"Sublime" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Unconsciously Sprudell groaned. To die bravely in the sight of a crowd was sublime; but to perish alone, unnoted, side by side with the Chinese cook and chiefly for want of trousers in which to escape, was ignominious. He snatched his cold feet from the middle ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... dechirer."[279] If Scott had to make an effort in writing the review, he made it with abundant energy. Some absurdities are indeed mentioned, but various particular passages are characterized in the most enthusiastic way, with such phrases as "horribly sublime," "impressive and affecting," "reminds us of the Satan of Milton, yet stands the comparison," "all the gloomy power of Dante." It may be noted that Scott used Milton's name rather freely in comparisons, and that for Dante his admiration was altogether unimpassioned,[280] but the ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... to marry an American wife is the most arduous profession in the world,' he cried. 'One has to combine the energy of the Universal Provider with the patience of an ambassador at the Sublime Porte.' ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... voice, born in that far, clear time, Over thy single harp thy simple strain Attuned all life for Britain to the chime Of viking oars and the sea's dark refrain, And thine own beating heart, and the sublime Measure to which the moons and stars revolve Untroubled by the storms that, year by year, In ever-swelling symphonies still climb To embrace our growing world and to resolve Discords unknown to thee, In the infinite harmony Which ...
— The Lord of Misrule - And Other Poems • Alfred Noyes
... stars moved perpetually and according to law, they seriously thought they were beholding the gods. The stars as we conceive them are not in that sense perfect. But the order which nature does not cease to manifest is still typical of all order, and is sublime. It is from these regions of embodied law that intelligibility and power combined come to make their covenant with ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... is Isaiah. The grand thunder-roll of that righteousness, like the lion-roar of Jehovah above the guilty world, utters coarse words. Amidst the bolted lightnings of that sublime denunciation, coarse thoughts, indelicate figures, indecent allusions, flash upon the sight, like gross imagery in a midnight landscape. ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... of the age had become my detractor without motive, without provocation. That it is not so I give thanks to Providence. "M. the duc d'Aiguillon did not deceive you when he told you that I fed on your sublime poetry. I am in literature a perfect novice, and yet am sensible of the true beauties which abound in your works. I am to be included amongst the stones which were animated by Amphion: this is one of your triumphs; but to this you must be accustomed. "Believe also ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... to take all of themselves away again. As the very dust grows golden and precious where certain workmanship is carried on, the touch and step and speech of those who had come ordering, consulting, coaxing, beseeching, to her apartments, had filled them with infinitesimal particles of a sublime efflorescence, by which the air itself in which they floated became—not the air of shop or business or down-town street—but the air of drawing-room, and bon-ton, and Beacon ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... of reeds. Want of sleep, and the great fatigue we had undergone, soon closed our eyes, and we slept soundly. After a few hours I awoke, and found the hut so uncomfortably hot that I went out into the open air. I leaned against a tree which grew near by, and thought over our probable fate. The sublime picture of nature first attracted my attention. The sky was clear, but below us and among the mountains rolled dark masses of clouds; it was most probably raining in the valleys. The snow which lay on the mountains ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... whether his example has prejudiced the nation, we still find that on our stage something must be done as well as said, and inactive declamation is very coldly heard, however musical or elegant, passionate or sublime. ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... Ireland, how wondrously they stand By the lakes and rushing rivers through the valleys of our land; In mystic file, through the isle, they lift their heads sublime, These gray old pillar ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... southern night, with its sense of rich, luscious, breathing intensity, lay over that romantic spot in Southern Rhodesia where the grey walls of the Zimbabwe ruins, with a sublime, imperturbable indifference, continue to baffle the ingenuity and ravish the curiosity of all who would read their story. Scientists, archaeologists, tourists come and go, but the stern old walls, guarded by the sentinel hills, ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... most effective at this age. Sadly as the written code of student honor in all lands needs revision, and partial, freaky, and utterly perverted, tainted and cowardly as it often is, it really means what Kant expressed in the sublime precept, "Thou canst because thou oughtest." Fichte said that Faulheit, Feigheit, and Falschheit [Laziness, cowardice, falsehood] were the three dishonorable things for students. If they would study the history and enter into the spirit of their own fraternities, they would ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... human circumstances, the designs of statesmen, the interfusion of philosophies, the rural relaxation and converse of immortal poets, the majestic triumphs of warriors, the mingling of the quaint and sublime in religious ceremony, the gorgeous delirium of gladiatorial shows, and under all the secretly working leaven of Christianity. Such a romance would not call the attention of society to the dialect of stable-boys, the low habits of rustics, ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the 28th of February last a dispatch was addressed by the Secretary of State to Mr. Marsh, the American minister at Constantinople, instructing him to ask of the Turkish Government permission for the Hungarians then imprisoned within the dominions of the Sublime Porte to remove to this country. On the 3d of March last both Houses of Congress passed a resolution requesting the President to authorize the employment of a public vessel to convey to this country Louis Kossuth and his associates in captivity. The instruction ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore
... of an immortal soul in peril of its eternal interests, beset with enemies, engaged in a desperate conflict, with hell opening her mouth before, and fiends and temptations pressing after, is a sublime and awful spectacle. Man cannot aid him; all his ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the ponderable condition, after having been converted to the former through levity set in action by the sun (as usually happens in a high degree just before a thunderstorm). We form a true picture of the course of a storm if we say that nature enables us to witness a sublime display of the sudden bringing to birth of matter in earthbound form. What falls to the ground as rain (or hail) is substantially identical with what was perceptible to the eye, a moment before, as a majestic light-phenomenon. The accompanying electrical occurrence ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... the seventh book of the AENEID, and quite amazed at its merits (also very often floored by its difficulties). The Circe passage at the beginning, and the sublime business of Amata with the simile of the boy's top - O Lord, what a happy thought! - have specially delighted me. - I am, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Silas was sublime. He was so transcendently unconscious of the emotions going on in Mr. Bernard's mind at the moment, that he ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... either deductive or inductive. Most of the great ethical philosophers have had inductive minds; from the basis of admitted facts of experience they have reasoned out their laws of conduct. Most of the great religious teachers have had deductive minds: from the basis of certain sublime assumptions they have asserted their commandments. Most of the great scientists have thought inductively: they have reasoned from specific facts to general truths, as Newton reasoned from the fall of an apple to the law of gravitation. Most ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... hand, his work is pervaded by a mysticism which is sometimes obscure and austere, by a discord between Christian ideas and pagan forms. The lyrical element predominates over the dramatic, good taste is often offended, and, above all, the thought and feeling, though aiming at the sublime, rise too high above this earth, and elude the comprehension of the human heart and mind. Nevertheless, historical precedence, originality, ardent patriotism, and a noble and patient life have made Vondel a great and venerated name in his country, where he is regarded as the personification ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... many attractions of Moscow one is apt to recall a page from history and remember the heroic, self-sacrificing means which the people of this Asiatic city adopted to repel the invading and victorious enemy. It was an act of sublime desperation to place the torch within the sanctuary of Russia and destroy all, sacred and profane, so that the enemy should also be destroyed. It was the grandest sacrifice ever made to national honor by any people. ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... many young fellows of our army declared they found infinitely greater diversion even than in London: and Mr. Henry Esmond remained in his sick-room, where he writ a fine comedy, that his mistress pronounced to be sublime, and that was acted no less than three successive nights in London ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... did not transform the world by their political power. Yet these simple and outstanding truths are persistently ignored by our political and historical philosophers and theorists. For the most part our history is written with a more sublime disregard of the simple facts of the world than is shown perhaps in any other department of human ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... one of the ungrateful wretches who have dared to resist the slaves of your sublime Highness," was the answer. Rupert had come in with me, so as to take the credit of my capture, but the conversation with the Nabob was carried on by one of the Indians, who seemed to be the ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... and from her lips the ear of reason catches deep-toned words of assurance that death is not the end of life. The hue of the butterfly's wing, "the flower of the grass," the beauty of the vernal year, these all, all teach the sublime truth that "all great endings are but great beginnings." The voice of God from the unrolled page of plainer if not diviner truth, says: "These are not dead, but ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... is long, not to say interminable: tragic, comic, sublime, pathetic, moving, sad, ridiculous, melancholy, tragi-comic, humoristic, majestic, dignified, serious, grave, imposing, noble, decorous, graceful, attractive, piquant, coquettish, idyllic, elegiac, cheerful, violent, ingenuous, cruel, base, horrible, disgusting, dreadful, ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... present offers a spectacle unheard of at any other period. Enthusiasm there produces an energy equally terrible and sublime. All those virtues which depend upon social or family affections, all those amiable weaknesses, which our natural feelings teach us to love or respect, have disappeared before the stronger, the only, at present, powerful passion, the Amor Patriae. I must confess ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... retreat under the hot sun. A singularly beautiful effect of harmony lay in the long, slowly rising slopes, in the rounded hills, in the endless curving lines on all sides. The scene was heroic because of the labor of horny hands; it was sublime because not a hundred harvests, nor three generations of toiling men, could ever rob nature of its limitless space and scorching sun and sweeping dust, of its resistless age-long creep back toward the ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... clear voice, but a voice full of sublime feeling, he repeated those immortal lines, beginning, "Come, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... a well-known and necessary reason, made a causeway seven furlongs in extent, admirable for its size and for the almost incredible rapidity with which it was made. The island of Pharos, where Homer in sublime language relates that Proteus used to amuse himself with his herds of seals, is almost a thousand yards from the shore on which the city stands, and was liable to pay tribute ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... same lesson. Another reason for the lack of success is the mental calibre of those engaged in the work. However, the devotion and self-sacrifice of the Army slum sisters is one of the most touching and sublime elements of the slums, and it is all the more touching when it is to some extent misdirected and misplaced. To see the tact, patience and perseverance of these "Slum Angels" as they are often called, is a divine object lesson ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... story he towd her, Th' story, 'at's owder nor time; Nowt ivver chap whisper'd wor owder, Nowt ivver soa grand an sublime. For man nivver towd ither story, Soa chock full ov magic as this, For, it shraaded th' young chaps i' glory, An' filled her 'at listened ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley
... and on the links of Burntisland, collecting shells and flowers; or spent the clear, cold nights at her window, watching the starlit heavens, whose mysteries she was destined one day to penetrate in all their profound and sublime laws, making clear to others that knowledge which she herself had acquired, at the cost of ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... this old man permitted no hour to pass by without gleaning some sensual enjoyment from it, that a less egotistical person might never have discovered. An epicure in all things, he had attained to a sort of self-worship, which would have been sublime if applied to the First Cause of all that is beautiful. His splendid person was held in reverence, not because it was made in the image of his God, but for the powers of enjoyment it possessed—for the symmetry it displayed, and the ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... This sublime protest was considered by the assembly as a funeral monument, erected to patriotism and fidelity. All the members arose, and adopted it spontaneously, with shouts a thousand times repeated of "Long live the nation! ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... Trans-Himalayan regions—had been established. From this seat of mystic learning he proceeded later to Egypt. He had been fully instructed in the secret teachings which were the real fount of life among the Essenes, and was initiated in Egypt as a disciple of that one sublime Lodge from which every great religion has its Founder. For Egypt has remained one of the world-centres of the true Mysteries, whereof all semi-public Mysteries are the faint and far-off reflections. The Mysteries spoken of in history as Egyptian were ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... them were tired of the commonplace life which they led; all felt attracted towards Asiatic pleasures by all the vehement strength of newly awakened and long dormant forces. One of these, chancing to take up Venice Preserved for the second time, admired the sublime friendship between Pierre and Jaffir, and fell to musing on the virtues of outlaws, the loyalty of the hulks, the honor of thieves, and the immense power that a few men can wield if they bring their whole minds to bear ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... of old that the Word is from God, Divinely inspired, and thus holy; and yet it has not been known heretofore where in the Word the Divine is. For the Word appears in the letter like a common writing in a foreign style, and a style not so sublime or so lucid as appears in the writings of the present ages. For this reason a man who worships nature more than God, or in place of God, and thus thinks from himself and what is his own (proprium), and not from the Lord out of heaven, can easily fall into error respecting ...
— Spiritual Life and the Word of God • Emanuel Swedenborg
... are completed, and when, by means of heat applied to the retort A, the substance it contains becomes decomposed, it is evident that the least volatile products must condense or sublime in the beak or neck of the retort itself, where most of the concrete substances will fix themselves. The more volatile substances, as the lighter oils, ammoniac, and several others, will condense in the recipient GC, whilst the gasses, ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... of its little frame. This is the simple process of a baby's digestion:-milk converted into cheese, cheese into chyle, chyle into blood, and blood into flesh, bone, and tegument-how simple is the cause, but how sublime and wonderful are ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... not be set at rest. No spark of malignity was harboured in my soul. I reverenced the sublime mind of Mr. Falkland, but I had a mistaken curiosity to find out the truth of Tyrrel's murder. Often it seemed that Mr. Falkland was about to speak to me, but the movement always ended ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... real opinion, should be classed with orators rather than poets. We have named these because Germanicus Augustus (Domitian) has been diverted from his favourite pursuit by the care of the world, and the gods thought it too little for him to be the first of poets. Yet what can be more sublime, learned, matchless in every way, than the poems in which, giving up empire, he spent the privacy of his youth? Who could sing of wars so well as he who has so successfully waged them? To whom would the goddesses who watch over studies ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... as occasion may require. He is now in the second period of study, in which his business is to learn all that has hitherto been known and done. Having hitherto received instructions from a particular master, he is now to consider the art itself as his master. He must extend his capacity to more sublime and general instructions. Those perfections which lie scattered among various masters are now united in one general idea, which is henceforth to regulate his taste and enlarge his imagination. With a variety of models thus before him, he will avoid that narrowness and poverty of conception which ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... of each clime. Now, ere the world has fully reached its prime, The oval earth lies compassed with steel bands; The seas are slaves to ships that touch all strands, And even the haughty elements sublime And bold, yield him their secrets for all time, And speed like lackeys forth at ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... liberality and justice which marked the course prescribed to me by two of my illustrious predecessors when acting under their direction in the discharge of the duties of superintendent and commissioner shall be strictly observed. I can conceive of no more sublime spectacle, none more likely to propitiate an impartial and common Creator, than a rigid adherence to the principles of justice on the part of a powerful nation in its transactions with a weaker and uncivilized people whom circumstances have ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... was bright with tropical splendor. The mountains, in whose hearts had slumbered volcanic fires, which, from time to time, had burst forth, lighting up the great ocean with Tartarean brilliancy, and scattering red-hot lava far and wide, now stood up in sublime composure, like ramparts of protection to the lovely island formed by ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... law by which the grotesque is linked with the sublime—by which the laugh re-echoes the groan, parody rides behind despair, and seeming is opposed to being—had never found more terrible expression. Never had a light more sinister illumined ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... through determining the accumulation and distribution of wealth, and the last by directly influencing the accumulation and distribution of thought, the imagination being stimulated and the understanding subdued when the phenomena of the external world are sublime and terrible, the understanding being emboldened and the imagination curbed when they are small and feeble; (4) That the great division between European and non-European civilization turns on the fact that in Europe ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... said Harper, in a low tone. "How grand! how awfully sublime!—may such a quiet speedily await the struggle in which my country is engaged, and such a glorious evening follow the day of ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... came to an abrupt stand-still in their rapid career; and if it had not been quite so excessively dark, his friend would have beheld a countenance wonderful to look on, in its mixture of utter astonishment and sublime consternation. ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... did not daunt Mr. McWhorter. Having calmly pronounced Dr. White "in error," he proceeded with sublime disregard of every other human being. He found that the statue "belongs to the winged or 'cherubim' type"; that "down the left side of the figure are seen the outlines of folded wings—even the separate feathers being clearly distinguishable"; that "the left side ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... strange tramp, tramp, tramp, the beat, beat, beat, the roll of drums, the call of bugles, the boom of cannon in the dark, the lightnings of hell flaring across the midnight skies, the thunder and chaos and torture and death and pestilence and decay—the hell of war. It is not sublime. There is no glory. The sublimity is in man's acceptance of war, not for hate or gain, but love. Love of country, home, family—love of women—I fought for women—for Helen, whom I imagined my ideal, breaking her heart over me on the battlefield. Not that Helen ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... with all that Nature can bestow, The child of fancy oft in silence bends O'er the mixt treasures of his pregnant breast With conscious pride. From thence he oft resolves To frame he knows not what excelling things; And win he knows not what sublime reward Of ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... almost interminable extent, there is a most superb view of the surrounding country; nothing can be more varied, grand, and sublime; every spot spared by the all-devastating lavas, is highly cultivated; the vines and other productive fruit-trees are seen laden with the most delicious fruits; the groves of olives, the towns and villages, in almost endless aerial perspective, all terminated by the distant and deep-blue sea, form ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... time she was conscious of the dramatic figure she made, and of how pleased and impressed her audience must be; in fact, as her voice "tremuloed" on that last sublime "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever," she unclosed one eye to ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... embellished, the scene could neither be strictly termed sublime nor beautiful, and scarcely even picturesque or striking. But its extreme solitude pressed on the heart; the traveller felt that uncertainty whither he was going, or in what so wild a path was to terminate, which, at times, strikes more on the imagination than the grand ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... then he shudders to think, that, in the struggles by which that constitution had been obtained, the barbarous islanders had murdered a king, and gives the preference to the constitution of Bearn. Bearn, he says, has a sublime constitution, a beautiful constitution. There the nobility and clergy meet in one House and the Commons in another. If the Houses differ, the King his the casting vote. A few weeks later we find him raving against ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and incantation is due to the circumstance that both Babylonians and Assyrians addressed their deities only when something was desired of the latter,—the warding off of some evil or the expectation of some favor. Even in the penitential psalms, that merit the term 'sublime,' the penitent pours out his soul at the shrine of grace in order to be released from some misfortune that has come over him or that is impending. Mere praise of the gods without any ulterior motive finds no place in the Babylonian ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... familiar to the musical world gradually, but Guarneri, in the hands of a Paganini, came forth at a bound. This illustrious Violin was often credited with the charm which belonged to the performer; the magical effects and sublime strains that he drew forth from it must, it was thought, rest in the Violin. Every would-be Violinist, whose means permitted him to indulge in the luxury, endeavoured to secure an instrument by the great Guarneri. ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... almost blasphemous outcries against God; but he maintains his righteousness, and drives his critics and censors from the field. Finally Jehovah himself is represented as answering Job out of the whirlwind, in one of the most sublime passages in all literature,— silencing the arguments of his friends, sweeping away all the reasonings which have preceded, explaining nothing, but only affirming his own infinite power and wisdom. ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... which entirely covered it as it now stands. Its situation would be most interesting and imposing, for its top would command not only a view of the whole plain of Troy, but of the sea, with the islands of Tenedos, Imbros, and Samothrace. There is not a more sublime situation in the whole area of the plain ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... idea, that "they have an inward witness of the truth of (the historical and outward facts of) Christianity." Perhaps the statement would bring its own refutation to them, if they would express it clearly. Suppose a biographer of Sir Isaac Newton, after narrating his sublime discoveries and ably stating some of his most remarkable doctrines, to add, that Sir Isaac was a great magician, and had been used to raise spirits by his arts, and finally was himself carried up to heaven one night, while he was gazing at the moon; and that this event had been ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... now arose among certain of those ancient and experienced men who grow gray about a court in the profound study of forms and ceremonials, with whom a point of punctilio is as a vast political right, and who contract a sublime and awful idea of the external dignity of the throne. Certain of these court sages propounded the momentous question whether the Moorish monarch, coming to do homage as a vassal, ought not to kneel and kiss the hand of the king. This was immediately decided in the affirmative ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... that intense pathos which rises over every defect of execution; and as they sung, Zephaniah Pennel straightened his tall form, before bowed on his hands, and looked heavenward, his cheeks wet with tears, but something sublime and immortal shining upward through his blue eyes; and at the last verse he came forward involuntarily, and stood by his dead, and his voice rose over all the others ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... on his bowed head as he knelt beside her, and, in a voice that knew no faltering, breathed out a fervent prayer, full of pathos and sublime faith—invoking blessings upon him—life-long guardianship, and final salvation through Christ. The petition ended, she rose, smiling through the mist that gathered over her eyes, ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Unpropitious Messengers," a picture of great power and truly sublime in the simplicity of its dramatic expression, the vision falls without hesitation on the figure of Pharaoh, easily passing over the three prostrate forms in the immediate foreground. These might have diverted the attention ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... indifferent. It becomes the devoutest Christian to hear discussions on these transcendent subjects without the least ill will or intolerance toward the adversary who may thus endeavor to shake his faith in those sublime truths which he holds indisputable and more sacred than all others. It is doing the highest possible service to the doctrines to attack them; for if they be sound and true, they will certainly survive, and be all the more glorious for having passed safely through the ordeal. Christianity ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... such import had never before been delivered by angel or received by man—good tidings of great joy, given to but few and those among the humblest of earth, but destined to spread to all people. There is sublime grandeur in the scene, as there is divine authorship in the message, and the climax is such as the mind of man could never have conceived—the sudden appearance of a multitude of the heavenly host, singing audibly to human ears the briefest, most consistent and most truly complete of ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... refluent echoes. Your true Trojan, in short, will don and doff his folly as a garment. Do you meet him, grave as a judge, with compressed lip and corrugated brow? Stand aside, I warn you: his fit is on him, and he may catch you up with him to heights where the ridiculous and the sublime are one and all the Olympians as drunk as Chloe. Better, if you have no head for heights, wait and listen for the moment—it will surely come—when the bubble cracks, and with a laugh ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... purity. When she stood with her hands quietly crossed before her and tranquilly sang "I know that my Redeemer liveth," the lofty fervor of the tone, the rapt exaltation of the woman, with the splendor of the vocalization, made the hearing an event, and left a memory as of a sublime religious function. This explains Jenny Lind's peculiar hold upon the mass of her audiences in this country, who were honest, sober, industrious, moral American men and women, to most of whom the opera was virtually an unknown, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... know, as always great men wait, whose soul shall be the signal to the latent hero in us all, who, standing forth from the machines of learning and the machines of worship, that spread their noise and network through all the living of our lives, shall start again the old sublime adventure of keeping a Man upon the earth. He shall rouse the glowing crusaders, the darers of every land, who through the proud and dreary temples of the wise shall go, with the cry from Nazareth on their lips, "Woe unto you ye men of learning, ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... very sublime bit of wit, but there was a great laugh at it all round the table. Val and Fergus declared they would go too, till they heard that Nurse Halfpenny said she would not let the little ones go out without her to tear their clothes ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... evidence in the Parnell Commission, and matrimony, and taking the second prize in the Lightweight Hunter Class at the Dublin Horse Show. But none of them, not even the trip to London, possesses quite the same fortunate blend of the sublime and the ridiculous that gives this incident such a perennial success at the Hunt and Agricultural Show dinners which are the dazzling breaks in the monotony of Mr. Denny's life, and ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... the volume will be found the best sentiments of the best writers. The pupil will find fables, nature studies, tales of travel and adventure, brave deeds from history and fiction, stories of loyalty and heroism, examples of sublime Christian self-sacrifice, and selections that teach industry, contentment, respect for authority, reverence for all things sacred, attachment to home, and fidelity to faith ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... as humility amongst men was necessary for the preparation of a truer freedom than could ever be known under heathenism, the part of Rome, however dreadful was yet sublime. It was not to unite, to discipline, or to fortify humanity, but to enervate, to loosen, and to scatter its forces, that the people whose history we have read were allowed to conquer the earth, and were then themselves ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... themselves from the less arbitrary sway of their hereditary sovereign. That he who accomplished this was no ordinary personage, all must admit; and yet, on close investigation, we shall discover little that was sublime or dazzling in his character. Cromwell was not the meteor which surprises and astounds by the rapidity and brilliancy of its course. Cool, cautious, calculating, he stole on with slow and measured pace; and, while with secret pleasure he toiled up the ascent ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... of Temper leads astray the Hearts of ordinary Women in the Choice of their Lovers and the Treatment of their Husbands, it operates with the same pernicious Influence towards their Children, who are taught to accomplish themselves in all those sublime Perfections that appear captivating in the Eye of their Mother. She admires in her Son what she loved in her Gallant; and by that means contributes all she can to perpetuate herself in a ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to be contemptible, to be very poor is worse still, and so on; but to be actually at the point of death through poverty is to be sublime. So "when weakness is utter, honour ceaseth." [The Righteous ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... or the great lakes of America, or the Alps, or the Desert, in my later years.... The pair, sitting alone amid the expanse of verdure, with islands of ruins behind them, grew more striking to us every day. To-day, for the first time, we looked up to them from their base. The impression of sublime tranquillity which they convey when seen from distant points, is confirmed by a nearer approach. There they sit, keeping watch—hands on knees, gazing straight forward; seeming, though so much of the face is gone, to be looking over to the monumental piles on the other side of the ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... could be trusted not to enlighten her. He knew Henrietta Pereira of old, bless her hard little heart. Not only did she detest tragedy, but positively revelled in any situation where clever avoidance of everything even remotely approaching it was open to her. She ruled the sublime and the ridiculous alike impartially out of the social relation; and that with so light though determined a touch, so convincing yet astute a tact and delicacy, you were constrained not only to submit to, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the meeting of the streams. In ascending the valley of St. Christophe the gorge soon becomes narrower, the rounded forms characterising the intruded lias are quickly left, and, the torrent having been passed on a substantial bridge, avery short distance brings us to a scene of sublime desolation. Amountain on the right hand has at some remote time crumbled into fragments and literally filled the valley from side to side with a colossal heap of ruins. Through and amongst these winds a narrow path practicable for mules, whilst ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... feeling, for the grand and sublime things in Nature had always appealed to him. He was gazing toward the east, where the rising sun was flooding the plains with a golden hue. Beyond the cottonwoods he caught a glimpse of the winding river. Then, when he turned, he saw the foothills ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... in that lady's conduct no trifling evidence of a haughty, proud, and even inexorable spirit. Circumstanced as she was at Cherbury, with no one capable or desirous of disputing her will, the more gracious and exalted qualities of her nature were alone apparent. Entertaining a severe, even a sublime sense of the paramount claims of duty in all conditions and circumstances of life, her own conduct afforded an invariable and consistent example of her tenet; from those around her she required little, and that was cheerfully granted; while, on the other hand, her more eminent situation alike ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... suddenly, leaving the bed of the river bare, except for the distance of about twenty rods where the channel is deepest, and remained so for the space of an hour. Persons went out and caught fish in the pools formed in the rocky cavities. The return of the waters was sudden and presented a sublime spectacle. They came down like an immense surge, roaring and foaming, and those who had incautiously wandered into the river bed, had barely time to escape being overwhelmed. A similar event occurred in 1842, when the current set back from the rapids, ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... the wings 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
... with sublime fatuity, 'I read your thoughts! Nor am I surprised—your education is not yet complete; the higher duties of men have not been yet presented to you fully. A hint—till we have leisure—must suffice. Now that I am once more ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fruits; and, in a radiant stream, Into the stores of sterile Winter pours. In winter awful thou! with clouds and storms Around thee thrown—tempest o'er tempest rolled. Majestic darkness! on the whirlwind's wing Riding sublime, thou bidst the world adore,[160] And humblest nature ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... Genesis constitutes a suitable introduction to the Pentateuch, without which its very existence, as a part of the divine plan, would be unintelligible, so does the book of Deuteronomy bring it to a sublime close. From the goodness and faithfulness of God, from his special favor bestowed upon Israel, from the excellence of his service, from the glorious rewards of obedience and the terrible penalties of disobedience, it draws motives for a deep and ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... elaborated in their schools a spiritual monotheism, over against the crude polytheism of the people generally—a theocratic ideal inadequately apprehended by gross and sensuous Israel—Jehovism simple and sublime amid a sacerdotal worship which left the heart impure while cleansing the hands. Instead of taking their stand upon the law, with its rules of worship, its ceremonial precepts and penalties against ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... contestant in the arena of finance. He has had no share in the lofty ideals of statecraft, nor the spotless ermine of the judiciary. He lived and moved and had his being in the sanctuary of the hills, the high altar-stairs of the mountains, the sublime silences of the stately pines—where birds sung their matins and the "stars became tapers tall"; where the zitkadanto—the blue bird—uttered its ravishing notes. He sought the kat-yi-mo—the "enchanted mesa"—as the place of prayer, the hour in which to register his oath. On the ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... the manger where Jesus Christ in the humility of his sacred humanity reposed. She pictured to herself the Virgin Mother in the joyful mystery of her maternity, bending over him with a rapture too sublime for words; and St. Joseph—wonderfully dignified as the guardian of divinity, and of her whom the most high had honored, leaning on his staff near them. "Shall I dare complain?" thought May, while these blessed images came into her heart warming it with generous ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... high, thou dost preserve me and prosper me with fatness! Boundless abundance, yea, sublime abundance dost thou bring me! Praise, profit, pleasure, jollity, festivity, feasting, trains of victuals, eatables, drinkables, satiety, joy! Never will I toady to human being more, I now resolve it. Why, I can bless my friend or blast my foe, now that ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... other part of his political system does Treitschke show more sublime disregard of all those political facts which do not fit in with his theories. No other part more conclusively proves how the tyrannical dogma of Prussian nationalism can blind even a profound and clear-sighted thinker to the most vital historical realities. It must be apparent ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... magnificent columned vestibule, fronting the broad flight of steps which led up to the western entrance of the Acropolis. But the most renowned of his works was the gigantic statue of the Olympian Zeus, wrought in gold and ivory, which was the chief glory of the temple at Olympia. Of this sublime creation, the highest expression of divinity achieved by the ancients, only the fame survives. These triumphs of art were not brought to completion until nearly the close of the period of forty- eight years which separates the Persian from the Peloponnesian War; and it is now necessary to glance ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... the world from the creation of Adam, God is connected with mankind in every creed, whether worshipped as the universal sublime Spirit of omnipotence, or shaped by the forms of idolatry into representations of a deity. From the creation of Adam, mankind has acknowledged its inferiority, and must bow down and worship either the true God or a graven image; or something that ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... light in the gloom. At times they skirted the edges of a circular clearing and saw the high pines fringing the southern horizon; overhead the heavens were almost black, except where great streams of stars swept in irregular bands. It was a glorious sight, Krayne told Roeselein—too sublime to be distracted by mere mortal love-making, he mentally added. Nevertheless he was glad when they were again in the woods; he could barely distinguish the girl ahead of him, but her outline made his heart beat faster. Once, as they neared the town, he helped her down a declivity into ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... now left aboard the Richard but her dead. To them I gave the good old ship for their coffin, and in her they found a sublime sepulcher. She rolled heavily in the long swell, her gun-deck awash to the port-sills, settled slowly by the head, and sank peacefully in about forty fathoms. The ensign-gaff, shot away in action, had been fished and put in place, soon after firing ceased, and our torn ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... living source losing, in the regulated channels to which they are confined, their force, depth and impetuosity. Real poetry, able to convey dream and illusion, cannot be brought forth. Lyric poetry proves abortive, and likewise the epic poem.[3227] Nothing sprouts on these distant fields, remote and sublime, where speech unites with music and painting. Never do we hear the involuntary scream of intense torment, the lonely confession of a distraught soul,[3228] pouring out his heart to relieve himself. When a creation of characters is imperative, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... had told me so much about herself before. She was a woman who had felt strongly and thought much; she had lived a rich, and eventful life; but all that had befallen her she romanticised. Her poetic tendency was towards the sublime. She was absolutely veracious, and did not really mean to adorn her tales, but partly from pride, partly from whimsicality, she saw everything, from greatest to least, through beautifully coloured magnifying-glasses, so that a translation ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... head of his countrymen, in 1693, when the allies, under William III., were defeated by Marshal Luxembourg at the battle of Landen. He was probably attended by his faithful wolf-dogs on that occasion, when he uttered those sublime words which no Irishman will ever forget—"Oh that this was for Ireland!" thus showing his love and affection for his native country as he was expiring in ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... relationship with the author. I was unluckily engaged on an excursion for some days afterwards; and, as the Duchess was on the eve of departing for Scotland, I have postponed my introduction till the winter, when I shall favour the lady, whose taste I shall not dispute, with my most sublime and edifying conversation. She is now in the Highlands, and Alexander took his departure, a few days ago, for the same blessed seat ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... men all remind us, We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... if anywhere, we might expect to find discrepancy between the teachings of science and revelation. But the impartial reader will rise from the perusal of this volume, not only with his faith in the inspiration of the Scriptures confirmed, but with the conviction that the sublime science of Astronomy affords a far more just conception of the pregnant meaning of the eloquent language of Job, David, and Isaiah, than without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... were unkind enough to suppose it to have been occasioned by her mortification at being, in point of rank, the last of the Princesses. I think I penetrated the true cause. Her aspirations were lofty; she loved everything sublime; often while I was reading she would interrupt me to exclaim, "That is beautiful! that is noble!" There was but one brilliant action that she could perform,—to quit a palace for a cell, and rich garments for a stuff gown. ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... dinner, with the exquisite pathos of the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. Devotedly as she worshipped the Master, whose picture hung above her Steinway Grand, she could never bring herself to believe that the two succeeding movements were on the same sublime level as the first, and besides they "went" very much faster. But she had seriously thought, as she came down in the train today and planned her fresh activities at home of trying to master them, so that she could ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... threatened 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 began to ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... reached forth his hand to assist, I need not tell you that my sympathies are with you. I thank you for the brave words you have spoken. A republic that produces such a wife and mother may hope for better days. Our heart may grow more hopeful for humanity when it sees the sublime sacrifice it is about to receive from his hands. Not in vain has your dear husband periled all, if the martyrdom of one hero is worth more than the life of a million cowards. From the prison comes forth a shout of triumph over that ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... nothing, except that Bones had made a big purchase, and that she was perfectly confident—such was her sublime faith in Augustus Tibbetts—that he would make a lot of money as ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... temporary habitations constructed of lumber imported from the North by sea. But the Rebel chiefs had thrown themselves into heroic attitudes, and while playing the part of incendiaries, they fancied their action to be as sublime as that of the Russians at Moscow. With such a precedent of Vandalism, no ravages of our own troops can hereafter be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... became subjective and intrinsic, a transition which was effected by the nominalists. This gave rise to a cognition which was altogether psychological; at first reality was wholly objective, and the ideas were only a sublime intellectual myth, but now the objective world disappeared, and the intellect which formulated the conception was the only real thing. In virtue of the faculty of entification, only the mind and its ideas were real, the world and all which it contained had ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... ramparts, on which stood the lighthouse, was sublime: the blue sea underneath us, Havana on the left, and the purple mountains in ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... heroicos de los espanoles durante la Guerra de la Independencia, [55-3] y en condenar y maldecir la perfidia y crueldad de los invasores, vamos a narrar hoy un hecho que, sin entibiar en el corazon el amor a la patria, fortifica otro sentimiento no menos sublime y profundamente cristiano:—el amor a nuestro projimo; 20 —sentimiento que, si por congenita desventura de la humana especie, ha de transigir[55-4] con la dura ley de la guerra, puede y debe resplandecer ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon |
