"Quintessence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... if I refused to attempt any such brief statement of the most valuable lesson that life has taught me. I am by no means sure that I had not better draw my pen through the page that holds the quintessence of my vital experiences, and leave those who wish to know what it is to distil to themselves from my many printed pages. But I have excited your curiosity, and I see that you are impatient to hear what the wisdom, or the folly, it may be, of a life shows for, when ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that ever poets held Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts, And every sweetness that inspired their hearts, Their minds, and muses on admired themes; If all the heavenly quintessence they still From their immortal flowers of poesy, Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive The highest reaches of a human wit; If these had made one poem's period, And all combined in beauty's worthiness, Yet should there hover in their restless heads One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... premature death prevented him from accomplishing, and guided by the advice which he left in writing, these Daughters of St. Francis of Sales, on the occasion of their Tercentenary, give to the English-speaking world a work which, in its wise curtailment and still full detail, may be called the quintessence of the Spirit of their Master, the Founder of their Institute. We thank them for their labour; and we beg God's blessing upon this book, that it may be the means of showing to many souls that safe and easy way of sanctification ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... who busies himself with, or drives an automobile, and so we have adapted the word chauffeur. Purists may cavil, but nevertheless the word is better than driver, or motor-man (which is the quintessence of snobbery), ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... a difficult part; You're a byway to suicide, Adela Chart; But to read of, depicted by exquisite James, O, sure you're the flower and quintessence of dames. ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... May 22 Horace Walpole wrote (Letters, viii. 44):—'Boswell, that quintessence of busybodies, called on me last week, and was let in, which he should not have been, could I have foreseen it. After tapping many topics, to which I made as dry answers as an unbribed oracle, he vented his errand. "Had I seen Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets?" I said slightly, "No, not yet;" ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... unsatisfactory state of the moral code in this respect is at the bottom of the supposed antagonism between religion and science. These two are not, or never ought to be, antagonistic. They should never want what is spoken of as reconciliation, for in reality they are one. Religion is the quintessence of science, and science the raw material of religion; when people talk about reconciling religion and science they do not mean what they say; they mean reconciling the statements made by one set of professional men with those made by another set ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... predilections on the question of the election of sheriffs and surrogates, and if, on a fair and deliberate examination, it should be thought better to have these officials elected by the people, they would cheerfully acquiesce in that decision. This was the quintessence of diplomacy. He knew that Erastus Root and Samuel Young insisted upon having these officers elected, and, to secure their opposition to the election of justices of the peace, he indicated a willingness to be convinced as to the expediency of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... happy times appear; All that I have to live I'd gladly change For one such month as I have wasted here— To draw long dreams of beauty, love, and power, From founts of hope that never will outrun, And drink all life's quintessence in an hour, Give me the days when I ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... their line, I grant you, oyster and lobster- sauce are the pillars of Hercules. But I speak of the cruet sauces, where the quintessence of the sapid is condensed in a phial. I can taste in my mind's palate a combination, which, if I could give it reality, I would christen with the name of my college, and hand it down to posterity as a seat of ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... blessed teapot; venison frizzled with mild, appetizing sound upon the ends of pine sticks; matchless beans allowed themselves to become seductively crisp upon our tin plates. That supper seemed to me then the quintessence of gastronomy, and I am sure Cotter and I must have said some very good after-dinner things, though I long ago forgot them all. Within the ring of warmth, on elastic beds of pine-needles, we curled up, and fell swiftly into a ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... feel at last that I am really away from America—a satisfaction that I never really enjoyed as long as I stayed in Liverpool, where it seemed to be that the quintessence of nasal and hand-shaking Yankeedom was gradually filtered and sublimated through my consulate, on the way outward and homeward. I first got acquainted with my own countrymen there. At Rome too it was not much better. But here in Florence, and in the ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... to a single end, with what unscrupulous laxity and versatility in the choice of means, the Jesuits fought the battle of their Church, is written in every page of the annals of Europe during several generations. In the Order of Jesus was concentrated the quintessence of the Catholic spirit; and the history of the Order of Jesus is the history of the great Catholic reaction. That order possessed itself at once of all the strongholds which command the public mind, of the pulpit, of the press, of the confessional, of the academies. Wherever ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to Sir James Stephen's Criminal Law on the subject of possession, and then turning to Pollock and Wright's enlightened book. Sir James Stephen is not the only writer whose attempts to analyze legal ideas have been confused by striving for a useless quintessence of all systems, instead of an accurate anatomy of one. The trouble with Austin was that he did not know enough English law. But still it is a practical advantage to master Austin, and his predecessors, Hobbes and Bentham, and his worthy successors, Holland and Pollock. Sir Frederick ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... KERNELS—QUINTESSENCE OF NOYEAU.)—Dissolve one ounce of essential oil of bitter almonds in one pint of spirit of wine. Use it as flavouring for cordials and pastry. In large quantities is exceedingly poisonous. A few drops only should be used to several pounds of syrups, pastry, &c. This and other ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... devoured her own heart in secret; and in time a dreadful thing came to happen—the stagnant soul beginning to fester. One day the girl, whose heart was the quintessence of all innocence, happened to see a low word scribbled upon a fence. And now—they had urged her to discover sins, and she discovered them. Suppose that word were to stay in her mind and haunt her—suppose that she were not able to forget it, try as she ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... is the quintessence of Eichendorff's lyric verse. Note the construction of the stanzas. The first stanza is composed of two syntactic units: 1 and 2, 3 and 4; the second of four units; notice the effect of the two heavy syllables sternklar; the third stanza reverts in structure to the ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... daily enacted throughout the length and breadth of China as would harrow up the soul of any but a soulless native. The curious part of it all is that Chinamen themselves regard their laws as the quintessence of leniency, and themselves as the mildest and most gentle people of all that the sun shines upon in his daily journey across the earth—and back again under the sea. The truth lies of course somewhere between ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... the very quintessence of thinness; and the matter hardly grows thicker when we gather, after enormous amounts of reading, that the great enveloping self in question is absolute reason as such, and that as such it is characterized by the ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... synthesis, even so will its God be. The aspect of God is different in the measure of every man's individuality, and the intimate thing of religion must, therefore, exist in human solitude, between man and God alone. Religion in its quintessence is a relation between God and man; it is perversion to make it a relation between man and man, and a man may no more reach God through a priest than love his wife through a priest. But just as a man in love may refine ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... matter she abstracts their forms, And draws a kind of quintessence from things; Which to her proper nature she transforms To bear them ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... the finest flower of American gentleman. That is, he's the quintessence of everything that's nice—and 'nasty.' I wish I were married to him for a week. I love Hugo, but he gives me the creeps." She rose and tramped restlessly about the room. "You both give me the creeps. Everything conventional gives me the creeps. If I'm not careful I'll dress myself in a long ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... guardsman SHAW, We men of mortal muscles must contemplate him with awe. Though I dwell by Cam's slow river, and I hope am not a bigot, I think that Isis cannot boast a better man than PIGOTT: Active, and strong, and steady, and never known to shirk, Of Corpus the quintessence, he is always fit for work. The men of Thames will be amazed when they see our "Three" so strong, And doubt if such a mighty form to mortal mould belong. "What son is this?" they, one and all, will ask in awe and wonder; The men of Cam will answer make, "A mighty son of thunder." Next ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... the innermost heart of the nation. It is a wonderful testimony to a man that he should have thus been able to imprint his own characteristics upon his race: and no doubt it is because he was himself of the very quintessence of its national character to start with, that he has maintained this prodigious power through ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... it set apart and isolated from all other air, with the mystery of the life of her whom its syllables designated to the happy creatures that lived and walked and travelled in her company; unfolding through the arch of the pink hawthorn, which opened at the height of my shoulder, the quintessence of their familiarity—so exquisitely painful to myself—with her, and with all that unknown world of her existence, into which I ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... creations may be called the books of life, if one may venture to modify De Quincey's well-worn phrase. For that which is deepest in this group of masterpieces is not power, but something greater and more inclusive, of which power is but a single form of expression,—life; that quintessence of the unbroken experience and activity of the race which includes not only thought, power, beauty, and every kind of skill, but, below all these, the living soul of ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... mischievous spirit, who rejoiced in playing off all manner of fantastic tricks upon poor humanity. Milton seems to have been the first who succeeded in giving any but a ludicrous description of him. The sublime pride, which is the quintessence of evil, was unconceived before his time. All other limners made him merely grotesque, but Milton made him awful. In this the monks shewed themselves but miserable romancers; for their object undoubtedly was to represent the fiend as terrible ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... in quoting these passages from Duveyrier, makes the following comment: "Such customs as these indicate delicate instincts, which are absolutely foreign to the Arabs. They strongly remind us of the times of our southern troubadours and of the cours d'amour, which were the quintessence of chivalry."[104] ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... taste: The quintessence of this fivefold test. Just cuddle a crumb with your tongue and if it tickles the taste buds it's prime. When it melts in your mouth, that's proof it will melt in ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... and flashy song' of an ear apt for harmony, combined with a maudlin sensibility, or a mere animal ferocity of passion, and an imagination creative chiefly because unbridled: it was, what true poetry is always, the quintessence of general mental riches, the purified result of strong thought and conception, and of refined as well as powerful emotion. In his writings, we behold him a moralist, a philosopher, a man of universal ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... reason why you should deeply reflect upon the precepts I have now to offer. Remembering that these little sheets are all the legacy my affection can bestow upon you, I shall concenter in them the very quintessence and epitome of all my wisdom. I shall provide in them a particular antidote to those defects to which nature has made you ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... of dust in the cupboards, nor a cloud in the air; the wooden shutters are dainty, the candlesticks are dainty, the saint's scarlet hat is dainty, and its violet tassel, and its ribbon, and his blue cloak and his spare pair of shoes, and his little brown partridge—it is all a perfect quintessence of innocent luxury—absolute delight, without one drawback in it, nor taint of the ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the most typical exponent of his school. Most of his poems are short, and present a picture of nature, or of some delicate, fleeting psychical emotion, but they are all filled with enchanting, artistic charm. His poetry is the quintessence of aesthetic voluptuousness, such as was evolved on the soil of the sybaritism of the landed gentry in the circles of the '40's of ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... indeed like the grass that springs up and soon withers away; but he is also more than this. The quintessence of dust, he is a son of the gods as well as a son of the soil. He is the direct product of the great creative power; therefore all the Athapascan tribes west of the Rocky Mountains—the Kenai, the Kolushes, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... to dwell in Cooperstown, the village had already made up its mind that he was a rather austere and distant man, an official person, the quintessence of ecclesiastical statesmanship,—urbane, but unyielding. He looked the part. Tall, erect, and of splendid figure, his countenance had the aristocratic beauty of a family noted for its handsome men. The noble head and the poutingly compressed lips of a wide mouth gave an impression of power, while ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... fisticuffs, all attempt to introduce human purpose and design and forethought into the industrial welter being 'contrary to the laws of political economy'" He would have seen, then, as one of the pioneers of the march to the plains of heaven [Footnote: The Quintessence of Ibsenism] that, of the kind of human purpose and design and forethought to be found in a government like that of Queen Victoria's uncles, the less the better. He would have seen, not the strong doing the weak down, but the foolish doing the strong ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... white-headed man dropped his eyes for once; and for once the thin, hard lines of his mouth relaxed in a smile that seemed to epitomize all the evil that was in his face, and to give it forth in one sudden sour quintessence. ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... have killed them even later than this when, after wandering fruitlessly the whole day in every direction but the right one, my ears have at length been gladdened by the distant sound of the bay. The particular moment when hope and certainty combined reward the day's toil is the very quintessence of joy and delight. Nothing in the shape of enjoyment can come near it. What a strange power has that helpless-looking mass—the brain! One moment, and the limbs are fagged, the shins are tender with breaking all ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... from the general practice of mankind. It appeals to principles which they all know and recognize: it gives back to them in a generalized form the results of their own experience. To the man of the world they are the quintessence of his own reflections upon life. To follow custom, to have no new ideas or opinions, not to be straining after impossibilities, to enjoy to-day with just so much forethought as is necessary to ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... does not there is a need for stimulants. That is why the dreamers who come here first for a light delicious brush with love, come down at last to the Thamesside barmaid with her array of spirits and cordials as the quintessence of ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... Boeig, gigantic gelatinous symbol of self deception, exceeds in recklessness anything else written since the second part of Faust. The third act, culminating with the drive to Soria Moria Castle and the death of Ase, is of the very quintessence of poetry, and puts Ibsen in the first rank of creators. In the fourth act, the introduction of which is abrupt and grotesque, we pass to a totally different and, I think, a lower order of imagination. The fifth act, an ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... itself to a work of the same kind, though subtler and more self-conscious, when it deduces a priori the categories of thought. It compresses intellect, reduces it to its quintessence, holds it tight in a principle so simple that it can be thought empty: from this principle we then draw out what we have virtually put into it. In this way we may no doubt show the coherence of intelligence, define intellect, give its formula, but ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... may urge, if Government interferes, and compels the farmer to farm higher than he wishes to himself, the gross produce will be more, and the employment for labourers will be at the same time better. True, and this is the quintessence of Protection. The whole point of Free Trade is to allow capital to be employed where it is most profitable: high farming is only to be preferred (both for individual and nation) to low when it is the more profitable. Capital that cannot be ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... spirits are caught and fastened upon the pages. Books are storehouses into which facts and principles have been harvested. Just as a bit of coal tells us what ferns and flowers grew in the far-off era, so the book gives us the very quintessence of man's thoughts about life and duty and death. Nor is there any other way of gaining these vital knowledges. Life is too short to obtain them through conversation or travel. Nor is any youth ready for his task until he has traced the rise and growth ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... produce their effect owing to a mass of accurate observation and a profound sense of the realities of life. His characters, like Watteau's, seem to possess, not quite reality itself, but the very quintessence of rarefied reality—the distilled fragrance of all that is most refined, delicate and enchanting in the human spirit. His Aramintes, his Silvias, his Lucidors are purged of the grossnesses of existence; their minds and their hearts are ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... modern scientific Socialism. But there are Utopias and Utopias. The great Utopians of the first half of our century were men of genius; they helped forward social science, which in their time was still entirely Utopian. The Utopians of to-day, the Anarchists, are the abstracters of quintessence, who can only fully draw forth some poor conclusions from certain mummified principles. They have nothing to do with social science, which, in its onward march, has distanced them by at least half a century. Their "profound thinkers," their "lofty theorists," do ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... go in fairy stories, we should prepare ourselves to see Hetty pass through a season in drudgery and hardship, with the ultimate quintessence of joy as the reward for her trials and tribulations. Happily, this is not a fairy tale. There are some things more fantastic than fairy tales, if they are not spoiled in the telling. Hetty did not go forth ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... prefect, with a smile. "He is the quintessence of caution, sir, and he never alludes to it by ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... individual existence of a sentient being. This is what is meant by the activity of tathata. The main idea of this tathata philosophy seems to be this, that this transcendent "thatness" is at once the quintessence of all thought and activity; as avidya veils it or perfumes it, the world-appearance springs forth, but as the pure thatness also perfumes the avidya there is a striving for the good as well. As the stage of avidya is passed its luminous character shines forth, for it is the ultimate truth ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... if Smith wished to express the very quintessence of brutality and meanness, he would refer to the death ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... and ape with increasing excitement and enthusiasm as the hideous effects of their discovery became apparent. Be sure an iron cross quickly hung over the iron heart that conceived and developed this filthy arm; for does it not offer the essence—quintessence of all "frightfulness?" Does it not challenge every human nerve-centre by its horror? Does it not, once proclaimed, by anticipation awake those very emotions of dread and dismay that make the stroke ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... this quintessence of fashion and elegance, long out of date, all exhaled the acrid odour of rose-water and essence of mignonette turned ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... the arena in which the races of eastern Europe have battled since history began. Within its borders are represented all the peoples who are disputing the reversion of the Turkish possessions in Europe. Macedonia might be described, indeed, as the very quintessence of the near ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... sad and strange— How far, far off, these happy times appear! All that I have to live I'd gladly change For one such month as I have wasted here— To draw long dreams of beauty, love, and power, From founts of hope that never will outrun, And drink all life's quintessence in an hour: Give me the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... his claim. So long as he is convenient he seems to be a power. So soon as the State is intelligent enough and strong enough it can do without him. It can take what it wants, and tell him to go and hang himself. That is the melancholy ultimate of the usurer. That is the quintessence of "finance." All credit is State-made, and what the State has made the State ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... expression on which a debate arose was that which recognised the original contract between King and people. It was not to be expected that the Tory peers would suffer a phrase which contained the quintessence of Whiggism to pass unchallenged. A division took place; and it was determined by fifty-three votes to forty-six ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... refitting and amusing ourselves on shore by dancing at dignity balls given by the upper-class copper-coloured washerwomen, who are the quintessence of perfection in affectation, when we were obliged to bid adieu to these interesting copper and coal-skinned ladies, as the ship was reported ready for sea, and the following morning we weighed and stood out of the harbour. As we passed the point we ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... of the "Maximes" was the head of one of the great princely houses of France. The author of the "Caracteres" was the type of the plebeian citizen of Paris. If La Rochefoucauld offers us the quintessence of aristocracy, La Bruyere is not less a specimen of the middle class. His reputation as an honest man long suffered from his own joke about his ancestry. He wrote, "I warn everybody whom it may concern, in order that the world may be prepared ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... poets in 1834, they do not fall far short even in this respect. And for adequacy of meaning, not unpoetically expressed, they are almost supreme. If Mr Arnold's own unlucky and maimed definition of poetry as "a criticism of life" had been true, they would be poetry in quintessence; and, as it ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... a book in her hand, except her prayer-book; how was he to do anything for a girl like that? For Godfrey knew no way of doing people good without the intervention of books. How could he get near one that had no taste for the quintessence of humanity? How was he to offer her the only help he had, when she desired no such help? "But," he continued, reflecting further, "she may have thirsted, may even now be athirst, without knowing that books are the bottles of the water of life!" Perhaps, if he could make ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... SOCIETY, but truth works equal ruin in THE WILD DUCK. There are no cardinal virtues of Ibsenism. There is no ideal man of Ibsen. All this is not only admitted, but vaunted in the most valuable and thoughtful of all the eulogies upon Ibsen, Mr. Bernard Shaw's QUINTESSENCE OF IBSENISM. Mr. Shaw sums up Ibsen's teaching in the phrase, "The golden rule is that there is no golden rule." In his eyes this absence of an enduring and positive ideal, this absence of a permanent key to ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Halleck is at work to translate some French military book. What an inimitable narrow-minded pedant. If Halleck had brains, he could not have an hour leisure for translation. But in such way he humbugs Mr. Lincoln, who looks on Halleck as the quintessence of military knowledge and genius. A man who can translate a French book must be a genius. Is it not so, Lincoln? And thus Halleck translates a book instead of taking care that the pontoons be sent in time; and Halleck prepared ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... does not accurately name a single one of the essential ingredients of true love, dwelling only on associated phenomena, whereas Shakspere's lines call attention to three states of mind which form part of the quintessence of romantic love—gallant "service," "adoration," and "purity"—while "patience and impatience" may perhaps be accepted as an equivalent of what I call the mixed ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... theory all the more probable, images and symbols of the cat were dedicated to the moon, the moon being universally regarded as the quintessence of everything supernatural, the very cockpit, in fact, of mystery and spookism. The nocturnal habits of the cat, its love of prowling about during moonlight hours, and the spectacle of its two round, gleaming eyes, may, of course, as ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... in the Italian language is an easy and a grateful task! What wonder, then, that Corilla acquitted herself so charmingly? The audience paid no attention to the thoughts expressed; they asked not after the quintessence; they were satisfied with the agreeable sound, without inquiring into the sense of her words; it was their melody which was admired. They listened not for the thought, but only for the rhyme, and with ecstatic smiles and admiring glances they nodded to each ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... surprise, and Mynheer Superbus Von Underduk having taken off his spectacles, wiped them, and deposited them in his pocket, so far forgot both himself and his dignity, as to turn round three times upon his heel in the quintessence of astonishment and admiration. There was no doubt about the matter—the pardon should be obtained. So at least swore, with a round oath, Professor Rub-a-dub, and so finally thought the illustrious Von Underduk, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... poem on Morals and the instructions in Oratory, which were found among the writings of Cato, may be regarded as the Roman quintessence or, if the expression be preferred, the Roman -caput mortuum- of Greek philosophy and rhetoric. The immediate sources whence Cato drew were, in the case of the poem on Morals, presumably the Pythagorean writings on morals (along with, as a matter of course, due commendation of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... there is any subject of the curriculum which it would be so difficult to commend to an uninterested pupil by an appeal to simple utilitarian motives. On the other hand there clings to literature, and particularly to poetry, which is the quintessence of literature, an air of pleasure-seeking, of holiday, of irresponsibility and detachment from the work-a-day world, which must captivate the student, or else the study itself will seem very poor fooling compared with football ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... transformation of her uncle from gentleness to ferocity. But many a far older and far wiser woman than seventeen-year-old Susan has failed to understand how it is with the man who does not regard woman as a fellow human being. To such she is either an object of adoration, a quintessence of purity and innocence, or less than the dust, sheer filth. Warham's anger was no gust. He was simply the average man of small intelligence, great vanity, and abject snobbishness or terror of public opinion. There ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... evident proof that these exhalations[96-*] possess the most restorative qualities is, that THE COOK, who is in general the least eater, is, as generally, the fattest person in the family, from continually being surrounded by the quintessence of all the food she dresses; whereof she sends to HER MASTER only the fibres and calcinations, who is consequently thin, gouty, and the victim of ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... possible; but especially she is busy trying to keep the peace between the old house servants and the imported cook. This Sicilian is a notable character. To him cookery is not a handicraft: it is the triumph, the quintessence of all science and philosophy. He talks a strange professional jargon, and asserts that he is himself learned in astronomy—for that teaches the best seasons, e.g. for mackerel and haddock; in geometry,—that ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... Wazirs; or the History of King Azadbakht and His Son King Dadbin and His Wazirs King Aylan Shah and Abu Tamman King Sulayman Shah and His Niece Firuz and His Wife King Shah Bakht and His Wazir Al-Rahwan On the Art of Enlarging Pearls The Singer and the Druggist The King Who Kenned the Quintessence of Things The Prince Who Fell In Love With the Picture The Fuller, His Wife, and the Trooper The Simpleton Husband The Three Men and our Lord Isa The Melancholist and the Sharper The Devout Woman accused of Lewdness The Weaver Who Became A Leach By Order of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the quintessence of my journalism; that is the supreme argument," he said to Antonia. "I have invented this definition, this last word on a great question. But I am no patriot. I am no more of a patriot than the Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores, this Genoese who has done such great things ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... passion to hide its hideousness under the disguise of love, and thus this most sacred and hallowed name is prostituted to signify that which is most vile and loathsome. Depravity? No. Goodness of heart, generosity of affections, the very quintessence of good nature! But God is love, and love that does not see the image of the Creator in its object is not love, but ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... that if the mother does not get what her longing soul supremely desires, that the on-coming baby is going to cry and cry until it is given what the mother wanted with all her heart and did not get. Such an idea is the very quintessence of folly and the personification of foolishness ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... thing remains believable? That Cant well-ordered is marketable Cant; that Heroism means gas-lighted Histrionism; that seen with 'clear eyes' (as they call Valet-eyes), no man is a Hero, or ever was a Hero, but all men are Valets and Varlets. The accursed practical quintessence of all sorts of Unbelief! For if there be now no Hero, and the Histrio himself begin to be seen into, what hope is there for the seed of Adam here below? We are the doomed everlasting prey of the Quack; who, now in this guise, now in that, is to filch us, to pluck and eat us, by such modes ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... at the sight and choked. There was something appalling in the sight: it was the quintessence of horror, that widening pool of blood, staining the rug, and flowing from an invisible body that writhed and twisted, while moans of anguish came ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... by the Rebis [from res bina, the double thing]. This substance, at once male and female, is a mercury [Symbol: Mercury] animated by its sulphur [Symbol: Sulphur] and transformed by this act into Azoth [Symbol: Mercury], i.e., into this quintessence of the elements [fifth essence] of which the flaming star is the symbol. It should be noted that this star is always placed in such a way that it receives the double radiation of the male sun [Symbol: Gold] and the female moon [Symbol: Moon]; its light is thus of a bisexual nature, ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... he would like to come with me when I propose to leave him at home. After the first half hour he lags behind, as if he had walked four hours. My childless marriage is thus suddenly blessed with an interesting phenomenon, and I take in, in rapid doses, the quintessence of paternal cares and troubles. All this has done me a great deal of good; it was a splendid diversion, for which, as I said before, I have to thank you. You knew what I wanted. Of course the youth pleases me immensely in other ways, and, although he acts like a naughty boy, he talks like an old ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... from the delusion that nobody but Nietzsche had ever challenged our mercanto-Christian morality. I first heard the name of Nietzsche from a German mathematician, Miss Borchardt, who had read my Quintessence of Ibsenism, and told me that she saw what I had been reading: namely, Nietzsche's Jenseits von Gut and Bose. Which I protest I had never seen, and could not have read with any comfort, for want of the necessary German, if I ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... in a voice at once silky and sonorous. Then ignoring Mercier, but looking blandly at the young man who sat facing him at the table, "What is this of Tissot?" he continued. "Can it be," with a side-glance at the newcomer, "that we have lost our—I may not call him our quintessence or alcahest—rather shall I say our baser ore, that at the virgin touch of our philosophical stone blushed into ruddy gold? And burned ever brighter and hotter in her presence! Tissot gone, and with him all those ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... was a leader in modern realistic fiction. His work has been called the "quintessence of realism." But instead of selecting, as Howells does, the well-known types of the average people, James prefers to study the ordinary mind in extraordinary situations, surroundings, and combinations. For this reason, his characters, ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... thorough white education and his constant association with white comrades, was always an Indian first. Now, as he stole from the thicket in the dark, knife in hand, he was the very quintessence of a great warrior of the clan of the Bear, of the nation Onondaga, of the great League of the Hodenosaunee. He was what his ancestors had been for unnumbered generations, a primeval son of the wilderness, seeking the life of the enemy ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... some genuine thieves' literature after so much that was spurious; sharp as an etching, written with a shuddering soul. There is an intensity of consideration in the piece that shows it to be the transcript of familiar thoughts. It is the quintessence of many a doleful nightmare on the straw, when he felt himself swing helpless in the wind, and saw the birds turn about him, screaming and ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... older it grows, shall flourish the more, day by day, and year by year. Good God! what variety of nations, what a choice assembly of Bishops of the whole world, what a splendid representation of Kings and Commonwealths, what a quintessence of theologians, what sanctity, what tears, what fears, what flowers of Universities, what tongues, what subtlety, what labour, what infinite reading, what wealth of virtues and of studies filled that august sanctuary! I have ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... destruction; it is that we insensibly regard death as threatening to the continuance of the ego, in spite of the theories of a future life which we have so elaborately developed. Indeed, the psychical shrinking is really the quintessence of the physical fear. We cleave to the abstract idea closer even than to its concrete embodiment. Sooner would we forego this earthly existence than surrender that something we know as self. For ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... this speech all the concentrated bitterness of his soul. Here was the quintessence of unorthodoxy in the very home of Walkingshaw & Gilliflower! The head of the firm proposed to die not merely drinking and smoking, but, if possible, feasting. They might be in some ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... it here! this little flask Contains the wonderful quintessence, The perfect flower and efflorescence, Of all the knowledge man can ask! Hold it ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Oxford pundit, this double-distilled quintessence of university perfection, this writer of religious treatises, this speaker of ecclesiastical speeches, had been like a little child in her hands; she had turned him inside out, and read his very heart ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... lapse of Uriel, Which in Paradise befell. Once, among the Pleiads walking, Sayd overheard the young gods talking; And the treason, too long pent, To his ears was evident. The young deities discuss'd Laws of form, and metre just, Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams, What subsisteth, and what seems. One, with low tones that decide, And doubt and reverend use defied, With a look that solved the sphere, And stirr'd the devils everywhere, Gave his sentiment divine Against the being of a line. 'Line in nature is ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... warm love-songs of fresh adolescence! Around us such raptures celestial they flung That it seemed as if Paradise breathed its quintessence Through the seraph-toned lips ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Coke glad, how to cast about to bring both ends together, Mrs Turner and Weston being already hanged for killing Overbury with poison; but he, being the very quintessence of the law, presently informs the jury that if a man be done to death with pistols, poniards, swords, halter, poison, etc., so he be done to death, the indictment is good if he be but indicted for any of those ways. But the good lawyers of those times were not of that opinion, but did believe ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... treasures, offering incense, myrrh, and gold. The crib becomes an altar; therefore dies No ox nor sheep; for in their fodder lies The Prince of Peace, who, thankful for His bed, Destroys those rites in which their blood was shed: The quintessence of earth He takes, and fees, And precious gums distilled from weeping trees; Rich metals and sweet odors now declare The glorious blessings which His laws prepare, To clear us from the base and loathsome flood Of sense and make us fit for angel's food, Who lift to God for us the holy smoke ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... eminently choice for this hour, too, when you scarcely gather their tint,—that tint, as if moonlight should wish to become a flower,—but their fragrance is an atmosphere all about you. How genuinely spicy it is! It's the very quintessence of those regions all whose sweetness exudes in sun-saturated balsams,—the very breath of pine woods and salt sea winds. How could it live away from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... not follow Mr. Watkinson's nonsense about "the domestic shrine of Schopenhauer," who was a gay and festive bachelor to the day of his death. As for Mr. Watkinson's treatment of Comte, it is pure Christian; in other words, it contains the quintessence of uncharitableness. Comte had a taint of insanity, which at one time necessitated his confinement. That he was troublesome to wife and friends is not surprising, but surely a man grievously afflicted with a cerebral malady is not to be judged ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... from his seat to the ground was deliberate, even for him; his silent nod to those wide-eyed, loose-jawed old men upon the sidewalk was the very quintessence of secretive dignity, and yet had he taken up his position there on the corner of the uneven boardwalk and cried aloud his sensation, like a bally-hoo advertising the excellence of his own particular side-show, he could not have equaled the results which the very profundity ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... itself. The events described are as lofty as those sung by Homer in his great work, and the characters brought upon the stage still more interesting. I think Hotspur as much of a hero as Hector, and young Henry more of a man than Achilles; and then there is the fat knight, the quintessence of fun, wit, and rascality. Falstaff is a creation beyond the genius even ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... o' my hand to you!" said Sean O'Donohue in the very quintessence of bitterness. "And to Moira, too, if she has more to do with you! I'll have naught to do with shenanigannin' renegades and blasphemers that actually import snakes into a world St. Patrick had set off for the Erse from ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... volatile mammal—a squirrel or a spider-monkey of the tropical forest, or the chinchilla of the desolate mountain slopes; the swiftest, wildest, loveliest, most airy, and most vocal of small beauties." Or this, as the quintessence of a sly remark: "After that Mantel got on to his horse and rode away. It was black and rainy, but he had never needed moon or lantern to find what he sought by night, whether his own house, or a fat cow—also his own, perhaps." So one might ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... it now. The name is enough to frighten them off: "Siris: A Chain of Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries Concerning the Virtues of Tar Water." He had a sort of mystical idea that tar contained the quintessence of the forest, the purified spirit of the trees, which could somehow revive the spirit of man. People said he was crazy on the subject, and doubtless he was, but the interesting thing about it is that not even ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... quintessence. Maybe Witwoud knows more; he stayed longer. Besides, they never mind him; they say ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... minds of true patriots. Great reforms and great revolutions are generally brought about by people of fierce and desperate convictions, like yours, who go to extreme lengths, and never know when to stop. The quintessence of an artist's talent is precisely that faculty of comparison, that gift of knowing when the thing he is doing corresponds as nearly as he can make it with the thing ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... on. Staring you in the face; hailing from East, West, North and South are banners; held aloft by unseen hands, bearing on them—the quintessence ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... I to understand, Mr. Jordan, that you are suggesting that this symbol, this quintessence of an historic and magnificent era in mankind's history ... this unique and precious object ... should be allowed to destroy ...
— If at First You Don't... • John Brudy
... she abstracts their forms, And draws a kind of quintessence from things, Which to her proper nature she transforms To bear them light ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... Quintessence of worldliness, Mrs. Mountstuart appeared through his farthest window, swinging her skirts on a turn at the end of the lawn, with Horace De Craye smirking beside her. And the woman's vaunted penetration was unable to detect the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... evening. When it pleased the Blessed Master that I should suffer reproach and vilification for my testimony, then it was that the river of joy which flows from the Throne flowed through my heart as never before. It was a new experience—a quintessence of joy. The shouts of burning martyrs were no longer a mystery. I stagger no more at the account of the saints who took joyfully the spoiling of their goods. My soul is bathed in an ocean of balm and ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... case is solved at the end, however. But even at the end of a ghost story, the underlying mystery remains. In the ghost story, we have the very quintessence of mystery. ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... know what I expected. Perhaps nothing else than that special intensity of existence which is the quintessence of youthful aspirations. Whatever I expected I did not expect to be beset by hurricanes. I knew better than that. In the Gulf of Siam there are no hurricanes. But neither did I expect to find myself bound hand and foot to the hopeless extent which was revealed to me as ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... he will devise something extraordinary.' Mme. D'Artlay's Diary, ii. 400. 'Dr. Johnson's history,' wrote Horace Walpole, on June 20, 1785, 'though he is going to have as many lives as a cat, might be reduced to four lines; but I shall wait to extract the quintessence till Sir John Hawkins, Madame Piozzi, and Mr. Boswell have produced their quartos.' Horace ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... she admitted. "But to be among them, controlling them, directing them, two hundred of them, and to escape being eaten by them—that, at least, if it isn't romantic, is certainly the quintessence of adventure. And adventure and romance are allied, ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... who belong'd to the same Army in which I serv'd, we set out with all Expedition. I don't remember to have been better diverted upon the Road, since I first knew what it was to Travel; one of our Company was a Provincial, and the very Quintessence of Wit and Gaiety. There was not the most trivial Occurrence but he dexterously made use of it to divert us, particularly at a small Village within a Days Journey of Lions. The Bailiff of the Village coming to our Inn ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... first, then was Man, the Little World, taken out of the greater; the Water was separated from the Earth, the Water was the Matter whereon the everlasting Spirit of God moved; the Little World was formed of the noblest Earth, as its Quintessence, by the Aquosity which yet was in the Earth, and all was only Natural; but after the breathing in of the Divine heating Breath, immediately the Supernatural was added; so then the Natural and Supernatural were ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... Peaches prepared for you; which cold Fruits must then be warm'd with a good glass of Wine. And in the Winter, to please your appetite, a dish of Pancakes, Fritters, or a barrel of Oisters; but none of these neither will be agreeable without a delicate glass of Wine. Oh quintessence of all mirth! Who could not but wish to get such Aunts, such Cousins, & such Bridemen ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... reach these Mysteries of Wit. The Intellectuall Language here's exprest, Admir'd in better times, and dares the Test Of Ours; for from Wit, Sweetnesse, Mirth, and Sence, This Volume springs a new true Quintessence. ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... the same school as this is very small, but in quality they represent the highest development of Egyptian sculpture. It is fit that we should take our leave of Egyptian art with such a work as this before us, a work which gives us the quintessence of the artistic genius ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... mirror, glory of our isle, Thou far, far more than mortal man, whose style Struck more men dumb to hearken to thy song Than Orpheus' harp, or Tully's golden tongue. To him, as right, for wit's deep quintessence, For honor, valor, virtue, excellence, Be all the garlands, crown his tomb with bay, Who spake as much as e'er our tongue can say. Britannia's Pastorals, Bk. II. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... griefs, troubles and petty annoyances, to guard her day and night, lest any rough, unlovely or unseemly thing press near her shining sphere. He desired to wrap her about with a magic mantle of beauty and luxury and the quintessence of life, to keep her in a place apart as he kept his priceless collection of rubies and emeralds. He loved her jealously, was sick at the thought that some other man might be near her when he might not, might dance with her, covet her, kiss her. He hated all men because ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... Nicolette cannot be made into a representative medieval romance: there is nothing else like it; and the qualities that make it what it is are the opposite of the rhetorical self-possession, the correct and deliberate narrative of Chrestien and his school. It contains the quintessence of romantic imagination, but it is quite unlike the ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... motherhood, would have seemed a terrible strain upon our unmitigable loyalty. And that I should have it in me to go on loving Nettie—who loved in different manner both Verrall and me—would have outraged the very quintessence of the old convention. ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... will drink a draught long as the bell rope of Notre Dame. Fill up brimmers of the quintessence of the grape, and drain them dry in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... he's the very quintessence of jealousy; he keeps no male creature in his house; and from abroad he lets no man ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... the Life of man runs his erring pilgrimage, That the stretching of a span, buckles in his summe of age. Some of violated vowes, twixt the soules of friend, and friend: But vpon the fairest bowes, or at euerie sentence end; Will I Rosalinda write, teaching all that reade, to know The quintessence of euerie sprite, heauen would in little show. Therefore heauen Nature charg'd, that one bodie should be fill'd With all Graces wide enlarg'd, nature presently distill'd Helens cheeke, but not his heart, Cleopatra's ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... religious man will almost certainly profess a kind of universalism; he will assert that whensoever men have called upon any God and have found fellowship and comfort and courage and that sense of God within them, that inner light which is the quintessence of the religious experience, it was the True God that answered them. For the True God is a generous God, not a jealous God; the very antithesis of that bickering monopolist who "will have none other gods but Me"; and when ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... 'better halves' of Weller, Varden, Snagsby and Joe Gargery, not to speak of the Miggs, the Gummidge, and the M'Stinger. Like Mr. Swinburne and other true men, he regards Mrs. Gamp as representing the quintessence of literary art wielded by genius. Try (he urges with a fine curiosity) 'to imagine Sarah Gamp as a young girl'! But it is unfair to separate a phrase from a context in which every syllable is precious, reasonable, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... advocating Negro equality. Whatever opinions they may have expressed under the varying aspects of our Revolutionary epoch, the Constitution of these United States was the finality of their arduous toils, heroic achievements, and sublime wisdom; and that Constitution, the very sublimation and quintessence of a hundred civilizations, exhibiting the onward progress of the human race, recognizes the Right of Slavery, founded upon ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... Auber, Sainte-Beuve, Adolphe Nourrit, Ferdinand Hiller, Balzac, Dumas, Heller, Delacroix,—the Hugo of painters,—Michelet, Guizot, Thiers, Niemcevicz and Mickiewicz the Polish bards, and George Sand: the quintessence of the Paris ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... said: "He [Mr. Chanler] proceeds to say that they are now, as a class, dependent as when they were brought from their native wilds in Africa. Sir, I believe if the gentleman were master of all languages, if he were to attempt to put into a sentence the quintessence, the high-wines, and sublimation of an untruth, he could not have more concentrated ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... snuff! our fashionable end and aim— Strasburgh, Rappe, Dutch, Scotch—whate'er thy name! Powder celestial! quintessence divine New joys entrance my soul while thou art mine; Who takes? who takes thee not? Where'er I range I smell thy sweets from Pall ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... voice and choosing his words carefully, "I beg a thousand pardons. Can you ever forgive me?" She regarded him gravely, his intent green eyes, his mouth, that to her thirteen-year-old, arrow-collar taste was the quintessence of romance. Yes, Myra could forgive him ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... read such [197]hyperbolical eulogiums, as of Aristotle, that he was wisdom itself in the abstract, [198]a miracle of nature, breathing libraries, as Eunapius of Longinus, lights of nature, giants for wit, quintessence of wit, divine spirits, eagles in the clouds, fallen from heaven, gods, spirits, lamps of the world, dictators, Nulla ferant talem saecla futura virum: monarchs, miracles, superintendents of wit and learning, oceanus, phoenix, atlas, monstrum, portentum ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... entirely emancipated from convention, and guided both in religion and morals exclusively by the inner light of his reflection. His energy now interacts on his clairvoyance with a completeness which he had never quite displayed before, and it is here that we find Mr. Hardy's utterance peculiarly a quintessence of himself. Especially in the narrative pieces—which are often Wessex novels distilled into a wine-glass, such as "Rose-Ann," and "The Vampirine Fair"—he allows no considerations of what the reader may think "nice" or "pleasant" to ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... less than three times exhorts every man to continue in the condition in which Providence has placed him. "And this rule," says he, "ordain I in all the churches." Yet—would any man believe it possible?—the very quintessence of abolitionism itself has been extracted from this passage of his writings! Let us consider for a moment the wonderful alchemy by which this has ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... definition of taste. I told him I must decline defining it, because I knew he would publish it.' To secure first-hand, sifted, and 'authentick' material this man, so long decried by sciolists as merely a fool with a note-book, would forego every rebuff or refusal. 'Boswell,' says Horace Walpole, 'that quintessence of busy-bodies called on me last week, and was let in when he should not have been. After tapping many topics, to which I made as dry answers as an unbribed oracle, he vented his errand; 'had I seen Dr Johnson's Lives of ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... have known the Ambassadress any where by the likeness to her family. He is cold and stately, and not much tasted here. She is very sensible; but neither of them satisfy me in one point; I wanted to see something that was the quintessence of the newest bon ton, that had the last bel air, and spoke the freshest jargon. These people have scarce ever lived at Paris, are reasonable, and little amusing with follies. They have brought a cousin ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... change men into beasts of the field, and to them it can give a monstrous humanity. Life and death are in the right hand and in the left of him who knows its secrets. It confers wealth by the transmutation of metals and immortality by its quintessence.' ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham |
