"Greatness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upon you with sword and cannon, retire with a proud smile, and do not defend yourselves, and we will see whether they are brutal enough to attack peaceful non-combatants. Act in this way, and the moral victory is yours, and you then will have conquered the enemy by your moral greatness, even if you are physically subdued. Against cannon and bayonets a people cannot defend themselves except by passive resistance, by submission, with secret and silent hatred in their hearts. Use no other weapons than ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... occurred to responsible English statesmen that here was ground, firm as a rock in America, and firm enough in Ireland, on which, if only they obeyed the instincts and maxims upon which England herself had risen to greatness, they might build a mighty and durable Imperial structure. That loyalty, to be genuine and lasting, must spring from liberty was a truth they did not appreciate, and to this truth, strangely enough, in spite of the lessons of nearly a century and a half, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... "Principles of Geology", and his conviction of the greatness of the revolution of thought brought about by Lyell, was almost as marked as in the case of Darwin himself. (See his Essay on "Science and Pseudo Science". "Collected Essays", Vol. V. page 90, London, 1902.) He felt, however, as many others have ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... certain state of fleshlessness to which they arrived, but from which they neither advanced nor receded by good feeding or bad. At this point, despite of all human ingenuity, they remained stationary for life, received the bounty afforded them with a greatness of appetite resembling the fortitude of a brave man, which rises in energy according to the magnitude of that which it has to encounter. The truth is, they were scandalous hypocrites; for with the most prodigious capacity for food, they were spare as philosophers, ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... a very good theme, in a new line," said Norman; "but I don't give into it, altogether. It is the hope and the thought of fame, that has made men great, from first to last. It is in every one that is not good for nothing, and always will be! The moving spirit of man's greatness!" ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... no right to tax America. If they have not, for what are they contending? It will, perhaps, be answered, for the dignity of Government. Happy would it be for those who advance this doctrine to consider, that there is more real greatness and genuine magnanimity in acknowledging an error, than in persisting in it. Miserable must that state be, whose rulers, rather than give up a little punctilio, would endanger the lives of thousands of its subjects in a quarrel, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... Why, do you not understand that this mine will want working, and that we must have a large number of men here? But no; you cannot conceive the greatness ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... Harlan, he felt the man's greatness—his especial fitness for the career he had adopted. Harlan was the ideal outlaw. He was cool, deep, subtle. He was indomitable; he felt no fear; his will was inflexible, adamant. Haydon felt it. The fear he had experienced at his first meeting with Harlan ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... willingly defrauded of their substance, by a handful of designing priests, who, dead to shame, erect the most stupid credulity into exalted virtue —battle in support of ignorance because knowledge is incompatible with their 'blood-cemented pyramid of greatness,' and to aggrandise themselves, perpetuate the vilest as well as most palpable delusions that ever assumed the mask of divine truth. Daniel O'Connell may object to have them called 'surpliced ruffians,' not ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... of a modern idea of progress, and in the medieval age itself there was nothing to create a fresh phrasing of expectancy. Men were aware of the darkness of the days that had fallen on the earth; even when they began to rouse themselves from their lethargy, their thoughts of greatness did not reach forward toward a golden ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... effect upon the awed lad, who, leaning against the rock behind him, the stock of his rifle resting at his feet, surveyed it all with feelings that drew him nearer to heaven, and gave him a more vivid knowledge of the greatness and majesty of the Author of all ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... people and the manifestations of good will everywhere so apparent. The recent election not only most fortunately demonstrated the obliteration of sectional or geographical lines, but to some extent also the prejudices which for years have distracted our councils and marred our true greatness as a nation. The triumph of the people, whose verdict is carried into effect today, is not the triumph of one section, nor wholly of one party, but of all sections and all the people. The North and the South no longer divide on the old lines, but upon principles and ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... is my sins, and the greatness of my sins hath brought me hither, and the greatest sin that troubles me, and lies on me, is that sin which I was much addicted to, and that was the sin of profaneness, of blaspheming God, of taking his name in vain. I never ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... was settled for his expulsion, quitted Pisa, and repaired to a manor of his called Settimo; whence, as soon as he was informed of Nino's departure, he returned to Pisa with great rejoicing and festivity, and was elevated to the supreme power with every demonstration of triumph and honour. But his greatness was not of long continuauce. It pleased the Almighty that a total reverse of fortune should ensue, as a punishment for his acts of treachery and guilt: for he was said to have poisoned the Count Anselmo da Capraia, his sister's son, on account of the envy ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... or any test of skill to his big brother, or a business transaction to his father; it was a mere contest of two healthy bodies at a time when the body was the outstanding fact of life. The fight may give us our chance, however, to aid him to a sense of the greatness of life's conflict, to a sense of the qualities that make the true fighter. It may leave him open to the appeal of true heroism. We must make light of the victory of brute strength, just as we may make light of his wounds and scars, and glorify the victory ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... white wool or deep purple, their fair beautiful matals, and their cloaks of every colour. If we add to this costume the magnificent ornaments which still remain to attest the truth of the bardic accounts of Erinn's ancient greatness, we may form a correct picture of the Celtic noble as he stood in Tara's ancient palace; and we must coincide in the opinion of the learned editor of the Catalogue of the Royal Irish Academy, that "the variegated and glowing colours, as well as the gorgeous decorations of the different ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness. ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... immense point gained. It was, as I have said, the first step toward greatness. Nor do I believe that any newspaper has ever attained a genuine and permanent standing in a community until it has first conquered a substantial independence. The administration then tried to accomplish its purpose in another way. During the gigantic wars of Napoleon ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... them to the sword. At the end of the Peloponnesian War Lysander restored the scattered remnants of the old inhabitants to the island, which was used by the Spartans as a base for operations against Athens in the Corinthian War. Its greatness, however, was at an end. The part which it plays henceforward is ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... for its greatness is half known, Stretching beyond our narrow quadrant-lines,— As in that world of Nature all outgrown Where Calaveras lifts his awful pines, And cast from ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... others folding their hands or stretching out their arms in mute entreaty. The river is once again depicted as a surging flood but it is the master-artist's command of sinuous line and power of suffusing a scene of turmoil with majestic calm which gives the picture greatness. ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... of existing conditions because the creative process is that of monogenesis and requires no other factor than the Spirit for its exercise, but at the same time subordinate to the Divine Spirit in the greatness of its inherent forward movement because there is only ONE Spirit and it cannot from one centre antagonize what it is doing from another. Thus the Great Affirmation makes us children of the Great King, at once living in obedience to that Power which is above us, and exercising this same ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... presence. My boarders here are so in want of fodder That they reciprocally devour each other. How well off at the theater is a player, Sure of the meat upon his ribs, albeit His frightful hunger may tear him and he it And colleagues' inner cupboards be quite bare!— Greatness in art we struggle to inherit, Although the salary never ...
— Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) - A Tragedy in Four Acts • Frank Wedekind
... simple chant of the Guardian Angel, the voice of the Evil Spirit is heard seducing 'The Man' from the quiet path of humble human duties. The glories of the ideal realm are spread before him; Nature is invoked with all her entrancing charms; ambitious desires of terrestrial greatness are awakened in his soul; he is filled with vague hopes of paradisiacal happiness, which the Demon whispers him it is quite possible to establish on earth. In the temptations so cunningly set before him by the Father of Lies, three widely-spread ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... reconciled to the decree which arbitrarily merged her political existence in that of the present Kingdom. She fondly cherishes the recollection of her ancient opulence, power and glory, and remembers that in her day of greatness she was the center and soul of a Republic. Hence her Revolutionary struggle in 1848; hence the activity and boldness of her Republican propaganda now. To see Italy a Federal Republic, whereof Piedmont, Savoy, Genoa and Sardinia should be separate and sovereign States, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... until his friend President Lincoln was ready to issue it. I remember the talk he gave at Hull-House on one of our early celebrations of Lincoln's birthday, his assertion that Lincoln was no cheap popular hero, that the "common people" would have to make an effort if they would understand his greatness, as Lincoln painstakingly made a long effort to understand the greatness of the people. There was something in the admiration of Lincoln's contemporaries, or at least of those men who had known him personally, which was quite unlike even the best ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... moment, hat in hand, as he chivalrously sent Madame Frangipanni home in a carriage. The poor old singer's bosom was thrilled with a sunset glow of departing greatness, as she lingered tearfully that night over the memories of the halcyon days when the officers of Francis Joseph's bodyguard had fought for the honors of the carriage courtesies of ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... them further, nor detail the pomp of the funeral rites, that last mockery of greatness, but return to existing objects and events—man's ever-gnawing ambition; so vast, when living, that the whole earth is too narrow for its sphere; when dead, the veriest churl hath as ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Mentezufis. "And if he falls into our hands Egypt will pay him for the sufferings which he has caused the heir to her throne. Believe me, lord, Thou mayst forgive all his crimes in advance, for the punishment will be in accord with their greatness." ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... misapplied, a zealous desire to promote the welfare of mankind, and courage enough to acknowledge her friends when in misfortune, and to do homage to virtue at the risk of life. Minds which have any claim to greatness are capable of divesting themselves of selfish considerations. They feel that they belong to the whole human race. Their views are directed to posterity. I am the wife of a virtuous man exposed to persecution. I was the friend of men who have been proscribed and ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... his looks were longest—it hath dwindled, Hath minish'd in its substance and its strength, As sunk the greatness of the House of Avenel. When this frail thread gives way. I to the elements Resign the principles of life they lent me. Ask me no more of this!—the stars ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... indisposed to listen to it again. They discussed the panic and its causes, and ventured upon guesses as to its duration. They all agreed that there had been too much haste to be rich, too much greed of speculation, too much personal greatness, and not enough national greatness. No generous striving together to build up what the war had pulled down, but every man for himself and for gold. If women had been frivolous and vain, and dazzled by the glare of newly acquired wealth, men had not been quite free from faults. The terrible ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... and Diana's reign Heaven confirmeth in the twain. And you, Prince most excellent, 250 Give me liberal reward: From your promise is none debarred, It fills all men with content, And the planets of Heaven's abode Had word of God 255 That to you be greatness sent And fortune's favour even more Than to those who reigned before. And for you, most lovely flower, Princess Dona Isabel, 260 The Lord of Heaven in His power Marshalled in host innumerable The sky and all its company, And Jove as judge did then ordain That ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... regard to the great final contrast, - the contrast between the immobility of death and the trappings and honors that survive. They expressed in every way in which it was possible to express it the solemnity, of their conviction that the Marble image was a part of the personal greatness of the defunct, and the protection, the re- demption, of his memory. A modern tomb, in com- parison, is a sceptical affair; it insists too little on the honors. I say this in the face of the fact that one has only to step across the cathedral of Nantes to stand in the presence ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... commanded to "take wise men, and understanding, and known among their tribes, to be made rulers over them." The six then approved of, as in the present case, are the senate, not by hereditary right, or in regard of the greatness of their estates only, which would tend to such power as might force or draw the people, but by election for their excellent parts, which tends to the advancement of the influence of their virtue or authority that leads the people. ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... deny the greatness of Rembrandt. In mere technical power (none of his eulogists know that power better than I, nor declare it in more distinct terms) he might, if he had been educated in a true school, have taken rank with the Venetians themselves. But that type of distinction between Titian's Assumption, and Rembrandt's ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... thy demands to those that own thy power! Know, I am still beyond thee. And tho' fortune Has strip'd me of this train, this pomp of greatness; This outside of a king, yet still my soul, Fix'd high, and on herself alone dependant, Is ever free and royal: and, even now, As at the head of ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... now, and to face round, in order that they might stare as long as possible at the possessor of such great expectations,—farewell, monotonous acquaintances of my childhood, henceforth I was for London and greatness; not for smith's work in general, and for you! I made my exultant way to the old Battery, and, lying down there to consider the question whether Miss Havisham intended me for ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the world so is, kings and princes are here to be above the world. In your greatness ye shall change it; with your justice ye shall purify it; with your clemencies ye should it chasten and amerce. Ye ask me to be a queen. Shall I be a queen and not such a queen? No, I tell you; if a woman may swear a great oath, I swear by Leonidas that saved Sparta ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... ordinary mortals. Public speakers and writers were for ever predicting that in a little while the Brotherhood would be invincible.[1] And so, hearing only good report of itself the Brotherhood grew over-confident, and entered this great fight top-heavy because of an exaggerated idea of its own greatness. ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... industrious, happy and dream-filled days. Lesser, but still great price, too, has been paid. Jealous hatred, misery and failure for the being I care most for in the world, the shame of a sordid scandal to those that hold me dear, the hopeless love and speedy mourning of a woman not without greatness. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... inference is drawn, "that the law was little observed in Rome, where distinguished men were concerned," anything more erroneous than this sentence was never uttered regarding Rome and the Romans. The greatness of the Roman commonwealth, and not less that of its great generals and statesmen, depends above all things on the fact that the law held ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... honors, pardon me: Men of your place and greatness are to blame. I tell ye true, my lords, in that his majesty Is not informed of this base abuse And daily wrongs are offered to his subjects; For, if he were, I know his gracious wisdom ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... Academy of Design will allow that a tendency to greatness is beginning to develop itself in certain directions among our artists. In landscape some of them are almost immense. The works of PORPHYRO warm the walls with rays of splendor, or cool the lampooned sight-line ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... the country gentleman. And yet Mr. Chamberlaine was only a prebendary, was the son of a country clergyman who had happened to marry a wife with money, and had absolutely never done anything useful in the whole course of his life. It is often very curious to trace the sources of greatness. With Mr. Chamberlaine, I think it came from the whiteness of his hands, and from a certain knack he had of looking as though he could say a great deal, though it suited him better to be silent, and say nothing. Of outside deportment, no doubt, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... The Greatness of Love.—There are no little events with the heart; it magnifies everything. It places in the same scale the falling of an empire and the dropping of a woman's glove; and the glove generally weighs more than the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... striking fact that the men who have been mightiest in prayer have known God well. They have seemed peculiarly sensitive to Him, and to be overawed with the sense of His love and His greatness. There are three of the Old Testament characters who are particularly mentioned as being mighty in prayer. Jeremiah tells that when God spoke to him about the deep perversity of that nation He exclaimed, "Though Moses and Samuel ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... was he one altogether, when he began to think of things. The worst of him was that he always wanted something new to go on with. He never could be idle; and yet he never worked to the end which crowns the task. In the early stage he would labor hard, be full of the greatness of his aim, and demand every body's interest, exciting, also, mighty hopes of what was safe to come of it. And even after that he sometimes carried on with patience; but he had not perseverance. Once or twice he had been on the very nick of accomplishing ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... conceive of a mob shouting any central and simple sentiment, good or bad, but it is impossible to think of a mob shouting a distinction in terms. In the matter of eloquence, the whole question is one of the immediate effect of greatness, such as is produced even by fine bombast. It is absurd to call it merely superficial; here there is no question of superficiality; we might as well call a stone that strikes us between the eyes merely superficial. The very ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... was inordinately vain and self-conscious; and, as has been seen, he was devoid of political knowledge and experience. The whole course of his previous life had been of a character to render him unfit for such greatness as was now thrust upon him. A considerable part of it had been spent in travel and adventure, and very little of it in study. He had left school at an early age, since which time he had encountered innumerable moving accidents by flood and field in various parts of the ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... opinions. The day on which she turns you into ridicule, sees the end of your happiness. Your power has expired. A woman who has laughed at her husband cannot henceforth love him. A man should be, to the woman who is in love with him, a being full of power, of greatness, and always imposing. A family cannot exist without despotism. Think of that, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... at the very moment of fruition. Helene felt very kindly towards her UNCLE as she led him, after luncheon, to a quiet corner of the winter garden, where a servant had already arranged a table with coffee and liqueurs and cigarettes. Unscrupulous all his life, there had been an element of greatness in all his schemes. Even his failures had been magnificent, for his successes he himself had seldom reaped the reward. And now in the autumn of his days she felt dimly that he was threatened with some evil thing against which he stood at bay single-handed, likely perhaps ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... all we will if we do not ask for a return. There should be no barter in love. If, by reason of the greatness of my love for you, I were to ask your love in return, I should be a base creature. It is only because I am content to love and serve for the sake of loving and serving that I have the right to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... have had trouble I can think of nothing but the greatness and richness of God's mercy to me in giving me such friends, and in always caring for us in every strait. There has been no day this winter when I have not had abundant reason to see this. Some friend ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... he began, "when the favour of the Lord rested chiefly upon the Jewish nation, at the times of the patriarchs and David, and when Solomon, arrayed in all his glory and in the greatness of his wisdom, reigned from Dan to Beersheba, mustn't those have been the times when the people walked most ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... which they are involved. In consequence, it is a matter of congratulation that their instinct of submission can be utilized in the interests of their welfare which they frequently not only do not know how to obtain, but do not understand. The Roman populace, enchanted by Augustus, follow him to greatness, without comprehending the imperial destiny which they are helping to build. The barbarian hordes affectionately following the lead of Charlemagne incidentally help to build the ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... winter, with its hardship and its horror; and that hatred and contempt which had sprung up between them. Could she love no one, cling faithfully to no one? And now the restless brain, the vast projects, the mixed nature, the half-greatness of the man had been silenced—crushed—in a moment, by the stroke of a knife. He had been killed by a jealous woman—because of his supposed love for another woman, whose abhorrence, in truth, he had earned in a few short ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... give way to her own feelings of utter amazement and incredulity. She certainly was not dreaming. And the man gazing out at the window was certainly flesh and blood—a great man, if voluble and eccentric. Perhaps to act and speak as one pleased was one of the signs of greatness, one of its perquisites. Was he amusing himself with her? Was he perchance taken with her physically and employing these extraordinary methods as ways of approach? She had seen many peculiarities ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... gratitude, for there is no little greatness of soul in patiently coming down to Mackarel Lane to be snubbed ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... glories back! You gentle sirs who sift the dust And burrow in the mould and must Of Babylon for bric-a-brac; Who catalogue and pigeon-hole The faded splendours of her soul And put her greatness under glass— If you could bring ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... conflict she was kindling in him, and how hard, if not impossible she was making the victory. Now he knew that the woman in his arms was his, that his brother had defrauded him of her and her of him. Now he knew it, while the woman in his arms revealed to him the greatness of the happiness of which his brother had robbed him. The brother had stolen her and had ill-treated her; and for all that he had suffered and done for his brother's sake, he now persecuted him and sought ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... some emotion that he looked upon the scene around him, for, in spite of his secluded life, he knew enough of the ancient greatness of his own family to be aware that the time had been when they had held undisputed and paramount sway over all that tract of country. His father could trace his pure Saxon lineage back to that Godfrey Malf who had held ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ostracised by the people, a man whom I hold (according to that which I hear of his character) to have been the best and most upright of all Athenians. This man came into the council and called forth Themistocles, who was to him not a friend, but an enemy to the last degree; but because of the greatness of the present troubles he let those matters be forgotten and called him forth, desiring to communicate with him. Now he had heard beforehand that the Peloponnesians were pressing to take the ships away to the Isthmus. So when Themistocles came forth to him, ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... contented." She fell back exhausted. "Sister," said the giant, laying his hand softly on her shoulder, "it is too late; when Algar slew my loved one the Pagan died in me; I am a servant of the God of the Christians." Hilda awaited fearfully the result of this announcement, but she knew not the greatness of the old woman's soul. It was long ere her voice was heard again. Presently, raising herself, she said, "I would it had been otherwise; but I have erred, I have misjudged. I thought that your Gods were ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... attire became the stern sadness of his face. Castro was not Comandante-general of the army at that time, but his bearing was as imperious in that year of 1840 as when six years later the American Occupation closed forever the career of a man made in derision for greatness. At his right rode his wife, one of the most queenly beauties of her time, small as she was in stature. Every woman's eye turned to her at once; she was our leader of fashion, and we all copied the gowns that came to her ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... longer the slave of duty, and would rest for a few days and see the beautiful city before he returned to the east. He wandered about, mostly on foot, visited and inspected the numerous public buildings, the City Park, Woodward's Gardens, etc., and became convinced from personal observation of the greatness and magnificence of this city on the Pacific, with its three hundred thousand inhabitants, covering a territory of forty-two square miles, and the growth of less than thirty years. On its eastern front San Francisco extends ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... army: Roland and the Peers will conquer, But be wearied with the struggle— Then bring on your untired warriors. France will lose this second battle, And when Roland dies, the Emperor Has no right hand for his conflicts— Farewell all the Frankish greatness! Ne'er again can Charles assemble Such a mighty host for conquest, And you ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution (!) of what turn out to be great powers or truths, the progress of things as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes; the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims and short duration. the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... he is entitled to remembrance, on the soil which was once the home of his fathers. And though linked with a melancholy association, as connected with the waning history of a people that once laid a claim to greatness, but are now fast passing into obscurity, it is not on this account the less attractive, but presents ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... and Abel, very perspiring, and conscious of the greatness of the occasion, led in Hazel in her wreath of drooping lilies. The green light touched her face with unnatural pallor, and her eyes, haunted by some old evil out of the darkness of life, looked towards ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... in a godly way. Piety, says he, in thanksgiving the Bestower of such abundant blessing, makes a distinction between what has been given and what has been forgiven, i.e., piety regards both what has been given and what has been forgiven, i.e., it compares the greatness of God's blessings and the greatness of our evils, sin and death, with each other, and gives thanks, etc. And hence the term eucharist arose in the Church. Nor indeed is the ceremony itself, the giving of thanks ex opere operato, to be applied on behalf of others, in ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... wilder and more rapacious than the waves of the sea; she knew that it needed only a voice, a Moses, to set all this human sea in motion, hurling it irresistibly onward until it should sweep away all the glory of wealth and greatness in its blood-red waves. ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... hardly worth your notice; but sich as they be, I want to lay 'em afore you. We are told that these apostles were all men from a humble class in life, with little l'arnin', chosen, as it might be, to show men that faith stood in need of no riches, or edication, or worldly greatness, of any sort. To me, sir, there is a wholesome idee in ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... would be ruined by the abolition. But Liverpool did not depend for its consequence upon the Slave-trade. The whole export-tonnage from that place amounted to no less than 170,000 tons; whereas the export part of it to Africa amounted only to 13,000. Liverpool, he was sure, owed its greatness to other and very different causes; the Slave-trade bearing but a small proportion to ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... cheek and slender frame, And dreams of greatness in thine eye! Go'st thou to build an early name, Or early in the ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... that which it is impossible for any man to understand. In all directions his investigations eventually bring him face to face with the unknowable; and he ever more clearly perceives it to be the unknowable. He learns at once the greatness and the littleness of human intellect—its power in dealing with all that comes within the range of experience; its impotence in dealing with all that transcends experience. He feels, with a vividness which no others can, the utter incomprehensibleness of the simplest fact, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... incorrigible young Otoo, to the first missionaries; 'he rides on a horse and I on a man.' Such was the case. He travelled post through his dominions on the shoulders of his subjects, and relays of immortal beings were provided in all the valleys. But, alas! how times have changed! how transient human greatness! Some years since, Pomaree Vahinee I., granddaughter of the proud Otoo, went into the laundry business, publicly soliciting, by her agents, the washing of the linen belonging to officers of ships touching in her harbours." Into the court of this washerwoman-queen, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... the tower they Were approached by an obliging attendant and furnished with spy glasses of great power with which they could see more distinctly the beauty and greatness of the world, and the roughness and inconvenience of traveling the King's Highway. To each one was also given an ingenious pocket mirror in which could be seen, at any time, ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... attention. As he gradually advanced in the years of his boyhood, it was observed by all who knew him that he was endued with extraordinary qualities of mind and of character, which seemed to indicate, at a very early age, his future greatness. ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... singular among the great works with which it ranks, for its strong stamp of personal character and history. In general we associate little more than the name—not the life—of a great poet with his works; personal interest belongs more usually to greatness in its active than its creative forms. But the whole idea and purpose of the Commedia, as well as its filling up and coloring, are determined by Dante's peculiar history. The loftiest, perhaps, in its aim and flight ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... character he had, it is true, even in a merely poetical standard; but, take him all in all, and I cannot but recognize in him a specious beauty and nobleness of moral deportment, which combines in it the rude greatness of Fabricius or Regulus with the accomplishments of Pliny or Antoninus. His simplicity of manners, his frugality, his austerity of life, his singular disdain of sensual pleasure, his military heroism, his application to business, his literary diligence, his modesty, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... fully armed and excellently mounted, they being, indeed, with the exception of a few court officials, his regiment of household cavalry, the pick of his native warriors and the very flower of his army. He was anxious to make the profoundest possible impression of his power and greatness upon the mysterious beings he was about to visit; and, indeed, the cavalcade, as it swept at a hand-gallop out through the wide gateway which formed the principal opening in the stockade, constituted, with its tossing ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... seemed still to retain the faint perfume of the pale primroses that I gathered in the meadow that day to mark my stopping-place, and my little volume of Voltaire's "Charles Douze" recalled an interesting argument upon the relative claims to greatness of that hero, and my hero par excellence, ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... splendid as the King's, adjoined his; she had the place of honour in the King's Council Room; the State's secrets were in her keeping; she guided and controlled the destinies of the nation. And all this greatness came to her when she had passed her fiftieth year, and when all the grace and bloom of youth were ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... remorse, she saw herself disloyal to her man, her sovereign and bread-winner, in whom (with what she had of worldliness) she took a certain subdued pride. She expatiated in reply on my lord's honour and greatness; his useful services in this world of sorrow and wrong, and the place in which he stood, far above where babes and innocents could hope to see or criticise. But she had builded too well - Archie had his answers pat: Were not babes and innocents ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... This fossil greatness finds a rival in another house, wealthier, though of less ancient lineage. Husband and wife spend a couple of months of every winter in Paris, bringing back with them its frivolous tone and short-lived contemporary crazes. Madame is a woman of fashion, though she ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... plantations, commodious sea-ports, and vast sandy wastes, alternate one with the other. Heat, sometimes almost insupportable, is succeeded by chilly and unhealthy mists; whilst here and there the scattered monuments of the wealth and greatness of bygone ages present a remarkable and painful contrast to ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... the character, or rather on the greatness, of Lee," said Queed, introspectively, "is that, so far as I have ever read, he never got angry. One feels that a hero should be a man of terrible passions, so strong that once or twice in his life they get away from him. Washington always seems a ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... making his virility sufficiently evident. The first and last impression Frissell made was of lovableness, and he was so intent on getting work done that he never cared to be known as its author. Therefore, even his friends did not always discover his strength or sometimes his greatness. He carried on the school to a phenominal success and he developed more than one beginning to a ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... of prosperity and national greatness it is hard to realize that the achievement of independence did not place the United States on a footing of equality with other countries and that, in fact, the new state was more or less an unwelcome member of the world family. It is nevertheless true that the latest comer into the family of ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... moral and physical equality which affects the whole human race as the children of one common Father, who causes his sun to shine and his rain to fall on all alike, and who has so appointed the universal lot of humanity, that death, the leveller of all human greatness, is made to visit with equal pace the prince's palace and ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... the character of its favorites by diminishing one shade of the abhorrence which attaches to their vices. They should rather be held up in their true deformity, as the more conspicuous from the very greatness with which they are associated. It may be remarked, however, that the reiterated and unsparing opprobrium with which foreign writers, who have been little sensible to Gonsalvo's merits, have visited these offences, affords ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... development from the English culture of Art, one must use the same processes as in proving Cromwell to have been called up by the loyalty of Englishmen. They towered the higher from contempt for the abasement around them. If there was greatness in measure in English Art, it was greatness subjected to tradition and conventionalism. The three artists we have just named were the only great freemen, in the realm of Art England had known down to the close of the first half of the nineteenth century; and of these, Turner alone has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... a resolution in this point we need only observe what hath been said in sect. 59, 60, 61, where it is shown that visible extensions in themselves are little regarded, and have no settled determinable greatness, and that men measure altogether, by the application of tangible extension to tangible extension. All which makes it evident that visible extension and figures are not the ...
— An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision • George Berkeley
... whatever task may be allotted to you. To correct the spirit of discontent, let us consider how little we deserve. To die for one's country, is glorious. How can we become wise? To seek God is wisdom. What is true greatness? Active benevolence. A good ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... abounds with allusions to the swellings of Jordan; but at present, whether the current has deepened its channel, or whether the climate is less moist than in former days, this occurrence is seldom witnessed,—the river has forgotten its ancient greatness. Maundrell could discern no sign or probability of such overflowings; for although he was there on the 30th of March,—the proper season of the inundation,—the river was running two yards at least under the level of its banks. The ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... yard or two in some special situation. But at least this comment can be made without qualification: Of the men who have risen to supreme heights in the fighting establishment of the United States, and have had their greatness proclaimed by their fellow countrymen, there is not one career which provides any warrant for the conclusion that there is a special shortcut known only to the smart operators. True enough, a few men have gained fairly high rank by dint of what the late Mr. Justice Holmes ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... verity hath excuse and his words add terror to my terror.' Then quoth the young lion to the ass, 'Whither goest thou?' Quoth he, 'Before sunrise I espied the son of Adam afar off, and fled from him; and now I am minded to flee forth and run without ceasing for the greatness of my fear of him, so haply I may find me a place of shelter from the perfidious son of Adam.' Whilst the ass was thus discoursing with the lion whelp, seeking the while to take leave of us and go away, behold, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... addressed to me were that he would feel better when I was back at Goldsboro'. We parted at the gangway of the River Queen, about noon of March 28th, and I never saw him again. Of all the men I ever met, he seemed to possess more of the elements of greatness, combined with goodness, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... rule, I think, to avoid the fanciful in names. So few of our children are going to be heroes or sages that we should be careful not to stamp them with the mark of greatness at the outset of the journey. Horatio was a happy stroke for Nelson, but how few Horatios win immortality, or deserve it! And how disastrous if Horatio turns out a knave and a coward! If young Spinks has any Miltonic fire within him, it will shine through plain John more ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... the plain, where the Subah usually resides; Bhemagarhi, another similar place, where he occasionally resides; and Janakpur, a place of pilgrimage noted in Hindu fable, and already mentioned as the seat of a very ancient dynasty. I am told that there are no remains of former power or greatness. ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... and my Rest, those graces ought to have been enough which Thou hadst given me hitherto, seeing that Thy compassion and greatness had drawn me through so many windings to a state so secure, to a house where there are so many servants of God, from whom I might learn how I may advance in Thy service. I know not how to go on, when I call ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... the buffaloes dare trust themselves upon it. When it is new-fallen and soft they flounder about helplessly until they die of starvation, and the wolves pull them down, or the Indians come and kill them. But the old bull had the privilege which belongs to greatness, of not being obliged to answer impertinent things that were said to him. He went on just as if nothing had interrupted, telling how the buffalo trails had found the mountain passes and how they were rutted deep into the ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... have arrived at the verge of that catastrophe which closes for ever the singular greatness of Anglia. Charles brought learning to France by drawing from Anglia and from Italy the best plants for his new field; he inherited the civilising labours of the Saxon missionaries in his dominions beyond the Rhine; he founded a centre of power and a centre of education together; and France ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... the continent in being independent is a point as clearly right as the former. America, by her own internal industry, and unknown to all the powers of Europe, was, at the beginning of the dispute, arrived at a pitch of greatness, trade and population, beyond which it was the interest of Britain not to suffer her to pass, lest she should grow too powerful to be kept subordinate. She began to view this country with the same uneasy malicious eye, with which a covetous guardian would ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Pitt—and perhaps a Lord Kitchener. He spoke in terms of the richest enthusiasm of the fostering of the Manly Qualities and the military drill—such a Fine Thing for the Lads; and he urged them to figure to themselves that, even if they did not rise to great heights, they might still achieve greatness by doing their duty at office desk, or in factory, loom, or farmyard, and so adding to the lustre of their Native Land—a land, he would say, in which they had so ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... form so high an opinion of Locke's general powers, that he prevailed upon Locke to take up his residence at his house, and urged him to apply his studies to politics and philosophy. This proved the stepping-stone to his subsequent greatness; and it is gratifying to learn that his career, literary and political, was closed as honourably as it had been commenced. His last publications were in a controversy with the celebrated Bishop Stillingfleet, who had censured some passages in Locke's immortal "Essay." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... his guarantee to the counter—not altogether as a bad shilling, but as a light one. At p. 5 of vol. 2, in a foot-note, which is speaking of Kant, we read of his attempt to introduce the notion of negative greatness into Philosophy. Negative greatness! What strange bird may that be? Is it the ornithorynchus paradoxus? Mr. Schlosser was not wide awake there. The reference is evidently to Kant's essay upon the advantages ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... find himself. Who but Selden could thus miraculously combine the skill to save Bertha with the obligation of doing so? The consciousness that much skill would be required made Lily rest thankfully in the greatness of the obligation. Since he would HAVE to pull Bertha through she could trust him to find a way; and she put the fulness of her trust in the telegram she managed to send him on her way to ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... with such dignity and magnanimity torn his hair. My friend Mr. Smith tells me that in his early youth he had a (very slight) acquaintance with a great prince, of elevated rank and of vast estates. That great prince came very early to his greatness; and no one had ever ventured, since he could remember, to tell him he had ever said or done wrong. Accordingly, the prince had never learned to control himself, nor grown accustomed to bear quietly what he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... by the greatness of their own ruler it seemed no impossible task to overthrow a few English colonies in America of whose King their own was the patron and the paymaster. The world of high politics has never been conspicuous for its knowledge of human ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... Garnache, he passed to the next table, and sat down with his companions. The Parisian's eyes followed him, and they blazed with suppressed wrath. Never in all his life had he exercised such self-control as he was exercising then—which was the reason why he had failed to achieve greatness—and he was exercising it for the sake of that child above-stairs, and because he kept ever-present in his mind the thought that she must come to grievous harm if ill befell himself. But he controlled his passion at the cost of his appetite. He could ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... whose knowledge of him coincided with his later years; for it would not be easy to find a nature which gained more by time than his, and lost less. But believing, as I do, (to use his own words,) that "if he were now living he would have sufficient judgment and sufficient greatness of mind" to wish to be shown as himself, I will suppress no trait in his disposition, or incident in his career, which might provoke blame or question. Such in all points as he was, the world, which has been so indulgent to him, has ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... an explanation of the meaning of the word at the head of this chapter. Possibly there has never been, in all the years of the Church, a greater preacher than this same Whitefield, and Whitefield's greatness has, to a large extent, its explanation in this, the last scene of his ministry. How many he led to God eternity alone can reveal. His spiritual descendants are numbered by multitudes as the sand on the sea-shore, the stars in the firmament, for number. When he ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... out of this Life I know not whether a Man of your Philosophy will call unfortunate or not, since it was attended with some Circumstances as much to be desired as to be lamented. She was her whole Life happy in an uninterrupted Health, and was always honoured for an Evenness of Temper and Greatness of Mind. On the 10th instant that Lady was taken with an Indisposition which confined her to her Chamber, but was such as was too slight to make her take a sick Bed, and yet too grievous to admit of any Satisfaction ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... almost universal verdict of students of the mediaeval period, Charles the Great has been pronounced the most imposing personage that appears between the fall of Rome and the fifteenth century. His greatness has erected an enduring monument for itself in his name, the one by which he ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... might irritate some one's hidden prejudice. He looked round for an older man who knew all about it, and could inform him. This man he found in the person of the Vice-Chairman of the Petty Sessions. The nominal Chairman, like many other unpaid officials, held the place because of old family greatness, not from any personal ability—family greatness which was in reality a mere tradition. The Vice-Chairman was the true centre ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... these countries to grow in greatness, and can you expect the inhabitants of these countries to become giants in intellect when they ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... Alexandrians did of the products of Africa and the treasures of India. Once when he had fallen into disgrace with Hadrian, the Athenians had thrown down his statue, and the favor or disfavor of the powerful weighed with him more than intellectual greatness, valuable labors, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... inexpressible littleness, how that the visible existence of his whole race does not occupy a single tick of the great Sidereal Clock, will he not sink under helpless misgivings, will he not utterly despair of immortal notice and support from the King of all this? In a word, how does the solemn greatness of man, the supposed eternal destiny of man, stand affected by the modern knowledge of the vastness of creation? Regarding the immensities receding over him in unfathomable abysses bursting with dust ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... you were called Sam; but now that the reign of Pierce is upon us it is difficult to tell what you may not be called. Not long since you were the son of greatness, you are now the shadow of Pierce—the man whose little light posterity will snuff out. I have thought of you frequently, Uncle: I have seen you in sorrow looking back upon the past, and my heart has beat with sympathy ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... Dew, which hath a fermenting vertue, and leavens a Paste exposed to the Air: that the Mud, which has been drawn out of the water, grows heavier, when the overflowing begins, then it was before, and that by the increase of the weight of that Mud, they judge of the greatness of the approaching inundation. The Author pretends, that {252} the Niter, which the Nile is stored with, is the cause of all these strange effects, and of many others, by him alledged. For, saith he, when the Nitre is heated by the heat ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... against the Exchange, and there saw the hangman burn, by vote of Parliament, two old acts: the one for constituting us a Commonwealth, and the other I have forgot; which still do make me think of the greatness of this late turne, and what people will do to-morrow against what they all, thro' profit or fear, did promise and practise ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... through want of warmth. But how were we to obtain warmth? The introduction of a new boiler would, in all probability, take many weeks. The repairing of the boiler was a questionable matter, on account of the greatness of the leak; but, if not, nothing could be said of it, till the brick-chamber in which it is enclosed, was, at least in part, removed; but that would, at least, as far as we could judge, take days; and what was to be done in the meantime, to find warm ...
— Answers to Prayer - From George Mueller's Narratives • George Mueller
... changes in the social fabric. And these changes must be dealt with by statesmen, must be guided with one hand while the war is being prosecuted with the other. The task is colossal. In no previous war have the British given more striking proof of their inherent quality of doggedness. Greatness, as Confucius said, does not consist in never falling, but in rising every time you fall. The British speak with appalling frankness of their blunders. They are fighting, indeed, for the privilege of making blunders—since out of blunders arise new truths and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... life and local administration. Of the provincial capitals, Novgorod was the nearest, and more interesting than most of its rivals; for it has had a curious history, much older than that of St. Petersburg or even of Moscow, and some traces of its former greatness are still visible. Though now a town of third-rate importance—a mere shadow of its former self—it still contains about 21,000 inhabitants, and is the administrative centre of the large province in which it ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Greece, developing some remarkable facts, which have as yet escaped the notice of historians. These reminiscences of the past will, at least, be instructive to future generations and if any remarks of mine will conduce to the permanent greatness and security of my country, I shall deem the residue of my life well spent ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... is the worth of greatness till you have the light Of the flower of the branch that is by your side? There is no god to deny it or to try and hide it, She is the sun in the heavens ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... the next morning she had a curious feeling, as if she were blinded by the glare of many hitherto unsuspected windows opening into the greatness outside the little world, just large enough to contain them, in which she had dwelt all her life with her parents, her aunt, her grandmother, and her doll. She tried to adjust herself to her old point of view with ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... thoroughfare, With shrill gesticulation, fawning ways, Clinging unto the traveller to sustain Her living foul decay, and death in life, She is the ghoul of cities; for she feeds Upon the corpse of her own buried greatness. ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... it was performed, and to Osborne and his successor Wake, was only rendered possible by the constant aid of Sir George Carteret. Most of all, however, did that energetic officer enrich himself, laying in fact the foundation of that greatness which afterwards culminated in his descendant, the famous Lord Granville, the rival of Walpole. He obtained from Charles a grant of Crown lands, including the escheated manor of Meleches. And he further ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... jewels, including a rather flue set of diamonds. When one day Miss Ludington took the gems from the box in which they had been hidden away for half a lifetime, and hung them upon Ida, saying, "These are yours, my sister," the girl protested, albeit with scintillating eyes, against the greatness of ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... be the most wretched possible for the mass of mankind. We have had and still have honest and capable men in public life, brave and able officers in our army and navy; but there has been nothing either in our civil or military history for many years to develop any latent qualities of greatness that may have been in them. It is only first-rate events that call for and mould first-rate characters. If there has been less stimulus for the more showy and striking kinds of ambition, if the rewards of a public career have been less brilliant than in other countries, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... of time to point out that ancient distinction,—between mere change and improvement. Yet there is a class of mind that is prone to confuse them. We have had political leaders whose conception of greatness was to be forever frantically doing something,—it mattered little what; restless, vociferous men, without sense of the energy of concentration, knowing only the energy of succession. Now, life does not consist of eternally running to a fire. There is no virtue in going anywhere ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... off indebtedness. And it has been sometimes asserted that this labor, coming on the top of many years of scarcely less hard works, was almost the last straw which broke down Balzac's gigantic strength. Of these things it is never possible to be certain; as to the greatness of La Cousine Bette, there is ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... it strange that there is a patient endurance and tranquil resignation, calm expectation of that which is to come on the further shore of the dark flowing river? Is it not rather to be wondered that anybody should ever care to be great for greatness' sake; for any other reason than pure conscientiousness; the simple fidelity of the servant who fears to lay his talents by in a napkin, knowing that indifference is near akin to dishonesty? If Robert Audley had lived in the time of Thomas a'Kempis, he ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... over a variety of "loud" costumes, more or less uncouth, in the midst of which might here and there be seen some authentic relics of royalty or greatness, dragged by the revolution of time from palaces and noble halls, to figure on the ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... away of 100l. out of the King's purse, to the building of another, which it seems must be a Neptune. To the King's Head ordinary, and there dined among a company of fine gentlemen; some of them discoursed of the King of France's greatness, and how he is come to make the Princes of the Blood to take place of all foreign Embassadors, which it seems is granted by them of Venice and other States, and expected from my Lord Hollis, [Denzil Hollis, second son of John, first Earl of Clare, created in 1661 Baron Hollis of Ifield, afterwards ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... God's teaching in symbol and in type. It is His great picture-book, where in living form He has portrayed Himself, and all that belongs to Him—His nature, character, wisdom; His greatness, glory, and His power. The Universe is a temple, where He sits enshrined in the things His own hands have made, and where those who have eyes to see, and hearts to learn and understand, may ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... his staff—how priceless they are! Reverence is a good thing, and part of its value is that the more we revere a man, the more sharply are we struck by anything in him (and there is always much) that is incongruous with his greatness. And herein lies one of the reasons why as we grow older we laugh less. The men we esteemed so great are gathered to their fathers. Some of our coevals may, for aught we know, be very great, but good heavens! ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... to their demands and their threats; and finally, Beckendorff has, of late years, so completely interwoven the policy of Reisenburg with that of Austria, that he feels that the rock on which he has determined to found the greatness of his country must be quitted for ever if he yield one jot to the caprice or the weakness ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... explodes at a touch. He is uncertain and therefore unsafe. His best results are conjured forth, but no man has yet conjured forth a Nation—it is all slow, patient, painstaking work along mathematical lines. Washington was a mathematician and therefore not a genius. We call him a great man, but his greatness was of that sort in which we all can share; his virtues were of a kind that, in degree, we too may possess. Any man who succeeds in a legitimate business works with the same tools that Washington used. Washington was human. We ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... not wonder," added Mr. Markland, "that the old hermits and anchorites, oppressed, so to speak, by the greatness of immortal interests over those involved in natural life, separated themselves from the world, that, freed from its allurements, they might lead the life ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... promised to increase the power of that country, which had become great under the rule and direction of Gustavus Adolphus and Oxenstierna. This fair promise was lost with the Battle of Pultowa; and a country that might have successfully resisted Russia, and which, had its greatness continued, could have protected Poland,—if, indeed, Poland could have been threatened, had Russia been unsuccessful at Pultowa,—was thrown into the list of third-rate nations. Poland was virtually given up to Russia through the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... people were over-awed by the pomp and splendour of royal power. The symbols of greatness, a throne, a sceptre, a purple robe, a crown, a fillet, these were sacred in their sight. These symbols, and the respect which they inspired, led them to reverence the venerable man whom they beheld adorned with them; without soldiers and without ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... may seem to be as much a matter of character as of intelligence; and such, indeed, is undoubtedly the case. My point is, not that Lincoln's greatness was more a matter of intellect than of will, but that he rendered to his country a peculiar service, because his luminous and disciplined intelligence and his national outlook enabled him to give each aspect of a complicated and confused situation its proper relative ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... are friendly voices which, here and elsewhere, in our reviews and our journals, bear to it the cordial expression of our wishes. In wishing the final triumph of the North, we wish the salvation of the North and South, their common greatness and their lasting prosperity. ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... that is, those who take part in government, and those who profit by oppression, that is, the rich, no longer imagine, as they once did, that they are the elect of the world, and that they constitute the ideal of human happiness and greatness, to attain which was once the highest aim of ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... required the King to give her fifty thousand crowns in money, a regiment for one of her relations, and a bishopric for another, and to dismiss Madame in the space of fifteen days, etc. I acquainted Madame with what this man told me, and she acted with singular greatness of mind. She said to me, "I ought to inform the King of this breach of trust of his servant, who may, by the same means, come to the knowledge of, and make a bad use of, important secrets; but I feel a repugnance to ruin the man: however, I cannot ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... prayers of their friends on earth. There are three stages of this Ante-Purgatory: the first, for those who put off conversion through negligence; the second, for those who died by violence and repented while dying; the third, for those monarchs who were too much absorbed in earthly greatness to give much thought to the world to come. The ascent of the terraces, as also those of Purgatory proper, is very difficult, and is not allowed to be made after sunset. The gate of St. Peter separates Ante-Purgatory from Purgatory proper. Three steps, the first of polished white marble, the second ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... by Heaven's decree, 385 How ill exchang'd are things like these for thee! How do thy potions, with insidious joy Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy! Kingdoms, by thee, to sickly greatness grown, Boast of a florid vigour not their own; 390 At every draught more large and large they grow, A bloated mass of rank unwieldy woe; Till sapp'd their strength, and every part unsound, Down, down they sink, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... of the miraculous power of the child-saint from the lives of St. Genevieve (423-512, A.D.), St. Vitus, who at the age of twelve caused the arms and legs of the Emperor Aurelian to wither, but on the Emperor owning the greatness of God, the "child-magician," as the monarch had termed him, made Aurelian whole again; St. Sampson (565 A.D.), who cured a fellow schoolboy of a deadly serpent's bite; Marianne de Quito (1618-1645 A.D.), who cured herself of a gangrened finger ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... locks are yet brown on thy head, While the soul still looks through thine eyes, While the heart still pours The mantling blood to thy cheek, Sink, O youth, in thy soul! Yearn to the greatness of Nature; Rally the good in the depths ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... written in April, 1814, after the first abdication at Fontainebleau, the dominant note is astonishment mingled with contempt. It is the lamentation over a fallen idol. In these stanzas (xxxvi.-xlv.) he bears witness to the man's essential greatness, and, with manifest reference to his own personality and career, attributes his final downfall to the peculiar constitution of his genius and temper. A year later (1817), in the Fourth Canto (stanzas lxxxix.-xcii.), he passes a severe sentence. Napoleon's greatness is swallowed up in weakness. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... her countenance betrayed a greater degree of eagerness and anxiety than usually appears on the face of a Chinese; and she left the temple in a peevish and muttering tone, sufficiently expressive of the greatness of her disappointment which, it seemed, was no less than a refusal, on the part of the oracle, to hold out the hope of her being blessed with a second husband. Till this circumstance had been explained to us by the keeper of the temple, it was concluded that the old lady had been muttering imprecations ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... And even if this dignity had not remained the position of the town in relation to the comings and goings between England and France would have saved it from any sudden fall from its opulence and greatness before ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... himself to the utmost, with a quiet and patient perseverance, equally distant from the tumultuous violence of terror, and the gloomy inactivity of despair.' Though the lieutenant hath said nothing of himself, it is well known that his own composure, fortitude, and activity, were equal to the greatness of ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis |
