high-sounding phrases by heart, he listened through the eyes, as it were, of the young girl, and grew more and more madly in love with her. To this true lover, Modeste was eclipsing all the Modestes he had created as he read her letters ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... me up, for the sake of a whim, of some silly fustian about patriotism, some fool's rubbish of high-sounding words! Me, you balance against a crazy notion! Very well, sir! How I shall hate you for it! Don't come near me—not a step! Cling to your notion; see if it will fill my place! From this moment, you're not my husband, I'm not ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... in her chair to laugh at that, greatly to the surprise of the little girls, who were much impressed with the elegance of these high-sounding names. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... moment of departure: 'Everybody has been invited expressly to meet the Wild Irish Girl; so she must bring her Irish harp. M.C.O.' I arrived at New Burlington street without my harp and with a beating heart, and I heard the high-sounding titles of princes and ambassadors and dukes and duchesses announced long before my poor plebeian name puzzled the porter and was bandied from footman to footman. As I ascended the marble stairs with their gilt balustrade, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... what does it do? The name is a contraction of Societe Internationale Forestiere & Miniere du Congo. In the Congo, where companies have long titles, it is the fashion to reduce them to the dimensions of a cable code-word. Thus the high-sounding Compagnie Industrielle pour les Transports et Commerce au Stanley Pool is mercifully shaved to "Citas." This information, let me say, is a life-saver for the alien with a limited knowledge of French ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... friend now dropped their high-sounding style of speech, and spoke for some minutes rapidly in an undertone. It was finally arranged that on a given day, at a certain hour, the woman should take the four horses down the shores of the lake to its lower end, as if she were going for firewood, there cross the creek at ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... heavy-shouldered man broke out in a harsh laugh that was partly amusement, but mostly hysterical. Both he and the captain regarded McCoy with incredulity and amazement. That this barefooted beachcomber should possess such high-sounding dignity was inconceivable. His cotton shirt, unbuttoned, exposed a grizzled chest and the fact that ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... also several officials with high-sounding titles who were going out to their stations in German East Africa. These gentlemen were mostly accompanied by wives and babies and between them they imparted a spirited scene of domesticity to the life on shipboard. The effect ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... for me was the number of foreigners—Turks, Egyptians, Persians, Tunisians. I say nothing of the Corsicans, who were very numerous that day, because during my four years at the Territorial I have become accustomed to the pronunciation of those high-sounding, interminable names, always followed by that of the locality: "Paganetti de Porto Vecchio, Bastelica di ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... embarrassment. Taylor was not a conversationalist, but on paper he could put his meaning so plainly that there could be no mistaking it. He knew how to express what he wanted to say in the fewest well-chosen words, but would not sacrifice meaning to the construction of high-sounding sentences. But with their opposite characteristics both were great and successful soldiers; both were true, patriotic and upright in all their dealings. Both were pleasant to serve under—Taylor was pleasant to serve ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... destroy all the captives, I was commanding the fugitives to press on still more in their flight, in order that they might save themselves as quickly as possible. For to trample upon captives is not holy." Such high-sounding and airy words did Chosroes speak to the ambassadors, but nevertheless it did not escape them why he gave time to the Romans in ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... Jako. On the slope of the hill, hidden by a dense growth of rhododendrons, lay the bungalow of Mr. Currie Ghyrkins, and a board at the entrance of the ride—drive there was none—informed us that the estate bore the high-sounding title of "Carisbrooke Castle," in accordance with the Simla custom of calling little things by ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... like the offending person. We find that we have really been the offender, going about with a moral tape-measure graduated by ourselves, and measuring the opposite party with a serene conceit which has called itself principle or honor, or some high-sounding name, while it was ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... no enemy in sight. The fort was deserted. A citizen of the town came out with a flag of truce. The General who had called upon his men in high-sounding words, the officer who was going to make New Madrid a Thermopylae, and himself a Leonidas in history,—the nine thousand infantry had gone! Two or three soldiers were found asleep. They rubbed their eyes and stared wildly when they were told that they were prisoners, that ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... advised her nephew to say nothing more for a time. Let Leslie find out for herself the character of the girl she had made her friend. It was really the only way she would learn not to be carried away by flattery and high-sounding words. Allison, grumbling a little, assented; but in his heart he still boiled with rage at the idea of that girl's winding his sister around her little finger just for the sake of using the car when she wanted it. It was not, perhaps, all happening that for ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... religion. The year which saw Washington inaugurated president, saw in the fair land of Lafayette the beginnings of that holocaust of murder which turned France into a hell. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." No high-sounding words about freedom, no Godless philosophy, no infidel creed, which robs men of homes here and heaven hereafter, can save this nation. "Not unto us, but unto Thy name be the praise," must be our song, as it was the song ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... reporter in Chicago would have given his ears to hear, was a quiet one. The Governor dominated the situation, and at the very outset he made this clear. In his dealings with the Intelligent Voter he was wont to call a spade by many high-sounding names, but when he chose he could call it a spade, and he did choose so ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... the city made an official address. Mr. Lincoln's reply was so modest, firm, patriotic, and pertinent, that my fears of the day before began to subside, and I saw in this new man a promise of great things to come. It was not boldness or dash, or high-sounding pledges; nor did he while in office, with the mighty armies of a roused nation at his command, ever assume to be more than he promised in that little upper chamber in New York, on his journey to the seat of Government, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... having in its progressive development a connected unity of thought and action, so that through all the changes of its outward form it had been moved and guided by the same single spirit,—"Le roi est mort; vive le roi!"—A Vipont dies; live the Vipont! Despite its high-sounding Norman name, the House of Vipont was no House at all for some generations after the Conquest. The first Vipont who emerged from the obscurity of time was a rude soldier of Gascon origin, in the reign of Henry II.,—one of the thousand fighting-men who sailed from Milford ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Yankee called smart, it is a term of reproach. I don't like to think of a Smart Set. And my refuge is in the knowledge that there is just one thing that destroys smartness and that is, to put it in a very high-sounding word, Nobility. There is the test we can all put to ourselves—and it really is conscience and ethics and religion all in one—is the idea smart or is it noble? I'd take my chances of going to Heaven on the conformity of ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... With high-sounding phrases of the equality of man, the lower orders are kept in a state almost approaching to serfdom. The poor Indians toil and spin, and cultivate the ground, being almost the only producers. Yet in the revolutionary outbreaks they are driven about like cattle, and forced into the ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... presented them in succession, Napoleon listened to each of their high-sounding old aristocratic names with a kindly nod and a gracious air, which delighted the ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... said to himself, one morning, as he stood watching the animal that was greedily eating out of its manger—'it is not right that a knight's good horse should go forth without a name. Even the heathen Alexander bestowed a high-sounding title on his own steed; and so, likewise, did those Christian warriors, Roland and the Cid!' But, try as he might, no name would come to him except such as were unworthy of the horse and his rider, and for four nights and ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... it. I have enjoyed many a hearty laugh over the strange affectations which people designate here very handsome names. I prefer the old homely Jewish names, such as that which it pleased my godfather and godmothers to bestow upon me, to one of those high-sounding christianities, the Minervas, Cinderellas, and Almerias of Canada. The love of singular names is here carried to a marvellous extent. It is only yesterday that, in passing through one busy village, I stopped in astonishment before a tombstone ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... delightful sentiment; but the thoughts, though fine and deeply felt, are not, like Milton's subjects, identified completely with the writer, and so far want a more individual interest. Mr. Wordsworth's are also finely conceived and high-sounding Sonnets. They mouth it well, and are said to be sacred to Liberty. Brutus's exclamation, 'Oh Virtue, I thought thee a substance, but I find thee a shadow,' was not considered as a compliment, but as a bitter sarcasm. The beauty of Milton's Sonnets is their sincerity, the spirit of poetical ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Arthurian history, but his real contribution to the legend is the new spirit that he put into it. In the first place his vehicle is the swift-moving French octo-syllabic couplet, which alone gives an entirely different tone to the narrative from that of Geoffrey's high-sounding Latin prose. Wace, moreover, was Norman born and Norman bred, and he inherited the possessions of his race—a love of fact, the power of clear thought, the appreciation of simplicity, the command of elegance in form. Such a spirit indeed was his as in a finer type had already expressed itself ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... stability; and this roominess, besides, allowed good accommodation aft for a large number of passengers, although in this instance I was the single solitary "landsman" aboard—that is, if a young shaver of thirteen can be dignified with such a high-sounding title! ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... do believe that he'll be here presently, to force her away from me. Let him come; but if he touches her with a single finger, that instant his eyes shall be torn out. I can put up with his impertinences and his high-sounding words, as long as they remain words: but if they are turned into realities, ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... He was a litterateur, a rhetorician, an idealist, where Spencer was a philosopher, a scientific man, and a rationalist. Farrar admired high literature with all his heart; though unfortunately it did not clarify his own taste, but only gave him a rich vocabulary of high-sounding words, which he bound into a flaunting bouquet. He was like the bower-bird, which takes delight in collecting bright objects of any kind, bits of broken china, fragments of metal, which it disposes with distressing prominence ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... supported on untrimmed posts of brigalow and swamp gum, but rude as was the structure, the miners at Chinkie's Flat, and other camps in the vicinity, had once been distinctly proud of their battery, which possessed the high-sounding title of "The Ever Victorious," and had achieved fame by having in the "good times" of the Flat yielded a certain Peter Finnerty two thousand ounces of gold from a hundred tons of alluvial. The then owner of the battery was an intelligent, but bibulous ex-marine engineer, ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... Donna Susanna Torrebianca?" She tried the name on her tongue. "Yes, for an impromptu, Torrebianca is n't bad. It's picturesque, and high-sounding, and yet not—not invraisemblable. You don't think it invraisemblable? So here 's luck to that bold adventuress, that knightess-errant, the ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... nothing had been said to them in the way of disapproval, they went on to choose the other members of the club; to appoint times and places for meeting; and to organize in as methodic and high-sounding a manner as their limited ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... sorely in want of the alms of all charitable Christian persons, and who is, in short, the bearer of this veracious document, duly certified and indorsed by an Italian consul in one of our Atlantic cities, of a high-sounding, but to Yankee organs ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... take refuge in our quite peculiar idealism, and dream—alas, aloud!—of our ideal mission for the saving (Heil) of mankind. Foreign countries turn away enraged from such unheard-of self-glorification and are quite certain that, behind the high-sounding words, the arrogance of "Prussian militarism" is concealed.—H. ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... many mushroom schools have recently added "rural" or "industrial" to their names, but few of them are doing work of great value. Where the school appeals chiefly to the negro for support, liberal use is made of such high-sounding names as "college" and "university." The negro still thinks that the purpose of education is to free him from manual labor, and he looks with little favor upon a school which requires actual industrial training. For the same reason he is quick ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... course defraying the actual cost of his brewery, and allowing him some L300 a year for himself? Who, as he read about 'Sun-spots,' or 'Fresh Facts for Darwin,' or the 'True History of Modesty or Veracity,' showing how it came about that these high-sounding virtues are held in their present somewhat general esteem, would find it in his heart to grudge the admirable authors their freedom ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... that it has cost me both time and care to prepare it, but I will yield no further. I am weary of being made the puppet of an unfaithful husband and his band of unblushing favourites, who receive, each in succession, some high-sounding title by which they are enabled to thrust themselves and their shame upon me in the very halls of the palace. I must and ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... extraordinary moment. She had indeed been brought up in palaces and the men whom she had known had been reckoned the salt of the earth. Yet, at that crisis, she was most profoundly conscious that not all the glamour of those high-sounding names, the picturesque interest of those gorgeous uniforms, nor the men themselves, magnificent in their way, were able to make the slightest appeal to her. She remembered some of her own bitter words when an alliance with one of ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... training of a nation to fit it successfully to fulfil the duties of self-government is a matter, not of a decade or two, but of generations. There are foolish empiricists who believe that the granting of a paper constitution, prefaced by some high-sounding declaration, of itself confers the power of self-government upon a people. This is never so. Nobody can "give" a people "self-government," any more than it is possible to "give" an individual "self-help." You know that the Arab proverb runs, ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... introduction of a number of superbly poetical speeches, the best known of which is that beginning, "O Sleep, O gentle Sleep." To the comic groups Shakespeare added a number of new figures, among them the braggart Pistol, whose speech bristles with the high-sounding terms he has borrowed from the theater, and old Justice Shallow, so fond of recalling the gay nights and days which are as much figments of his imagination as is his assumed familiarity with the great John of Gaunt. ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... improving, but he has a tendency to a "fatal fluency," and he must beware of high-sounding phrases. Also too many passages in his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... Java. These two principalities, which once comprised the great empire of Mataram, are nominally independent, being ostensibly ruled by their own princes: the Susuhunan of Surakarta and the Sultan of Djokjakarta, who are, however, despite their high-sounding titles and their dazzling courts, but mouthpieces for the Dutch residents. The series of episodes which culminated in the Dutch acquiring complete political ascendency in the Vorstenlanden form one of the most picturesque and significant chapters in the history ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... degree worthy of the relationship. She must not be too unfit to enter upon more brilliant surroundings whenever the time should come,—she took care that her pet chickens and her one doll should have high-sounding names, such as would seem proper to the aunt, and, more than this, she took a careful survey of the house whenever she was coming home from school or from play, lest she might come upon her distinguished relative unawares. She had asked her grandmother more than once ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... She could not deny what her father had so pertinently expressed, yet these high-sounding words made no impression ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... adopted. Population of Labuan. Its coal measures and the failure of successive companies to work them; now being worked by Central Borneo Company (Ltd.). Chinese and natives worked well under Europeans. Revenue and expenditure. Labuan self-supporting since 1860. High-sounding official titles. One officer plays many parts. Labuan celebrated for its fruits, introduced by Sir Hugh Low. Sir Hugh's influence; instance of, when writer was fired on by Sulus. H.M.S. Frolic on a rock. Captain Buckle, ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... disposition, he patiently waited there for three days after the Moro's departure. The Moro returned with another man, his uncle, who was said to be a servant of the king of Menilla. He had been sent to act as ambassador, with certain other Moros who accompanied him. He tried to make us understand, with high-sounding words, that his master was a most magnificent lord. After a great show of authority and many pauses, he finally declared that the king of Menilla wished to be the friend of the Spaniards, and that he would be pleased to have them settle in his land, as they had done in Cubu and Panay. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... imaginable danger in the cause of the republic—of dying for one's country. When you speak in this manner we are all amazed, like a pack of blockheads, and you are laughing in your sleeve: for, among all those high-sounding and admirable expressions, pleasure has no place, not only that pleasure which you say consists in motion, and which all men, whether living in cities or in the country, all men, in short, who speak Latin, call pleasure, but even that stationary ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... visited the head-quarters of her own army, hoping that she might also enkindle similar ardor. Accompanied by a magnificent retinue of her brilliantly-accoutred generals, she swept, like a gorgeous vision, before her troops. She lavished presents upon her officers, and in high-sounding phrase harangued the soldiers; but there was not a private in the ranks who did not know that she was a wicked and a polluted woman. She had talent, but no soul. All her efforts were unavailing to evoke one single electric spark of emotion. ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... another factor. There was that debased form of patriotism called Jingoism. It is a form of party politics without solid convictions or real beliefs, which puffs itself out with big words, and with the froth of high-sounding ideas and principles. It is a policy, nevertheless, which appeals most strongly to the instincts of self-interest and to the illegal appropriation of other people's property. It revels in the lust of boasting, ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... quite inexperienced in that sort of particular knowledge which is necessary for all statesmen. Nothing is so easy as to make things look fine on paper; we should never forget that: there is a great difference between high-sounding generalities and laborious details. Is it reasonable to expect that men who have passed their lives dreaming in colleges and old musty studies should be at all calculated to take the head of affairs, or know what measures those at the head of affairs ought to adopt? I ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... may appear to the eyes of some, and high-sounding as they may strike the ears of many, they do not affect me with any force. In the first place, I do not perceive how they bear upon the question before me; it merely refers to the seizure of New Orleans, not to the maintenance of the balance of power. Again, of all characters, I think that ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... night," as she herself expressed it. High-sounding names were there—much intellect and beauty; all were assembled to do honour to the coiffeur from the banks of the Garonne. France honours intellect, no matter to what class of society it belongs: it is an affectionate kind of social democracy. ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... permitted to ascend the throne without difficulty. He is said, at his accession, to have borne a good character for prudence and moderation, a character which he sought to confirm by the utterance on various occasions of high-sounding moral sentiments. The general tenor of his reign was peaceful; and we may conclude therefore that he was of an unwarlike temper, since the circumstances of the time were such as would naturally have induced a prince of any military ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... a very flourishing prospectus, setting forth the enormous benefits to be derived by shareholders from the profitable dealings of the company. Some good high-sounding names figured in the list of directors, and the chairman was Captain H. N. Cromie Paget. The prospectus looked well enough, but the holder of Mr. Sheldon's dishonoured bill was not able to derive much comfort from high-sounding phrases ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... way," said my father, pouring himself a second glass of port, and turned over my high-sounding phrase with a faint hint of distaste; "Constructive Statesmanship. No. Once a barrister always a barrister. You'll only be a party politician.... Vulgar men.... Vulgar.... If you succeed ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... how you light a world, a sky, eternity. A word we have no business with; a high-sounding word for a penny purpose. Look, we try to keep alive because it's necessary to life, to nature; and the effort, the struggle, breeds the dream. You can understand that. Men who ought to know say that ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... representations of the vices and virtues they impersonated. She had entertained this idea particularly with regard to Flint. She had felt that the day would come when he and she would occupy the stage together. He would speak his part with a great flourish of the hands and much high-sounding emphasis, and when he had finished she would reply with a carefully worded retort, setting forth the claims and rewards of virtue. Thus it would continue, argument succeeding argument, a declamatory give and take, dignified, ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... and I will slightly glance at the state of affairs as they at present exist in South Africa. I have the advantage of having spent some time in South Africa, and of having been—not only General Commanding, but Governor and High Commissioner, with high-sounding titles given me by her Majesty. I know, consequently, not only a little of South Africa, but a good deal of Boer character. During my stay as Governor of the Transvaal, I had many opportunities of knowing people whom you ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... in the sun was enough to put a man on his back for the rest of the day. Exposure to the direct action of the sun's rays was frequently followed by nausea, a slight chill, and then a high fever. The doctors subsequently called this "thermal fever," which is suspected to be a high-sounding name calculated to cover up a very dense ignorance of the nature of the disease, because no one ever obtained any relief from it from them. Recurrence of the exposure brought recurrence of the fever, and, if persisted in, finally ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... self-possessed, and these did not ask Cicely to dance again. She felt, when they returned her to her mother, that she had not been a success with them. Others were boyish and diffident, and with them she got on pretty well. With one, a modest child of nineteen or so with a high-sounding title, she was almost maternally friendly, and he seemed to cling to her as a refuge from a new and bewildering world. They ate ices together—he told her that he had been brought up at home in Ireland under a priest, and had never eaten enough ices at a sitting until he had joined ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... was certainly very nice to be addressed by so high-sounding a title. She wished she could get Delia to call her signorita. But no; she felt sure ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... leader. He had made them all keys to fit their masters' doors, and at night, when they were supposed to be asleep in bed, they would steal out to meet in a dirty cellar owned by an old blind man, where they kept a skull and cross-bones and signed high-sounding oaths with a pen dipped in blood, and did other silly things. The object of the society was to hurt, annoy, wrong and pick quarrels with such of their masters as happened not to please them. With such cheap fooleries Tappertit had convinced ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... are flattered among the populace, receive the attentions of very fine and very virtuous ladies, wield a potential voice in the city government, and lead in the greatest development of internal improvements;—that these men even whisper high-sounding words of morality, and the established custom considers their example no harm when color ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... rusty for want of practice, and he did not trust himself to join in the exceedingly lively and general conversation till he had regained something of his old fluency in long daily talks with the landlord. Beside which, he did not feel greatly drawn toward his fellowguests. Their high-sounding and pompously-expressed platitudes bored him, their absurd views on politics, their parrot-like and yet self-satisfied remarks on literature and art filled him with compassion. One guest in particular, who sat at the head of the table, and generally led the conversation in the loudest ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... murmur; yet, when he laid down his sword to die, he had nothing to leave to his children but the commissions Congress had awarded him on his California revenues. War is a hard trade for the bravest of the brave, and with very few prizes except to political favorites, who with high-sounding titles, but without military experience, ride by the side of some brave subaltern, gather his laurels, and enjoy the fruits ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... virtues, is beautiful. "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" does not explain the Scriptures. The book, as an attempt to explain and crystallize truth, is a failure. It ranks with that great mass of literature, written and copied at such vast pains and expense, bearing the high-sounding ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... the ears, rend the ears, split the head; deafen, stun; faire le diable a quatre[Fr]; make one's windows shake, rattle the windows; awaken the echoes, startle the echoes; wake the dead. Adj. loud, sonorous; high-sounding, big-sounding; deep, full, powerful, noisy, blatant, clangorous, multisonous[obs3]; thundering, deafening &c. v; trumpet-tongued; ear-splitting, ear-rending, ear- deafening; piercing; obstreperous, rackety, uproarious; enough to wake the dead, enough to wake seven sleepers. shrill &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... always appear so to her, and he turns to look in her face, he says, "Why, mother! how beautiful you look! Please to give me some little spectacles, all my own!" She could not resist this entreaty,—(who could?)—and little "Squire Specs" does not mind the shouts of his companions or the high-sounding nicknames they give him, he so rejoices in what seems to him a new ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... can make—YOUR HEART! You should not offer it to one so unworthy. Heaven, you know, has allowed my father's house to be made a house of solitude, a home of silent obedience, which my parents say is more to be admired than big names and high-sounding titles. Notwithstanding all this, let me speak the emotions of an honest heart—allow me to say in the fullness of my hopes that I anticipate better days. The bird may stretch its wings toward the sun, which it can never reach; and flowers of the field ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... into the average magazine article is not likely to merit much high-sounding praise. In our familiar shop talk we are prone to laugh about it. But even the most commercial-minded of our brotherhood cherishes deep in his heart a craftsman's pride in work well done. So your deponent testifies in his own defense that his copybook exercises ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... and Ireland, that she had seen her last Ard-Righ, according to the ancient Milesian Constitution. Powerful Princes of his own and other houses the land was destined to know for many generations, before its sovereignty was merged in that of England, but none fully entitled to claim the high-sounding, but often fallacious title, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... that the peculiarity consists /chiefly/, not /solely/, in the use of the foreign words; for there are two or three instances of unquestionably German words, which are Italicized on account of their high-sounding pomp. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... imitation many mushroom schools have recently added "rural" or "industrial" to their names, but few of them are doing work of great value. Where the school appeals chiefly to the negro for support, liberal use is made of such high-sounding names as "college" and "university." The negro still thinks that the purpose of education is to free him from manual labor, and he looks with little favor upon a school which requires actual industrial training. For the same reason he is quick to protest when the attempt is made to introduce ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... parts of India, which are seen in full series on the walls of the South Kensington, and by their barbaric profusion of ornamentation and true magnificence of design give the stay-at-home Briton some faint inkling of the empire which has invested his queen with another and more high-sounding title. Yet when close at hand the building does not bear out this connection with Indian architecture of the grand style; it might be mere chance that at a distance there is a similarity; or it may be that the smallness of size in the decorations as compared to ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... me once upon a time, showing what quarters travellers may stumble upon even with the best recommendations. A large party of us had started, particularly recommended by letter from the consular agent of a place that shall be nameless, to no less a person than the Demarch of a high-sounding Greek town, who was to do every thing for us in the way of billeting. By great exertion, and with aching bones, we managed to reach this place after night-fall, prolonging, for its hope's sake, our course through a most break-neck ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... canal at Givenchy; he had laughed and joked as he lay all day in the open and listened to the bullets that went "pht" against the few clods of earth he had erected with his entrenching tool, and which went by the high-sounding name of "head cover." ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... authorised him to borrow the sum of 600,000 livres upon his benefices, ran in debt above a million, and thought to dazzle the city and Court of Vienna by the most indecent and ill-judged extravagance. He formed a suite of eight or ten gentlemen, of names sufficiently high-sounding; twelve pages equally well born, a crowd of officers and servants, a company of chamber musicians, etc. But this idle pomp did not last; embarrassment and distress soon showed themselves; his people, no longer receiving pay, in order to make money, abused the privileges of ambassadors, ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... Louis. This was what he had meant. He had known all along, and plotted with them; even if his stomach had turned now, he had been a party to this infamy. Even then she did not hate him; she saw him, misled as she had been by Doyle's high-sounding phrases, lured on by one of those wild dreams of empire to which men were sometimes given. She did not love him any more; she ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... thicknesses to be observed; and, moreover, he carried with him the superior form of the Cremonese school, and the glorious varnish. Mr. Reade names him "the mighty Venetian," an appellation not a whit too high-sounding, though it may appear so to those not acquainted with his finest works. The truth is, that Montagnana is less known than any of the great makers. For years his works have been roaming about, bearing ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... perfectly familiar with these productions written by people who think they are psychic when they are only sick. And I have never yet seen a publisher's reader who had found anything in inspirational writing but words, words, words. High-sounding paraphrases and rolling sentences do not make literature; and so far as we know, only the fallible, live and loving man or woman can breathe into the nostrils of a literary production the breath of life. All the rest is only ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... human thought had already emerged from the age of theology and was now emerging from the age of metaphysics into the age of positivism; the three ages coexist, and although antagonistic they lend one another mutual support. High-sounding positivism, whenever it ceases to deny and begins to affirm something, whenever it becomes really positive, is nothing but metaphysics; and metaphysics, in its essence, is always theology, and theology is born ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... glory lies in the abundant display of one's personal appellation in the newspapers. Our heroine lived in the most gossiping of all ages, herself its greatest gossip; yet her own name, patronymic or baptismal, never was talked about. It was not that she sank that name beneath high-sounding titles; she only elevated the most commonplace of all titles till she monopolized it, and it monopolized her. Anne Marie Louise d'Orleans, Souveraine de Dombes, Princesse Dauphine d'Auvergne, Duchesse de Montpensier, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... provoke conduct which will be fruitful of wrong to others; and it must cause misery to the man who feels it. It will not be any the less fruitful of wrong and misery if, as is often the case with evil motives, it adopts some high-sounding alias. The truth is, gentlemen, that each one of us has in him certain passions and instincts which, if they gain the upper hand in his soul, would mean that the wild beast had come uppermost in ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... to please a Turk. Upon their turbans or caps were the distinguishing badges of their respective corps—a half-moon, a lion, the sun, and various other devices. The regiments were not numbered as with us, but adopted some magniloquent high-sounding title suggestive of their valour in war, fearlessness of ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... this Trojan adventure, I chose a well-legged mule, young, lively, and well enough looking generally; and thenceforward I was entitled to call myself "Mounted Ranger," according to General Walker's rather high-sounding classification. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... surpass. In fact, both pieces have plenty of Marlowe's thunder, but none of his lightning. Even the blank-verse reads like that of one accustomed to rhyme, and unable to get out of his wonted rut. And the versification runs, throughout, in a stilted monotony, the style being made thick and turgid with high-sounding epithets; while we have a perfect flux of learned impertinence. As for truth, nature, character, poetry, we look for them in vain; though there is much, in the stage noise and parade, that might keep the multitude from perceiving the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... was composed of some three to four thousand Chinese, officered by 150 Europeans of almost every nationality and often of doubtful character. By the indomitable will of its commander this heterogeneous body was moulded into a little army, whose high-sounding title of "Ever Victorious" became a reality, and in less than two years, after thirty-three engagements, the power of the Taipings was completely broken and the rebellion stamped out. The maintenance of discipline was a perpetual struggle, and at one time there was a mutiny ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... far too good-natured not to have answered it at once if he had been able. I told the story to my brother officers, who were amused by the comparison with the Grand Llama, and we sometimes called the major by that high-sounding title afterwards. ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... only fitting that on his tombstone Lady Tintagel should have had inscribed an impressive and high-sounding misquotation from the Bible. ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... here Elixir of Long Life, I might embellish it with a great many high-sounding epithets; but I disdain to follow the example of every illiterate vagabond, that, from idleness, turns quack, and advertises his nostrum in the public papers. I am neither a felonious drysalter returned from exile, an hospital stump-turner, a decayed staymaker, a bankrupt printer, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... five years. If we ever tried to reason with him, he would threaten to stop his paper, and, of course, that meant bankruptcy and destruction. That man used to write articles a column and a half long, leaded long primer, and sign them "Junius," or "Veritas," or "Vox Populi," or some other high-sounding rot; and then, after it was set up, he would come in and say he had changed his mind-which was a gilded figure of speech, because he hadn't any—and order it to be left out. We couldn't afford "bogus" in that office, so we always took the leads out, altered the signature, credited the article ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... grace. "Saint Scholastica" is divine; and the "Taking down from the Cross" as noble a composition as ever was seen; I care not by whom the other may be. There is more beauty, and less affectation, about this picture than you will find in the performances of many Italian masters, with high-sounding names (out with it, and say RAPHAEL at once). I hate those simpering Madonnas. I declare that the "Jardiniere" is a puking, smirking miss, with nothing heavenly about her. I vow that the "Saint Elizabeth" is a bad picture,—a ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... after, and intimately associated with, some event or individual. Every mass of seaweed became a familiar object. The various little pools and inlets, many of them not larger than a dining-room table, received high-sounding and dignified names—such as Port Stevenson, Port, Erskine, Taylor's Track, Neill's Pool, &c. Of course the fish that frequented the pools, and the shell-fish that covered the rock, became subjects of much attention, and, in ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... very flourishing prospectus, setting forth the enormous benefits to be derived by shareholders from the profitable dealings of the company. Some good high-sounding names figured in the list of directors, and the chairman was Captain H. N. Cromie Paget. The prospectus looked well enough, but the holder of Mr. Sheldon's dishonoured bill was not able to derive much comfort from high-sounding ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Jemima, with her whole paternal inheritance close at her heels, in the shape of an unshapely, gigantic negro youth, destined in after years to win for himself among the Red warriors of the wilderness the high-sounding title of "The Big Black Brave of the Bushy Head." With brave and cheerful hearts, which the pioneer must maintain, or sink, they had gone to work, and cutting out a broad green patch from the vine-inwoven ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... certainly somewhat voluptuous. Troilus, the pattern of lovers, looks patiently on, while his mistress enters into an intrigue with Diomed. No doubt, he swears that he will be revenged; but notwithstanding his violence in the fight next day, he does no harm to any one, and ends with only high-sounding threats. In a word, in this heroic comedy, where, from traditional fame, and the pomp of poetry, every thing seems to lay claim to admiration, Shakspeare did not wish that any room should be left, except, perhaps, in the character of Hector, for esteem ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... out. He did not thus phrase the position even to himself. He clothed it in other and high-sounding words. It was after all a sort of convention to accept acquittal as the proof of innocence. But at the back of his mind from first to last there was an immense fear of the figure which he himself ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... me,' said Monks, rising boldly, 'what then? Fraud and robbery are high-sounding words—justified, you think, by a fancied resemblance in some young imp to an idle daub of a dead man's Brother! You don't even know that a child was born of this maudlin pair; you ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... He could levy troops, declare war and peace, make laws, punish or pardon at will, build cities, forts, and castles, and grant out lands in fiefs, seigniories, counties, viscounties, and baronies. Thus was effete and cumbrous feudalism to make a lodgment in the New World. It was a scheme of high-sounding promise, but in performance less than contemptible. La Roche ransacked the prisons, and, gathering thence a gang of thieves and desperadoes, embarked them in a small vessel, and set sail to plant Christianity and civilization in the West. Suns rose and set, and the wretched bark, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... from my political writings that I was a good hand at fiction, I turned my thoughts to novel-writing. These I wrote in the same pompous, inflated style as I had used in my other publications, hoping that my fine high-sounding periods would assist to make the unsuspecting reader swallow all the insidious reasoning, absurdity and nonsense ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... a pretty name?" she asked, in a matter-of-fact tone. "All the girls do it when they come to the factory to work. It don't cost no more to have a high-sounding name." ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... mettlesome charger and he was quite sure that his new steed would prove equal to any fatigue or danger that might come its way in the course of his adventures. And remembering that all the horses of famous warriors had possessed high-sounding names he called his horse Rocinante and adopted for himself the title of Don Quixote of La Mancha, under which name he will be known through the ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... and fall!" exclaimed Madame von Berg. "There is an ominous commotion everywhere. Spain is the first fruit of the new era about to dawn upon us. She has not yet been conquered, nor will she be, notwithstanding Napoleon's high-sounding phrases and so-called victories. She is as a rock that will first break the waves of his haughty will. As a proof of the hatred prevailing in Spain, Baron von Stein sent me a page from the catechism, which the priests are teaching ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... who believe that the Indians, as a race, have been greatly sinned against, and to sustain their views, have called in the assistance of flowery-written romances and the high-sounding language of prose and poetry. Much of this novelty and interest rubs off by coming in contact with the savage as he really exists. Admiration often changes, in this case, into distrust and even enmity. It is natural that this should be so, for mere book-education biases the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... the "Genius of Christianity" and the "Martyrs." Some of the characteristics of Chateaubriand, however, have produced a seriously injurious effect on French literature, and of these the most contagious and corrupting is his passion for the glitter of words and the pageantry of high-sounding phrases. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... extensive empire was filled to overflowing with exulting thousands, to welcome the victorious monarch from a brilliant campaign. Proud banners floated in triumph on the high turrets, while a thousand minstrels filled the air with their high-sounding melody. ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... Jefferson is not the only American statesman who has spoken high-sounding words in favour of freedom, and then left his own children ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... Rivington. He added with a shrug of the shoulders, "A somewhat high-sounding name for such a humble citizen as myself, but it was not of ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... for the sake of a whim, of some silly fustian about patriotism, some fool's rubbish of high-sounding words! Me, you balance against a crazy notion! Very well, sir! How I shall hate you for it! Don't come near me—not a step! Cling to your notion; see if it will fill my place! From this moment, you're ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... that is to say, the red men gave the white men Indian names, and the white men gave the red men English names. Thus, for example, Washington gave the Half King the name of Dinwiddie, which pleased him greatly; while he, in his turn, bestowed on his young white brother a long, high-sounding Indian name, that you could pronounce as readily spelt backwards as forwards. Fairfax was the name given a young sachem, the son of Queen Aliquippa, whose eternal friendship to the English, it must be borne in mind, had been secured ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... still stronger claim to his protection. It was his reliance on this powerful assistance that chiefly encouraged the King of Poland to continue the war, which had hitherto turned out so unfavourably for him, and the courts of Madrid and Vienna failed not to encourage him by high-sounding promises. While Sigismund lost one place after another in Livonia, Courland, and Prussia, he saw his ally in Germany advancing from conquest after conquest to unlimited power. No wonder then if his aversion to peace kept pace with his losses. The vehemence with which he nourished ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... air of solemnity that was really delightful, they each offered us the tip of one finger for us to shake, and spoke with such affectation that their words stumbled one against the other. Their vocabulary was evidently restricted, and in order to make the conversation elegant they interpolated high-sounding words which did not exactly belong, but sounded grand in their ears. It was a trial to have to ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... a deep sigh. She could not deny what her father had so pertinently expressed, yet these high-sounding words made no impression ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... indians of the district who has taken an interest in the study of his native tongue. He has already published a grammar of the Zapotec, as spoken in his village. He has also printed a little tract for lovers, in which high-sounding phrases are translated from the Spanish into Zapotec. He has also prepared, and holds in manuscript, a dictionary of the dialect containing ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... Taylor was not a conversationalist, but on paper he could put his meaning so plainly that there could be no mistaking it. He knew how to express what he wanted to say in the fewest well-chosen words, but would not sacrifice meaning to the construction of high-sounding sentences. But with their opposite characteristics both were great and successful soldiers; both were true, patriotic and upright in all their dealings. Both were pleasant to serve under—Taylor was pleasant to serve with. Scott saw more ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... olive trees on the island of Skyros, Brooke found at least one Certainty—that of being "among the English poets." He would probably be the last to ask a more high-sounding epitaph. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... in her room a few volumes of the principal poets of the end of the eighteenth century, and of the Empire, such as Delille and Fontanes; but their high-sounding and material poetry was not suited to us. She had been lulled by the melodious murmur of the waves of the tropic, and her soul contained treasures of love, imagination, and melancholy, which all the voices of the air and waters could not ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... of superbly poetical speeches, the best known of which is that beginning, "O Sleep, O gentle Sleep." To the comic groups Shakespeare added a number of new figures, among them the braggart Pistol, whose speech bristles with the high-sounding terms he has borrowed from the theater, and old Justice Shallow, so fond of recalling the gay nights and days which are as much figments of his imagination as is his assumed familiarity with the great John of Gaunt. By placing more stress upon the evil and less ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... unknown but high-sounding name, many eyes were turned toward the door through which the newcomer must enter. A hum of talk spread among ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... waxed old; in that long interval of time it never cooled"—he remarks that it was then "forty years since he put together a youthful essay on these matters, which with vast confidence I called by the high-sounding title, The Greatest Birth of Time." "The Greatest Birth of Time," whatever it was, has perished, though the name, altered to "Partus Temporis Masculus" has survived, attached to some fragments of uncertain date and arrangement. But in very truth the child was born, and, ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... revealing the real colors of those impractical zealots, and it was plain that their noisy minority would no longer be allowed to bluster down the truer and more equable spirit of "the best for all the people." The men and women of the State were taking time to analyze some of those high-sounding phrases with which so-called temperance had disguised vicious theories which left human ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... these speculations may appear to the eyes of some, and high-sounding as they may strike the ears of many, they do not affect me with any force. In the first place, I do not perceive how they bear upon the question before me; it merely refers to the seizure of New Orleans, not to the maintenance ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... This fanciful and high-sounding title was given by the great Swedish botanist, Linnaeus, to a race of plants which are in reality by no means distantly allied to a very ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Principality striving for the succession to the Dragon Throne and launching desperate attacks on the Great Wall of China) to receive from the Dalai Lama, as well as from the lesser Pontiffs of Tibet and Mongolia, high-sounding religious titles, prove conclusively that dignities other than mere possession of the Throne were held necessary to give solidity to a reign which began in militarism and which would collapse as the Mongol rule ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... president of the Directory responded in pompous and high-sounding words. "Minister plenipotentiary of the United States," he said, "by presenting this day to the executive Directory your letter of recall, you offer a very strange spectacle to Europe. Rich in her freedom, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... had been guilty of a cowardly and abominable act, which had nearly cost a man his life. And this crime, if it had been successful, would have benefited the very fellow who concealed his sinful, shameful past under the high-sounding name of Coralth. How was it that Chupin had not recognized him at once? Because he had worked for this fellow without knowing him, receiving his orders through the miserable wretches who pandered to his vices. He had only seen him personally once or twice, ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... the open door of a house attached to a wharf situated in that dreary district which bears the high-sounding name of "St. Katharine's." ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... a place which was overgrown, in broad patches, with misshapen stunted bushes—a rare occurrence in this part of the country, where wood is scarce. My driver bestowed upon this tangled brushwood the high-sounding name of jungle. I should rather have compared them with the dwarfed bushes and shrubs of Iceland. The country beyond this woody district had a very remarkable appearance; the ground was in many places torn and fissured, as if in ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... their own importance in the American scale of power.... Having thus infected them... he easily formed them into a nominal republican government—crowned their old Archimagus emperor after a pleasing new savage form, and invented a variety of high-sounding titles for all the members of ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... his past life was gone over with him on a number of occasions, but on each occasion he gave a different, highly fantastic recital of his past adventures, always using high-sounding words and phrases and high-sounding names, many of which he mispronounced. Many of the words used by him were of his own coinage, if one were to judge by the sound of them. He was always very pleasant and agreeable, and enjoyed reciting ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... who are quite inexperienced in that sort of particular knowledge which is necessary for all statesmen. Nothing is so easy as to make things look fine on paper; we should never forget that: there is a great difference between high-sounding generalities and laborious details. Is it reasonable to expect that men who have passed their lives dreaming in colleges and old musty studies should be at all calculated to take the head of affairs, or know what measures ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... constitution or civil compact; and, what was more important, they also showed the common-sense American spirit that led them to adopt the scheme of government which should in the simplest way best serve their needs, without bothering their heads over mere high-sounding abstractions.[26] ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... something he called "Trafalgar Oil for restoring the hair," price one dollar; and told him that after he had used that bottle, and it did not have the desired effect, he must try bottle No. 2, called "Balm of Paradise, or the Elixir of the Battle of Copenhagen." These high-sounding naval names delighted Blunt, and he had no doubt there ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... somehow jumped to the conclusion, that portions of animals might possess wonderful virtue for the healing of diseases of the corresponding special parts of man. We ourselves, however, within a little more than a decade, had a phase of opotherapy—how much less absurd it seems under that high-sounding Greek term—that was apparently very learned in its scientific aspects yet quite as absurd as many phases of old-time therapy, as we look at it. We administered cardin for heart disease and nephrin for kidney trouble, ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... enjoyed many a hearty laugh over the strange affectations which people designate here very handsome names. I prefer the old homely Jewish names, such as that which it pleased my godfather and godmothers to bestow upon me, to one of those high-sounding christianities, the Minervas, Cinderellas, and Almerias of Canada. The love of singular names is here carried to a marvellous extent. It is only yesterday that, in passing through one busy village, I stopped in astonishment before a tombstone headed ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the article did not approve of marriage and the artistic temperament. He said the artist belonged to his Art, and to posterity through his Art. The essay fairly bristled with many-lettered words and high-sounding phrases, few of which Billy really understood. She did understand enough, however, to feel, guiltily, when the thing was finished, that already she had married Bertram, and by so doing had committed a Crime. She had slain Art, stifled ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... the most important of them, Ludwig was not by any means the only competitor for Lola's favours. Men of wealth and position—the bearers of high-sounding titles—with politicians and place-hunters, fluttered round her. It is to her credit that she ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... the talk," grunted Jim Hickey, who, like his mates, styled himself "soldier of fortune." But, alas! that high-sounding title in his case, as in many others, was simply a polite way of disguising his true calling, to-wit, that of an unscrupulous adventurer, whose object was to line his own pockets. A fashion has arisen of late of writing about soldiers of fortune as if ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... Its coal measures and the failure of successive companies to work them; now being worked by Central Borneo Company (Ltd.). Chinese and natives worked well under Europeans. Revenue and expenditure. Labuan self-supporting since 1860. High-sounding official titles. One officer plays many parts. Labuan celebrated for its fruits, introduced by Sir Hugh Low. Sir Hugh's influence; instance of, when writer was fired on by Sulus. H.M.S. Frolic on a rock. Captain Buckle, R.N. Dr. Treacher's ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... obscure villages. The number of yards of Flemish poetry annually manufactured and consumed throughout the provinces almost exceed belief. The societies had regular constitutions. Their presiding officers were called kings, princes, captains, archdeacons, or rejoiced in similar high-sounding names. Each chamber had its treasurer, its buffoon, and its standard-bearer for public processions. Each had its peculiar title or blazon, as the Lily, the Marigold, or the Violet, with an appropriate motto. By the year 1493, the associations ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in it. On the restoration of the Chaldaean power he is again in high repute. Nebuchadnezzar mentions him with respect; and Nabonidus, the last native monarch, restores his shrine at Ur, and accumulates upon him the most high-sounding titles. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... him, if Lord Byron had not qualified it by calling him the first only of Irish poets, and, as we suppose his Lordship must mean, of Irish poets of the present day. The title may be, for aught we know to the contrary, perfectly appropriate; but we cannot conceive how Mr. Moore comes by the high-sounding name of "patriot;" what pretence there is for such an appellation; by what effort of intellect or of courage he has placed his name above those idols of Irish worship, Messrs. Scully, Connell, and Dromgoole. Mr. Moore has written words to Irish ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... gives utterance to high-sounding thoughts, to sentimental dreams, and melancholy subtleties, it has been assumed that his character is one nourished with the poet's own heart's blood. A thousand times the noble sentiment of duty has been dwelt upon, which it is alleged he is inspired with; ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... the empire. These efforts at reform, like many before and after, were largely unfruitful, and, despite occasional protests, practical disunion prevailed in the Germanies of the sixteenth century, albeit under the high-sounding title of "Holy ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... won his way to the Count's heart in an especial way, because he expressed a very favourable opinion of the verses which the Count patched together out of high-sounding phrases in the sweat of his own brow, and because he was, to the Count's unspeakable satisfaction, edified and touched by them to the proper pitch. Nevertheless it is a fact that Jonathan's taste in aesthetic matters was really greatly improved ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... with kindling face. "Oh Jasper, was anything ever so gorgeous!" she cried joyfully, for Polly dearly loved high-sounding words; "and we'll sell a lot more tickets, because he's new, and people will want to ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... plebeian. He goes on to say how to prepare some toast, so-and-so, some milk and butter, or cream, so-and-so, put this and that in it, then you dish it up and call it—oh! I can't say what he calls it; but, if you will believe me, it is just 'cream toast,' and nothing else, disguised under a high-sounding name to deceive innocent people, and make them believe they are eating something very high-toned. Just a little more tea, papa. But I am up to their tricks and I'll not palm off any old-fashioned dishes on you, under a Frenchified name," and she chatted on, helping him and ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... servants remaining in the lonely house were delighted to see the young master home again. Olympia, the coloured cook, whose high-sounding cognomen was usually reduced to Olly, gave him a welcome equal to what might be expected from a whole plantation of darkies. Her eyes and teeth shone in perpetual smiles, her gaily turbaned head and dusky hands gesticulated in ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... rendered along this line is to insist that seeming shall no longer be allowed to pass for being. No matter where it strikes or whom it strikes, he must help strip away pretense from the vain and shallow, unveil those who masquerade under borrowed, empty, high-sounding titles—those whose vociferous tones, glib tongues and unlimited audacity seek to pose their owners as learned ones under the thinnest veneer. This uncovering of shams, exposure of frauds will save the race many a gibe ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough
... M'Dougall issued two proclamations from his post at Pembina, on the frontier: in one he declared himself Lieutenant-Governor of the territory which Her Majesty had transferred to Canada; and in the other he commissioned an officer of the Canadian militia, under the high-sounding title of "Conservator of the Peace," "to attack, arrest, -disarm, and disperse armed men disturbing the public peace, and to assault, fire upon, and break into houses in which these armed men were to be found." Now, of the first proclamation ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... This means that if a person thinks clearly and sincerely he will write clearly and sincerely. If a person's thoughts are lofty, he will naturally find dignified words to express them. No good writer will deliberately choose "high-sounding" words to express his ideas. All young writers should avoid what have ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... brilliant high-sounding prefaces of outrageous length, raising great expectations of the wonders to follow— and then comes a poor little appendix of a—history; it is like nothing in the world but a child—say the Eros you must have seen in a picture playing in an enormous ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... standard of safe thinking, we will end up with no thinking at all.... We cannot... have thought half slave and half free.... A nation which, in the name of loyalty or of patriotism or of any sincere and high-sounding ideal, discourages criticism and dissent, and puts a premium on acquiescence and conformity, is ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... barrier. Swarms of fighting men, Ostrogoths as well as Visigoths, overran the provinces south of the Danube. The great ruler, Theodosius, [5] saved the empire for a time by granting lands to the Germans and by enrolling them in the army under the high-sounding title of "allies." Until his death the Goths remained quiet—but it was only the lull ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words were, "high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who does not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached liberty and equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier? On the contrary. We wanted liberty, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... worthies, and the torture chamber, still extant, is a hall almost as big as the Dresden throne-room. In an inscription hewn in the basalt, the sovereign bishop, Johannes VI, poses as builder and seems proud of the damnable fact. Other princes of the Church let us know in high-sounding Latin script that they created the "Monk hole" and the ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... under which the weak, the oppressed, and the ignorant of all nations are invited to come among us and share in the economic and political opportunities and privileges of American citizens. Such high-sounding and professedly disinterested cosmopolitanism appeals to a certain class of sentimental believers in democracy. It does not appeal, however, to any one who fully understands present-day industrial and political conditions. This capitalistic sympathy for the weak and ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... the things of which slavery has deprived the black is a name. A slave has no family designation. It may be for that reason that a high-sounding appellation is usually selected for the single one he is allowed ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... my babyhood, like the kings of Bagdad, I had a hundred bay horses in their stables, each bridled with a coloured woollen string, and stalled in the palings of the garden, and each with his high-sounding name, and princely lineage, and his thrilling history, and where I had a thousand black cattle at pasture in the ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... a remarkable thing, but Billy, who should have replied to the aged man in all sorts of high-sounding language, could find nothing to reply to ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... precise, it was during the summer of 1903—I was paying what must have seemed like an interminable visit to my old friend John Saunders, who at that time filled with becoming dignity the high-sounding office of Secretary to the Treasury of His Majesty's Government, in the quaint little town of Nassau, in the island of New Providence, one of those Bahama Islands that lie half lost to the world to the southeast of the Caribbean Sea and form a somewhat neglected portion ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... but my lady's name's a high-sounding one, and she's not at all backward about airing it; it rolls off her sweet tongue as easy as water off a duck's back—Mrs. Richmond Montague," and the girl tossed her head and drew herself up in imitation of her mistress's haughty air ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... a monopoly of the fur trade in Canada, but the grant is so furiously opposed by the merchants of the coast towns that it is revoked until the Marquis de la Roche, who had been a page at the French court, again obtains monopoly, with many high-sounding titles as Governor, and the added obligation that he must colonize the new land. What with wars and court intrigue, it is 1598 before the Governor of Canada is ready to sail. Of his two hundred people taken from jails, all ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... that is why, instead of restraining their individuality, it prolongs and develops it."[37] Democracy is, in the view of Sorel, the regime par excellence, in which men are governed "by the magical power of high-sounding words rather than by ideas; by formulas rather than by reasons; by dogmas, the origin of which nobody cares to find out, rather than by doctrines based on observation."[38] Lagardelle declares that syndicalism is post-democratic. "Democracy ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... "I ought to," he said; "there isn't a man in this western country that understands the business better or has got it down any finer than my uncle. He may not be able to talk so glibly or use such high-sounding names for things as you fellows, but he can come pretty near telling whether a mine will pay for the handling, and if it has any value he generally knows how to go to work to ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... months—four months. Surely you have seen my name in the papers. Every morning you may read a full description of what Princess Kalora of Morovenia wore the night before. For a simple and democratic people you are rather fond of high-sounding titles, don't you think?" ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... corresponded at one end, they served for alliteration; and when at the other, they answered for rhyme. By way of proving its progress, he showed us a composition by a man who was deaf and dumb, in praise of Morosofia, who, merely by the use of his eyes and hands, had made an ingenious and high-sounding piece of eloquence, though I confess that the sense was somewhat obscure. We went away filled with admiration for the great ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... History of the Robins, too, is a continuous delight; and from its pompous and high-sounding dialogue a skilful adapter may glean not only one story, but one story with two versions; for the infant of eighteen months can follow the narrative of the joys and troubles, errors and kindnesses ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... teacher, and that his son's heart remained obstinately closed to him. He looked round, and found at the other side of Paris what seemed a suitable preceptor,—a young Frenchman of some distinction in letters, more especially in science, with all a Frenchman's eloquence of talk, full of high-sounding sentiments that pleased the romantic enthusiasm of the Captain; so Roland, with sanguine hopes, confided his son to this man's care. The boy's natural quickness mastered readily all that pleased his taste; he learned to speak and write French with rare felicity and ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Monastery of Inchaffray, dated at Inchaffray, December 24th, 1554. This commendator was Alexander Gordon (brother of George, fourth Earl of Huntly), who was defeated in his hopes of the Archbishopric of Glasgow on the death of Gavin Dunbar, and imperfectly consoled by the high-sounding title of Archbishop of Athens in partibus fidelium, the poor See of the Isles, with, on November 26th, 1553, the Abbacy of Inchaffray in commendam, which last he held till 1564. In 1558 he was promoted to the See of Galloway. Nine years later he was accused ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... needless trouble. Do you know the modern recipe for a finished picture of fashionable life? Let a gentlemanly man, with a gentlemanly style, take of foolscap paper a few quires; stuff them well with high-sounding titles—dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies, ad libitum. Then open the peerage at random, pick a supposititious author out of one page of it, and fix the imaginary characters upon some of the rest; mix it all up with quantum ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various
... to put Canelos in communication with the capital; but the largest villages in this vast and fertile region—Archidona, Canelos, and Macas—still remain isolated from the outer world.[98] Ecuador once appointed a functionary under the high-sounding title of "Governor of the Orient," with a salary of $700; but now the Indians are not troubled with any higher official ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... clerk, who had been busy over night preparing a speech which his honor was to deliver before some distinguished city guest the next day. In these matters the chief magistrate proved rather hard to please, as he was fond of high-sounding words and poetical ideas, but found them very ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... its other contradictory qualities, was distinguished for capriciousness and meanness. Even Muratori, their ardent panegyrist, does not attempt to conceal this blemish. We must deduct a good deal from the high-sounding praise which the courtly writers of Italy bestowed upon this house for its splendid patronage of literature, when we remember that Ariosto, who passed his life in its service, was treated with niggardliness ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... fondness for Italian names shown by vocalists and pianists humorously parodied in such self-evident forms as Jacksonini, Signora Marra Boni, and Billsmethi. Banjo Bones is a self-evident nom d'occasion, and the high-sounding name of Rinaldo di Velasco ill befits the giant Pickleson (Dr. M.), who had a little head and less in it. As it was essential that the Miss Crumptons of Minerva House should have an Italian master for their pupils, we find Signer Lobskini introduced, ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... to the English rule under Sir Stamford Raffles, and often express a wish that the country again belonged to Great Britain. In the centre of the south side of the island is a tract of country nominally ruled by two native princes, with the high-sounding titles of Emperor or Sunan of Surakerta, and the Sultan of Yugyakerta. Madura is also divided between the Sultan of Bankalang and the Panambehan of Sumanap. But these princes, potent as from their titles they may be supposed ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... we were out of the desert. The wonderful mountain still loomed up large and clear on our left. I thought of the old Spanish explorers and wondered if they came so far as this, when they journeyed through that part of our country three hundred years before. I wondered what beautiful and high-sounding name they might have given it. I wondered a good deal about that bare and isolated mountain, rising out of what seemed an endless waste of sand. I asked the driver if he knew the name of it: "That is Bill Williams' mountain, ma'am," he replied, and relapsed into his customary silence, which was ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... were next passed, but the view seaward was bleak and cheerless: the Neversink hills for the first time appearing to me worthy such a high-sounding distinction. Not a symptom of frost was here, although the wind had ceased to stir the waters of the bay, and to the sun alone was left the task of opposing the advance of the ice-king. Sol, though with diminished powers, had made a glorious rally on this day; for not a thicket ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... the western banlieue. Houses half built and deserted in the middle, perhaps by some bankrupt builder; small traders, bakers, charcutiers, fried-fish sellers, lodged in structures of lath and plaster, just run up and already crumbling; cabarets of the roughest and meanest kind, adorned with high-sounding devices,—David mechanically noticed one which had blazoned on its stained and peeling front, A la renaissance du Phenix;—heaps of rubbish and garbage with sickly children playing among them; here and there some small, ill-smelling factory; a few melancholy shrubs in new-made gardens, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was convinced that his interlocutor passed an agreeable moment, whose remembrance would never be forgotten. His patients might wait in pain or anguish, he did not hasten the majestic delivery of his high-sounding phrases with choice adjectives; and unless it was to go to a dinner-party, which he did at least five days in the week, he could not leave you until after he had made you partake of the admiration that he professed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Wright of Oxford, she did better than my Lady Hamilton or my Lady Blessington of later times. Mrs. Wiseman read novels and plays, and, of course, during the intervals of domestic drudgery, began to write a drama, which she finished after she went to London. It was of high-sounding title, for it was called, "Antiochus the Great; or, the Fatal Relapse." Who relapsed so fatally—whether Antiochus with his confidant, or his wife with her confidante, or Ptolemy Pater with his confidant, or Epiphanes with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... idealist, where Spencer was a philosopher, a scientific man, and a rationalist. Farrar admired high literature with all his heart; though unfortunately it did not clarify his own taste, but only gave him a rich vocabulary of high-sounding words, which he bound into a flaunting bouquet. He was like the bower-bird, which takes delight in collecting bright objects of any kind, bits of broken china, fragments of metal, which it disposes with distressing prominence about ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... have seen enough to know so much. There be bitter strivings and envyings and hatreds amongst those of lofty degree. I would have my children wed with godly and proper men; but I would sooner give them to simple gentlemen of no high-sounding title, than to those whose duties in life will call them to places round about the throne, and will throw them amidst ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... "Unworldly" put the match, and he flamed up. He possessed, it seemed, the other necessary qualifications; for a thin tenor voice, not unmusical, was his, and also a smattering of Hebrew which he had picked up at Cambridge because he liked the fine, high-sounding names of deities and angels to be found in that language. Courage and imagination he lumped in, so to speak, with the rest, and in the gilt-edged diary he affected he wrote: "Have taken on Skale's odd advertisement. I like the man's name. The experience may ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... square in Paris has a high-sounding name, For instance, that spot which has been the theater of so much tragedy, upon which so much human blood has been poured, is called the Place de la Concorde. It much more appropriately might be called the Place of Blood. So there are other, many other spots in Paris, which deserve ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... and happy. He was Professor of Latin in the college; perhaps the terms would be more just if we said he was Latin master in one of the most flourishing and successful of French schools; but our neighbours still prefer the more high-sounding nomenclature. The great Garonne was not full of ships and trade at that period as it is now; but Bordeaux was one of the old capital cities of France, possessing a rank which now belongs to no French provincial town, and had its own characteristic society, its scholars and provincial ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... you light a world, a sky, eternity. A word we have no business with; a high-sounding word for a penny purpose. Look, we try to keep alive because it's necessary to life, to nature; and the effort, the struggle, breeds the dream. You can understand that. Men who ought to know say that love is nothing more." He rose and stood over her, ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Detroit, to "manufacture" public opinion, claiming, at the same time, very high motives for so very disinterested an act, in which the good of the Indians, and the integrity of public faith, are clearly held forth as the aim of the writer. The editor endorsing it with most high-sounding phrases, in which he speaks of it as taking fit place beside the most atrocious fictions, which have been conjured up by mistaken heads and zealous hearts, anxious to ride the aforesaid "Indian question," in relation to the Cherokees ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... important of these missions, politically considered, was, however, that of the Duque de Feria,[70] who arrived in France with a brilliant suite, charged with the most specious and high-sounding professions and promises of Philip of Spain, who pledged himself to support the Regency under all circumstances, and to place at the disposal of the Queen whatever assistance she might require against both external and internal enemies. These ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... retreat from Castelnaudary from retiring into Roussillon; but to the very close of his life, the faction-loving Prince always withdrew after the first check, and sought to secure his own safety, rather than to justify the expectations which his high-sounding professions were ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
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