"Achievement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the opposition and abuse that beset Florence Nightingale's undertaking, because they are pleasanter and more instructive than the sentimentality into which her detractors converted their abuse when her achievement was publicly glorified. It is significant that, in its minute account of the Crimean War, the Annual Register of the time appears to have made no mention of her till the war was over and she had received ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... gloom lightened, and dawn broke. Never had I been so glad to see the morning. While dressing I cast gratified glances at the ragged hole in the window. With the daylight my courage had returned, and I began to have a sort of pride in my achievement. ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... attitude to it was not in the least disturbed by his humorous perception of other people's. With his dexterity in adjustments he was quite capable of reconciling them, quite capable of enjoying the effect it had on nervous organisms while he himself took it seriously. It was, after all, his own achievement, and a very astonishing achievement too. He continued to respect it as the immense sign of his material prosperity, the advertisement, you may say, of his arrival. His business instinct would never have allowed him to repent ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... minutes. During their descent, they restored their strength with some refreshments Sr. Munoz had sent to meet them; and they reached Albay towards evening, where during their short stay they were treated as heroes, and presented with an official certificate of their achievement, for which they had the pleasure ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... at hand. Its range was commensurate with all that could be asked of it, and she moved with greatest ease in the regions which most of her rivals carefully avoided. To throw out those scintillant bubbles of sound which used to be looked upon as the highest achievement in singing seemed to be an entirely natural mode of expression with her. With the reasonableness of such a mode of expression I am not concerned now; it is enough that Mme. Melba came nearer to providing ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... thirties, the richest years of all yet lived. The splendid colour of the crimson roses in the centre of the table was not richer in its bloom than that in Charlotte's cheeks, nor the sparkle of the lights more attractive than that in Ellen's dark eyes. As for the two men—all the possible achievement of forceful manhood seemed written in their faces, so different in feature and colouring, so alike in the look of dominant purpose and the power born of will ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... the Sieur de la Verendrye, which marked this period, was perhaps the most picturesque achievement Quebec had witnessed since the days of La Salle. In the spring of 1731, La Verendrye, with his three sons and a handful of adventurous coureurs de bois, set off from the trading post of Michillimackinac to take possession of the West. By a long succession of ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... left named Mille Crag Bend, with a great number of jagged pinnacles gathered in a group at the top of the walls, which had dropped down to a height of about 1300 feet. We felt just a little proud of our achievement, and believed we had established a record for Cataract Canyon, having run all rapids in four days' travelling, ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... should know pride in his achievement,—else why is striving given him? I looked over my warriors, rank on rank. Fierce-eyed, muscled like panthers, they were terrible engines of war. And I controlled them! I felt the lift of the heart that strengthens a man's will. That is something rarer than pride; a flitting ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... the precepts of Bacon, linked together and applied in one great integration, would fail to produce a complete man of science. In this respect Art and Science are identical—that to reach their highest outcome and achievement they must pass beyond knowledge and culture, which are understood by all, to inspiration and creative power, which pass the understanding even of him who possesses them in the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... opportunities for industrial aggression, and for the accumulation of property, increase in scope and availability. And it is even more to the point that property now becomes the most easily recognised evidence of a reputable degree of success as distinguished from heroic or signal achievement. It therefore becomes the conventional basis of esteem. Its possession in some amount becomes necessary in order to any reputable standing in the community. It becomes indispensable to accumulate, to acquire property, in order to retain one's good name. When accumulated goods have ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... great achievement, for we were now in possession of the main entrance to Delhi, and the street of the city leading direct from the Lahore gate to the palace and Jama Masjid. We proceeded up this street, at first cautiously, but on finding it absolutely empty, and the ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... though the goal should be reached, the changes which Time works in us have been left out of the reckoning: we forget that the capacity whether for achievement or for enjoyment does not last a whole lifetime. So we often toil for things which are no longer suited to us when we attain them; and again, the years we spend in preparing for some work, unconsciously rob us of the ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... of his achievement, but felt a little blue when he observed a storm coming in rapidly from the sea; but his luck did not desert him. He saw a deserted cabin, toward which he made his way, and it didn't take him long to gather a lot of twigs and drift, and, upon reaching the cabin, he made a fire, and ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... the separation of sunlight into its component parts, and the invention of the spectrum, have marked an advance in man's achievement such as the world had not seen since the time of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... She was as one who, having wantonly released some complex mechanism, stands aghast and powerless at the consequence of his rashness. And yet, despite the seeming setback to her hopes, the conviction that had urged her to this step was still strong in her; she still had faith in its ultimate achievement. She touched the girl's shoulder in a quick caress. "You are worn out, child. Go to bed and rest now, and think to-morrow," ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... the 17th of April he obtained from the National Assembly a decree authorizing the organization of a better national fleet, and, before proceeding to join in the efforts for the relief of the Acropolis, he did all that was possible towards the achievement of this object, making such arrangements as would prevent any hindrance thereto arising from his temporary absence on the most pressing work that devolved upon him. Having sent Captain Hastings with all the available ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... And as their forefathers had cultivated the then dense wilderness, so he admonished them to study and improve their minds in school. Great men and noted women had already sprung into fame from their young city, and many a glorious achievement of word, of pen, and of sword, had given renown to the place whose birth he had incidentally witnessed in ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... beginning: all the toil of men Do they endure; and therefore evermore The spirit of the War-god thrills them through. 'They fall not short of men in anything: Their labour-hardened frames make great their hearts For all achievement: never faint their knees Nor tremble. Rumour speaks their queen to be A daughter of the mighty Lord of War. Therefore no woman may compare with her In prowess—if she be a woman, not A God come down in answer to our prayers. Yea, ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... as he turned the corner of the Plaza Cataluna into the wide Rambla. It might be that the narratives of Pontiana Tabor and the denials of Ramon Castillo were all just part of one little subsidiary plan in the German scheme which was to reach its achievement by putting an inconvenient Englishman out of the way for good in one of the dark, ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... over two unduly protected screen embroideries, a German marine and an English pair of lions, done in silk. They are both as hard as nails and devoid of any real suggestion of the spirit which animates either water or lions in reality. If it is so great an achievement as we are often asked to believe to do certain things in badly chosen material, then why not try to reproduce Rafael's "Sistine Madonna" with thumbtacks? Most such attempts to find an agreeable substitute for the various painting media are ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... splendid weather of the trip to the Philippines, and in a few days they were steaming into Manila bay. Their hearts swelled with pride as they recalled the splendid achievement of Admiral Dewey, when, with his battle fleet, scorning mines and torpedoes, like Farragut at Mobile, he had signaled for ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... had come to Brent, and it was not all his fault that most of them had been neglected. His capacity for achievement was as an arm perpetually carried in a sling; no one's fingers had untied the knot and massaged the cramped muscles, nor had anyone's lips bidden him strike the right sort of blow. His mother breathed his name when ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... over, I sought Vilalba, and congratulated him on his brilliant achievement, jestingly adding that I knew he was leagued with sorcery and helped on by diabolical arts. The cold evasiveness of his reply confirmed my belief that the condition I have described was abnormal, and that he was himself conscious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... refusing to allow her judgment to be fogged with sentiment. He only marvelled that she could do it where he had failed. He could not blame her—not if his speech and activities since he came to Lone Moose were the measure of his possible achievement. ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... watched the boy silently as he undressed and went to bed; and in the morning the whole incident passed from his mind. The intangible holds but little fascination for the simple folk who live under the Arctic Circle. Their struggle is with life, their joys are in its achievement, in their constant struggle to keep life running strong and red within them. Such an existence of solitude and of strife with nature leaves small room for curiosity. So the nature of John Cummins led him to forget what ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... had come the time when his crowning ambition should be fulfilled, to have the Imperium unofficially acknowledged as the national theatre, so that when he retired it should be purchased for the nation and make his achievement immortal.... Macready, Irving, all of the great line had perished and were but names, while Henry Butcher would be remembered as the creator of the theatre, the people's theatre, the nation's theatre.... Then he remembered a particularly delicious wine ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... Harry on his entering the playground the following morning; neither was there any symptom of the persecution of the previous evening. No murmured words flung at him; no hissing; but only a few stares of wonder, almost, at his recent achievement. He was treated as a mere cypher,—sent to Coventry in fact. But this he did not mind; it certainly was preferable to positive persecution; and as he wished to keep calm for his coming ordeal, he was glad that nothing ensued ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... for the achievement of an enterprise commenced in the early part of the present century, and which would reflect honor on the science of any country and any age; I mean the translation and commentary on Laplace's Mecanique Celeste, ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... makes me turn cold to my soul. Believe me, to pray with all your heart and strength, with the reason and the will, to believe vividly that God will listen to your voice through Christ, and verily do the thing he pleaseth thereupon—this is the last, the greatest achievement of the Christian's warfare upon earth. Teach us to pray, O Lord!" And then he burst into a flood of tears, and begged me to pray for him. O what ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... on a hand that has thrown the die and has lost; no tolerance for the player who, holding fine cards, will not play them by the rules of the game. "Manquee!" the world says, with a polite sneer, of the lives in which it beholds no blazoned achievement, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... unanimous in acknowledging her spirited conception of what was certainly a difficult and delicate role, which, in less skilled hands than hers, might have degenerated into buffoonery or sheer melodrama. She was greatly to be congratulated on her achievement, and it is hoped this is not the last time she will appear on the boards and give Devon audiences the opportunity of enjoying her rare humour. It may be noted that, in addition to her powers of dramatic representation, Miss Ramsay has ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... of pride that I read in the newspapers during the following days of the magnificent achievement of the 55th Division—of the "Lancashire Men's Great Fight:" "Stubborn in attack and withdrawal." I read of heroic fights round Pommern Castle, of Wurst Farm being captured by a gallant young officer, ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... asserted that inward grace of spirit without which there is no true grace of body,—and as he paused in his slow pacing to and fro to gaze half-wistfully, half-mournfully upon the almost ghastly artistic achievement of "Le Mourant" he sighed, and his lips moved as if in prayer. For the brief, pitiful history of human life is told in that antique and richly-wrought alabaster,—its beginning, its ambition, and its end. At the summit of the shrine, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... them correctly 'Parentales Cantus.' In the Preface to the Shih, to which I have made reference above, it is said, 'The Sung are pieces in admiration of the embodied manifestation of complete virtue, announcing to the spiritual Intelligences their achievement thereof.' K Hs's account of the Sung was—'Songs for the Music of the Ancestral Temple;' and that of Kiang Yung of the present dynasty—'Songs for the Music at Sacrifices.' I have united these two definitions, and call the Part—'Odes of the Temple ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... underneath his plebeian simplicity, dress and manners, this great child of nature possessed the most delicate instincts of the perfect gentleman. The only just scale by which to measure any man is the scale of actual achievement; and in Lincoln's case some of the most essential instruments had to ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... that kind of acquirement which is needful instrumentally, but is not charming or immediately inviting to self-indulgent taste. I have insisted to him on what Aristotle has stated with admirable brevity, that for the achievement of any work regarded as an end there must be a prior exercise of many energies or acquired facilities of a secondary order, demanding patience. I have pointed to my own manuscript volumes, which represent the toil of years preparatory to a work not yet accomplished. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... did somehow resemble an achievement, wonderful enough in its way, in unglazed earthenware. The only gleam perhaps that one could find on her was that of her teeth, which one used to get between her dull lips unexpectedly, startlingly, and a little inexplicably, because it was never associated with a smile. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... 1764; while Haendel died in 1759, and Bach in 1750. Bach was destined to give to the world its first glimpse of the tremendous power of music, while Rameau organized the elements of music into a scientific harmonic structure, laying the foundation for our modern harmony. Haendel's great achievement (besides being a fine composer) was to crush all life out of the then promising school of English music, the foundation for which had been so well laid ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... Surprisingly, I was no longer upset—which, as I think it over, was probably more an achievement of internal engineering ...
— Inside John Barth • William W. Stuart
... and laid out, the Flaminian Way, the great north road of the Romans, was built by Caius Flaminius the Censor about 220 B.C.[1], that is to say, immediately after the first subjection of the Gauls south of the Po which had been largely his achievement, and for military and political business which that achievement entailed. This road ran from Rome directly to Ariminum (Rimini) and it crossed the Apennines near the modern Scheggia and by the great pass ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... those youthful days; and when on one afternoon of reckless daring she had attained it, and far to the northward she saw the waters of the great Sound sparkling in the sun, she had felt like Balboa in sight of the Pacific, awed to the point of prayer by her own miraculous achievement. ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... came abruptly to an end; and presently Bud's vagrant, half-formed desire for achievement merged into biting recollections. Here was a love drama, three reels of it. At first Bud watched it with only a vague, disquieting sense of familiarity. Then abruptly he recalled too vividly the time and circumstance of his first sight ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... are unaccustomed to do so; for then one imagines the suffering most intense, since it is stronger than a strong man. At Austerlitz the Emperor said, "Ordener is worn out. There is only one time for military achievement in a man's life. I shall be good for six years longer, and ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... the combined forces of the Goth and the Frank which drove this scourge out of Europe. Meroveus, or Meroveg, the leader of the Franks in this great achievement, once the terror of the Gallic people, was now their deliverer. He had won the gratitude of all classes, from bishops to slaves, throughout Gaul, and fate had thus opened wide a door leading into ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... in this sort committed to her love for Collier Pratt, her one ambition was to put her life in order for him,—to pick up the raveling threads of her achievement and prove to him and to herself that she was the kind of woman who accomplishes that which she attempts. In the light of his indefatigable patience in all matters that pertained to his art—his clean-cut workmanship—his skill in handling his material—she blushed for ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... away. You see, Mrs. Henriksen, I should very much have liked to stay, because this is really where I belong; but what more can I do here? I don't work; I merely idle. Do you understand me? I grieve continually, and my heart sits wrinkled. My most brilliant achievement is spinning coins: I toss a coin into the air and wait. When I came here last autumn I wasn't so bad, not nearly so bad. I was only half a year younger then, yet I was ten years younger. What has happened to me since? Nothing. Only—I'm not a better ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... still bound by the prejudices of the days of little things, still slaves—they of all people!—to an old and outworn formula. They have not yet comprehended that within their arm's reach there lies an achievement greater than has ever been given to a nation to accomplish, and that they have but to take one step forward to enter on a destiny greater than anything foreshadowed even in the promise of their own ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... possible of the great machine that old Morton Sanders would build and set to work on his mother's land. And more than ever that summer he warmed to his uncle Arch Hawn for the fight that Arch was making to protect native titles to mountain lands—a fight that would help the achievement of the purpose that, though faltering at last, was still deep in the ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... while replying, quite to the purpose, to Mrs Enderby's praise of her management of the dear children, and to George's pressing offers of cake; and to Mr Rowland's suspicions that the children would never have accomplished this achievement without her, as indeed he might say of all their achievements; and to Anna's entreaty that she would eat a pink comfit, and then a yellow one, and then a green one; and to Mrs Grey's wonder where she could have put away all her books ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... suggested, until he had exhausted his stock, and was obliged to apply himself to the discharge of his duty. He, therefore, made up his mind to face the danger, but not to monopolize the glory of the achievement. He dared not go alone, and accordingly looked round for somebody to assist him in the perilous enterprise. Now, the veteran Primus, by virtue of his exploits in the Revolutionary War, and the loss ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... by indications of influential public opinion in Spain, that this Government has hoped to discover the most promising and effective means of composing the present strife with honor and advantage to Spain and with the achievement of all the reasonable ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... bungled, and saw with satisfaction that the gun-cotton had rent great holes through Big Ben's breech in two places, rendering him totally unfit for foreign service. This was the crowning act of a great achievement, and the force that had aided in its accomplishment marched back to camp triumphantly ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... the most becoming corner in the library and was holding gay court there; the young people were thronging from one room to another; everybody was laughing and chatting and exclaiming over the charms of the new house. In fact the complacency of the hostess over her achievement was only surpassed by the curiosity of the guests who were confirming with their own eyes the wild rumors which had been current of the ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... Victory: Synonyms: achievement, advantage, conquest, mastery, success, supremacy, triumph. Victory is the state resulting from the overcoming of an opponent or opponents in any contest, or from the overcoming of difficulties, obstacles, ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... regretted. What is alone and always sacred and binding for man is the climbing towards his total perfection, and the machinery by which he does this varies in value according as it helps him to do it. The planters of Christianity had their roots in deep and rich grounds of human life and achievement, both Jewish and also Greek; and had thus a comparatively firm and wide basis amidst all the vehement inspiration of their mighty movement and change. By their strong inspiration they carried men off the old basis of life and culture, whether Jewish or Greek, and ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... abolished, and he who under the old regime of Austria would style himself Count von Potts and Kettlehausen is now called plain Mr. Potts. Other titles, those that have been won by individual achievement and cannot be inherited, still remain in use to brighten our drab existence. Most common amongst these is "Doctor"; you may be a doctor of any or many more or less exact sciences; Professor seems to come next in quantity; ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... the cringing herd of weaklings who have hitherto possessed the world. The earth is for the strong, the capable, the few. A mighty race, self-assertive, full of vitality and will, is the goal of humanity. The vital significance of Nietzsche's radicalism lies less in its positive achievement than in its stimulating effect. Though his account of Christianity is a caricature, his strong invective has done much to correct the sentimental rose-water view of the Christian faith which has ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... of other people, as if he were in the habit of going on high 'Change every day. The Artist whom I wish to present to the notice of the Meeting is one to whom the perfect enjoyment of the five senses is essential to every achievement of his life. He can gain no wealth nor fame by buying something which he never touched, and selling it to another who would also never touch or see it, but was compelled to strike out for himself every spark of fire ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... gather up our threads a little. Let us first confront the fact that, under present conditions, in the face of the mass of records and books and accumulated traditions, arts and sciences must make progress little by little, line by line, in skilled technical hands. Fine achievement in every region becomes more difficult every day, because there is so much that is finished and perfected behind us; and if the conditions of our lives call us to some strictly limited path, let ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... publication of certified circulation and solvency or employed verbally as intellectual stimulation for sympathetic auditors, tacitly appreciative of successful narrative and confidently augurative of successful achievement, during the increasingly longer nights gradually following the summer solstice on the day but three following, videlicet, Tuesday, 21 June (S. Aloysius Gonzaga), sunrise ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... still further, how that which is pronounced blessed is not the realisation of a desire, but the desire itself. And that is so, not only because, as I said, all noble aspiration is good, fulfilled or unfulfilled, and aim is of more importance than achievement, and what a man strongly wishes is often the revelation of his deepest self, and the prophecy of what he will be; but Christ puts the desire for a certain quality here as in line with the possession of a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Then reverently and with the pride of his gallant office vibrant in every line of his slight figure, invested in white satin and very grand, as he had prophesied, M. le Duc de Chateaurien handed Lady Mary Carlisle down the steps, an achievement which had figured in the ambitions of seven other gentlemen ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... instrument the Americans went to work with characteristic energy, and, by always using a line of the same size and make, and a sinker of the same shape and weight, they at last ascertained the law of descent. This was an important achievement, because, having become familiar with the precise rate of descent at all depths, they were enabled to tell very nearly when the ball ceased to carry out the line, and when it began to go out in obedience to the influence of deep-sea currents. The greatest depth ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Resolution and the enemy, and that his son had been wounded. His aides de camp were now able to assure him that, although serious, Captain Mordaunt's wounds were not likely to be fatal, and Peterborough was delighted with the narrative of the gallant achievement of his son. Shortly afterward an imperative order for his return reaching the earl, he set out for England through Germany with his two aides de camp. Peterborough was suffering from illness caused by the immense exertions he had ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... evergreens, and while the children were looking about and commenting upon the taste displayed in their arrangement, the folding doors communicating with another parlor were suddenly thrown open, disclosing the grand achievement of the afternoon—the beautiful Christmas tree—tall, wide-spreading, glittering with lights and tinsel ornaments, gorgeous with gay colors, and every ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... he once achieved by winning the beaten eight division of the sixth sixteen. It was a little pocket match-safe, but it is more precious in his eyes than pearls, aye, than much fine gold or his reputation as perhaps the deftest writer of dialogue on the American stage. It represents definite achievement in the game ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... earnest, and that war or a restitution of their captives must be the consequence, they will adopt the latter. We must make up our minds to fight our battles and win our independence alone. No one will help us. We require no extraneous aid, if true to ourselves. But we must be patient. It is not a light achievement and cannot be accomplished at once.... I wrote a few days since, giving you all the news, and have now therefore nothing to relate. The enemy is still quiet and increasing in strength. We grow in size slowly but ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... feet had spiritlessly trodden from earliest youth, and entered a field of bloom and verdure where the very stir of the atmosphere exhilarated, where the labor to be performed called dormant capacities into play and tested their strength, where each day's achievement gave the delightful assurance of latent powers within himself hitherto unrecognized,—in a word, where his manhood was developed through the regenerating virtue, the glorious might, the blessed ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... better than any one else in Harvey—better even than the Nesbits—what Kenyon Adams really promised in achievement and fame. They knew that he had some European recognition. Margaret in Europe had been amazed to see how far he was going. In New York and Boston, she knew what it meant to have her son's music on the best concert programs. Her realization ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... utterly destroyed A.D. 450, by Totila, Flagellum Dei, who, with great want of originality, immediately rebuilt Fiesole; thus repeating, but reversing, the achievement of the Romans five hundred years before. So Fiesole and Florence seem to have alternately filled and emptied themselves, like two buckets in a well, down to the time of Charlemagne. That emperor rebuilt Florence, but experienced some difficulty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... ready to assert that the Negro has done absolutely nothing worth while in the field of invention. This conclusion necessarily grows out of the traditional attitude of the average American on the question of the capacity of the Negro for high scientific and technical achievement. This state of mind on the part of the general public is not perceptibly changed by the well-authenticated reports now and then of meritorious inventions in many lines of experiment made by Negroes in ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... of three generations. It was hollowed out by means of fire, cautiously applied, or by stone hatchets; but so slowly did the work proceed, that years were passed in its excavation. When completed, it was regarded as a great achievement, and its launching on the waters of the lake or river was celebrated by feasting and dancing. The artizans were venerated as great patriots. Possibly the birch-bark canoe was of older date, as being more ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... making me appear a fool," he admitted. "That is no mean achievement, young man! I merely wished to set myself straight with Miss Smith, to leave her no room for doubt as to my absolute honesty of purpose toward her; and you," said The Author, gulping, "you have made me bray! I wish you'd clear out. You ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... Dick, suffering his oar to float on its blade, and running his fingers into his hair, as if he was content with his achievement "no more mistake than there is in taking the sun on a clear day and in smooth water. Guinea is in the boat you hired; but a bad bargain you made of it, as I thought at the time; and so, as 'better ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... capabilities of joy, suffering, or achievement. As with Ida, Stanton was at a loss to understand the changes in his own character. It was quite possible, therefore, that Miss Burton should misunderstand him. Indeed he had, as yet, but little place in her sad ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... should not, among the latter, be a trenchant distinction of employment, as between idle and working men, or between men of liberal and illiberal professions. All professions should be liberal, and there should be less pride felt in peculiarity of employment, and more in excellence of achievement. And yet more, in each several profession, no master should be too proud to do its hardest work. The painter should grind his own colours; the architect work in the mason's yard with his men; the master-manufacturer be himself a more skilful operative than any man in his mills; and ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... decoyed General Hood to Nashville and then turned on him, defeating his army thoroughly, capturing all his artillery, great numbers of prisoners, and were still pursuing the fragments down in Alabama. So complete success in military operations, extending over half a continent, is an achievement that entitles it to a place in the military history of the world. The armies serving in Georgia and Tennessee, as well as the local garrisons of Decatur, Bridgeport, Chattanooga, and Murfreesboro', are alike entitled to the common honors, and each regiment ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... his fiancee, the leading lady; and continued in it as jeune premier because she refused to be made love to on the stage by anybody else. In assuming a role for which he was incredibly ill-qualified he seemed likely to facilitate the achievement of his purpose, namely to make the play a hopeless failure and so secure the deliverance of his lady from the thraldom of her mother's ambitions and set her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... have been acknowledged, the permanence of Hazlitt's achievement appears only the more remarkable. It is clear that the gods made him critical. The two essential qualities of judgment and taste he seems to have possessed from the very beginning. It is impossible ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... heart was a chair, which, with incredible industry, she had made from an empty flour barrel. She had spoiled a good barrel to make a bad chair, but her thrifty soul rejoiced in her achievement. Roger never went near it, so Miss Mattie herself sat in it on Sunday afternoons, nodding, and crooning hymns ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... secretly felt that his young friend reasoned from a broader base, and took in a much wider circumference; and that he was, at once, more liable to failure and error, and more capable of new discovery and of intellectual achievement. But their ways in life being different, they did not clash; and De Montaigne, who was sincerely interested in Ernest's fate, was contented to harden his friend's mind against the obstacles in his way, and leave the rest to experiment and to Providence. They went up to London together: and De Montaigne ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... broke off; he breathed hard as though after some difficult achievement. All he said about the benevolent society had probably been prepared beforehand, perhaps under Liputin's supervision. He perspired more than ever; drops literally trickled down his temples. Varvara Petrovna looked ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... influences of our free institutions and to the kindly effects of unrestricted social and commercial intercourse. An entire restoration of fraternal feeling must be the earnest wish of every patriotic heart; and we will have accomplished our grandest national achievement when, forgetting the sad events of the past and remembering only their instructive lessons, we resume our onward career as a free, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... and the wide-eyed Countess became infused with the spirit of jubilation that filled the souls of these time-worn, hand-to-mouth stragglers. They rejoiced with them in their sudden elevation to happiness, and overlooked the vain-glorious claims of each individual in the matter of personal achievement. Even the bewildered Tilly bleated out her little ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... achievement was given to the public, after two days of repeated signaling. The honors that were at once heaped upon Marconi would have turned the head of anyone less modest and sane. From every quarter of the world came plaudits. The ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... lectures and lessons principally intended to illustrate that old and glorious trend of the life and history of Italy which takes its name from the humble saint of Assisi, it seemed natural to connect it with the greatest achievement of modern Italy, different in so many ways from the Franciscan movement, but united with it by the mighty common current of Italian History. It is suitable as well in place because at Perugia, which witnessed ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... becomes dominant, and at last beyond question the most wonderful of all temple-building, St. Barbara's Tower is, of course, its perfected symbol and utmost achievement; and whether in the coronets of countless battlements worn on the brows of the noblest cities, or in the Lombard bell-tower on the mountains, and the English spire on Sarum plain, the geometric majesty of the Egyptian maid became ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... the midst of all these marks of haste and negligence, here and there the philosophical student of history betrays himself, the ideal of noble achievement glows in an eloquent paragraph, or is embodied in a loving portrait like that of the professor and historian Harlem. The novel, taken in connection with the subsequent developments of the writer's mind, is a study of singular interest. It is a chaos before the creative epoch; ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and social tendency of life, under every aspect, in Paris, often promotes success by making individuals famous,—a process far easier of achievement there than in any other metropolis. A poor fellow who opened a cafe, and had so little patronage as at the end of his first quarter to be on the verge of bankruptcy, resorted, one day, to the expedient of firing a heavily-charged musket in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 'Oxton" who takes off his cap as a child's funeral goes by. The feeling is: "This is a thing out of my heart that I am showing. This is my best confession, and nobody knew there was this within me." I am sure that that great glory of poetry in one's heart does not wait on achievement. If it did, what centuries would die unglorified. It is just perfection appearing, to your equal pride and shame, a perfection that never taunts ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... Belgium has bloodsoaked ground crying to Heaven long waiting but soon at length to hear. And France fiercely, proudly proving her right to live an independent nation. And Germany. Germany! the last word in intellectual power, in industrial achievement, in scientific research, aye and in infamous brutality! Germany, the might modern Hun, the highly scienced barbarian of this twentieth Century, more bloody than Attila, more ruthless than his savage hordes. Germany doomed to destruction because freedom is man's inalienable birthright, man's ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... current phrases, such as Philistinism, Sweetness and Light, and all that is just the thing to strike him." In 1884 he wrote from America about his phrase, The Remnant—"That term is going the round of the United States, and I understand what Dizzy meant when he said that I had performed 'a great achievement in launching phrases.'" But his wise epigrams and compendious sentences about books and life, admirable in themselves, will hardly recall the true man to the recollection of his friends so effectually as his sketch of the English Academy, disturbed by a "flight of Corinthian ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... interest in a phenomenon which we ourselves have not every reason to be proud of, is not without justification, as we must allow if we consider a little, for if we consider, we must own that our greatest achievement in the last twenty or thirty years has been in the heaping up of riches. Our magnificent success in that sort really eclipses our successes in every other, and the average American who comes abroad must be content to shine in the reflected glory of those Americans who have recently, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... a duodecimo of 360 pages, at last made its appearance at the end of May. At the time of its publication, English poetry was experiencing one of its periods of ebb between two flood tides of great achievement. Shelley, Keats, Byron, Scott, Coleridge were dead; Wordsworth had ceased to produce poetry of the first order; no fresh inspiration was to be expected from Landor, Southey, Rogers, Campbell, and such other writers of the Georgian era as still were numbered with the living. On the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... prophecies, those of Daniel and Christ, which his actions sufficiently evidence. His historian, indeed, says, that he undertook this work out of a desire of rendering the glory of his reign immortal by so great an achievement:[17] but this was only an after-thought or secondary motive; and Sozomen in particular assures us that not only Julian, but that the idolaters who assisted in it, pushed it forward upon that very motive, and for the sake thereof suspended ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... subordinate all through the most brilliant part of his variegated life of adventure. It was only for a moment, at Cadiz or Fayal, that by a doubtful breach of prerogative he struggled to the surface, to sink again directly the achievement was accomplished. This soured and would probably have paralysed him, but for the noble stimulant of misfortune; and to the temper which this continued disappointment produced, we must look for the cause of ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... in space for just six weeks now—didn't seem nowadays like the bitterly contested achievement it actually was. From Earth it was merely a tiny speck of light in the sky, identifiable for what it was only because it moved so swiftly and serenely from the sunset toward the east, or from night's darkness into the dawn-light. But it had been fought bitterly before ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... antagonist; to the male mind an antagonist is essential to progress, to all achievement. He has planted that root-thought in all the human world; from that old hideous idea of Satan, "The Adversary," down to the competitor in business, or the boy at the head of the class, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... during the reign of Catherine II., who not only added the Crimea to her dominions,—an achievement to which Peter the Great aspired in vain,—but dismembered Poland, and invaded Persia with her armies. "Greece, Roumelia, Thessaly, Macedonia, Montenegro, and the islands of the Archipelago swarmed with her emissaries, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... shrugged hugely. "I doubt if they are possible of achievement. The organization is a sloppy one. Revolutionary? Nonsense," he scoffed. "They have no plans to change the government. No plans for overthrowing the regime. Ultimately, what this country needs is true Communism. This so-called Movement doesn't have that as ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds |
