"Sublime" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... What a sublime self-repression there was in the Master! Not one word escapes from His lips of the personal pain and agony into which He had to plunge and be baptized, before that day could dawn. All that was crushed down and kept back, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... originality, and by fantastic energy both of conception and of execution. He delighted to study Nature, not in the lovely attractiveness of green meadows, flourishing fields, sweet-smelling groves, murmuring springs, but in the sublime as seen in towering masses of rock, in the wild sea-shore, in savage inhospitable forests; and the voices that he loved to hear were not the whisperings of the evening breeze or the musical rustle of leaves, but the roaring of the hurricane and the thunder ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Croustillac was sublime in his impudence and coolness; he answered Mortimer with an accent of melancholy reproach: "Exile and adversity must indeed have changed me much if my best friend no longer recognizes me!" Then, half-turning toward De Chemerant, the chevalier ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... side, whilst in nooks and cozy places are inviting seats for the weak and weary to rest awhile, and gain breath to enable them to pursue their journey upwards. The Obelisk, as it is called, stands on the highest point; the view from it on every side is unrivalled for beauty—the sublime it has not—but the beautiful is perfect. The mountains, which yesterday morning at sea, gave the first glimmering indication of the Irish coast, assume new shapes, and are thrown into new combinations. Inland, the landscape stretches on till it ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... was sublime. He was so transcendently unconscious of the emotions going on in Mr. Bernard's mind at the moment, that he ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Thus, Botticini's famous "Assumption," painted for Matteo Palmieri, and now in the National Gallery, already passed in Vasari's time for a Botticelli, and the attribution at Karlsruhe of the quaint and winning "Nativity" to the sublime, unyielding Piero della Francesca is surely nothing more than the echo of the real ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... must e'en linger on a note of sublimity in this petition of Symmachus: of sublime faith;—when he makes Dea Roma refer to her history as having "hitherto flowed in an uninterrupted course of piety." It makes one think that they taught Roman history in their schools then much in the same way that we teach our national ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Hibernian in all moral respects; but the remark is more applicable to Spain than to Ireland, as in the former country foreign statesmen have more than once made Spanish policy ridiculous by taking that one step which separates that quality from the sublime. What in the person of a Castilian is at the worst but Quixotic becomes in the foreigner, or man of foreign descent, the merest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... sleep was full of nightmares, and I had a relapse. The news was worse every day. After Saint-Privat came Gravelotte, where 36,000 men, French and German, were cut down in a few hours. Then came the sublime but powerless efforts of MacMahon, who was driven back as far as Sedan; ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... combination of both. The soul, the spirit, had its share in producing this incomparable picture. It was to behold the play of those noble features, to watch the changing cheek, the varying smile, the falling lash, the flashing eye, the glance now tender, now sublime—it was to look on all this, and be impressed with an idea of ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... certainly well suited to the taste of French soldiers, who, as Bourrienne remarks, are wonderfully pleased with grandiloquence, metaphor, and hyperbole, though they do not always understand what they mean. Even a French author of some distinction praises this address as something sublime. "The proclamation to the army," says he, "is full of energy: it could not fail to make all military imaginations vibrate. That prophetic phrase, 'The eagle, with the national colours, will fly from church steeple to church ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... veins, in their tapering formation and perfect filbert nails, I read a likeness whose prototype, struggle how I would, I could not recall. Gradually the hand moved upwards, and, reaching the throat, the fingers set to work, at once, to remove the wrappings. My terror was now sublime! I dare not imagine, I dare not for one instant think, what I should see! And there was no getting away from it; I could not stir an inch, not the fraction of an inch, and the ghastly revelation would take place within a ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... Stations of Life, are indispensably obliged to exert some noble Inclinations for the Service of the World, or else such Advantages become Misfortunes, and Shade and Privacy are a more eligible Portion. Where Opportunities and Inclinations are given to the same Person, we sometimes see sublime Instances of Virtue, which so dazzle our Imaginations, that we look with Scorn on all which in lower Scenes of Life we may our selves be able to practise. But this is a vicious Way of Thinking; and it bears some Spice of romantick Madness, for a Man to imagine that he must grow ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... alone, could do; and his achievement is unique in throwing all the glamour of romance over a fragment 'sublime ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... it was one of the most pathetic aspects of his earthly ministry that he could not tell all his mind to his followers. They were not able to bear it; they were too rude and limited to take it in. He had to carry his deepest thoughts out of the world with him unuttered, trusting with a sublime faith that the Holy Ghost would lead his Church to grasp them in the course of its subsequent development. Even what he did utter was ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... image! The image of God! These words were never before spoken in my ears. I have never thought that I myself might bear the image of God. Who has suggested to you this unheard-of and sublime idea? ...
— Theobald, The Iron-Hearted - Love to Enemies • Anonymous
... at its entrance, where, as you stand at the other end of the valley, you see a bare, bleak mountain, standing as it were to guard the entrance. It is without exception, the most beautiful place I ever visited, and from thence we proceeded to Dove-Dale, without question tremendously sublime. Here we dined in a cavern, by the side of a divine little spring. We returned to Derby, quite exhausted with the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... voice to know why I quoted them in my review "with approval." Suppose I did not comprehend their important relation to the subject from your point of view? But I do understand enough to know that the "social compunction" in Aristotle's day was a mere theory, a sublime doctrine practised by a few, whereas now it is a great governing principle, a dynamic power in the social order of mankind. And I challenge your accuracy in calling such social sympathy "only a rumour in ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... split differences and sacrifice principles to expediency it became impossible even to the least observant of Mr. Wilson's adherents in the Old World to cling any longer to the belief that his cosmic policy was inspired by firm intellectual attachment to the sublime ideas of which he had made himself the eloquent exponent and had been expected to make himself the uncompromising champion. In every such surrender to the Great Powers, as in every stern enforcement of his principles on the lesser states, the same practical spirit of the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... anxiety, they were just in time to see Rasalama led forward by two men armed with spears. In front of them was a shallow ditch, and a little further on the brow of the precipice, from which was seen a magnificent prospect of the surrounding country. But no prospect, however sublime, could have attracted the eyes of the three friends just then, for in front of them stood two crosses supporting the bodies of two Christians who had been crucified thereon the day before. Even these, however, lost their horrible ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... and all that was so evidently God's. It will be seen that she felt in no way compelled to advise him of this her backsliding. I doubt whether such a perversion of her magnificent course of action ever occurred to her. It was magnificent, for it entailed a high disregarding stroke; it implied a sublime confidence of what the end would be, a capacity to wait and endure. She smiled buoyantly, in the intervals of arranging it, at the idea that Stephen Arnold stood beyond ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... We believed, in our sublime self-conceit, that the difficulty of life would lie solely in the direction of losing these precious ideals of ours, of failing to follow the way of martyrdom and high purpose we had marked out for ourselves, and ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... proportion to the capacity of the heart; and yet some of the greatest of those have reposed so supremely in the innate and ineffable Ideal that to the uninitiated they have seemed in their serenity as pulseless as pearls. Through this sublime influence lovely women have become nuns, and have lived and died saints, that they might continually indulge and constantly cherish the blissful hope of being, in some spiritual form, the brides of Jesus. A long line ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... was not the O'Shaughnessy custom to break news gently, or in a circuitous fashion, and the moment Sylvia entered the doorway, Bridgie flew at her with outstretched arms, crying incoherently, and with sublime disregard ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... "Sublime! colossal!" he would cry enraptured. "If I had known it was anything like that, I'd have stopped another day and ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... two ways in which a father can lose his son. One is by talking too much, the other's by not talking enough. The old trouble of the devil and the deep, blue sea; the frying-pan and the fire. Come, we've been bandying the sublime; let's get down to the level of stomachs and smile. The greatest thing about man is the range ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... saved western society from dissolution owe all to St. Paul, Hildebrand, Luther, Calvin; but the spiritual life of the west during all these generations has burnt with the pure flame first lighted by the sublime mystic of the Galilean hills. Aristotle acquired for men much knowledge and many instruments for gaining more; but it is Plato, his master, who moves the soul with love of truth and enthusiasm for excellence. There is peril ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... brown, yellow, and red, across which the sun poured like a stream of oil. The light, without which one could see the stars concealed in the back ground, fell upon the stone, and gilded it as if by fire. That was all. A first stupid attempt at dealing with light, burning rays, the sublime. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... beautiful and sublime truths from Emerson's essays. (How did they ever have commencements before Emerson?) But that is not knowing them. You cannot know them until you have lived them. It is a grand thing to say, "Beyond ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... Nothing. The force of steam was marvellous,—talking over a wire mysterious; but here I was in a great ship riding among the planets and the stars. I had likened Niagara to a vast mill-dam, because I could find no peer to set beside it; so now, in my weakness, the sublime pageant of the "Flying Cloud" could search out nothing higher in my recollection with which to compare it than a wild, ride of my youth in a canoe, for a half mile or so, down the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the unceasing metal fingers that are the children of men's brains throbbed steadily, and the screw of the little vessel drove her on to her work of rescue. On deck, the Coast Guard men, clear-eyed and determined, handled their day's routine with a sublime disregard of the dangers of the sea. Other vessels might scurry to safe harbors, but the Miami, flying the colors of Uncle Sam, set out on her mission to save, with never a ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... to rest his cheek upon his left hand and stood gazing with a ridiculous look of sublime satisfaction at the top of the stone with its suppositious rifle, towards which he advanced upon the tips of his toes, pretended to lift it off, and bore it once more to the pigmy, laid it before him and knelt down to begin talking to him in ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... that. Then I brought you upon the scene; and, without flattering you in the least, I must say that your opening act was a perfect success. I was concealed behind the curtain, and saw your first interview; it was sublime! She saw you, and loved you: you spoke a few words ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... divine law, and live in open rebellion to the Christian rule He came to establish. God Almighty help us, if we expect to get to heaven in any other way than by the Cross of Christ! Think of it! The Cross of Christ! Can you associate with those words, so dear, so sublime, to every Catholic heart, aught of this world's ease, or luxury, or happiness? How many thousands saintly souls have flung aside all that the world could offer sweet and beautiful to embrace this hard, this cruel Cross! And meet they no reward? Hard Cross and cruel to eyes not ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... was magnificent in its proof of the sublime conviction of the truth of his belief: "The existence of an orchid with a slender nectary eleven inches in length, and with nectar secreted at its tip, is a conclusive demonstration of the existence ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... the end very deliberately, flicking the ash from time to time towards the raging water below. When he had quite finished, he stretched his arms wide with a gesture of sublime self-confidence, faced about, and very ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... order of truths to a person's sublime conviction of himself, comes the attraction of one person for another, and all that we mean ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... atoms question how they feel sensation? Or dust make suggestion of its own creation? Yet if man were better than his base conditions, Could things baser fetter his sublime ambitions? ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... of him only in symbolic words, designating him by some periphrasis: Pharaoh, "Pirui-Aui," the Double Palace, "Pruiti," the Sublime Porte, His Majesty,* the Sun of the two lands, Horus master of the palace, or, less ceremoniously, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... shaking like an aspen, Aunt Lizzie clung tightly to Miss Mercy. The scenery was sublime, but they had no eye for it. Their gaze was riveted upon the edge of the precipice some six or eight inches from the outer wheels of the surrey, and life at the moment looked as sweet as it ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... drop it till you have turned the last page."—Cleveland Leader. "Its very audacity of motive, of execution, of solution, almost takes one's breath away. The boldness of its denouement is sublime."—Boston Transcript. "The literary hit of a generation. The best of it is the story deserves all its success. A masterly story."—St. Louis Dispatch. "The story is ingeniously told, and ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... of the Enquirer John Aubrey Jones said: "What an inspiration it was to see and hear Mrs. Blake-Alverson sing. Physically infirm, but vocally strong and pregnant, her pure, limpid birdlike notes thrilled and stirred the soul and tears to the eyes did unbidden come. It was eloquence sublime set to the all-subdivining rhythmical harmony of divine music, rendered by a master whose spirit was enwrapped. The writer felt an uplift in patriotic fervor that was a joyous inspiration and so ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... once raised himself into a kneeling position, and commenced repeating the sublime prayer of the Christian. The rough sailor knelt alongside of him, and with hands crossed over his breast in a supplicating attitude, listened attentively, now and then joining in the words of the prayer, whenever some ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... trust, when Christian churches in the United States shall return to follow the sublime examples of the founders of Christianity; shall practise and diffuse that spirit of love in which is all freedom, all toleration and co-operation; shall welcome science and philosophy, and become the centre of all cooperative efforts ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... can make more sublime his utter self-abandonment for the sake of the people among whom he had just been flaming in wrath, and smiting like a destroying angel. That was a great soul which had for its poles such justice and such love. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... in Harvey's arrangements; and not to make a needless number of words about it, the poor man was regularly robbed by a shopman, whose dexterity in pitching a guinea into the drawer, so as to make it jump, unseen, with a jerk into his hand, was worthy of Herr Dobler, or any other master of the sublime art of jugglery. ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... utilizing it in the guise of an apologue or parable. Alike for wedding-feasts and funerals, for banquets and days of fasting, the garden of the Haggada is rifled of its fragrant blossoms and luscious fruits. Simplicity, grace, and childlike merriment pervade its fables, yet they are profound, even sublime, in their truth. "Their chief and enduring charm is their fathomless depth, their unassuming loveliness." Poems constructed with great artistic skill do not occur. Here and there a modest bud of lyric poesy shyly raises its head, like the following couplet, describing a celebrated ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... love is of the immortal, And patience is sublime, And trouble a thing of every day, And touching every time; And childhood sweet and sunny, And womanly truth and grace, Ever call light life's darkness And bless earth's lowliest place. —Mrs. ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... still came to think that Religion, as such, consisted in something short of intellectual exercises, viz., in the affections, in the imagination, in inward persuasions and consolations, in pleasurable sensations, sudden changes, and sublime fancies. They learned to believe and to take it for granted, that Religion was nothing beyond a supply of the wants of human nature, not an external fact and a work of God. There was, it appeared, a demand for Religion, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... become weary of his sublimeness, this sublime one, then only will his beauty begin—and then only will I taste him and ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... division. Soon afterwards I joined General Lee, who had in the meanwhile come to that part of the field on becoming aware of the disaster. If Longstreet's conduct was admirable, that of General Lee was perfectly sublime. He was engaged in rallying and in encouraging the broken troops, and was riding about a little in front of the wood, quite alone—the whole of his Staff being engaged in a similar manner further to the rear. His face, which is always placid and cheerful, did not show signs of the slightest ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... fortunate enhancement of the traveler's enjoyment; it seems providential that there is one part of the way just long enough and uninteresting enough to permit one to go to sleep without the fear of missing anything sublime. Leaving Salt Lake City at noon, we sped through the fertile and populous Jordan Valley, past the fresh and lovely Utah Lake, and up the Valley of Spanish Fork. All the way the superb granite walls and summits of the Wahsatch ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... Ottilia; I knew that too well, and worse could not happen. I had besides lost other things that used to sustain me, and being reckless, I was contemptuous, and listened to the talk about money with sublime indifference to the subject: with an attitude, too, I daresay. But Hermann's name revived my torment. Why had he come? to persuade the squire to control my father? Nothing but that would suffer itself to be suggested, though conjectures ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... literary topics furnished us with ample matter for conversation while we were not engaged in contemplating the sublime ruins over which, when the sentinel returned, we climbed. I asked him respecting the literature of Poland, and particularly if there were now any living poets of eminence. He observed: 'Yes, sir, I am happily travelling in company ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... of rest, which possibly existed before, but which received obligatory importance to Israel first by the Sinaitical legislation, so far controls that account of the creation of the world that, next to the sublime perception of the dignity and position of man, it forms its very quintessence. The account makes that divine week of creation, with its six working days and its divine day of rest, the divine prototype and ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... "The supreme, sublime madness of love? Do you not know, surely you do, that every perfect violin is as much man and woman as you and I? The back of the violin is made from the timber of the female tree, the belly of the male tree. The harmony depends ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... simple, and direct, it lifted the hearts of all present up to the throne of God, to the place of strength and of peace. There was no attempt to explain the "mystery of the Providence," but there was a sublime trust that refused to despair even in the presence of ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... insult was too much. His outraged vanity hardened into absolute malice. For the first time he positively hated the man who could be loved better than himself. He forgot the self-sacrifice, the wealth given up to his use—the sublime devotion which had made James Harrington a guardian angel to Mabel's son. He forgot everything save that the noble girl he had married for her wealth—wealth even on her wedding-day half squandered at the gaming table, by an unfaithful guardian, had give the preference of her taste—he ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... temper far too closely resembling her own. Before many days had passed, mistress and attendant found themselves on cool terms, and from this to the extremity of warmth was a step as fatally easy as that from the sublime to the ridiculous. Lady Ogram gave an order; it was imperfectly obeyed. Lady Ogram, her eyes blazing with wrath, demanded an explanation of this neglect; met with inadequate excuses, she thundered and lightened. Any ordinary domestic would have been ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... Swedenborg, Kerner, Ennemoser, Du Prel, Hellenbach, Fichte, Varley, Ashburner, Flammarion, Aksakoff, and a score of others of the highest rank, and criticize if you can the magnificent philosophy of these and of many an ancient writer. Consider the well attested facts and sublime religion that you will find in them, and observe that the facts are a hundred times better attested and a thousand times more critically observed than any of those upon which the world's great religions rest, before ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... with the most consummate science, and a grace and ease I have never seen equalled. He kept me busy defending myself too all the time, and more than once had nearly done for me. His audacity was astonishing, his sang froid superb, and his perfect mastery over his sword, and his temper, sublime—he was not a man, but a god. I could have fallen down and worshipped him. At the risk of being spitted on his sword, I prolonged the fight as much as I dared, so as to enjoy his marvellous, glorious, unparalleled method ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... Naturalism is a perversion of that high instinct in mankind which issues in the old concept of supernaturalism. The supernaturalist, of a former and discredited type, believed that God violates the order of nature for sublime ends; that He "breaks into" His own world, so to speak, "revealing" Himself in prodigious, inexplicable, arbitrary ways. By a sort of degradation of this notion, a perversion of this instinct, the naturalist assumes that he can violate both the ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... by Art. iii. of the Berlin Treaty it was declared hereditary in the family of a prince "freely elected by the population and confirmed by the Sublime Porte with the assent of the powers." According to the constitution of Trnovo, voted by the Assembly of Notables on the 29th of April 1879, revised by the Grand Sobranye on the 27th of May 1893, and modified by the proclamation of a Bulgarian kingdom on the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... to show her how much she lost of the sublime and inspiring things of the past. He took the story of Jesus. It mattered not in the least if it was fiction or fact—it was there, as an achievement of the human spirit. He showed her the man of the gospels—not ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Essays, those of Mirabeau Junior upon Free Trade:—they contain, in condensed shape, everything we were privileged to hear, seventy years later, from all organs, coach-horns, jews-harps and scrannel-pipes, PRO and CONTRA, on the same sublime subject: "God is great, and Plugson of Undershot is his Prophet. Thus saith the Lord, Buy in the cheapest market, sell in the dearest!" To which the afflicted human mind listens what it can;—and after seventy years, mournfully asks itself and Mirabeau, "M. le Comte, would ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... in arm, through every upward grade, From the rude Mongol to the starry Greek, everywhere we seek Union and bond, till in one sea sublime Of love be merged all measure and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... German; but had studied in Italy, and afterwards settled in England, where he met with the most favourable reception, and resided above half a century, universally admired for his stupendous genius in the sublime parts of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... his simplicity, had raised himself to a purer belief than that of the sensuous Roman or the superstitious Gaul. He believed in a single, supreme, almighty God, All-Vater or All-father. This Divinity was too sublime to be incarnated or imaged, too infinite to be enclosed in temples built with hands. Such is the Roman's testimony to the lofty conception of the German. Certain forests were consecrated to the unseen ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the great cholera epidemic in this country—she was left by herself, in a house where all its occupants had fled through fear. Trusting in the God of Israel for protection, she experienced the full force of those sublime words of King David: "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... of nations, A nation's flag's unfurled, Transcending in its martial pride The nations of the world. Though born of war, baptized in blood, Yet mighty from the time, Like fabled phoenix, forth she stood— Dismembered, yet sublime. ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... from a Mercurial Brain, whose wild Chimera's flush the lighter Faculties, which tir'd i'th'vain pursuit of fancy'd Pleasures; a Passion more substantial Courts our Reason, solid, persuasive, elegant, sublime, where ev'ry Sense crowds to the luscious Banquet, and ev'ry nobler ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... no! you rush Headlong into a deed you deem, sublime. Do not deceive yourself: I know you well: Long have you thirsted for it. If your pride But have its fill, what matters it to you Though thousand hearts should break. Oh! now, at length, I comprehend your feelings—'tis the love Of admiration ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... St. John in the Wilderness. The conception of the figure and poetical expression of the face always seemed to me astonishingly fine. Pray, Sir, do you know that picture?" "Perfectly, it partakes of the sublime and is amazingly fine." "Your portrait of Cosmo has the expression of a resolute, determined man, and I think it conveys well the idea of the monstrous parent, who could with his own hand destroy his only surviving son after discovering he had murdered his brother. What a horrible piece ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... description of that visit, mutually paid to that desolate and silent Dinbren. How worthy of yourselves that hour of consecration, with all its tributary sighs! Too happy were the days and weeks which I passed beneath its roof, and in its beautiful and sublime environs, to permit ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin
... fraternal enormities of the Factory and Poorhouse,—the Barracks and Hospital. And the final law in this matter is that, if you require edifices only for the grace and health of mankind, and build them without pretense and without chicanery, they will be sublime on a modest scale, and ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... mirari se, quinam pectora semper impavida repens terror invaserit.... Alpes quidem habitari, coli, {5} gignere atque alere animantes; pervias fauces esse exercitibus. Eos ipsos, quos cernant, legatos non pinnis sublime elatos Alpes transgressos. Ne maiores quidem eorum indigenas, sed advenas Italiae cultores has ipsas Alpes ingentibus saepe agminibus cum {10} liberis ac coniugibus migrantium modo tuto transmisisse. ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... though a stiff breeze from the south blew directly ahead, she stemmed the current with perfect ease, as the tide was a strong ebb. She sailed by the forts and saluted them with her thirty-two pound guns. Her speed was equal to the most sanguine expectations; she exhibited a novel and sublime spectacle to an admiring people. The intention of the Commissioners being solely to try her enginery, no use was made of her sails. After navigating the bay, and receiving a visit from the officers of the French ship of war lying at her anchors, ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle
... danger, the good ship sped merrily on her course; most of the crystallised groups grew closer together—in some instances, however, they burst asunder! Musical tendencies also developed, though in some cases the sublime gave place to the ridiculous, and music actually, once or twice, became a nuisance. As the end of the voyage drew near, the hearty captain grew heartier, the bosom-friends drew closer; the shy passengers opened up; the congenial passengers ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... in succession, every creek and cove, or sandy beach of the lake, every mountain pass or ridge; every grotto or remote valley; every cascade hidden among the rocks of Savoy. We saw more sublime or smiling landscapes, more mysterious solitudes, more enchanted deserts, more cottages hanging on the mountain brow half-way between the clouds and the abyss, more foaming waters in the sloping meadows, more forests of dark pines disclosing their gloomy colonnades and echoing ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... he was a member, warmly patronised the invention. Desirous that the poor, who could not afford to pay Mr. Perkins five guineas, or even five shillings, for his tractors, should also share in the benefits of that sublime discovery, they subscribed a large sum, and built an hospital, called the "Perkinean Institution," in which all comers might be magnetised free of cost. In the course of a few months they were in very general use, and their lucky inventor in ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... world, Friend Chick, that the sleeker we are on the outside, the more ragged we are within. I think I'll move on. I might say something to jar your sense of sublime content. I'd be sorry to do that. Real contentment is a rare thing and must ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... strong feeling that he had better not do so, or was he afraid to? She was in the clouds, far, far away. She seemed in a trance: something, at once painful and sacred, held her enchained. She was both pathetic and sublime, ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... child," replied Father Mathias; "but the Almighty is not only to be worshipped in His works, but, in the closet, with meditation, self-examination, and faith. Hast thou followed up the precepts which thou hast been taught? hast thou reverenced the sublime mysteries which have been unfolded ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and we felt very uncomfortably in the way. At the next station we left and went into the next compartment, which contained nothing but a priest reading his breviary; a dignified ecclesiastic; proving once more that there is only one step from the ridiculous to the sublime. We carefully removed all our small traps, including H.C.'s numerous antique parcels. But he forgot his umbrella, which he had placed up in the rack. A dreadful umbrella, which had been a martyrdom to me ever since we had left England. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... ceiling of the Sistine transcend all description. How give an idea of these countless sublime figures to those who have not trembled and turned pale in this awful temple? The immense superiority of Michelangelo is manifest in this chapel itself, where are paintings of Ghirlandajo, of Signorelli, which pale ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... was drawn out. I was as recluse as ever I had been at the convent, but how different was my seclusion. My time was spent in storing my mind with lofty and poetical ideas; in meditating on all that was striking and noble in history or fiction; in studying and tracing all that was sublime and beautiful in nature. I was always a visionary, imaginative being, but now my reveries and imaginings ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... only to increase her worshippers and enrich her temples. The pupil of Canova, you have inherited his excellences, while you have shunned his errors,—yours his delicacy, not his affectation. Your heart resembles him even more than your genius: you have the same noble enthusiasm for your sublime profession; the same lofty freedom from envy, and the spirit that depreciates; the same generous desire not to war with but to serve artists in your art; aiding, strengthening, advising, elevating the timidity ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... chapel, made me a welcome sojourner beyond the limited period allowed to travellers, and I felt less and less inclined to quit the scene. My amusement was climbing the most frightful precipices, followed by the large and faithful dogs, and viewing nature in her wildest and most sublime attire. At other times, when bodily fatigue required rest, I sat down, with morbid melancholy, in the receptacle for the bodies of those unfortunate persons who had perished in the snow. There would I remain for hours, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... consequent danger of body. Those who hang, in truth deserve to do so; but they who strike, like myself, for reasons that success cannot shake and from a settled, farsighted resolution beyond the power of any emotion to assail, should be safe enough. We rejoice in the sublime mental gratification that follows success: it is our spiritual support, our sustenance ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... brought the wisdom of Asia into Europe, for they invented nothing. Greece was the home of syllogism and of unreason. 'Read Plato: at every page you will draw a striking distinction. As often as he is Greek, he wearies you. He is only great, sublime, penetrating, when he is a theologian; in other words, when he is announcing positive and everlasting dogmas, free from all quibble, and which are so clearly marked with the eastern cast, that not to perceive it one must never have had a ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... the concerns of life it places man and woman side by side, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, putting their best thought, their finest feeling, their highest aspiration, into the work of the world. This reflection gives us a lasting and sublime satisfaction amid defeat and derision. Whatever of fortune or misfortune befalls the Suffrage Association in the carrying on of its work, this belief is the root which is calculated to sustain and inspire us—that this movement is the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... the attempts, under the same system, to make sugar and coffee from common culinary vegetables; attempts which served to fill the print-shops of Europe, and to show us how easy is the transition from what some think sublime to that which all admit to be ridiculous. The folly of some of these projects has not been surpassed, nor hardly equalled, unless it be by the philosopher in one of the satires of Swift, who so long labored to ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... poet himself was a prominent actor. In the bitter feuds of the Guelfs and Ghibellines he bore the sufferings of failure, persecution, and exile. But above all these trials rose his heroic spirit and the sublime voice of his poems, which became a quickening prophecy, realized in the birth of Italian and of European literature, in the whole movement of the Renaissance, and in the ever-advancing development ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... from the Puritan and Calvinistic teaching which, instilled into him throughout his earlier years, had laid deep the foundations of the serious and fervent vein of piety conspicuous in all his life and writings. He had learnt much from the sublime Christian philosophy of his eminent instructors at Cambridge, Cudworth and Henry More, John Smith and Whichcote, under whom his heart and intellect had attained a far wider reach than they could ever have gained in the school of Calvin. But his ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... eternal. The rest was superstition and the quaking use of a false physics. That appeal to the supernatural which while the danger threatens is but forlorn medicine, after the blow has fallen may turn to sublime wisdom. This wisdom has cast out the fear of material evils, and dreads only that the divine should not come down and be worthily entertained among us. In art, in politics, in that form of religion which is superior, and not inferior, to politics and art, we define and embody ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... of Icarus when he approached the flaming zones. For one such glance a man would have gladly steeped his hands in the blood of his host, scattered the ashes of his father to the four winds, overthrown the holy images of the gods, and stolen the fire of heaven itself, like the sublime thief, Prometheus. ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... cold To wake my place-enthusiasms of old!" Till a voice passed: "Behind that granite mien Lurks the imposing beauty of a Queen." I looked anew; and saw the radiant form Of Her who soothes in stress, who steers in storm, On the grave influence of whose eyes sublime Men count for the ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... pedestrian, and he knows of few more lovely or more tiring. Fanny Burney described the drive as "the most beautiful to which my wandering feet have sent me; diversified with all that can compose luxuriant scenery, and with just as much approach to the sublime as is in the province of unterrific beauty." The long ascent of "Chiddick" Hill commences soon after leaving the mill pool just outside Bridport. To the right, a turning leads to Symondsbury, where there is an old cruciform church with a central tower and, in the chancel, the tomb ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... their magnitude have a touch of the sublime; and to this dignity the seizure of Texas by our citizens is entitled. Modern times furnish no example of individual rapine on so grand a scale. It is nothing less than the robbery of a realm. The ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... knack at making histories out of nothing. Wert thou to plant the bean in the nursery-tale, thou wouldst make out, so soon as it began to germinate, that the castle of the giant was about to elevate its battlements on the top of it. All that happens to thee gets a touch of the wonderful and the sublime from thy own rich imagination. Didst ever see what artists call a Claude Lorraine glass, which spreads its own particular hue over the whole landscape which you see through it?—thou beholdest ordinary events just through such ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... The sublime opening of the Scriptures announces the fact of God and His existence: "In the beginning God" (Gen. 1:1). Nor is the rise or dawn of the idea of God in the mind of man depicted. Psa. 14:1: "The fool hath said in his heart. There is no God," indicates not a disbelief in the existence, but ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... generosity seldom found in her peers, pardoned you to some degree your theft of her spouse; she pardoned you in order to be agreeable to him, and to prove to him that, being his most sincere friend, she could not bring herself to contest his affections and his pastimes. But this sublime philosophy is at an end; the excellent heart of this Queen is at Val-de-Grace; it will beat no more, neither for her volatile husband, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... just under his nose; I take leave to tell him, that this reproof to his friends, for want of zeal and clamour against Popery, slavery, and the Pretender, is what they have not deserved. Are the pamphlets and papers, daily published by the sublime authors of his party full of any thing else? Are not the Queen, the ministers, the majority of Lords and Commons, loudly taxed in print with this charge against them at full length? Is it not the perpetual echo of every Whig coffeehouse ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... groups of trees, with seats beneath the shade For prattling babes and whisp'ring lovers made, The never-failing brawl, the busy mill, Where tiny urchins vied in fistic skill. (Two phrases only have that dusky race Caught from the learned influence of the place; Phrases in their simplicity sublime, "Scramble a copper!" "Please, sir, what's the time?") These round thy walks their cheerful influence shed; These were thy charms—but all these charms are fled, Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen, And rude pavilions sadden all thy green; ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... this continent and of those islands and the organization upon their soil of societies and governments have been great and important events. After all, they are merely preliminaries, a preparation by secondary incidents, in comparison with the sublime result which is about to be consummated—the junction of the two civilizations upon the coast and in the islands of the Pacific. There certainly never happened upon this earth any purely human event which is comparable to that ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... hearers still demurred, reminding him that the people far and near were groaning under the weight of taxation, and assuring him that this could not possibly be increased, when he suddenly changed his despairing gesture for a martial attitude, and with sublime eloquence recited ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... them may seem to be incorporated in this narrative, under the guise of mere romance, the reader need not on this account think himself misled, or treat them with sublime contempt. If it should ever be his fate or fortune to make a tour through the East Indian Archipelago, he ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... but only from human interpretations thereof. And it should ever be borne in mind that he is the real enemy of the great cause of philanthropy who, by absurd or overstrained applications of this sublime precept, lessens that profound respect to which it is so justly entitled from every portion of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... whilst in every solitude are those who succor our genius, and stimulate us in wonderful manners. There is a power in love to divine another's destiny better than that other can, and by heroic encouragements, hold him to his task. What has friendship so signaled as its sublime attraction to whatever virtue is in us? We will never more think cheaply of ourselves, or of life. We are piqued to some purpose, and the industry of the diggers on the railroad ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the quartette clan; When our neighbors' children have lost their drums Oh, what will we do when the good time comes? Oh, what will we do in that good blithe time, When the tramp will work—oh, thing sublime! And the scornful dame who stands on your feet Will "Thank you, sir," for the profered seat; And the man you hire to work by the day, Will allow you to do his work your way; And the cook who trieth ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... or moderate, or slow, according to the amount of what may be called the collateral thinking accompanying the reading, of any given passage. To put it another way: a phrase is read slowly because it means much; because the thought is large, sublime, deep. The collateral thinking may be revealed by an expansive paraphrase. For instance, in ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... The sublime truths of the great Book of books, its glorious promises, and its awful mysteries, thrilled the soul of the Huron to its center, and many a time when wandering alone through the great, solemn forests, he felt his spirit expanding within him, until his eyes overflowed, and he, the mighty, scarred ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... been no desire to emphasize the hardships and unpleasant features, but only to picture in the fewest possible words the many consecutive years of unremitting toil, begun amidst conditions which now seem almost incredible, and continued with sublime courage in the face of calumny and persecution such as can not be imagined by the women of today. Nothing has been concealed or mitigated. In those years of constant aggression, when every step was an experiment, there must ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper |
