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Grandeur   Listen
noun
Grandeur  n.  The state or quality of being grand; vastness; greatness; splendor; magnificence; stateliness; sublimity; dignity; elevation of thought or expression; nobility of action. "Nor doth this grandeur and majestic show Of luxury... allure mine eye."
Synonyms: Sublimity; majesty; stateliness; augustness; loftiness. See Sublimity.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Grandeur" Quotes from Famous Books



... populous hermitage, every part of it occupied by figures resolutely bent on being alone, and sedulously ignoring the others. Humboldt quotes from the early Fathers some glowing descriptions of natural scenery, but they turn always upon the seclusion from mankind, and upon the contrast between the grandeur of God's works and the littleness of ours. But in Claude we have the hint, however crude, of a relation as unsordid as this, but positive and direct,—the soul of the landscape speaking at once to the soul of man,—showing itself cognate, already friendly, and needing only to throw ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... Never in her life had she seen such grandeur of color. They stood in an open place—a tiny valley surrounded by brown foot-hills. Beyond, the higher pine-clad mountains shut off the valley from the eyes of all who did not seek it. Some great, gray, over-hanging rocks guarded ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase

... the Grayle of whom you read, or believe you read, and the Margrave in whom you evidently think that Grayle is existent still? The one represented, you say, as gloomy, saturnine, with vehement passions, but with an original grandeur of thought and will, consumed by an internal remorse; the other you paint to me as a joyous and wayward darling of Nature, acute yet frivolous, free from even the ordinary passions of youth, taking delight in innocent amusements, incapable of continuous study, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... or the willow or the beech, but how much richer it is and more welcome in its monotony! How much more profoundly our souls echo it! How much more deeply does it seem to be in harmony with the spirit of the air! What grandeur, what tenderness, what pathos, what heart-searchingness in the swells and cadences of its 'Andante Maestoso,' when the wind wrestles with it and brings out ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds

... halcyon days of Spain, and what a breed of men she produced! Read the story of their conquests in Mexico and Peru, as told with so much skill and taste by our own Prescott; or read of the grandeur of her national character, and the wonderful valor of her troops, and the almost marvelous skill of her Alexander of Parma, and her Spinola, as described by our great Motley, and you will see something of the moral and national glory ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... struck with the vast extent of some of the structures when compared with the puny buildings of our own country and times; and the space occupied by the palaces will but remind him of the mistaken magnificence of Buckingham, or the gloomy grandeur of St. James's. Again, the plastered and fancifully coloured fronts of the dwelling-houses, their gay draperies, &c. but ill-assort with the heavy red-brick exteriors of our metropolis; although this contrast is to be sought elsewhere than in externals. Mr. Burford's summary, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various

... corporations in the world; and fearing, if he did not maintain greatness, that they at any time should object that he had done them an injury, therefore, I say, that they might see that he did not intend to lessen their grandeur, or to take from them any of their advantageous things, he did choose for them a Lord Mayor and a Recorder himself; and such as contented them at the heart, and such also as pleased him ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... will become of the world?' I am not prejudiced myself—unnecessary to say that the foolish scruples of the women do not move me. But the devotion of the community at large to this pursuit of gain-money without any grandeur, and pleasure without any refinement—that is a thing which cannot fail to wound all who believe in human nature. To be a millionaire—that, I grant, would be pleasant. A man as rich as Monte Christo, able to do whatever he would, with the equipage ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant

... The grandeur and pathos of that burial scene, amid the stately columns and arches of England's famous Abbey, pale in luster when contrasted with that simpler scene near Ilala, when, in God's greater cathedral of nature, whose columns and arches ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... November, Jackson, accompanied by his wife and traveling in a handsome coach drawn by four of the finest Hermitage thoroughbreds, set out for Washington. Hostile scribblers lost no time in contrasting this display of grandeur with the republican simplicity of Jefferson, who rode from Monticello to the capital on the back of a plantation nag without pedigree. But Jackson was not perturbed. At various points on the road he received returns from the elections, and when after four or five weeks the equipage drew ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... of his walks he went up to the window and stood looking out. The gulch always impressed him; it had a solemn melancholy majesty and desolate grandeur that is not easy to define in words: an icy splendour by moonlight, and a horrible gloomy beauty towards the fall of the day. It was at this time that Talbot stood looking out at its rugged edges and the snow-drifts turning grey as the sunlight left them, and listening with a sort ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross

... ship. During the worst of the gale one man was washed overboard but his loss was not discovered for nearly twenty minutes, and even if it had been, nothing could have been done to save him in such tremendous seas. Clark Russell says that the grandeur and sublimity of the ocean can be best seen on a yard arm during a gale of wind, but somehow I have not been able to make those words applicable to the gales through which I have passed. Through our ninety degrees ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various

... during mealtime. Marthasa's wife caught the spirit of it and they both regaled the Terrans with accounts of the grandeur of Markovian exploits. Cameron grew more and more depressed by it, and as they retired to their rooms early he began to realize how absolutely complete was the impasse into which they ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones

... guarantee of power in Europe, and at the same time a natural opportunity for conquering Flanders, a possession so necessary to her strength and her security. But high above this policy, so thoroughly French, towered a question still more important than that of even the security and the grandeur of France; that was the partition of Europe between Catholicism and Protestantism; and it was in a country Catholic in respect of the great majority, and governed by a kingship with which Catholicism was hereditary, that, in order to put a stop to civil war between ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... forefathers mingle with the dust of ages? Truly we love the land of our birth—every stone of it, every blade of grass that grows in it, its lakes, its valleys, and its streams, each mountain that in rugged grandeur stands sentinel over it, each rivulet that whispers its beautiful story to us—and because we would yet own it for our very own, we grudge not the sacrifices that its final deliverance demands, for it will be all the dearer in ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... of Scotch Folk-lore are such as might have been expected from a consideration of the characteristics of Scotch scenery. The rugged grandeur of the mountain, the solemn influence of the widespreading moor, the dark face of the deep mountain loch, the babbling of the little stream, seem all to be reflected in the popular tales and superstitions. ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... outrageously bitter, our neighbors were as extravagantly attached to him by a strange infatuation—adored him like a god, whom we chose to consider as a fiend; and vowed that, under his government, their nation had attained its highest pitch of grandeur and glory. In revenge there existed in England (as is proved by a thousand authentic documents) a monster so hideous, a tyrant so ruthless and bloody, that the world's history cannot show his parallel. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Claudius[28] to that of the Corsicans, and made Regulus[29] a victim to the ferocity of the Carthaginians. Through the injustice of fortune, Pompey,[30] after he had acquired the surname of the Great by the grandeur of his exploits, was murdered in AEgypt at the pleasure of some eunuchs, while a fellow named Eunus, a slave who had escaped from a house of correction, commanded an army of runaway slaves in Sicily. How many men of the highest birth, through the connivance of this same fortune, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... the melancholy of many different natures, coloured by meditative ecstasy, upspringing with the impulse of repentance—blended with the myriad fancies of every creed. Yes. In those long vaulted aisles the melodies inspired by the sense of things divine are blended with a grandeur unknown before, are decked with new glory and might. Out of the dim daylight, and the deep silence broken by the chanting of the choir in response to the thunder of the organ, a veil is woven for God, and the brightness of ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... lulled; but the sea still ran high. The sun rose upon a scene of awful grandeur. The schooner was sailing under the few rags of canvas which had withstood the gale. The steamer was nowhere in sight; but other vessels of the shattered fleet could be seen, some near, and some half below the horizon, far out at sea. The waves, white-capped, green-streaked, ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... most remarkable thing about our church is the view from the belfry, which is full of grandeur. Certainly in your case, since you are not very strong, I should never recommend you: to climb our seven and ninety steps, just half the number they have in the famous cathedral at Milan. It is quite tiring ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... finds in after years, is but the more substantial bottom of two slopes which rise sublimely toward the zenith of his life. He banishes his false conceptions of the grandeur of the human mind. He banishes an attachment which had not a substantial girder under it, and within a few years his heart is all the broader, gentler and more charitable for his young sorrow. Do not think me underrating the ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... Gothic grandeur and sobriety about this pattern which gives to it a noble and grave aspect. It is worked in Irish stitch, six threads straight down the second row, falling about four stitches below the first; the third, the same below the second; the fourth and fifth the same number below the third; the ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous

... boys spinning their tops in the shadow of the house, now round his neat new lodging, he thought how pleasantly he would settle down to this new Cossack village life. Now and then he glanced at the mountains and the blue sky, and an appreciation of the solemn grandeur of nature mingled with his reminiscences and dreams. His new life had begun, not as he imagined it would when he left Moscow, but unexpectedly well. 'The mountains, the mountains, the mountains!' they permeated all his ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy

... are assigned, or these circumstances determined. This hypothesis, therefore, solves all that objection to the divine care and goodness which the promiscuous distribution of good and evil (I do not mean in the doubtful advantages of riches and grandeur, but in the unquestionably important distinctions of health and sickness, strength and infirmity, bodily ease and pain, mental alacrity and depression) is apt on so many occasions to create. This one truth changes the nature of things; gives order ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... Who that has watched the foaming crests, the white manes, as it were, of the larger billows as they advance in measured order, and rank on rank, into the bay, but will own not merely the fitness, but the grandeur, of this last image? Let me illustrate my meaning more at length by the word 'tribulation.' We all know in a general way that this word, which occurs not seldom in Scripture and in the Liturgy, means affliction, sorrow, anguish; but it is quite worth our while to ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... to realize the situation there was another President of the United States and the grandeur of the continuity of the ...
— Lincoln's Last Hours • Charles A. Leale

... destitute of ruggedness and grandeur, possesses undeniable charm, at least at its W. and E. extremities; but it lapses into unquestioned tameness where the sea washes the central flats. The waters of the Bristol Channel as far down as Minehead are ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade

... grandeur, lived Aunt Katharine's widowed sister, Mrs Trevor, with her daughter Philippa, who was just ten years old. Mrs Trevor had always wondered why her brother, Captain Chester, had not sent Dennis and Maisie to Haughton to be educated with Philippa. Surely nothing could ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton

... Manhattan, to some unseen goal. It was magnificent; it was colossal; but it was uncanny. Mr. Neal had always been moved by the romance of the subway, but tonight, in his elevation of spirit, it seemed something of epic quality, full of a strange, unreal grandeur. Faint red lights here and there revealed nothing of the tunnel; they but lent mystery to dimly seen arches and darkling bastions, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the whole community: older people would point to them as an illustration of justice visited on blind youth, and would chuckle to observe Henry in the process of receiving his come-uppance: the younger set would quake with merriment and poor jokes and sly allusions to Henry's ancient grandeur. Even Bob Standish would have to hide his amusement; why, Bob himself had made society and success his fetiches. And Anna—Anna who was so ambitious for him—how could she endure the status of a cheap ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall

... There was something in the well-marked type of both to catch his imagination, which can always hit off the grander features of royalty, and the homelier features of laborious humility. Is there any sketch traced in lines of more sweeping grandeur and more impressive force than the following of Mary Stuart's lucid interval of remorse—lucid compared with her ordinary mood, though it was of a remorse that was almost delirious—which breaks in upon her ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... equally infallible judges who have been in dread procession towards us ever since we began to be—our posterity—judges who perhaps will doubt with a smile whether we even knew what love was, or ever had a dream of the grandeur they are on the point of grasping. But at least bethink yourselves, dear posterity: we have not ceased ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... British Columbia with the Dominion of Canada was the political issue, absorbing all others. But the allurements of its grandeur and the magnitude of promised results were insufficient to allay opposition, ever encountered on proposal to change a constitutional polity by those at the time enjoying official honors or those who benefit through contracts ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... kingdoms dragged at the wheels of her triumphal chariots; her eagle waving over the ruins of desolated countries; where is her splendour, her wealth, her power, her glory? Extinguished for ever. Her mouldering temples, the mournful vestiges of her former grandeur, afford a shelter to her muttering monks. Where are her statesmen, her sages, her philosophers, her orators, generals? Go to their solitary tombs and inquire. She lost her national character, and her destruction followed. The ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... the grounds, and a promenade on the top of the hotel affording a charming view, contribute to render the house attractive. The dining halls, parlors, etc., are superb and ample, and everything about the house is on a scale of unequaled magnificence and grandeur. ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn

... nearly twenty years all the money that could be spared from immediate and pressing needs' was 'compulsorily expended upon an enormous pile which surpasses the town halls and cathedrals of the Middle Ages in extent if not in grandeur.'"[163] ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith

... would have rated cleanliness higher. Some of us primates have learned to keep ourselves clean, but it's no large proportion; and even the cleanest of us see no grandeur in soap-manufacturing, and we don't look to manicures and plumbers for social prestige. A feline race would have honored such occupations. J. de Courcy Tiger would have felt that nothing but making ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day

... originality as well as grandeur of the unconscious action of the peasant shoemaker who, from 1779, prayed daily for all the heathen and slaves, and organised his society accordingly, will be seen in the dim light or darkness visible of all who had preceded him. They were before the set time; he was ready in the fulness of ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... had our first view of one of the great cathedrals in the Old World, and we were all deeply impressed with its grandeur. It was just at the twilight hour, when the last rays of the setting sun, streaming through the stained glass windows, deepened the shadows and threw a mysterious amber light over all. As the choir was practicing, the whole effect was heightened by the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... thus accomplished feats of strength and stratagem which gratified to satiety that love for the uncommon, the ideal, and the great which is inherent in the spirit of their nation. In the successful combination and evolution of all these elements there was a grandeur which Bonaparte and every soldier of his army appreciated at its ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... under the wide and simple vault of sky the wife and children whose going before is to bring such desolation. It is a place supremely fitting for that ample spirit which knew for its own the nobility of large spaces, and the grandeur of repose. ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... led Sumner to the choice of a subject for his Fourth of July oration in 1845. The title of this address was "The True Grandeur of Nations," but its real object was one which Sumner always had at heart, and never relinquished the hope of,—namely, the establishment of an international tribunal, which should possess jurisdiction over the differences and quarrels ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... As Chancellor of the Duchy he has nothing to do,—and were there anything, he would not do it. He rarely speaks in the House, and then does not speak well. He is a handsome man, or would be but for an assumption of grandeur in the carriage of his eyes, giving to his face a character of pomposity which he himself well deserves. He was in the Guards when young, and has been in Parliament since he ceased to be young. It must be supposed that Mr. Mildmay has found something in him, for he has been included in three ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... absolute controul, Where'er thou wilt to lead th' admiring soul, Gifted alike with Fancy's train to sport, And tread light measures in her elfin court; Or pierce the height where Grandeur sits alone, Girt by the tempest, on his mountain throne: Whate'er the theme which wakes thy vocal shell, Well-pleased I follow where its concords swell; In regal halls, where pleasure wings the night With pomp and music, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... short, abrupt introduction with its solo for trombone, its flutes, oboes, and clarionet, all suggesting the most fantastic effects of color. The andante in C minor is a foretaste of the subject of the evocation of the ghosts in the abbey, and gives grandeur to the scene by anticipating the ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac

... entrance from the ground level, on any one of three stories; or an unexpected view down a steep roadway, or over ancient moss-grown housetops to where, as an old book I found there puts it, "between two ramparts, in a gorge of savage grandeur, the lordly Potomac takes to his embrace ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... all this grandeur, their hearts were humbled to the tacit admission that the colonial metropolis was not only worthy of its seat, but had traits of a solid prosperity not excelled by any of the abounding and boastful cities of the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the memory of man. Mrs. Hilson and Miss Emmeline Hubbard had staked their reputations, for elegance and fashion, upon the occasion. The list of invitations was larger than any yet issued at Longbridge, and all the preparations were on a proportionate scale of grandeur. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... great moment to the race are thus projected to the earth, and spiritual Adepts in occult laws will again revive the "Wisdom Religion" upon earth in all its beauty and grandeur as the western race becomes fitted intellectually and spiritually to ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner

... the very last—his literary fame for which he cared nothing; but what became of the sweetnesses of life, his fine house, his grand company, and his entertainments? The grand house ceased to be his; he was only permitted to live in it on sufferance, and whatever grandeur it might still retain to soon became as desolate a looking house as any misanthrope could wish to see. Where were the grand entertainments and the grand company? There are no grand entertainments where there is no money; no lords and ladies where there ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... was all so grand and awe-inspiring. Occasionally there was an opening through which we could see the snowy peaks, seemingly just beyond us, toward which we were headed. But when you get among such grandeur you get to feel how little you are and how foolish is human endeavor, except that which reunites us with the mighty force called God. I was plumb uncomfortable, because all my own efforts have always been just to make the best of everything and ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... and its yellow plaster window-mouldings, looks like an edifice that has been fashioned of meat, and cemented with grease. Nay, its very shadow seems so richly heavy as to be the shadow of a fane erected by men endowed with a plethora of this world's goods to a god otiose in his grandeur. Ranged around the building in ring fashion, the hamlet's squat white huts stand girdled with belts of plaited wattle, shawled in the gorgeous silken scarves of gardens, and crowned with a flowered brocadework of reed-thatched roofs. In fact, they resemble a bevy of buxom babi, [Peasant ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... of Genghis Khan exists in the language. Baron D'Ohsson in French, and Erdmann in German, have both written minute and detailed accounts of him, but none such exists in English, although the subject has an epic grandeur about it that might well tempt some well-grounded scholar to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... that ever man made could have passed up this new track. It was difficult for ridden horses, and our loaded beasts had to be given time. We seemed to be entering by a fissure into the womb of the savage hills that tossed themselves in ever-increasing grandeur up toward the mist-draped heights of Kara Dagh. Oftener than not our track was obviously watercourse, although now and then we breasted higher levels from which we could see, through gaps between hill and forest, backward along the way we had come. There was smoke from the direction ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... have attained their chief significance from the fact that they have summed up within themselves the entire contribution to human progress of a certain race, a certain nation, a certain organized religion. The glory that was Greece is epitomized and sung forever in the "Iliad,"—the grandeur that was Rome, in the "AEneid." All that the Middle Ages gave the world is gathered and expressed in the "Divine Comedy" of Dante: all of medieval history, science, philosophy, scholarship, poetry, religion may be reconstructed from a right reading and entire understanding ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... moved to emulate the simple grandeur of that poem, for he often repeated it in those days, and somewhat later we find it copied into his notebook in full. It would seem to have become to him a sort of literary touchstone; and in some measure it may be regarded as ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... low line of coast rose to view, never before seen by ancient or modern navigators. This country appeared thickly peopled by a vigorous race, of tall stature and athletic form; fearing to risk a landing at first with his weak force, the adventurer contented himself with admiring at a distance the grandeur and beauty of the scenery, and enjoying the delightful mildness of the climate. From this place he followed the coast for about fifty leagues to the south, without discovering any harbor or inlet where he might shelter his vessel; he ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... was terrific; the sight was terrible in its fierce grandeur. The three companions had seen many strange and fearful things during the past years, but perhaps they had never before been quite so near to a battery spouting out its leaden rain in great broad flashes of ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... Times description was an eloquent one: "To those sitting in the stands it appeared as if a great rich ornamental carpet of kaleidoscopic colour had been suddenly unrolled across the gravel of the parade-ground; a line of dazzling tints, before which the impressive grandeur of Household uniforms with attendant cuirasses, bear-skins, scarlet and bullion, dwarfed into insignificance. The front of the Asiatic line was crested with fluttering lance pennons, and beneath these flags were stalwart frames in vermillion, rich orange, purple-drab, ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... looking round with astonishing delight, beheld the ample plains, the beauteous tracts below. On the other hand, I surveyed the famous river Ohio that rolled in silent dignity, marking the western boundary of Kentucke with inconceivable grandeur. At a vast distance I beheld the mountains lift their venerable brows, and penetrate the clouds. All things were still. I kindled a fire near a fountain of sweet water, and feasted on the loin of a buck, which a few hours before I had killed. The sullen shades of night ...
— The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone • John Filson

... brass; he had seen them both in a great wagon with bright furnishings and brass-girt harness on their horses, lording it over all, rich, dominant and admired. In his visions he had even seen a Romany babe carried in his arms to a Christian church and there baptized in grandeur as became the child of the head of the people. His imagination had also seen his own tombstone in some Christian churchyard near to the church porch, where he would not be lonely when he was dead, but could hear the gossip of the people as they went in and out of church; and on the tombstone ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Rhine. Bismarck had only to acquaint the King of Bavaria and the South German Ministers with the designs of their French protector in order to reconcile them to his own chastening, but not unfriendly, hand. The grandeur of a united Fatherland flashed upon minds hitherto impenetrable by any national ideal when it became known that Napoleon was bargaining for Oppenheim and Kaiserslautern. Not only were the insignificant questions ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... self amidst the Variety of Objects that offer themselves to its Observation. Such wide and undetermined Prospects are as pleasing to the Fancy, as the Speculations of Eternity or Infinitude are to the Understanding. But if there be a Beauty or Uncommonness joined with this Grandeur, as in a troubled Ocean, a Heaven adorned with Stars and Meteors, or a spacious Landskip cut out into Rivers, Woods, Rocks, and Meadows, the Pleasure still grows upon us, as it rises from more than ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... facts for me to enlarge upon them I entered the place shortly after it had been occupied by our troops. One of the first objects that attracted my attention was the dead body of Theodore. There was a smile on his lip—that happy smile he so seldom wore of late: it gave an air of calm grandeur to the features of one whose career had been so remarkable, whose cruelties are almost unparalleled in history; but who at the last hour seemed to have recalled the days of his youth, fought like a brave man, and killed himself rather ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc

... Palisades to the Catskills are as epical as the loveliness of the Rhine is lyrical. The Hudson implies a continent beyond. No European river is so lordly in its bearing, none flows in such state to the sea. Of all the rivers that I know, the Hudson, with this grandeur, has the ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous

... vanquished in life, and scarcely deserve the pity of the conqueror; for their defeat lacks grandeur, since it has never been aurioled by the ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi

... land is far cheaper, the soil is much more fruitful, and consequently the yield greater. After Revelstoke we pass Glacier, where the line runs round in a kind of amphitheatre, showing a magnificent range of peaks in solemn grandeur rising above ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... persuade our hearing, but did not so make known the dignity of the things themselves as does the sight of them, and being present among them. I indeed, who did not believe what was reported, by reason of the multitude and grandeur of the things I inquired about, do see them to be much more numerous than they were reported to be. Accordingly I esteem the Hebrew people, as well as thy servants and friends, to be happy, who enjoy thy presence and hear thy wisdom every day continually. ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... description,—Rock Creek has an abundance of all the elements that make up not only pleasing but wild and rugged scenery. There is perhaps, not another city in the Union that has on its very threshold so much natural beauty and grandeur, such as men seek for in remote forests and mountains. A few touches of art would convert this whole region, extending from Georgetown to what is known as Crystal Springs, not more than two miles from the present State Department, into a park ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... accidents of a man's life, and its external shows, may indeed be irrelate and incongruous; but the organizing principles which fuse into harmony, and gather about fixed predetermined centres, whatever heterogeneous elements life may have accumulated from without, will not permit the grandeur of human unity greatly to be violated, or its ultimate repose to be troubled in the retrospect from dying moments, or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... traced to the virtue and intelligence of the people,—to that general enlightenment and prompt efficiency of public opinion possible only under the influence of a political framework like our own. We find it hard to understand how even a foreigner should be blind to the grandeur of the combat of ideas that has been going on here,—to the heroic energy, persistency, and self-reliance of a nation proving that it knows how much dearer greatness is than mere power; and we own that it is ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... were three Princesses, named Roussette, Brunette, and Blondine, who lived in retirement with their mother, a Princess who had lost all her former grandeur. One day an old woman called and asked for a dinner, as this Princess was an excellent cook. After the meal was over, the old woman, who was a fairy, promised that their kindness should ...
— The Frog Prince and Other Stories - The Frog Prince, Princess Belle-Etoile, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp • Anonymous

... him drinking his black coffee in those early hours of the morning, wrapped in his dressing-gown, and with a sort of clouded Vulcanian grandeur about him, hammering at his population of colossal figures amid the smouldering images of his cavernous brain. He was wise to work in those hours when the cities of men sleep and the tides of life run low; at those hours when the sick find it easiest to die ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... word of its meaning." "I will tell you its meaning," said Brian. "'O Tuis, we do not hide your fame; we praise you as the oak above the kings.' That is, as the oak is beyond the kingly trees of the wood, so are you beyond the kings of the world for open-handedness and for grandeur. ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory

... and writings have done much to open the eyes and hearts of mankind. He has visited all Europe,—not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces or the stateliness of temples, not to make accurate measurements of the remains of ancient grandeur nor to form a scale of the curiosity of modern art, not to collect medals or collate manuscripts,—but to dive into the depths of dungeons, to plunge into the infection of hospitals, to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain, to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... magnificent continent, could hav had no idee of the grandeur it would one day assoom," sed ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... Sunday, and Lisbeth thought it certainly began well when no less a person than Kjersti Hoel herself came out into the little hall room carrying a big tray with coffee and cakes on it, for Lisbeth to indulge in as she lay in bed. Such grandeur as that Lisbeth had never before experienced. She scarcely believed that such a thing had ever happened to the milkmaid herself. And what was more, when she hopped into her long frock Kjersti said that she must hurry up and grow, ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud

... and by the unanimous voice of the committee the premium plans of the architect, Don Cayetano Buigas Monraba, were adopted. From these plans, which we find in La Ilustracion Espanola, we give an engraving. Richness, grandeur, and expression, worthily combined, are the characteristics of these plans. The landing structure is divided into three parts, a central and two laterals, each of which extends forward, after the manner of a cutwater, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various

... the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. Here these swift streams merged and formed the broad Ohio. The new-born river, even here at its beginning proud and swelling as if already certain of its far-away grandeur, swept majestically round a wide curve and apparently lost ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... de Marchena, happening to come up, and remarking the appearance of the stranger, entered into conversation with him. The Prior, a man of superior information, was struck with the grandeur of his views, and when he found that the navigator was on the point of abandoning Spain to seek patronage in the Court of France, and that so important an enterprise was about to be lost for ever to the country, his patriotism took the ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith

... paintings, such as we are accustomed to find everywhere in Egypt, are all wanting; and yet these bare walls produce as great an impression upon the spectator as the most richly decorated temples of Thebes. Not only grandeur but sublimity has been achieved in the mere juxtaposition of blocks of granite and alabaster, by means of purity of ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... which her sweet words hear'st and treasurest, Faint traces, where her shapely foot hath trod, Smooth boughs, green leaves, which now raw juices load, Pale darling violets, and woods which rest In shadow, till that sun's beam you attest, From which hath all your pride and grandeur flowed; Oh land delightsome, oh thou river pure Which bathest her fair face and brilliant eyes And winn'st a virtue from their living light, I envy you each clear and comely guise In which she moves. ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... building will presently be lighted with innumerable lamps. Away to the west yonder the heavens are afire with sunset, but at that we do not care to look; never in our lives did we regard it. We know not what is meant by beauty or grandeur. Here under the glass roof stand white forms of undraped men and women—casts of antique statues—but we care as little for the glory of art as for that of nature; we have a vague feeling that, for some reason or ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... abandon it, after having planted therein the holy gospel, and consequently, having sent the so great fruit of so many souls to heaven. Besides this, if it has peace and is free from enemies, and religiously governed, it will give the greatest wealth and grandeur to your Majesty that can be imagined. It is advisable that such a one be a picked man, and that he be such a person as is necessary, as I have written your Majesty at other times: that he be entirely disinterested, and a good lawyer, with ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various

... they were entitled. Were they to be trenched on by his fault in his person, the rights of others to their enjoyment would be endangered, and the benefits accruing to his country from established marks of reverence would be imperilled. But here was an assumed and preposterous grandeur that was as much within the reach of some rich swindler or of some prosperous haberdasher as of himself,—having, too, a look of raw newness about it which was very distasteful to him. And then, too, he knew that nothing of all this would have been done unless he had become Prime Minister. Why on ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... great chain of mountains from the sea-level, you will find a large tract of country consisting of elevated hills and deep ravines, intersected by rapid streams and torrents. This tract is more or less broad, in proportion to the grandeur of the mountain chain; and, in the case of mountains of the first class, it is usually from twenty to fifty miles in breadth. Such a tract of country lies along both sides of the great chain of the ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... I dare go!" our lieutenant said, with a brusque gesture which bade the chauffeur stop. But before the car turned, he gave us a moment to take in the picture of grandeur and unforgivable cruelty. Yes, unforgivable! for you know, Padre, there was no military motive in the destruction. The only object was to deprive France forever of the noblest of her castles, which has helped in the making of her history since ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... like a veil, for she had been startled from her bed, still sat on the ground making her lap a pillow for the white-bearded head, nobler and more venerable than ever. On it lay, in the absolute immobility produced by the paralysing blow, the fine features already in the solemn grandeur of death, and only the movement of the lips under the white flowing beard and of the dark ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... terror to her lover." Such a saying belonged to Percival. I shouldn't think of repeating it to Charlie, for he could not comprehend it. I should puzzle him as much as Louise did. It made me heartsick. How could even Charlie Hardy so persistently misunderstand the grandeur of Louise King? Yet how could such a glorious girl imagine herself in love with nice, weak, ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... in which I spent many happy years back in my young manhood. Not, indeed, so elegant and so large as this where I am now writing, but comfortable. To me, then, it had an atmosphere of romance and some look of grandeur. Well, in those days I had neither a sated eye, nor gout, nor judgment of good wine. It was I who gave it the name of Fairacres that day when, coming out of the war, we felt its peace and comfort for the first time, ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller

... Goodloe Chapel arrived upon Goodloets just one month from the day upon which the beast of storm had ravaged it, and as that fateful morning dawned with an extraordinary grandeur, so that Sunday in mid-October came up from behind Paradise Ridge with unusual beauty, only with the difference of calmness instead of splendor and peace instead of tumult. The sun was warm and benignant, ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... is over and done with. I can't say that it was a howling success. And I'm still very much in doubt as to its raison d'etre, as the youthful society reporters express it. At first I thought it might possibly be to flaunt my lost grandeur in my face. And then I argued with myself that it might possibly be to exhibit Sing Lo, the new Chink man-servant disinterred from one of the Buckhorn laundries. And still later I suspected that ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... several hundred thousand of its citizens, and another great nation, anxious to retain the city, was preparing calmly for a parallel hecatomb. There is something awful and dreadful about the orderliness of a great offensive, for while one's imagination is grasped by the grandeur and the organization of the thing, all one's faculties of intellect are revolted by the stark brutality ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... scene of beauty in the visible creation has proved a more hackneyed theme for the poet and the philosopher than a starry night. But not all the superabundance of simile and moral illustration with which the subject has been loaded can rob the beholder of the freshness of its grandeur or the force of its teaching; that noblest and most majestic vision of the handiwork of GOD on which the eye of man is here permitted ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... to their bearers than the symbols of destruction, and woman should become imbued more and more with this truth! They will then cease to hide their pregnancy and to be ashamed of it. Conscious of the grandeur of their sexual and social duty they will raise aloft the standard of our descent, which is that of the true future life of man, at the same time striving for the emancipation of their sex. Viewed in this way, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... being now concerted with Theodora's Confident, Philetus was admitted to wait upon Theodora and Amaryllis, with a feign'd Message from a Lady of their Acquaintance at Rome, and was entertain'd with the utmost Respect and Grandeur, with occasion'd frequent Visits between Philetus and Theodora, and at length there was such an Intimacy contracted, by the Management of Philetus and the Confident, that Philetus was permitted to be present in their ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob

... three champions, with empty guns, tumbled over each other in eager haste to escape the dreaded claws—but in vain, for with one stroke he dashed John Rennie to the ground, put his paw on him, and looked round with that dignified air of grandeur which has doubtless earned for his race the royal title. The scene was at once magnificent, thrilling, and ludicrous. It was impossible for the other hunters to fire, because while one man was under the lion's paw the others were scrambling ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... the southwest the clouds she referred to had been, in fact, gathering for some time. Domed, terraced and pinnacled, they rose in gloomy grandeur on the far horizon. But Miss Prescott had not been the first to notice them. For some reason Mr. Bell, after gazing at the vaporous masses for a few minutes, looked rather troubled. He summoned Juan, who was feeding his beloved burro, and ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... on the distant slope, majestic shows Old Canonbury's tower, an ancient pile To various fates assigned; and where by turns Meanness and grandeur have alternate reign'd; Thither, in latter days, have genius fled From yonder city, to respire and die. There the sweet bard of Auburn sat, and tuned The plaintive moanings of his village dirge. There learned ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... indubitably is, that sense which enables me to drink in and appreciate to the full Nature's works of sublime grandeur and vastness was ruined for the day. My eyes had beheld the "Three Sisters" in the rocks; after that they discovered faces in everything. They fell upon this mountain of ice and beheld spray that had frozen into a grinning mask. Cautiously I picked my way along the treacherous ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... his head from his breast as he suspended his nap, induced by a slight excess this morning in honour of the occasion. "Well, I hope my young friend will like such a comely sample of his own blood. And tell'n, Tess, that being sunk, quite, from our former grandeur, I'll sell him the title—yes, sell it—and at ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... conflict between the Greeks and barbarians, in order that the causes might be known and glorious deeds might not perish. Readers are imprest by the perfect ease and mastery with which a great variety of subjects are dealt with, his story "advancing with epic grandeur to its close." Mahaffy pronounces Herodotus an Ionic story-writer, who never became an Attic one—the chief master of Ionic, as Thucydides was ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various

... two famous divisions of our earth is nowhere more marked than on the shores of the Bosphorus. The traveller turns without disappointment from the gay and glittering shores of Europe to the sublimer beauty and the dusky grandeur ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... broke at the end of this explanation, and Caracalla, concluding that it was the thought of the grandeur that awaited her through his favor which confused her and brought the delicate color to her cheeks, seized her hand, and, obedient to an impulse of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... all of us, glance out at it and admire it, and say something about it. Harder and harder grew the frost, yet still the forest-clad hills possessed a something that drew the mind open to their largeness and grandeur. Earth is always beautiful—always. Without colour, or leaf, or sunshine, or song of bird and flutter of butterfly's wing; without anything sensuous, without advantage or gilding of summer—the power is ever there. Or shall we not say that the desire ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... of whom the weakest must die, with the corollary of misery before death. Competitive Society tends to the death of the weakest, Socialistic Society would tend to the preservation of the weak. There can be no question of the grandeur of this conception. To no man is given nobler aspirations than to him who conceives of a just distribution of comfort in an existence not idle, but without struggle. It would be a Nirvana glorious only in the absence of sorrow, ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams

... with a tenderer grace, as of a soul grown human and fraught with countless memories of man's smiles and tears, his hard, bitter labor, his sins, sorrows, and longings. But it is very tender, and not even the wildest storm-effects raise the landscape to any expression of tragic grandeur, but only suede its fair hues and soft outlines to the wan pathos peculiar ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... down and enveloped us on Slide Mountain, the grandeur, the solemnity, were gone in a twinkling; the portentous-looking clouds proved to be nothing but base fog that wet us and extinguished the world for us. How tame, and prosy, and humdrum the scene instantly became! But when the fog lifted, and we looked from under ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... among heaps of stones and gravel, the effects and tokens of their winter fury;—like so many spendthrifts dwindled down by the consequences of former excesses and extravagance. This desolate region seemed to extend farther than the eye could reach, without grandeur, without even the dignity of mountain wildness, yet striking, from the huge proportion which it seemed to bear to such more favoured spots of the country as were adapted to cultivation, and fitted for the support ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... Saint Peter's. White and stately by its side shot up the airy shaft of the Campanile; and the violet vapor swathing the whole city in a tender indistinctness, these two striking objects, rising by their magnitude far above it, seemed to stand alone in a sort of airy grandeur. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... eastward to Cracow, the old capital of Poland, scattered in ruined grandeur within its brick walls. Beyond it I remember a stronghold of the Middle Ages called the fortress ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... Rocky Mountains is beyond comprehension, they sprawl the length of the continent. No one can hope to see all their beauty, all their grandeur and awesomeness in a single lifetime. From the crest of the Divide, north, west, and south, stretches a world of rugged peaks. Range on range, tier on tier, like the waves of a solidified ocean in a Titanic storm they roll away to the ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... God, a revery of sublime love, occasionally rewarded with ecstasy and a vision of the infinite. For fourteen centuries the ideal of this life was the anchorite or monk. If you would estimate the power of such a conception and the grandeur of the transformation it imposes on human faculties and habits, read, in turn, the great Christian poem and the great pagan poem, one the 'Divine Comedy' and the other the 'Odyssey' and the 'Iliad.' Dante has a vision and is transported out of our little ephemeral sphere ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various

... Virtue welter unseparated,—in that domain of what is called the Passions; of what we call the Miracles and the Portents! It is thus that, for some three years to come, we are to contemplate France, in this final Third Volume of our History. Sansculottism reigning in all its grandeur and in all its hideousness: the Gospel (God's Message) of Man's Rights, Man's mights or strengths, once more preached irrefragably abroad; along with this, and still louder for the time, and fearfullest Devil's-Message of Man's weaknesses and sins;—and ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... was! How wholesome the unconscious satire of her criticism! This story, shorn of its grandeur, could not stand indeed. ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... For the epistle of William I. see Cinnamus (l. iv. c. 15, p. 101, 102) and Nicetas, (l. ii. c. 8.) It is difficult to affirm, whether these Greeks deceived themselves, or the public, in these flattering portraits of the grandeur ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon



Words linked to "Grandeur" :   nobility, magnanimousness, noble, sublimity, splendor, nobleness, magnificence, honorableness, noble-mindedness, splendour, grandness, idealism, honourableness



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