"Priceless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fine collection of pictures, including the well-known portraits by Reynolds of Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire. Other paintings are ascribed to Holbein, Durer, Murillo, Jan van Eyck, Dolci, Veronese and Titian. Hung in the gallery of sketches there are some priceless drawings attributed to Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raffaelle, Correggio, Titian and other old masters. Statues by Canova, Thorwaldsen, Chantrey and R.J. Wyatt are included among the sculptures. In the state apartments ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... of God; when servility was held to be ennobling duty; when beauty and youth tried eagerly for royal favour; and woman's shame was held to be no dishonour. Mended morals and mended manners in Courts and people, are among the priceless consequences of the freedom which George I came to rescue and secure. He kept his compact with his English subjects; and if he escaped no more than other men and monarchs from the vices of his age, at least we may thank him for preserving and transmitting the liberties of ours. In our free ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... began he was professor of international law at the ancient university whose walls alone stand, surrounding the ashes of its priceless volumes, across from the ruined cathedral. With the burgomaster a refugee from the horrors of that orgy, he turned man of action on behalf of the demoralized people of the town with a thousand homes in ruins. Very lucky the client in its lawyer. He is the kind of man who makes the best ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... what lack of money means," Bertha was thinking. And her house, her automobile, her horses, became at the moment as priceless, as remote, as crown jewels and papal palaces. Then, conversely, she grew to a larger conception of the possibilities which lay in sixty thousand dollars a year. Not only did it lift her and all hers above the heat and mire and distress of the world of toil, ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... itself comes the most priceless of its monuments. The services Johnson rendered to Shakespeare are only second to those he rendered to the language in which Shakespeare wrote. The Preface to his edition of Shakespeare is certainly the most masterly piece of his literary criticism: and ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... great door, which was once again unlocked, I turned my steps to the steps of the crypt, which lay behind the richly carven wood screen. This I could see, with the better light, was a noble piece of work of priceless beauty and worth. I tried to keep my heart in full courage with thoughts of my Lady, and of the sweetness and dignity of our last meeting; but, despite all, it sank down, down, and turned to water as I passed with uncertain feet ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... hoped we rarely pray for what is termed wealth; but, on the other hand, how needful it is that we should supplicate unceasingly for health. "Grant me health, Lord, to perform my daily task." We have, indeed, need to ask for that unpurchasable, that priceless blessing. If we possess it already, we need to implore its continuance; if we have lost it, so much the more earnestly and devoutly should we solicit a return to its paths. Yes, next to the possession of a healthy conscience, we ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... infinite your gain! Of all the land you bloom the loveliest; Yet, ah! the priceless blessing, The bliss of parents' fondness, You left ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... is analyzed and explained in the minutest and keenest fashion, discussions on abstruse subjects being sometimes relieved by an anecdote or two, a bit of folklore, worldly wisdom, or small talk. Scattered through its numerous volumes are priceless gems of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... for the word. Preaching, indeed! Preaching a blessed gospel, for this world of pain and suffering; a gospel of hope and happiness and joy. I offer you, here, now, this moment of blessed opportunity, the priceless boon of health. It is within reach of the humblest and poorest as well as the millionaire. The blessing falls on all like the gentle ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... gathered around it, it walled its great eyes almost humanly towards Kearny and expired. That was bad; but worse, to our minds, was the concomitant disaster. Part of the mule's burden had been one hundred pounds of the finest coffee to be had in the tropics. The bag burst and spilled the priceless brown mass of the ground berries among the dense vines and weeds of the swampy land. Mala suerte! When you take away from an Esperandan his coffee, you abstract his patriotism and 50 per cent. of his value as a soldier. The men ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... imagination of the fifteenth century. The chance of history, fortunate perhaps for the whole world, swept the last Greek scholars away from Constantinople to the living soil of Italy, carrying with them the priceless relics of forgotten splendours. To some broken stones, and to the chance which saved a few hundred manuscripts from destruction, is due such knowledge as we have to-day of that Greek thought and life which still remains to us in many ways an ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... the man who has achieved the conquest of poise. It is the one particular evidence of this priceless quality. ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... Congress, let these hard-working Americans buy into the Medicare system. It won't add a dime to the deficit, but the peace of mind it will provide will be priceless. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William J. Clinton • William J. Clinton
... down by Monfaucon, in his Monarchie Francaise. The dress consisted of rich blue velvet, sumptuously embroidered in gold, with which were intermixed rubies, emeralds, pearls and other precious stones, with a large diamond star in the centre, and an opal, of priceless value, set with diamonds. The cloak was of cloth of gold, lined with white satin, and trimmed over with powdered ermine. The belt worn by the Noble Duke, on this occasion, was of crimson, richly studded with precious stones, and fastened in the centre by a large diamond buckle. Sword, a valuable ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... the extreme, yet it contains many objects of some value and of great rarity; illiterate as this person is, he would not be so presumptuous as to offer any for your acceptance, but if you will confer upon him the favour of selecting that which appears to be the most priceless and unreplaceable, he will immediately, and with every manifestation of extreme delight, break it irredeemably in your honour, to prove the unaffected depth of his ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... when Eveley speaks like that, I know your friendship is a priceless boon, and I want my share of it. I am receiving a sort of psychic message that you and I are destined ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... port," as his friends said, meaning thereby that his first consideration had been the cellarage of the house, and that when those cellars had been built and provision made for the safe storage of his priceless wines, the house had been built without the architect's being greatly troubled by his lordship. The double cellars of Gratham House had, in their time, been one of the sights of London. When Henry Gratham lay under eight feet of Congo earth (he was killed by an elephant whilst on a hunting ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... month; for to the Chinese mind it seems plain that grave-clothes made in a year which is unusually long will possess the capacity of prolonging life in an unusually high degree. Amongst the clothes there is one robe in particular on which special pains have been lavished to imbue it with this priceless quality. It is a long silken gown of the deepest blue colour, with the word "longevity" embroidered all over it in thread of gold. To present an aged parent with one of these costly and splendid mantles, known as "longevity garments," ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Quincey from it; most assuredly all who love English literature would sooner spare some much more faultless writers. Even that quality of his which has been already noted, his extraordinary attraction for youth, is a singular and priceless one. The Master of the Court of the Gentiles, or the Instructor of the Sons of the Prophets, he might be called in a fantastic nomenclature, which he would have himself appreciated, if it had been applied to any one but himself. What he somewhere calls his "extraordinary ignorance of daily ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... cruel war," whispered George to his bride upon their wedding-day, "has robbed us of all our own worldly wealth, has cost you your father, and has left me a cripple for life, yet it could not take from us the priceless wealth of ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... year round, and vegetation is literally perpetual. They met with none of the initial difficulties of primitive peoples. They were educated, and they possessed the treasures of knowledge born of a thousand years of Roman supremacy; from the beginning they had that other priceless treasure, leisure—that real essential of perfect culture; they had for the first five hundred years no human enemy to contend with, and even then with the merest weaklings—weaklings in the hands of a people at that period very strong; for by that time the Hili-lites ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... little arts that make a jury feel well disposed toward a lawyer, and as a word artist he was unsurpassed. Gottlieb could, I believe, have wrung tears from a lump of pig iron, and his own capacity to open the floodgates of emotion was phenomenal. He had that rare and priceless gift shared by some members of the theatrical profession of being able to shed real tears at will. His sobs and groans were truly heart-rending. This, as might be expected, rendered him peculiarly telling in his appeals to the jury, and he could frequently set the entire panel snivelling and wiping ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... as it moved gracefully by his side—"But that I failed in homage to the High Priestess was a most unintentional lack of wit on my part,—for if THAT was the High Priestess,—that dazzling wonder of beauty who lately passed in a glittering ship, on her triumphant way down the river, like a priceless pearl ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... people will multiply as heretofore; fate is unavoidable, and Allah is great! Moreover, what does it all matter to us so long as our integrity is maintained, our seraglios remain intact, and our coffers are filled? That hillock must be taken. It is a priceless hillock. Like other hillocks, no doubt, and not very promising in an agricultural point of view, but still a priceless hillock, which must be carried at any cost, for on our obtaining it depends somehow (we can't say exactly ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... These, to be sure, are very brief and fragmentary, and it has been a source of much wonder that, knowing intimately as she did many of the notable persons of her time, she has not left behind in any single letter a valuable portrait or even sketch of any of these great people. What priceless words of Darwin she might have gathered up, which all the world would have eagerly read; what characteristic anecdotes she could have told of Tennyson,—what an insight she might have given into ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... his stead. The Palais Royal, the magnificent ancestral abode of the Duke of Orleans, being left unguarded, the mob burst in, rioted through all its princely saloons, plundering and destroying. Its paintings, statuary, gorgeous furniture, and priceless works of art were pierced with bayonets, slashed with sabre-strokes, thrown into the streets, and consumed with flames. In less than half an hour the magnificent apartments of this renowned palace presented but a revolting spectacle of ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... of that precious heritage called "love" is the bitterest possible reflection upon our modern civilization. The sort of attraction these unchaste, nakedly adorned, women "of fashion" hold out can never inspire that precious, priceless thing which "passeth all understanding," which survives all the travail of tribulation, that beautiful emotion that "age cannot wither nor custom stale," which radiates the ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... perhaps oftener than any other people, we come to the masses with the divine benediction of prayer; and it would be difficult to find the Salvationist's home that does not regard the family altar as its most precious and priceless treasure. ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... in panic, Bud caught a brief glimpse of the ponderous test stand with the priceless telemeter tilting to one side. An instant later it crashed over, pinning ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... gorgeous parties in cold houses," continued Elisabeth, "and having priceless dinners in fireless rooms. On such occasions I always feel inclined to say to my hostess, as the poor do, 'Please, ma'am, may I have a coal-ticket instead of a soup-ticket, if ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... of silks, cut velvets, tapestries, embroideries, carpets of the East, lay figures glittering with replicas of priceless armour. Delicate fabrics trailed over chair and floor almost under foot; inlaid and gem-hilted weapons, illuminated missals, glass-cased papyri, gilded zones, filets, girdles, robes of fur, hoods, ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... part, and up to his senior year no fraternity had bid him. This grieved Ole so that he retired from football just before the Kiowa game on which all our young hearts were set, and before he would consent to go back and leave some more of his priceless foot-tracks on the opposition we had to pledge him to three of our proudest fraternities. Talk of wedding a favorite daughter to the greasy villain in the melodrama in order to save the homestead! No crushed father, ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... turn which things had taken, and especially at the promise of the priceless cup which he had long coveted, Kaku bowed obsequiously. He picked up his crumpled roll and was about to retire when through the gloom of the falling night, some men mounted upon asses were seen riding over the mud flats that border the Nile at this spot, towards ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... priceless jewel entrusted to him. He watched it by day and by night for its safe keeping, but was always troubled by the thought that he might lose it. When, therefore, the owner of the jewel came to take it back, the man was happy, because he no longer had to fear for the safety ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... of course, many forms of that priceless gift. Different temperaments will interpret it differently. Various experiences will produce variations of the blessing. A man may make a failure in his affairs and yet remain happy. The spiritual and inner life is a thing apart from material success. Even a man who, ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... was to watch Clinch, prevent any robbery by Quintana's gang, somehow discover where the Flaming Jewel had been concealed, take it, and restore it to the beggared young girl whose only financial resource now lay in the possible recovery of this almost priceless gem. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... his fruitful bride, Assumes new force and elevates his pride. No more, recumbent o'er his finger'd style, He plods whole years each copy to compile, Leaves to ludibrious winds the priceless page, Or to chance fires the treasure of an age; But bold and buoyant, with his sister Fame, He strides o'er earth, holds high his ardent flame, Calls up Discovery with her tube and scroll, And points the trembling magnet to the pole. Hence the brave Lusitanians stretch the sail, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... up his banjo and waxed sentimental. Nan lay among her cushions and listened in sympathetic silence. Undeniably Jerry knew how to make music, and he also knew when to stop—a priceless ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Bede's History. Roger of Hoveden is of high value for Henry II.'s time, but for that of Richard and the first year of John he is really admirable. No circumstance is too trivial for his pen, and in this garrulous diffuseness many touches are preserved of priceless worth to us, with which better authors would have ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... writing; when, after long fasting and meditation among the desert hills, under the glorious eastern stars, he came down and told his good Kadijah that he had found a great thing, and that she must help him to write it down. And what was this which seemed to the unlettered camel-driver so priceless a treasure? Not merely that God was one God—vast as that discovery was—but that he was a God "who showeth to man the thing which he knew not;" a "most merciful God;" a God, in a word, who could be trusted; a God who would teach and strengthen; a God, as he ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... have nothing that can properly be called a biography of Jacob Behmen, we have ample amends made to us in those priceless morsels of autobiography that lie scattered so plentifully up and down all his books. And nothing could be more charming than just those incidental and unstudied utterances of Behmen about himself. Into the very depths of a passage of the profoundest speculation ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... property of the monasteries was confiscated, the Hotel de Cluny was sold, and passed at last, in 1833, into the hands of M. du Sommerard, a zealous antiquary, who began the priceless collection of works of art which it contains. He died in 1842, and the Government then bought the house and museum, and united it with the Roman ruin at its back under the title of Musee des Thermes et de l'Hotel de Cluny. Since that time many further objects ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... were a challenge to the men of the seaboard to seize upon the rich trade of the West which had been early monopolized by the French in Canada. But the challenge brought its difficult problems. What land canoes could compete with the flotillas that brought their priceless cargoes of furs each year to Montreal and Quebec? What race of landlubbers could vie with the picturesque bands of fearless voyageurs who sang their songs on the Great Lakes, the Ohio, the Illinois, and ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... not pause to detail the calamities which slavery has entailed upon our race in the domain of the family. Every one knows how it has pulled down every pillar and shattered every priceless fabric. But now that we have begun the life of freedom we should attempt the repair of this, the noblest of all the structures of human life. The basis of all human progress and of all civilization is the family. ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... daughter for nothing ... our own, our only daughter, the light of our eyes, our priceless jewel—you've trodden her into the mire, that's what you've done! ...
— The Live Corpse • Leo Tolstoy
... miserable and tantalising a thought, Miss Lavington, to those who know that a priceless spirit is near them, which might be one with theirs through all eternity, like twin stars in one common atmosphere, for ever giving and receiving wisdom and might, beauty and bliss, and yet are barred from their bliss by some invisible adamantine wall, against which they must beat ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... in pedagogical insight, which paints with master-strokes the relations of husband and wife, parents and children, master and servants, friend and friend, enemy and enemy, and the dignity of labor as well as the necessity of its division. This priceless book forms a side-piece from the theocratic stand-point to the Republic of Plato and his laws on ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... successful doctors in Paris. I found both her history and her personality highly interesting, and her experience no doubt will be a severe shock to many Americans who flatter themselves that we alone of all women possess the priceless gift of ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the cost of victory. There was a terrible flippancy in the irrepressible spirit of trade which had seized upon the nation's emblems, freshly consecrated in the blood of her sons, and was turning them to commercial account,—advertising, in symbols of death and priceless devotion, that ribbons or soap or candy were for sale. The flag was, so to speak, dirt-cheap. You could wear it in a hatband or a necktie; you could deface it, or tear it in two, in opening an envelope addressed to ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... affecting to have been stirred by the mere impulse of elegant idleness. Under the affectedly careless scrutiny of the hostess he falls dramatically into an attitude of awed entrancement. Reverently he gazes upon the priceless bibelots within: the mother-of-pearl fan, half open; the tiny cup and saucer of Sevres on their brass easel; the miniature Cupid and Psyche in marble; the Japanese wrestlers carved in ivory; the ballet-dancer ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... Early in the present century Lord Elgin, the English Ambassador to the Porte, interested himself in having the sculptures found in the ruins taken to England. In 1812 eighty chests containing these priceless works of the greatest sculptor who ever lived were placed in Burlington House, and a few years later Parliament purchased them for L35,000, and they were placed in the British Museum, where they now are. There ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... sacrifice, much less self-torturing penance. What he demands is the heart. The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit. A broken and a contrite heart he will not despise. It is such utterances as these which have given, for now many hundred years, their priceless value to the little book of Psalms ascribed to the shepherd outlaw of the Judaean hills. It is such utterances as these which have sent the sound of his name into all lands, and his words throughout all the world. Every form of ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... plot. Miko, we were convinced, had been the Martian who followed Snap and me from Halsey's office in Greater New York. George Prince had doubtless been the invisible eavesdropper outside the radio room. He knew, and had told the others that Grantline had found that priceless metal on the Moon and that the Planetara would stop there on ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... at last, love's utmost measure, Giving, give the whole; Keep back nothing of the treasure Of thy priceless soul: Hold with both hands out unto him Thy chalice, let him drain The nectar of its dearest draught, Till not ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... literary occupation. It was Mark Twain's belief that if Orion would record in detail his long, weary struggle, his succession of attempts and failures, his past dreams and disappointments, along with his sins of omission and commission, it would make one of those priceless human documents such as have been left by Benvenuto ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... was feared by many that the bivouac, the camp-fires, and the march would accustom the ears of their bright and innocent boys to obscenity, oaths, and blasphemy, and forever destroy that purity of mind and soul which was their priceless possession when they bid farewell to home and mother. Some feared the destruction of the battle-field; the wiser feared hardship and disease; and others, more than all, the destruction of morals and everything good and pure in character. That the fears of the last named were realized ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... sweet sake with other kings hath vied, Still craving union with me and suing for my sight! Whenas En Nebhan strove to win my grace, himself to me With camel- loads he did commend of musk and camphor white, And aloes-wood, to boot, he brought and caskets full of pearls And priceless rubies and the like of costly gems and bright; Yea, and black slaves he proffered me and slave-girls big with child And steeds of price, with splendid arms and trappings rich bedight. Raiment of silk and sendal, too, he brought to us for gift, And me in marriage sought therewith; yet, all his ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... person may be plunged and replunged like Schiller's diver into seas of the unknown. But, unlike the doomed hero, he returns triumphant, grasping the priceless truth that his mind is not crippled, not limited to the infirmity of his senses. The world of the eye and the ear becomes to him a subject of fateful interest. He seizes every word of sight and hearing because his sensations compel it. Light and colour, of which he has no tactual evidence, ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... group of guards, who escorted the small package of priceless metal to the space-ship, and before the massive door was sealed the friends bade each ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... the morning? Spenser's Allegories are as native to him as his dreams; and if Milton has now and then carried off a load which belonged to another, it was a load which only a giant's arm could lift, and which he added to a caravan of priceless wealth, the native ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... under a splendid, powerful, and growing nationality, they are too conscious of the dignity and glory of the American character ever to be willing to fall from that high estate without a struggle which shall fully demonstrate their lofty patriotism and their intelligent appreciation of the priceless political and social structure they seek to preserve for the benefit of the whole country and of the world. The history of Europe, and indeed the experience of the entire human race, have taught them the immense value of a mighty continental organization, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... powers were painfully constituting themselves, there was a priceless interval for action. The king had given way to the middle class; the nobles would succumb to the lower, and the rural democracy would be emancipated like the urban. This is the second phase of that reign of terror which, as Malouet says, began with the Bastille. Experience ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... bands are steel To souls that yearn for Heaven; Avaunt Earth's pride! Deep Hell shall hide Hearts that for fame have striven. Far be lust of earthly pleasure, Purity, our priceless treasure, Christ shall grant us of His store. What word shall ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... As for the "Glades," it is kept by Mr. Dailey in the grand old Southern style, and the visitor, very likely for the first time in his life, feels that he is at home. It is a curious thing that the sentiment of the English inn, the priceless and matchless feeling of comfort, has now completely left the mother-country to take refuge with some fine old Maryland or Virginia landlord, whose ideas were formed before the war. We have at the "Glades" a specimen. In Captain ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... and several kings of the turf were brought out for inspection. We were taken all over the place, and many things of interest were shown us. A Bible and powder-horn, once the property of Daniel Boone, books with the autograph of Henry Clay, duelling pistols, quaint and almost priceless silver and china, and a rare collection of old prints and family portraits. The walls in one room were fairly lined with cups, the trophies of ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... books down from their shelves and showed them in turn to his 'young friend,' never pausing in his discourse. His hands grew caressing as he touched each volume bound in priceless leather or material. A subtle smile played continually round his lips, and a gleam as of madness flashed from time ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... splendid apartment, only used upon state occasions, lighted, I should think, with at least two or three hundred wax candles, which threw a soft glow over the panelled and pictured walls, the priceless antique furniture, and the bejewelled ladies who were gathered there. To my mind there never was and never will be any artificial light to equal that of wax candles in sufficient quantity. The company was large; I think thirty sat down to dinner that night, which was given to introduce ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... superior to a subordinate, as if fearing remonstrance. General Kirby Smith marched north of Shreveport on the 16th, and three days thereafter I received a dispatch from his "chief of staff" informing me that the pontoon train, asked for in vain when it would have been of priceless value, would be sent back from his army and placed at my disposition. Doubtless General Kirby Smith thought that a pontoon train would supply the place of seven thousand infantry and ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... have cried aloud at this wanton destruction of what she would have regarded as priceless, but she dared make no sign, although she was trembling in ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Bessie rejoiced in full deliverance from her taste for novel-reading, and her interest in her mother's talks returned. As they read the Bible together and praised God for the precious truths it contained, cherishing them within their hearts as priceless treasures, Bessie's understanding seemed to open, and she was able to comprehend many of the deep truths of God's Word. The reading of God's Word gave her such unbounding joy, such complete spiritual happiness, that nothing could compare ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... the memory of Metz might haunt the imagination of the Elector. That priceless citadel, fraudulently extorted by Henry II. as a forfeit for assistance to the Elector of Saxony three quarters of a century before, gave solemn warning to Brandenburg of what might be exacted by a greater Henry, should success be due ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the trouble of an answer," interposed Ronayne, as he took the arm which had just disengaged itself from that of the commandant, and placed it within his own, "until you have set your seal to the priceless gift," and his eyes looked all the intensity of his feeling; "I part not with ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... notebooks—those priceless materials for the final edition of Athenaeus—they were empty, mere blank pages! Only in that labelled "No. 1" was there a scrap of the old scholar's handwriting, ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the Court of Berlin, and had spared nothing in the way of promises and assurances of friendship to win the King over to his side. The neutrality of Prussia was of no great service to France: its support would have been of priceless value, rendering any attack upon France by Russia or Austria almost impossible, and thus enabling Napoleon to throw his whole strength into the combat with Great Britain. In the spring of 1804, the King of Prussia, uncertain of the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... upon dangerous ground. Can there be salvation for any that may not partake of the Paschal lamb? Is not exclusion from this feast exclusion from pardoning grace? Oh that there could be a Lamb whose blood could take away the sins of all the world—a Sacrifice of such priceless worth, that not in Jerusalem alone, but through all the earth, there might be forgiveness, and hope, and salvation for all who in faith partake ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... them to loving them. And at last he became their fond, devoted slave. It is true that fear was to White Fang only the beginning of wisdom; but that is precisely what Solomon says. Afterwards the brave old wolf learned fearlessness; but the early lessons taught by fear were still of priceless value, for to courage they added caution; and courage wedded to caution ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... convention, constituted all public knowledge of the details of the meeting. But in the year mentioned above, Madison's papers were purchased by the National Government, and among them was found a number of little home-made books containing his priceless "Notes on the Convention." In the introductory pages, Madison tells how he carried out his determination to preserve a record of the debates for the ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... all he has vouchsafed to us in the past, and with the prayer that henceforth peace may be the priceless boon of all nations, we await the dawn of the new century, and turn our faces hopefully to ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... this man never to be prodigal in the display of energy. He usually sat when there was no need for standing; he always considered speech to be golden, but silence, to his way of thinking, was priceless. And like most men of such opinion he ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... He ventured once to let the midnight hour pass without calling Laura, but he ventured no more; there was that about her rebuke when he tried to explain, that taught him that to let her sleep when she might be ministering to her father's needs, was to rob her of moments that were priceless in her eyes; he perceived that she regarded it as a privilege to watch, not a burden. And, he had noticed, also, that when midnight struck, the patient turned his eyes toward the door, with an expectancy in them which presently grew into a longing but brightened into contentment as ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... I am strong—in truth Stronger than I have been in years; and soon I shall feel young again as in my youth, My glorious youth—life's one great priceless boon. ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... would make an immense difference in the value of their collections if certain countries were absorbed or abolished or allowed to go on. For instance, suppose anyone had a complete set of Albelian stamps, and Albelia wasn't allowed to go on, the set would become almost priceless. Norty says also that heaps of stamp-collectors who have been opposed tooth and nail to Home Rule on principle have been won over by the Coalition with the promise that an absolutely sweet set of Irish stamps would be issued as soon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... said, answering her look, "I will not be silent. While it is due to your generosity that the world does not hear of your heroism as the story would naturally be told, it is your father's right that he should hear it, and know the priceless jewel that he has in his daughter. I know that appearances will be against me. If you can take her view of the matter, sir, I shall be glad, otherwise I cannot help it;" and he related the events as they had actually occurred, softening ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... obedience to superiors when faced by a sudden danger, caused by his fear of the unknown. More than that, the English were in a lucky state of exaltation at the time, and were ready to sacrifice everything to save from destruction what they were told was the ancient, exquisite, and priceless civilization of France. They did save it; but in the prolonged and costly process they learned more than they had known before of that civilization, as well as of their own; and so much of their fear of losing ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... though, mind you, she found the evidence in support of it miserably weak, did he not think that the canonisation of Joan of Arc must have been a terrible smack in the face for St. Paul? He made himself forget in laughter the priceless moment that had passed, and he told himself, as sternly as once in South America he had had to tell himself that he must stop drinking, that her mother had been right, and he must not make love to her ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... as he rushed to the kitchen. He arrived in time to see the lid of the priceless heirloom disappearing in a puddle of pewter. It seemed to the Toomeys that the Fates had singled them out as special objects ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... result in the program's being scrambled. In the classic first-contact SF novel 'The Mote in God's Eye', by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, an alien describes a very difficult task by saying "We juggle priceless eggs in variable gravity." That is a very hackish use of language. See also ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... express my gratitude to Mr. John E. Bruce and Mr. Arthur A. Schomburg, President and Secretary of the Negro Society for Historical Research, for advice, suggestion, and best of all, for help in lending priceless books and manuscripts and for aid in ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... are, I fear, unfit for the world. Your spirit is too pure, too noble for common life. Like some priceless gem, it sparkles with the brilliancy of too many virtues for the ordinary ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... attributes an immense power in the culture of man. The third is reverence for what is beneath us—to learn to recognise in pain, sorrow, and contradiction, even in those things, odious as they are to flesh and blood—to learn that there lies in these a priceless blessing. And he defines that as being the soul of the Christian religion—the highest of all religions; a height, as Goethe says—and that is very true, even to the letter, as I consider—a height to which the human ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... were numerous along the Mississippi, as De Soto had found a century and more earlier. About thirty miles below the Missouri they came to another village of peaceful natives, whose souls they made happy by a few trifling gifts which were of priceless worth to their untutored minds. Then downward still they went for a hundred miles or more farther, to the mouth of another great stream, this one flowing from the east, and as noble in its milder way as the Missouri had been in its turbulent flow. Unlike the latter, this ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... brothers of antiquity,—of our Socrates and Cato,—whose lives provoke us to sympathetic greatness across the interval of two thousand years. As long as the ancient languages are the means of access to the ancient mind, they must ever be of priceless value to humanity; but surely these avenues might be kept open without making such sacrifices as that above referred to, universal. We have conquered and possessed ourselves of continents of land, concerning which antiquity knew nothing; and if new continents of thought reveal themselves ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... done it will be quite time enough to give me the answer that I expect. Meanwhile, for the first time in my life, allow me the luxury of being in earnest. To me it is a new sensation, and therefore very priceless. May I go on?" ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... she can rejoice that he is out of danger, we will; I am content to know him near. It makes all much easier. And, mother, he will find all ready to own what a priceless treasure he sent before him in ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it, and went. Over and over again she had brought intelligence of an Arab movement, news of a contemplated razzia, warning of an internal revolt, or tidings of an encounter on the plains, that had been of priceless value to the army which she served. It was not lightly that Cigarette's words were ever received when she spoke as she spoke now; nor was it impossible that she now brought to them that which would brook ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... to you it is just a glorious lark; Scorn of danger is still your creed. As you open her out and advance your spark And humour the throttle to get more speed, Life has only one end for you, To carry your priceless message through! ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... veritable treasure mines of information concerning our early Pacific Coast history, and the correspondence of many an old family and the living memory of many an individual pioneer can still furnish priceless records of a later period. Professor Stephens has elaborated a practical scheme for making available all these sources of historical information through the providence of these fellowships, as ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis
... parish church in their place under the name of Christ Church. It was probably in order to render the old monastic church more convenient as a parish church that they removed much of what to the antiquary of to-day would have seemed of priceless value, and at the same time reduced ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... their canoes laden with the wealth of the coming season, other flotillas were on the little waves of the river, other chiefs made their entrance up the main way of the post, and the goods of the Hudson's Bay Company went out in a stream as the priceless pelts ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... B.C., he presented them with a stele of black marble, on which he had engraved his own portrait, together with a long inscription setting forth his most glorious exploits. They set it up at Kition (Citium), where it has been preserved amongst the ruins, a priceless witness to the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... gallery's profusion of priceless art for the time and went directly to the mummy-case of the ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... suffice if we invoke that adolescent instinct which moves us to merge our individual life—to consolidate it, as the stock-manipulators say—in the world's one great life, our "celestial selfishness" being intuitively assured that our own priceless individuality ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... gone. He had the look of bestowing, and Captain Pharo of witnessing bestowed, upon another, a boon inestimable, priceless, rare. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... warm with rejoicing, has a tragic and terrible significance. It may be worth remark that the Poetry for Children appeared the year after that—most fortunate of years for all students of the higher English drama—which was made nobly memorable by the appearance of the matchless and priceless volume of 'Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who Lived about the Time of Shakespear,' in which the fratricide's apologue is translated at length; so that while some part of Lamb's too rare leisure was given to the gentle "task work" of making rhymes for little children, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... combined with disproportionate destructiveness. Just as a rat will gnaw his way through a Holbein panel, or shred up the Vatican Codex to make a nest, so the professional criminal will melt down priceless medieval plate to sell in lumps for a few shillings. The analogy ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... seized the bottle, but not to hurl it on the ground as Rosa had bidden him; he clasped it nervously to his breast, as if it were a priceless treasure that must ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... world, with the blessings of liberty all around us, we do not realize the priceless boon they are to us; but when we stand in the presence of the perils that are undertaken in order to gain them when deprived of their benefits, we begin to comprehend the real value of these ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... have not only blown up Coucy, but that other priceless relic, the Tower of the Grand Constable and the entire historic Chateau of Ham, and equally the Castle of Peronne, a jewel of beauty—all in one corner of the Vallois! On the smoking wreck of Peronne, they left ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... steadfast courage and consummate ability with which he fought the battle of intellectual freedom, and insisted that people should be allowed to speak their honest convictions without being oppressed or slandered by the orthodox. He was one of those, perhaps the very foremost, who won that priceless freedom for us; and, as is too common, people enter into the labours of the brave, and do not even know what their elders endured, or what ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... them. They were probably worth a considerable sum of money in the British market. Of course we did not lay claim to any part of the spoil of that day, with the exception of a few of the beautiful birds shot on the voyage up the river, which were of no value to the natives, although priceless to me. Alas! when I came to examine them next morning, I found that those destructive creatures the white ants had totally destroyed the greater part of them, and the few that were worth stuffing were ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... appearance of modern work to that of the old, instinct with life, full of the thoughts of the builders and workers in wood and stone, whose bones have mouldered into dust in the garth of the vanished cloisters, and whose very names have in many cases been forgotten, yet we hope that those who have this priceless treasure in their keeping may recognise ere it is too late, that the result of a continuance of the process of restoration commenced about the middle of the nineteenth century will be the gradual conversion of a splendid memorial of bygone ages ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... not slice the sleeve in her dress and inflict this priceless boon on her with affectionate violence. Even the hero of Dr. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... much covet, is not a solitary plant. Always by its side is justice. But Justice is nothing but right applied to human affairs. Do not forget, I entreat you, that with the highest morality is the highest liberty. A great poet, in one of his inspired sonnets, speaking of his priceless possession, has said, "But who loves that must first be wise and good." Therefore do Pilgrims in their beautiful example teach liberty, teach republican institutions, as at an earlier day, Socrates and Plato, in their lessons of wisdom, taught liberty and helped the idea of the republic. ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... pearl is all unworthy. It chafes and frets within the cruel grasp which an ungleaming pebble might fill as well. It would glow in the sunlight of your fostering care. It would enrich your soul as a priceless gem; as an amaranthine flower it would breathe unto your heart an ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... the reverse of disagreeable. But in the work which is not quite so excellent, other symptoms appear which are as decisive and less tolerable. In the poetry of the time there appear, side by side with much exquisite melody and much priceless thought, the strangest blotches, already more than once noticed, of doggerel, of conceits pushed to the verge of nonsense and over the verge of grotesque, of bad rhyme and bad rhythm which are evidently ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... you were surrounded by those who would try to obtain possession of that jewel you would not entrust it to a blind or a deaf watchman or one so ignorant of the wiles of the robbers that he would trustingly allow it to pass into their possession. There is nothing in the world so priceless to the father and mother as the virtue and happiness of their daughter. And yet there are thousands of parents who have been entrusted with the care of a daughter who are trying to discharge that trust with their eyes blinded and their ears closed. They insist upon keeping the childish belief ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... and was standing at his window, puffing at his pipe and absently staring into the street, reluctant to turn to work. He had been calculating, rather cynically, during his meal, on the meagre returns paid by the world for any labor requiring the cream of thought and talent: work priceless, indeed, so far as roubles went, but comparing badly in actual recompense with mere, mechanical labor. The subject still occupied him in its way, when his attention was drawn from it to the behavior of the only person to be seen in that little-frequented thoroughfare. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... good, Of womankind she stands alone, Unconscious of her priceless worth— A queen on ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... beautiful of all his letters, in which he lays bare his very heart and every sentence glows with love more tender than a woman's. When the slave Onesimus was sent back to Colossae, he received, as the branch of peace to offer to his master, the exquisite little Epistle to Philemon, a priceless monument of Christian courtesy. He carried, too, a letter addressed to the church of the town in which his master lived, the Epistle ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... Zeyn Alasnam, the enchanted mirror was able to reflect character, and was called the Touchstone of Virtue. Here again we have Hamlet's idea of holding the mirror up to Nature. The young King, Zeyn Alasnam, had eight beautiful statues of priceless value, and he wanted a ninth to make up his set. The difficulty was to find one beautiful enough; but the Prince of Spirits promised to supply one as soon as Zeyn should bring him a maiden at least fifteen years old, ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... the Amsterdam Jews are diamond cutters and polishers. You may see in certain cafes dealers in these stones turning over priceless little heaps of them with the long little finger-nail which they ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... Europe, and had these translated for the benefit of scholars. He had been in the habit of conciliating Alfonso of Naples by a present of gold and jewels, but as soon as a copy of Livy, the Latin historian, came to his hand, he sent the priceless treasure to his ally, knowing that the Neapolitan prince had an enormous reverence for learning. Cosimo, in truth, never coveted such finds for his own private use, but was always generous in exhibiting ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... the heaven of their infancy,—to banish those reveries of innocent fancy which even noisy boyhood knows, and which are the appointed guardians of its purity before conscience wakes,—to abolish its moments of priceless idleness, saturated with sunshine, blissful, aimless moments, when every angel is near,—to bring insanity, once the terrible prerogative of maturer life, down into the summer region of childhood, with blight and ruin;—all this is the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... chambers. Its weight, as I learned from Simon, was exactly one hundred and forty carats. Here was an amazing coincidence. The hand of Destiny seemed in it. On the very evening when the spirit of Leeuwenhoek communicates to me the great secret of the microscope, the priceless means which he directs me to employ start up within my easy reach! I determined, with the most perfect deliberation, to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... reenforced by the dictates of the noblest and most elevated of human interests—the interests of a nation, of a continent, yea, of the world itself; for our gates are still open to the ingress of our brothers from abroad, and our immense and fertile domain, as well as our priceless institutions, are freely offered ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a proper focus to the matter, and this collection of beautiful things made by people dead these two thousand years is now known to be absolutely priceless, almost as much so as the Elgin Marbles, taken from the Parthenon at Athens and which now repose in the British Museum, the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... the proportion will be found greater than that upon the aggregate remainder belonging to the rest of the nation. Life is the same blessing for all ranks alike. But certainly, though for all it is intrinsically the same priceless jewel, there is in the setting of this jewel something more radiantly brilliant to him who inherits a place amongst the British nobility, than to him whose prospects have been clouded originally by the doubts ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... deposits of radioactive ore in Utah in what is known as the Poor Little Rich Valley, a valley so named because from being about the barrenest and most unproductive mineral or agricultural hole in the hills, the sudden discovery of the radioactive deposits has made it almost priceless." ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... tall bronze candelabra, and of the two great footmen in knee breeches who sleep in the big armchairs, made drowsy by the heavy warmth of the hot-air stove. She thought of the long salons fatted up with ancient silk, of the delicate furniture carrying priceless curiosities, and of the coquettish perfumed boudoirs made for talks at five o'clock with intimate friends, with men famous and sought after, whom all women envy and ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... at this present moment, is deaf to the charms of conversation, his young mind being nobly bent on proving to his sister (a priceless treasure of six) that the salt-cellar planted between them belongs not to her, but to him! This sounds reasonable, but the difficulty lies in making Mabel believe it. There comes the pause eloquent at last, and then, I regret to ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... despatched to Cirey; gold-amber trinkets for Madame, perhaps an amber inkholder for Monsieur: priceless at Cirey as the gifts of the very gods. By and by, a messenger goes express: the witty Colonel Keyserling, witty but experienced, whom we once named at Reinsberg; he is to go and see with his eyes, since his Master cannot. What a messenger there; ambassador ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... but Polybius endeavored to restrain them. The historian went to Carthage, however, and while he was away disputes were stirred up which gave Rome an excuse for interfering. Corinth was taken with circumstances of barbarous cruelty, and plundered of its priceless works of art, the rough and ignorant Roman commander sending them to Italy, after making the contractors agree to replace any that might be lost with others of equal value! With Corinth fell the liberties of Greece; a Roman province took the place of the ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... are, even in your loss, fortunate in this. He left behind him a name unsullied, and which should be a priceless legacy to his children and to you. His life was so pure and his Christian faith so undoubted, that we may feel the blessed assurance that he has gone to the home prepared for those who love and faithfully ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke |
