"Overtop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... can discern any solidity or roundness in them; the lights and shades of solid form are both equally lost in the blue of the atmosphere, and the mountain tells only as a flat, sharp-edged film, of which multitudes intersect and overtop one another, separated by the greater faintness of the retiring masses. This is the most simple and easily imitated arrangement possible, and yet, both in nature and art, it expresses distance and size in a way otherwise quite unattainable. For thus, the whole mass of one mountain being of one ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... the result with confidence would not be at all true. Quite the contrary. Fear and trembling were far more the characteristics of my mind in that hour. Had I been allowed more time to build my cairn—time to have made it high enough to overtop the waves, and firm enough to resist them, I should have felt less apprehension. I had no fear that the signal-staff would give way. It had been well proved, for there had it stood defying the storm as long as I could remember. It was my newly-raised cairn ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... cousin Moses, as soon as he returns from the South. People may believe it or not. People may say it may be of practical use, or not. I shall overhaul my terminologies, and, with the "metaphysical aid" of my cousin, fit it with a scientific name which shall overtop all the ologies. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... followers of Buddhism in Ceylon. Yet, strange to tell, under all the icy coldness of this barren system there burns below the unextinguished fires of another and a darker superstition, whose flames overtop the icy summits of the Buddhist philosophy, and excite a deeper and more reverential awe in the imagination of the Singhalese. As the Hindus in process of time superadded to their exalted conceptions of Brahma, and the benevolent attributes ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... thou be astonished—to the bride it came, even in the joy of the bridal hour (more animated). I am a woman, but I feel the nobleness of my blood. I cannot bear to see these proud Dorias thus overtop our family. The good old Andreas—it is a pleasure to esteem him. He may indeed, unenvied, bear the ducal dignity; but Gianettino is his nephew—his heir—and Gianettino has a proud and wicked heart. Genoa trembles before him, and Fiesco (much affected)— Fiesco—weep with me, damsels!—loves ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Castle of Edinburgh," and signed by "O Cromwell," contains this passage—"The ministers in England are supported, and have liberty to preach the gospell, though not to raile, nor under pretence thereof to overtop the civill power, or debase it as they please. No man hath been troubled in England or Ireland for preaching the gospell, nor has any minister been molested in Scotland since the coming of the army hither. The speaking truth becomes ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... me after it. We leave the town together, and I am soon in the midst of those market-gardens where the infant Topffer lost himself, and, overtaken by nightfall, fell to making his famous analysis of fear. The big pumping wheels still overtop the willows, and cast their shadows over the lettuce-fields. In the distance rise slopes of woodland, on Sundays the haunt of holiday-makers. The Rhone leaps and eddies, singing over its gravel beds. Two trout-fishers are taxing all their strength ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... painted with that power and made so poetic?) detach themselves and live with a personal life. Two of the sisters stand hand in hand at the back, in the delightful, the almost equal, company of a pair of immensely tall emblazoned jars, which overtop them and seem also to partake of the life of the picture; the splendid porcelain and the aprons of the children shine together, while a mirror in the brown depth behind them catches the light. Another little girl presents herself, with abundant tresses and slim legs, her hands behind ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... not only for its frank statement of the terms on which England and the Continent might have peace, but also because it discloses the rank undergrowth of pride and ambition that is beginning to overtop his reasoning faculties. Even before he has heard the news of Moreau's great victory of Hohenlinden, he equates the military strength of France with that of the rest of Europe: nay, he claims without a shadow of doubt the mastery of the world: he will wage, if necessary, a double ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... as it appeared from the street, and the doctor made rueful allusions to convents and prisons, and was not half satisfied to leave his dear little Bessie there. The morning sun had gone off the grass. The walls were immensely lofty—the tallest trees did not overtop them. There was a weedy, weak fountain, a damp grotto, and two shrines with white images of the Blessed Mary crowned with ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... of the gates of Rome you have generally half-an-hour's progress through winding lanes, many of which are hardly less charming than the open meadows. On foot the walls and high hedges would vex you and spoil your walk; but in the saddle you generally overtop them, to an endless peopling of the minor vision. Yet a Roman wall in the springtime is for that matter almost as interesting as anything it conceals. Crumbling grain by grain, coloured and mottled to a hundred tones by sun and storm, with its rugged structure of brick ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... published in the time of {567} Queen Elizabeth. I fear his memory deceived him, or why should a man of his sound learning afterwards incline to vail bonnet to the dogmatist Warburton? whose knowledge of dogs, by the way, must have been marvellously small, or he could never have imagined them to overtop one another in a horizontal course. Overrun, overshoot, overslip, are terms in hunting, overtop never; except perchance in the vocabulary of the wild huntsman of the Alps. Trash occurs as a verb in the sense above ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... any irony in those speeches: it was natural, no doubt, that they should utter such things in all seriousness; but what they say is interpreted into irony by the subsequent events. And when such a shallow idealist as Brutus is made to overtop and outshine the greatest practical genius the world ever saw, what is it but a refined and subtile irony at work on a much larger scale, and diffusing itself, secretly, it may be, but not the less vitally, into the texture? It was not ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... invincible reputation. The match would not take place for a fortnight, which gave extra time for practice. In cricket, Betty Carlisle had come to the front at bowling, while Maggie Allesley and Irene Swinburne were heroines of the bat. It is inevitable that some girls should overtop the rest, but Winona would not on that account allow the others to slack. She knew the importance of a high general average of play, and urged on several laggers. She thoroughly realized the importance of fielding, and made her eleven ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... this Michaelmas has cost us Joe! He is promoted from the farm to the mansion-house, two miles off; there he cleans shoes, rubs knives, and runs on errands, and is, as his mother expresses it, 'a sort of 'prentice to the footman.' I should not wonder if Joe, some day or other, should overtop the footman, and rise to be butler; and his splendid prospects must be our consolation for the loss of this great favourite. In the meantime ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... yourself by giving him so unmanly a satisfaction. You have braved him in your heat and anger, and you would flatter and appease him in your cooler and better sense; and by that means lay yourself lower and at his feet, whom before you pretended to overtop. I do not find anything a gentleman can say so vicious in him as unsaying what he has said is infamous, when to unsay it is authoritatively extracted from him; forasmuch as obstinacy is more excusable in a man of honour than pusillanimity. Passions are as easy for me to evade, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the waters and the line Sinks deepest, while no eye beholds thy work, Creator! thou dost teach the coral-worm To lay his mighty reefs. From age to age, He builds beneath the waters, till, at last, His bulwarks overtop the brine, and check The long wave rolling from the southern pole To break upon Japan. Thou bidd'st the fires, That smoulder under ocean, heave on high The new-made mountains, and uplift their peaks, A place of refuge for the storm-driven ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... surface-scratchings of the heart soil there had sprung up a mixed growth in which the tares of self-righteousness began presently to overtop the good grain of humility. One must not be too exacting. If the world were not all good, neither was it all bad; at all events, it was the part of wisdom to make the magnanimous best of it, and to be thankful ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... might happen. Where I was, I yet knew not; whether on the continent or on an island; whether inhabited or not inhabited; whether in danger of wild beasts or not. There was a hill, not above a mile from me, which rose up very steep and high, and which seemed to overtop some other hills, which lay as in a ridge from it, northward. I took out one of the fowling-pieces and one of the pistols, and a horn of powder; and thus armed, I traveled for discovery up to the ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... at the accustomed altars. And lo! from Tenedos, over the placid depths (I shudder as I recall) two snakes in enormous coils press down the sea and advance together to the shore; their breasts rise through the surge, and their blood-red crests overtop the waves; the rest trails through the main behind and wreathes back in voluminous curves; the brine gurgles and foams. And now they gained the fields, while their bloodshot eyes blazed with fire, and their tongues lapped and flickered in their hissing mouths. We scatter, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... turning steadily one way. When quite mixed, pass the whole through a search, fill your cups, and, if you have not a regular bain-marie, a flat sauce-pan will do, filled to a proper height, so as not to overtop the creams, and which must continue boiling a quarter of an hour. For a change, instead of the chocolate, boil the milk with a pod of vanille broken in pieces, or any other flavour you ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... being by a word in her life, but that, that, sir, seems to be where you have missed it. Now look here," he went on, kindling in spite of himself, "I respect any man who has grounds—discoverable grounds—for respecting himself, and if you are a man, then 'sir' won't overtop ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... something quite the reverse of heroic. The note of heart-breaking despair is tragic enough, but there is a touch of comedy behind it. Though her words have the fire, the devotion, the abandon of Heloise, they leave a certain sense of disproportion. One is inclined to wonder if they do not overtop the feeling. ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... through the tact with which it invariably seized it, and through the genius with which it always acted on it, the Circumlocution Office had risen to overtop all the public departments; and the public condition had ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... (Syrphidae), and beetles, among other visitors, come in great numbers, seeking the accessible pollen, and, in this case, nectar also, secreted in a conspicuous orange-colored disk. When a floret first opens, or even before, the already mature stigmas overtop the incurved, undeveloped stamens, so that any visitor dusted from other clusters cross-fertilizes it; but as the stigmas remain fresh even after the stamens have risen and shed their abundant pollen, it follows that ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... the heart's comment to be framed in words. Below, all their earthward-looking branches are sapless and shattered, splintered by the weight of many winters' snows; above, they are still green and full of life, but their summits overtop all the deciduous trees around them, and in their companionship with heaven they are alone. On these the lightning loves to fall. One such Mr. Bernard saw,—or rather, what had been one such; for the bolt had torn the tree like an ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... men, in which lately a ball was given; yet, deducting for all these improvements, which are certainly much less offensive than you could imagine, it is a very sweet ruin, standing so enclosed in wood, which the towers overtop, that you cannot know that it is not in a state of natural desolation till you are close to it. The opposite bank of the Tweed is steep and woody, but unfortunately many of the trees are firs. The old woman followed us after the fashion of other guides, but being slower of foot than ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... them, on the banks of the Charles, is as picturesque a ruin as time, fire and neglect are able to achieve in a hundred years. The walls of heavy blocks of stone, roofless and broken in outline, are still standing. Great trees have grown up within them and now overtop them. Here and there a poplar leans forth from a broken window casement, leaving scant room for the ghosts of ancient spinners and weavers to peer into the outer world at midnight. From a distance it resembles ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... on English lips, the name of Voltaire. No one would pretend that the multiform energy of this giant of literature did not take some unseemly directions and several unlovely shapes. But the qualities of Voltaire must, in the eyes of any unbiassed observer, vastly overtop his defects. If, however, we wish to see Voltaire at his best, we must contemplate him in relation to our soldier-philosopher. As soon as his health had recovered a little from the horror of the Bohemian campaign, Vauvenargues took the step of writing to Voltaire, then a stranger, for his ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... would be in the heart of a torrent, for the two rivers would be one. So instead of going to school, all the boys had gone to look, and the master followed them. Nor was the fear without foundation; for the stream was still rising, and a foot more would overtop the ground ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... from Regional or General Reserve." Vall told him. "This thing's going to have overtop priority till ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... I see them presently? Will they crush me with their reproaches? And—have my nerves broken down?—Is it fancy, or does that girl's pale face, with warning in her eyes, float between me and the wall? Well, I will drink to her, for her mind could even overtop my own. She was, at least, my equal, and I have driven her mad! ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... beam of self-interest and advantage, after this hang about his neck a gold chain, for an intimation that he ought to have all virtues linked together; then set a crown of gold and jewels on his head, for a token that he ought to overtop and outshine others in all commendable qualifications; next, put into his hand a royal sceptre for a symbol of justice and integrity; lastly, clothe him with purple, for an hieroglyphic of a tender love and affection to the commonwealth. If a prince ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... while it will increase our ability to remove them. Self-interest and self-preservation furnish motives enough to excite our exertions.' * * 'By thus repressing the rapid increase of blacks, the white population would be enabled to reach and soon overtop them. The consequence would be security.'—[African Repository, vol. iv. pp. 53, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... thoroughfare to possess one of those monstrosities, a modern American tavern, or a structure whose roof should overtop that of all its neighbours. Still its inns were of respectable size, well piazzaed, to use a word of our own invention, and ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... your propositions—wholly wrong,' cried the other. 'The party that will send you in won't want to be bribed, and they'll be proud of a man who doesn't overtop them with his money. You don't need the big families, for you'll beat them. Your religion is the right one, for it will give you the Priests; and your politics shall be Repeal, and it will give you the Peasants; and as to not knowing ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... to look out the spot for our house, we had to get a surveyor to go before us and cut a path through the dense underbrush that was laced together in a general network of boughs and leaves, and grew so high as to overtop our heads. Where the house stands, four or five great old oaks and chestnuts had to be cut away to let it in; and now it stands on the bank of the river, the edges of which are still overhung with old forest-trees, chestnuts and oaks, which look at themselves ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of California, there is a cedar four hundred and eighty feet in height. It would overtop the Houses of Parliament, and even the Great Pyramid of Egypt. The trunk at the surface of the ground was one hundred and twenty feet in circumference, and the concentric layers of the wood disclosed an age of more ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... has been said. If we could only overtop the mountains of prejudice, and we fear we must add, for it is the parent of prejudice, ignorance, which divide the West from the East, we should be able to look down not upon a barren wilderness, but a fruitful ...
— Hymns from the Morningland - Being Translations, Centos and Suggestions from the Service - Books of the Holy Eastern Church • Various
... iron works. The walls, built of alternate layers of stone and timber, were forty feet in thickness, and could neither be burnt nor driven in with the ram. The town could be taken only with the help of an agger—a bank of turf and fagots raised against the wall of sufficient height to overtop the fortifications. The weather was cold and wet, but the legions worked with such a will that in twenty-five days they had raised their bank at last, a hundred yards in width and eighty feet high. As the work drew near its end Caesar himself lay out all night among the men, encouraging them. One ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... down into the funnel-shaped outer casing of the stack. Here, the heavy embers and cinders are collected and prevented from directly discharging into the countryside as dangerous firebrands. Wire netting is stretched overtop of the deflecting cone to catch the lighter, more volatile embers which may defy the action of the cone. The term "bonnet stack" results from the fact that this netting is similar in shape to a lady's bonnet. The cinders thus accumulated in the stack's hopper could ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White
... the graveyard is set apart as a sort of potter's-field, where negroes, Indians, and stranger-paupers are buried. This region is bordered by a little jungle of poke-berry and elder-bushes, sumachs and brambles, so dense and thrifty that they overtop and hide the fence; and there is a tradition among the school-boys, that somewhere in the copse there is a black-snake hole, the abode of an enormous monster, upon whom no one, however, has ever happened to set eyes. Here, with but few exceptions, the graves are marked ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... as she stands there in the morning sunshine. She is looking back upon the enclosure where the white stones overtop the bluebells. They are headstones, and mark the cemetery where Miss Sally, not ordinarily given to sentiment, has a fancy for ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... climbing fast in these days; but still, compare it with the corresponding point in the Atlantean civilisation, and you will realise that it has not yet climbed to its highest point. For every Race must overtop the Race that has gone before it, and we have not yet reached even the level of the old Atlantis in knowledge, and therefore in power over the lower nature, although, as I said, the climbing now is rapid, and will become more and more rapid with every ten years that pass over ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... spreading plant, like most plants that grow on the close-cropped sheep-walks, whose safety lies in their power to root themselves and live very close to the surface, yet must ever strive to lift its flowers into the unobstructed light and air and to overtop or get away from its crowding neighbours. On one side of the road, where the turf had been cut by the spade in a sharp line, the plant had found a rare opportunity to get space and light and had thrust out such a multitude of bowering sprays, projecting them beyond the turf, as ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... swept down the valley, bringing glorious cloud-effects, and sending the stream swirling over its boulders with a boom of myriad voices. Sometimes the sudden swelling of its tributaries made the Craigwen River overtop its banks, flooding the low-lying meadows till, augmented by the high tide, its waters filled the valley from end to end like a lake. This occasional flooding of the marsh was good for the fields, and ensured a rich hay-crop next summer, so the school felt it could enjoy the picturesque ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... in 1848, and who have so bravely faced ungenerous opposition and insult since, must look back on the result with unmixed astonishment and delight. Temperance, and finance—which is but another name for the labor movement—and woman's rights, are three radical questions which overtop all others in value and importance. Woman's claim for the ballot-box has had a much wider influence than merely to protect woman. Universal suffrage is itself in danger. Scholars dread it; social ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... seated, now some ten days past, Beneath those lofty firs, that overtop Their ancient neighbour, the old steeple-tower, 20 The Vicar from his gloomy house hard by [A] Came forth to greet me; and when he had asked, "How fares Joanna, that wild-hearted Maid! And when will she return to us?" he paused; And, after ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... like this amount. So deep was it that, although almost all the people of these towns survived, it did not seem to them worth while to undertake to excavate their dwelling places. At Pompeii the covering did not overtop the higher of the low houses. An amount of labour which may be estimated at not over one thirtieth of the value, or at least the cost which had been incurred in building the city, would have restored it to a perfectly inhabitable state. The fact that ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... sea-sickness, that we were obliged to quit the table precipitately. I laid myself down at once, feeling unable to move about, or even to drag myself on deck to admire the magnificent spectacle of nature. The waves frequently ran so high as to overtop the flue of our stove, and from time to time whole streams of water poured ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... guard for the garden. Stand this hollyhock phalanx up against a wall like naughty boys, close to the house, or by an old fence. They are so tall that they must be in the background. They grace it. Otherwise they would overtop and shadow the other garden plants. If there is an old ash pile, an old dump or anything else unsightly, plant something tall before it. Hollyhocks would not do for this, since their foliage is too scanty. Castor beans are just the thing, however; and sunflowers, the ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... Frederic the most famous of living engineers to make his siege-machines. Crema was completely invested; and every known method of assault was tried. The moat was filled with fascines, and movable towers of wood, so high as to overtop the battlements, were brought up to the walls; which were also attacked with rams, and undermined by sappers working in the shelter of huge penthouses. But breaches were no sooner made than repaired; every scaling-party was repulsed; and ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... gigantic organ, whose many hundred pipes rise many feet in air. Its lofty position, seen from the viewpoint of the trail, is one of dignity; it overlooks the pines and firs surrounding the clearing in which the observer stands. The trees on the higher level scarcely overtop it; in part, it is ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... vitality in the bearing of the graceful figure, and the light poise of the head, while in the complexion there is a tender softness and a freshness of tints belonging only to the dewy morning of life. The princeliness of youth, the glow of joy and hope overtop and outshine the crown which she wears as lightly as though it were a May-queen's Coronal of roses; and the dignity of simple girlish purity envelops her more royally than velvet and ermine. The eyes have the softness of morning skies and spring violets, and the smile ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... is born unity of heart, for we cannot obtain true unity, unless the Spirit of God lights His flame in our heart. For this fire makes one and like unto itself all that it can overtop and transform. Unity gives a man the feeling of being concentrated with all his faculties on one point. It gives internal peace and repose of heart. Unity of heart is a bond which draws and binds together the body ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... garden path enjoying the contrast with the heat, glare, and noise of the day. The central one was a tall, slender lady, with a light shawl hung round her shoulders. On one side was a youth who had begun to overtop her, on the other a girl of shorter and sturdier mould, who only reached up to ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was a favorite sport with them. It is told of a Mr. Kirkton that he followed the hounds on horseback until he was eighty, and from that period to one hundred he regularly attended the unkennelling of the fox in his single chair. Scott's "Dandy Dinmont" could scarcely overtop that. No one can read the "Annals of Yorkshire" without being struck with the number of persons who at their death left bequests to the poor, widows getting a large ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... all picturesquely placed along broad streets and lanes. In front of the large bright windows of many of the houses, beyond the kitchen gardens, dark green poplars and acacias with their delicate pale verdure and scented white blossoms overtop the houses, and beside them grow flaunting yellow sunflowers, creepers, and grape vines. In the broad open square are three shops where drapery, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, locust beans and gingerbreads are sold; ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... Swiftwater in the early Spring. In a shallow pool, which the drought of summer will soon change into dry land, you see the pale-green shoots of a little plant thrusting themselves up between the pebbles, and just beginning to overtop the falling water. You pluck a leaf of it as you turn out of the stream to find a comfortable place for lunch, and, rolling it between your fingers to see whether it smells like a good salad for your ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... represent existing species; and those produced during each former year may represent the long succession of extinct species. At each period of growth all the growing twigs have tried to branch out on all sides, and overtop and kill the surrounding twigs and branches, in the same manner as species and groups of species have tried to overmaster other species in the great battle for life. The limbs divided into great branches, and these into lesser and lesser branches, were themselves once, when the ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... on some invisible realm. When he spoke it was with a firm, natural, unshaken accent. "Why, yes, I think it very likely that I am being fooled all the time. But I don't think it matters the least bit in the world beside the fact that I love you. That's big enough to overtop everything else." ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Jewish children, who refused The fare luxurious of Chaldea's king, And on their simple diet grow more fair And healthful than their mates, and wiser too, Than the wise men of Babylon. I've seen Ill-fortune follow those, whose early tastes Were pampered and inured to luxury. Their palates seem'd to overtop the brain, And the rank Dives-pleasure, to subvert Childhood's simplicity of sweet content. —Precocious appetites, when overruled, Or disappointed, lend imperious strength To evil tempers, and a fierce disdain. Methought, our Mother-Land, ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... there is always pathos in great beauty, and nowhere more so than here in Prague. There is the delicate beauty of the Town Hall Chapel, and facing it the tall steeples of the Tyn Church, with clusters of quaint little pointed turrets, overtop a row of houses that seem to have set themselves down with the deliberate intention of blocking the west entrance. Now these houses are arcaded, and so are those on the south side of the square. You puzzle for a while and then recall Padua, Verona and other towns of Northern Italy; so now ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... absence of small vegetation, but Nelson writes that in the vicinity of Gallego, Chihuahua, they can be readily distinguished at a distance because of a growth of weeds and small bushes over their summits, which overtop the grass. In the vicinity of Albuquerque, N. Mex., Bailey reports (and this was recently confirmed by Vorhies) that the mounds about the holes of spectabilis are often hardly noticeable. Hollister writes that in the yellow-pine forests of the Gallina Mountains the burrows are usually ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor
... match for the world,—which is saying a good deal, the world being, like Briareus, a very many-handed gentleman,—but, to be so, you must stand alone. Recollect that the scurvy buildings about St. Peter's almost seem to overtop itself." ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... dear reader, this little plant which should spring up like the poppies in the wheat, this plant which has never been seen growing higher than watercress, but which should overtop the oaks, this undiscoverable plant, ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... the effect of the shock by lowering stuffed sacks or other buffer material between it and the wall. At another point, in place of the shed, there is rolled forward a lofty construction like a tower built in several stories. When this approaches the wall it will overtop it, and a drawbridge with grappling irons may be dropped upon the parapet. Elsewhere there is mining and countermining. From a safer distance the artillery of the time is hurling its formidable missiles. There is the "catapult," which shoots a giant arrow, sometimes tipped ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... the opposite side of the avenue and her head was in the air. She had long since ceased to carry her spine in a tubercular droop and when she chose she could draw her body up until it seemed to elongate like the neck of a giraffe, and overtop Mortimer or whoever happened to have incurred ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... pounds rent than any of the other towns. In Auldbiggin and Plainstanes parties were so equal that no majority on either side could be reckoned on, but the Whig majority in Ladykirk was expected to overtop the Tory majority in the two first towns by as much as would secure Hogarth's return. The Honourable Mr. Fortescue was again to be put up for the Tory interest, for though he had not distinguished himself last parliament, he was a perfectly ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... states in their budgets and loomed bigger than whole commonwealths in their influence over the lives and fortunes of entire communities of men. Centralized business has built up vast structures of organization and equipment which overtop all states and seem to have no match or competitor except the ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... country—Michael Strogoff felt within himself a fierce desire to dash on across the steppe, to accomplish the distance which separated him from Irkutsk as the crow would fly it, to be an eagle that he might overtop all obstacles, to be a hurricane that he might sweep through the air at a hundred versts an hour, and to be at last face to face with the Grand Duke, and to exclaim: "Your highness, from ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... woman!" I said, "arise! I slay thee not! Who am I, that I should judge thy crime, that, with mine own, doth overtop all earthly judgment?" ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... flight of steps, supported on a squinch arch, down to what then became the lower chapel. Much battered during the sieges of the palace, it was restored and reconsecrated in 1411 and a century later the Gothic upper apse was added, whose external walls overtop the old nave. In consequence of these modifications the lower chapel has a Gothic nave and a Romanesque apse, whereas the upper chapel has a Gothic apse ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... speaks the truth. The green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and those produced during each former year may represent the long succession of extinct species. At each period of growth all the growing twigs have tried to branch out on all sides, and to overtop and kill the surrounding twigs and branches, in the same manner as species and groups of species have tried to overmaster other species in the great battle for life. The limbs divided into great branches, ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... rarely exceeds 8 lbs. weight.' He also says—'When the cacao plants are six months old, the planter from this period must not be too fond of cleaning the plantation from grass and herbage, because they keep the ground cool; but all creeping, climbing plants, and such weeds as grow high enough to overtop the cacao, should be destroyed.' He gives the distance from tree to tree at 18 feet. I have long since been of opinion that it is of less consequence to clean the ground beneath the trees than to attend to the top-pruning of the shade trees, as well as to the cacao (although ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... crowning triumph was the great festival which the Grand Constable gave with the king's permission in the king's own rose garden, the magnificent mascarado in the Italian manner, to which all who were associated with the court were summoned. This revelry which began at sunset was intended to overtop all possible courtly ceremonials in the splendour of its equipment, the lavishness of its display, the richness and profusion of ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... That has to this maturity blown up In rank Achilles, must or now be cropped, Or, shedding, breed a nursery of like ill, To overtop us all. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... forty. Whereupon, as if released on either side from some kind of vague fear, our confidences came thick and fast, when we found that we were in the same confraternity of love. It was which of us should overtop the other ...
— The Message • Honore de Balzac
... from a Conquest, And puts an awful Gloom upon our Joy; I fear his Grief will overtop his Reason; A Lover weeps with more than common Pain. Nor flows his greatest Sorrow at his Eyes: His Grief is inward, and his Heart sheds Tears, And in his Soul he feels the pointed Woe, When he beholds the lovely Object ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... sugar in proportion to population than any other nation of the world. The total consumption last year was not less than 2,500,000 tons. This is enough to make a pyramid that would overtop the tallest pyramid of Egyptian fame. Of this total, 2,200,000 tons came from foreign countries, the Spanish possessions and Hawaii sending about twenty-five per cent. Five years earlier, when our imports were less by half a million ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... from the indolent character of the Indians, it being entirely entrusted to the squaws, the men considering labor beneath their dignity. The object was attained, if the plants were sufficiently protected against the encroaching weeds to enable them to overtop the latter, after which they were left to take care of themselves. Yet, notwithstanding all this negligence, prodigal Nature rendered a rich return. It has been said (with what truth we know not) that the weeds of a soil depend upon the race which cultivates ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... people. The minister will inspire his formative citizens with good portrayals of statesmen, educators, inventors, reformers, discoverers, pioneers, and philanthropists. He will charm them into greatness at the very time when a boy's ideals overtop the mountains. ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... consist of a number of ranges; they extend 1,500 miles east and west, and are the sources of the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra. The highest is Mount Everest, the loftiest mountain in the world, 29,002 feet; and I could mention several other peaks which overtop any of the Andes. Himalaya means 'the abode of snow,' and the foot-hills are the resorts of the wealthy to obtain a ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... the least against it, for so it ought to be: and the "stock" company that plays its parts plays them well. The father is perhaps rather excessively foolish and unnatural, but then he almost had to be. The wicked and ugly stepmother tops, but does not overtop, her part, and her punishment is not commonplace. Gracieuse herself deserves her name, not only "by her comely face and by her fair bodie," but by her good but not oppressive wits, and her amiable but not faultless disposition. She ought not to have looked into the box; but then ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... the position of a single stone. A large and solid bridge which has been built against it by the states of Languedoc, appears by comparison to shrink into insignificance, and shelter itself behind the old Roman arches, the lower tier of which, eleven in number, overtop it in height by about three-fifths. The span of the largest arch is about 78 feet; of the other ten, 66 each: and they are surmounted by a row of thirty-five smaller arches. With the exception ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... swept towards the island, and before it became too dark to observe, in the early twilight one could see the wind-lashed waters of the bay begin to heap themselves into broken and irregular waves, each striving to overtop the other in their plunge upon the city. They broke, indeed, into the back door of the city, and then, with a suddenness that seemed to rock the very foundations of the earth, the wind struck us, in three ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... its solid breakwaters; ignorance, inability, clumsiness, and awkwardness raise such obstacles as they can; but the delay of a century is but a moment. Slowly and surely the waters rise till they sweep away all obstacles, overtop all barriers, and plunge forward again with ever accelerating force. The record of iron is at once a record of our glory and of our humiliation,—a record of marvellous, inborn, God-given genius, reaching forth in manifold ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... "I am fond of good horses; and, as I only keep a pair, I have the best. There is a certain degree of pretension in four horses, I do not much like—it appears as if you wished to overtop your neighbours." ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... spy-in-the-sky. V. be high &c adj.; tower, soar, command; hover, hover over, fly over; orbit, be in orbit; cap, culminate; overhang, hang over, impend, beetle, bestride, ride, mount; perch, surmount; cover &c 223; overtop &c (be superior) 33; stand on tiptoe. become high &c adj.; grow higher, grow taller; upgrow^; rise &c (ascend) 305; send into orbit. render high &c adj.; heighten &c (elevate) 307. Adj. high, elevated, eminent, exalted, lofty, tall; gigantic &c (big) 192; Patagonian; towering, beetling, soaring, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... herd's-grass and wild oats was spread Last year with nicer skill than monarchs use, A clover tuft is pillow for my head, And violets quite overtop my shoes. ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... the geologist assures us that when the cold of the Glacial Age was at its maximum glaciers streamed down from all the mountains of Scotland, Wales, and Northern England; that the ice was thick enough to overtop all the smaller hills, and on the plains it united in one great sea of ice some thousands of feet in thickness, that it stretched as far south as the latitude of London, England. But that to the west the ice streamed out across, the Irish Sea, the islands ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... work of the Law within man strive to bring forth themselves in writing to beget numbers of bodies on their sides. That power which begets the bigger number always rules as King or Lord in the creature and in the Creation, till the other side overtop him: even as light and darkness strive in day and night to succeed each other. Or as it is said—"The strong man armed keeps the heart of man till a stronger than he came ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... sunset in the Pyrenees, a glorious crimson sky tipping the distant peaks with pale pink, and deepening the purple shadows on the nearer mountains—the mountains that inclose and overtop Margotte Nevaire's pretty home. I had come for a quiet month to this picturesque, secluded village, and though my month was over, I was tempted to linger day after day, for the sake of the sunshine and the mountains, and not least, perhaps, for ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... was then and ever my creed that it is a man's best business to be in love as much and as often as he can, and I answered him according to my fancy. "I should scorn myself if I did not overtop every conceited fancy that lover has ever sighed ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the abandon that had delighted and finally satiated him with Phoebe. His relation towards any other human being could never now stretch from rim to rim of the world for him as had so nearly been the case when he loved Blanche. No one thing could seem to him to overtop all others as he had tried to make it in the first ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... is not a glimpse of sun. The rain descends as a deluge. The river is still further swollen by the melting of the snow on the Himalaya, and now comes swirling along in dark and angry mood, rising higher and higher in its banks, eating into them, and threatening to overtop them and carry death and destruction far and wide. Men no longer go down to meet it. They shrink back from it. They uneasily watch it till the fulness of its strength is spent and it has returned ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... a child you are! Listen to me. You have suffered this personal dislike to your uncle and his son to overtop, like some rank weed, every better growth of your mind; to destroy your moral integrity and mental advantages; to interfere with your studies, and prevent any beneficial result which might arise from your situation as clerk in this ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... torture of tomorrow! Oh, Agnes, the agony of success to a nervous, sensitive man; the dismal apprehension that fills his life and gives each victory a voice to cry out "Hear, hear! Bravo, bravo, bravo! But this is to be your last—you'll never overtop it!" Ha, yes! I soon found out the weak spot in my armour—the need of constant encouragement, constant reminder of my powers; [taking her hand] the need of that subtle sympathy which a sacrificing, unselfish woman alone possesses the ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... altitudes made by the three explorers named differed considerably. The height now fixed for Mount Mitchell is 6711; that of Mount Washington is 6285. There are twelve peaks in this range higher than Mount Washington, and if we add those in the Great Smoky Mountains which overtop it, there are some twenty in this State higher than the granite giant ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the pains to pick the figures out of the several words, and range them in their proper order, you will find they amount to MDCXVVVII, or 1627, the year in which the medal was stamped: for as some of the letters distinguish themselves from the rest, and overtop their fellows, they are to be considered in a double capacity, both as letters and as figures. Your laborious German wits will turn over a whole dictionary for one of these ingenious devices. A man would think they were searching after an apt classical term, but instead of ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... as far as they are able to reach, causing the tree to assume a grotesque hour-glass shape, flat on the under part of the head, with a cone of green herbage at the ground. Sometimes pastures are full of little hummocks of trees that have not yet been able to overtop the grazers. ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... the fashionables of Bruenn is termed the Franzes Berg. It is a sort of table-land, on the side of that hill which the cathedral and bishop's palace overtop; and is laid out in shady walks, well-ordered terraces, and bowers of most umbrageous shelter. Thither, in the cool of the day, that is, between the hours of six and nine in the evening, the elite of the inhabitants repair, that they may enjoy the pleasures ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... passes of the high divide, but whether one gets passage depends a little on how many have gone that road before, and much on one's own powers. The passes are steep and windy ridges, though not the highest. By two and three thousand feet the snow-caps overtop them. It is even possible to win through the Sierras without having passed above timber-line, but one misses ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... enthusiasm, I pluck up gaiety of spirit, and whisper to myself, 'True, but it may be an enormous gain.' To get the left bank of the Rhine is a trifle; but to check in our next neighbour a growth which a few years hence would overtop us,—that is no trifle. And, be the gain worth the hazard or not, could the Emperor, could any Government likely to hold its own for a week, have declined to take the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ship's side with a couple of boat-hooks, so that the little barque should not dash against the hull of the bigger one, now she was so loaded up—a collision would have insured destruction to all in her, the huge billows of the Southern Ocean rolling in at intervals, and raising her so high aloft as to overtop the ship sometimes, and again carrying her down right under the Esmeralda's counter, thus making her run the risk of being stove ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Formal salutations were exchanged between the seconds. The duelling swords were examined, and found to be of the same length. There was no difficulty in choosing the ground, as there was an open space in the centre of the little wood, and the sun had not risen high enough to overtop the trees. As, therefore, the glade was in shade, there was no advantage, in point of light, ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... defended by a strong roofing of boards and hides, beneath which they could work their battering-rams with impunity. To co-operate with this unwieldy and bulky instrument, which, from its shape and covering, they called a "sow," movable scaffolds had been constructed, of such a height as to overtop the walls, from which they proposed to storm the town; and, instead of a single vessel, as on the former occasion, a squadron of ships, with their top castles manned by picked bodies of archers, and their armed boats ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... of the tower is, if possible, heightened by the Great Cataract, in conjunction with which it is almost invariably seen. The falling waters vie with the Mountain Supporter in breadth, and overtop it by the height from which they are hurled; the one firm, stately, and magnificent in its solidity and repose, the other vapoury and grand in its gracefulness and movement; both inconceivably beautiful; the Cataract, a ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... of Universology, as so delightfully unfolded by Mr. ANDREWS, is one that must ere long overtop and engulf all others, seeing that it is, of itself, the science which embodies and contains all. It teaches that the universe exists in time and space—a fact never discovered till now—or that, rather, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... perhaps, is the impression Aeschylus leaves on the minds of those who know him. They bear testimony to the fact that, however grand his style—like a Milton Carlylized in poetry—thought still seems to overtop it and to be struggling for expression through ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... entangled in the meshes of thy corruption, hast thou not tendered the torch of licentiousness, or the steel of murder? Must I say more? Even of late, when thou hadst rendered thy house vacant for new nuptials, by the death of thy late wife, didst thou not overtop that hideous crime, by a crime more incredible? which I pass over, and permit willingly to rest in silence, lest it be known, that in this state, guilt so enormous has existed, and has not been punished. I pass over the ruin of thy fortunes, which all men ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... well pleased indeed," Pollio said, "that we meet here for the first time, and that I did not encounter you in the forests. By the gods, but you have grown into a veritable giant. Why, you must overtop ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... fellows. Oaks, too, are numerous, and the scene in many places is covered with mansanita underwood, a graceful and beautiful shrub. The trees and shrubbery, however, are not so thickly planted as to intercept the view, and the ground undulates so much that occasionally we overtop them, and obtain a glimpse of the wide vale before us. Over the whole landscape there is a golden sunny haze, that enriches while it softens every object, and the balmy atmosphere is laden with the sweet perfume called forth ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... he saw it on his visit a short time afterwards. 'The tents were raised on a small hill, and about 2000 in number, ranged at that time without order, only the Grand Signior's seemed to be in the midst to overtop all the rest, well worthy observation, costing (as was reported) 180,000 dollars, richly embroidered in the inside with gold. Within the walls of this tent (as I may so call them) were all sorts of offices belonging to the Seraglio, apartments for the ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... his hassock with difficulty, and confronting her: "Do I look like a man who would dare to make fun of you? I am half a head shorter than you, and in moral grandeur you overtop me so that I would always have to wear a high hat when ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... Caius, who forthwith speaks and writes to no other end than to vex and put down Cneius, and give him pain. Each for his part strives his utmost to find out faults in his neighbor and to put him in the pillory, particularly if his antagonist is held the greater man, or is likely to overtop him. Listen to the girls at the well, to the women at the spindle; no one is sure of applause who cannot tell some evil of the other men or women. Who cares to listen to his neighbor's praises? The man who hears that his brother is happy ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... silence for a moment, pondering how he should accomplish it. Here was his match in size; here was one against whom his veils were powerless; here, too, was a creature who melted from his grasp when he thought to seize and twist him. What, then, remained for him to do? This only: to overtop him and smother him by casting himself down ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... Dapple to sigh, which, by both knight and squire, was accepted as a good sign and a very happy omen; though, if the truth is to be told, the sighs and brays of Dapple were louder than the neighings of the hack, from which Sancho inferred that his good fortune was to exceed and overtop that of his master, building, perhaps, upon some judicial astrology that he may have known, though the history says nothing about it; all that can be said is, that when he stumbled or fell, he was heard ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Before the gates round which I linger oft, In Twilight's hour, to catch a glimpse of those Gardens which are my just inheritance, Ere the night closes o'er the inhibited walls And the immortal trees which overtop The Cherubim-defended battlements? 90 If I shrink not from these, the fire-armed angels, Why should I quail from him who now approaches? Yet—he seems mightier far than them, nor less Beauteous, and yet not all as beautiful As he hath been, and might be: ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... the other; the odour of their corpses awakes me in the night; I drive away the birds that come to peck out their eyes; and yet not for a single day have I despaired of Carthage! Though I had seen all the armies of the earth against her, and the flames of the siege overtop the height of the temples, I should have still believed in her eternity! But now all is over! all is lost! The gods execrate her! A curse upon you who have quickened ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... in his native section and in the state at large. Before the autumn his election to the House of Delegates, which in April seemed so great a thing, began to assume the appearance of a trifle in his fortunes. He would overtop that, and how highly no man was prepared to say. Through all the clashing of shields, through Republican attack and Federalist resistance, through the clamour over Hamilton's death, the denunciation and upholding of Burr, the impeachment of Chase, the situation ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... Cyrus; there was a Tamerlane somewhere, but few people know anything of the empire he overshadows with his name; France has had two mighty warriors, Charlemagne and Napoleon—unfortunate France! As for ourselves, fortunate islanders! we have never had a great man so immensely great as to overtop the whole, like Charlemagne in his day. Fortunate for us, indeed, that it has been so. But the best example to the point is the case of the immense empire of Russia, which has had one Peter the Great, and one only. ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... sort of secular monastery for pilgrims to the Dragon peak. They were tenanted now, we had been told, by a couple of watchmen. We struck out with freer strides, while the moon, which had by this time risen high enough to overtop the wall of peaks, watched us with an ashen face, as in single file we moved across the waste of level ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... as we believe all his three Sons were so too, they were able to have inform'd them how absurd it was to suppose either the one or the other (viz.) (1.) that they could build up to Heaven, or (2.) that they could build firm enough to resist, or high enough to overtop the Waters, supposing such another Flood should happen; I would rather think it was only that they intended to build a most glorious and magnificent City, where they might all inhabit together; and that this Tower was to be built ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... monotonous, melancholy; and has a terrible eeriness in its endlessness. For there is nothing else. There are no meadows where the cows lie lazily, no fields where the red and purple kerchiefs of the reapers overtop the high corn; no orchards, no hayfields; nothing like those hill slopes where the wild herbs encroach upon the vines, and the goats of Corydon and Damoetas require to be kept from mischief; where, a little lower down, the Athenian shopkeeper of Aristophanes goes daily to look whether ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... garrulous gourd As o'er the palm tree's crest it poured Its spreading leaves and tendrils fine, And hung a-bloom in the morning shine. "A hundred years," the palm tree sighed.— "And I," the saucy gourd replied, "Am at the most a hundred hours, And overtop thee in the bowers." ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... then recedes, and for some time none that follows comes up to its mark, but after a while the whole sea is there and beyond it, so now and then there comes a man head and shoulders above his fellow-men, showing that Nature has not lost her ideal, and after a while even the average man will overtop the highest wave of manhood yet given to ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... or me?" retorted Mrs Jane. "I should say, about as big as a field mouse. He thinks himself big enough to overtop all the elephants in creation. Marcus Welles! Oh, yes, I'll mark him well,— ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... inutility of classical studies. Thus, it is urged, that, in every department of human knowledge, we transcend the most splendid acquirements of the ancients, and therefore that it is so much time wasted which we devote towards keeping up an acquaintance with antiquity. But how is it that we so far overtop the ancients? Simply by preserving our conscious connection with them, just as manhood towers above childhood through the remembered experiences of childhood. As an evidence of this, we need only note the sudden impulse which modern ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... spacious wilderness about them they are but toy hills. Few of them are much over 150 feet high, large as they often loom in the deceiving light of the Soudan. Many are but 50 feet in height, and there are regular, peaky, and prettily-shaped little mountain ranges, the summits of which overtop the plain but five to ten yards. Such hills children might build in play by the sea-shore. Surgham was quite a big one, and the signallers soon took possession of it, flagging and "helioing" back to camp. From its top I was ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... eternal: let thy heart be careful that thou go the right way to overpass this height, that thou mayest not miss of the delectable plains, and the pleasures that are above. Now, there is nothing so high, as to overtop this height; but Jacob's ladder, and that can do it: that ladder, when the foot thereof doth stand upon the earth, reacheth with its top to the gate of heaven. This is the ladder by which angels ascend thither: and this ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... hearty supper we gathered around the fire, and the young men sang in chorus until bedtime. "Now then, boys," cried I, "for a huge camp-fire, for it will be cold tonight!" We all scattered in the woods, and every man returned with a log, and soon the leaping blaze seemed to overtop the pines. We all lay around, with our feet to the fire, and soon ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... air and a rich herbage on which browse countless herds of cattle, horses, and flocks of sheep. The grass grows tall, and miles upon miles of rich scarlet, white, or yellow flowers mingle with or overtop it. Beds of thistles, in which the cattle completely hide themselves, stretch away for leagues and leagues, and present an almost unbroken sheet of purple flowers. So vast are these thistle- beds that a day's ride through them only leaves the traveller with the same purple ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... when the wit of Aristophanes sought to overtop the stately lines of AEschylus; Praxiteles outdid Ictinus; and wayside words uttered by Socrates were ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... dog-snake's dread abode. Noxious things of earth and air, Get you hence, for I prepare To flaunt my beauty in the sun When all beside me are undone. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Pan shall see The surge of my virginity Overtop the sobered glade. Luminous and unafraid Near his sacred oak I'll spread Lures to tempt him from his bed: His couch, his lair his form shall be By none but ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... tears up the surplus vegetation, and the hoe tops it off in its luxuriance. The race is a hard one, but industry conquers; and when the third working-over of the crop takes place, the cotton-plant, so much cherished and favored, begins to overtop its rivals in the fields—begins to cast a chilling shade of superiority over its now intimidated groundlings, and ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... drawn up into the remotest corner of the carriage, her face transfixed with horror, and a terrific yell bursting occasionally from her white lips. But neither the sound of her cries nor the noise of the deadly struggle could overtop the clatter of the express train. Those in the next compartment did indeed hear a little of it but they were powerless to render assistance, and there was at that time no means of communicating with the guard or driver. Poor Edwin thought ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... whereby He sets such bounds to the greatest mountains, that ye see they fall not upon the vallies, albeit they overtop them. The Lord hath set bounds to the great kings in the world which they could not pass, when they have set themselves against the Lord's people. We may see an example of this in Sennacherib. "Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not come up to this city, ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... a giantess to overtop you, mon ami," laughed Lorimer with a lazy shrug. "By Jove, I am sleepy, Errington, old boy; are we never going to bed? It's no good waiting till it's dark here, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... impress of the sublime principle of the institutions. The houses of the private citizens, for instance, overtop the roofs of all the public edifices, to show that the public is merely a servant of the citizen. Even the churches have this peculiarity, proving that the road to heaven is not independent of the popular will. The great Hall of Justice, an ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... extent to one standing on the deck of a steamer passing on the river. The distance back from the water's edge is about 50 yards. The mound strikes you with great surprise as your eye first catches it. Its crest is covered with lofty trees, which overtop the surrounding forest. These thriving trees, elm, soft maple, basswood and poplar, 60 or 70 feet high now thrust their root tendrils deep into the aforetime softened mould. A foot or more of a mass of decayed leaves ...
— The Mound Builders • George Bryce
... said the Forester. "Presently," he continued, "as these young trees grow up together, one will overtop the rest. If the adjacent small trees be cut down when this tallest tree has reached a good height, it will spread at the top in order to get as much sunlight as possible. In order to carry a large top the diameter of the trunk must increase. So, by starting the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... sap the wall failed; their artillery was met and crushed by engines of greater power; a fleet of Slavonian canoes, which endeavored to force an entrance by the Golden Horn, was destroyed or driven ashore; the towers with which they sought to overtop the walls were burnt; and, after ten days of constantly repeated assaults, the barbarian leader became convinced that he had undertaken an impossible enterprise, and, having burnt his engines and his siege works, he retired. The result might have been different had the Persians, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... and fashionable, perfect in etiquette, costume, and most particular in their society; but the rank and position of the noble Lady de Tilly made her friendship most desirable, as it conferred in the eyes of the world a patent of gentility which held good against every pretension to overtop it. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... cotton shrouds, but congress, the ministry, and the "West Point of Honduras," the superintendent of which was a native youth who had spent a year or two at Chapultepec. Against it lean barefooted, anemic "soldiers" in misfit overalls, armed with musket and bayonet that overtop them in height. The main post-office of the republic is an ancient adobe hovel, in the cobwebbed recesses of which squat a few stupid fellows waiting for the mule-back mail-train to arrive that they may lock up in preparation for beginning ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... take the pains to pick the Figures out of the several Words, and range them in their proper Order, you will find they amount to MDCXVVVII, or 1627, the Year in which the Medal was stamped: For as some of the Letters distinguish themselves from the rest, and overtop their Fellows, they are to be considered in a double Capacity, both as Letters and as Figures. Your laborious German Wits will turn over a whole Dictionary for one of these ingenious Devices. A Man would think they were searching after an apt classical Term, but instead of that they ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... she fly for sanctuary to the toilet-table; and if a damosel, prying in her mirror, be sure that with brush and pigment she can trick herself into more charm, we are not angry. Indeed, why should we ever have been? Surely it is laudable, this wish to make fair the ugly and overtop fairness, and no wonder that within the last five years the trade of the makers of cosmetics has increased immoderately—twentyfold, so one of these makers has said to me. We need but walk down any modish street and peer into the ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... starting-point. In the morning, when I went on the platform, I saw two miles to windward, Hawaii, the largest of the seven islands that form the group. I saw clearly the cultivated ranges, and the several mountain-chains that run parallel with the side, and the volcanoes that overtop Mouna-Rea, which rise 5,000 yards above the level of the sea. Besides other things the nets brought up, were several flabellariae and graceful polypi, that are peculiar to that part of the ocean. The direction of ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... space, comparatively with the inclosures in its vicinity, until it reached the village. It was surrounded by high stone walls, which every now and then the dark spiral forms of a cypress or a cedar would overtop, and in the more distant and elevated part rose a tall palm tree, bending its graceful and languid head, on which the sunbeam glittered. It was the first palm that Tancred had ever seen, and his heart throbbed as he beheld that fair ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... the ocean, now are converted into white, foamy breakers. The swell of the waves against our shore makes a snowy depth, tinged with green, for many feet back from the shore. The longer waves swell, overtop, and rush upon the rocks; and, when they return, the waters pour back in a cascade. Against the outer points of Smutty Nose and Star Island, there is a higher surf than here; because, the wind being from the southeast, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the American merchant marine is such as to call for immediate remedial action by the Congress. It is discreditable to us as a Nation that our merchant marine should be utterly insignificant in comparison to that of other nations which we overtop in other forms of business. We should not longer submit to conditions under which only a trifling portion of our great commerce is carried in our own ships. To remedy this state of things would not .merely serve to build up our shipping interests, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... sea, all phosphorescent and glowing with the tiny lights of myriads of animalculae, threatened to overwhelm us with a deluge of fire. Higher and higher, thinner and thinner, the crest grew as it began to curve and overtop preparatory to breaking, until with a roar it fell over the bulwarks, a mass of soft glowing light and tons of water which sent the sailors sprawling in all directions and left in each nook and cranny little specks of ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... figure to yourself a number of persons walking behind this wall, and carrying with them statues of men, and images of other animals, wrought in wood and stone and all kinds of materials, together with various other articles, which overtop the wall; and, as you might expect, let some of the passers-by ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... of life around us—of common life—of everyday events, and the common scenes which Nature has prepared on every side, are full of interest, full of means of gratifying a taste formed or cultivated to rational enjoyment. The Hymmalayen mountains may overtop the Andes, and the Amazon bear more water to the sea than the Susquehanna, but it follows not thence that the combination of scenery—points of beauty to be associated with the eye—are less attractive in the latter ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... scene of much bustle and excitement. Long lines of white tents overtop the heaps of pipeclay, which grow higher from day to day. The men are hard at work on these hills of "mullock," plying the windlasses by which the stuff is brought up from below, or puddling and washing ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles |
