"Quintessence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... Quintessence (Queen), sovereign of Ent['e]l['e]chie, the country of speculative science visited by Pantag'ruel and his companions in their search for "the oracle of the Holy Bottle."—Rabelais, Pantagruel, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... 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.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... throw the figure into relief. Alongside of the portrait as a painting of the soul should be placed pictures of ideal characters; ideal, not in the sense of good, but in the sense of more highly complex and unified than actually existing persons. Such pictures symbolize for us the quintessence and highest level of definite types of life. Manet's "Olympia" and Goya's "Maja" belong here equally with Leonardo's "Christ" or "Mona Lisa," with Raphael's Madonnas and Michelangelo's gods and angels. In them is attained the most intense concentration of ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... into the circle there. "But we could not conceive," he says, "how such a book could be dangerous. It came to us so gray, so Cimmerian, so corpse-like, that we could hardly endure its presence; we shuddered before it as if it had been a spectre. It struck us as the very quintessence of musty ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... that product of man's ingenuity, the moving picture, is destined to play the greatest part in quick education. It is the quintessence of democracy. ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... preaching in a desert while all the world was gone to hear strange things at Sainte-Baume. "Michaelis, you preach away, indeed, but you get no further forward; while Louisa has reached, has caught hold of the quintessence ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... as thou first didst know her, A loveliness to tempt or saint or devil, The rare quintessence of pure womanhood! Transparent brightness! A living crystal globe, Wherein all beauties of humanity Reflect themselves with iridescent glow! Dost thou remember? Behold her now the ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... that every mathematician and engineer should read them. They are, if I may say so, a "mathematical biology"—the survey of a life long study of "tropisms," which is the name given to express "forced movements" in organisms. They give the quintessence of laboratory experiments as to what are the effects of different energies such as light (heliotropism), electricity (galvanotropism), gravity (geotropism), etc., in their reaction and influence ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... Faustine stepped into the arms of the severe and stately prince whom her father had chosen. That Marcus Aurelius adored her is certain. His notebook shows it. A more tender-hearted and perfect lover romance may show, but history cannot. He must have been the quintessence of refinement, a thoroughbred to his finger-tips; one for whom that purple mantle was too gaudy, and yet who bore it, as he bore everything else, in that self-abnegatory spirit which the higher reaches ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... whose visits alone are sufficient to start the report that you are a Connaisseuse, though there should be no other reason for it. As for me, what I value particularly is, that by means of these ingenious visits, we learn a hundred things which we ought necessarily to know, and which are the quintessence of wit. Through them we hear the scandal of the day, or whatever niceties are going on in prose or verse. We know, at the right time, that Mr. So-and-so has written the finest piece in the world on such a subject; that ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... would be neighbourly Charity to give them away to the poorer Person. Hence may appear the Hardship that many are under of being necessitated to drink of those Brewers Malt Liquors, who out of avarice boil their Hops to the last, that they may not lose any of their quintessence: Nay, I have known some of the little Victualling Brewers so stupendiously ignorant, that they have thought they acted the good Husband, when they have squeezed the Hops after they have been boiled to the last in small Beer, to get ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... she saw the quintessence of all dolls. For her she could embroider, ruffle, and tuck; search the city over for the daintiest of baby shoes and the showiest of infant hats. Althea should have a nurse, and a carriage, and a poodle dog. Santa ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... must be counted, worms of five feet long, mortal angels, the world's epitome, heaps of atoms which Nature has kneaded with blood into solid flesh, little worlds of living clay, sparks of heaven, inches of earth, Nature's quintessence, moving dust, the little all, smooth-faced cherubim, in whose souls the Ring of stars has drawn the image ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... as was the original story. One must be a student of Poe to get its ultimate flavor. But in reading Poe's own stories, one need not be a reader of any one special preceding writer to get the strange and solemn exultation of that literary enchanter. He is the quintessence of his own ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... wines and brandies I detest, Here's richer juice from barley press'd. It is the quintessence of malt, And they that drink it want no salt. Come, then, quick come, and take this beer, And ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... 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
... times of strictest economy, it would perhaps be interesting to go deeper into the ways of those untiring thrifty ants who seem to know how "To cut a centime in four" and extract the quintessence from a bone. My concierge is a precious example for such a study, having discovered a way of bleaching clothes without boiling, and numerous recipes for reducing the high cost of living ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... 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 Plutarch seems to have thought, have suggested ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... wrongs our nomenclature, How our names differ from our nature, 'Tis easy to discern: "Here lies the quintessence of wit, For mirth and humour none so fit, And yet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... flower of the field is but of a month or a week's standing, nay, of one day's standing, for in the morning the grass is green, and the sun scorcheth it ere night, so that one sun's course shall see it both growing green and fading. So is the goodliness, the very perfection, the quintessence, so to speak, and the abstract of creatures' perfections. Outward accommodation in a world is as fading a thing as the flower is, as smoke is, it is so vanishing that it bides but a puff of his breath to blow it to nothing. Job hath a ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... society; and even now his spirit haunts you as you read the gorgeous sins of Roman noblemen in the pages of Gabriele d'Annunzio. And Murillo, though the expert not unjustly from their special point of view, see in him but a mediocre artist, in the same way is the very quintessence of Southern Spain. Wielders of the brush, occupied chiefly with technique, are apt to discern little in an old master, save the craftsman; yet art is no more than a link in the chain of life and cannot be sharply sundered from the civilisation ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... more exquisite and refined enmity against God, and so the more spiritual and purified it be from grosser corruptions, it is the more active and powerful against God, because it is, as it were, the very spirit and quintessence of enmity. You see it, 1 Cor i., how the wisdom of God is foolishness to the wisdom of the world, and then again, that the wisdom of the world is the greatest folly to the only wise God. Men, that have ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... be light,' said God, and forthwith light Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure, Sprung from the deep, and from her native east To journey through the airy gloom began, Sphered in a radiant cloud, for yet the sun Was not: she in a cloudy tabernacle Sojourned the while. ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... sweeps 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
... Others commend their Extract of the Soul of the Heathen Gods. One sets up with a receipt received from Van Helmonts own hands; Another hath received from a Jew the shining of Moses Face; nay I have heard a Pseudochymist blasphemously brag, he saw in the making of a grand Elixir, the Quintessence of the Trinity in Unity, and infinite other pitiful captivations of silly people, to be seen on every Gate and Post of this City; such as are the Spirit of the Salt of the World, Panchymagogon, and other ten-footed Greek names, and some other Mongrel non-sensical ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... generally; and yet you see, by the fineness and delicacy of their diet, diving into the fat capons, drinking your rich wines, feeding on larks, sparrows, potato-pies, and such good unctuous meats, how their wits are refined and rarified; and sometimes a very quintessence of conceit flows from them, able to drown ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... mean it," retorted Craig with a laugh which Grant thought the quintessence of impertinence. "You never dreamed she'd fall in love ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... Spring-times, loves, and partings, evoked by this poignant lure from dim realms of sub-consciousness, like subterranean rivers rising through creaks and crannies towards the lifted wand of the diviner. It seemed the quintessence of human experience, the ecstasy of perfect and enfranchising sorrow, distilled from the shackling, smirching half-sorrows of actual life. Some of the listening faces smiled; some were sodden, stupefied rather than enlightened; some showed ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Antipuritan reaction pervades almost the whole polite literature of the reign of Charles the Second. But the very quintessence of that spirit will be found in the comic drama. The playhouses, shut by the meddling fanatic in the day of his power, were again crowded. To their old attractions new and more powerful attractions had been added. Scenery, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... against 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 ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... Daudet or Maupassant, though I have profoundly appreciated the exquisite artistry of both these. No French writer, however, has moved me so much as the Spanish, for the French are wanting in the humor which endears these, and is the quintessence of their charm. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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 histrionic Irishism of the fellow. Or she liked him for his acting and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not be anything else but the second bulb, that is to say, the quintessence of all the hopes ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... to feel at last that I am really away from America,—a satisfaction that I never enjoyed as long as I stayed in Liverpool, where it seemed to me that the quintessence of nasal and hand-shaking Yankee-dom was continually 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 summer-time, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... fortunes, found A mistress worth five thousand pound; Swears he could get her in an hour, If gaffer Harry would endow her; And sell, to pacify his wrath, A birth-right for a mess of broth. Young Harry, as all Europe knows, Was long the quintessence of beaux; But, when espoused, he ran the fate That must attend the married state; From gold brocade and shining armour, Was metamorphosed to a farmer; His grazier's coat with dirt besmear'd; Nor twice a-week will shave his beard. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... women on board are daily quarrelling together and fighting like bull-dogs; little Gaddum Her is a regular black toy terrier, rather old, wonderfully strong, very short, but making up in spirit for what she lacks in stature; she is the quintessence of vice, being ready for a stand-up fight at the shortest notice. On one occasion she fought with her antagonist until both fell down the hold, smashing all my water jars; on another day they both fell into the river. The ennui of this wretched voyage appears to ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... made a free use of metaphor and allegory, telling how dear were the prosperity and happiness of the Hodenosaunee to his soul, and he felt every word he said. Charged with the thoughts and impressions of an Iroquois, the fourteen chiefs were the quintessence of dignity and importance to him, and when they smiled and nodded approval of his youthful effort his heart was lifted up. Then he, Tayoga and Willet bowed low to these men who in very truth were the ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... to the great park runs between the main edifice and the Chateau d'Enghien, a gentle incline descending again to the sunken gardens in a monumental stairway of easy slope, the whole a quintessence of much that is best of the art of the landscape gardener ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... 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 day through ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... 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 ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... glared at me. My soul was calm as a summer's 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 ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... 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 of houses, tools, ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... followed her past an open bathroom door whose garment-littered floor showed indeed that the laundry hadn't been sent out for some time, into another room that was, so to speak, the quintessence of pinkness. This was Mrs. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... near as I can to the thrill of a dog going into a fight or the delight of a bird in the air. And not simply in the heroic field of war and the air do I want to understand. I want to know something of the jolly wholesome satisfaction that a hungry pig must find in its wash. I want to get the quintessence of that. ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... We needed a word for the individual 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), or conductor. ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... which is the best of me. You agree, don't you, that it is the best of me?" She fingered the manuscript in her lap. "All my power, all my joy, the quintessence of my life! I think I shall be angry if it has a common success, if the people like it too well. I only want recognition for it—recognition and acknowledgment and admission. I want George Meredith to ask to be introduced to me!" ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... is even more absolute and unquestioned. He had great precursors here, but no equal; and until Claude Lorrain long afterwards arose, there appeared no successor capable, like himself, of expressing the quintessence of Nature's most significant beauties without a too slavish adherence to any special set of natural facts. Giovanni Bellini from his earliest Mantegnesque or Paduan days had, unlike his great brother-in-law, unlike the true Squarcionesques, ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... knew a couple of desperately bad boys who were reported to play "seven-up" in a barn, on the haymow, and the enormity of this practice made him shudder. He had once seen a pack of greasy "playing-cards," and it seemed to him to contain the quintessence of sin. If he had desired to defy all Divine law and outrage all human society, he felt that he could do it by shuffling them. And he was quite right. The two bad boys enjoyed in stealth their scandalous pastime, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Rome and Naples I did view Faces of celestial hue; Venetian dames I have seen many, (I only saw them, truck'd not any) Of Spanish beauties, Dutch and French, I have beheld the quintessence[3]: Yet saw I none that could out-shine, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... 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 fair experiments! ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... certain melancholy grandeur in the very simplicity or triteness of the theme: as it were the very quintessence of all the old [200] Roman epitaphs, of all that was monumental in that city of tombs, layer upon layer of dead things and people. As if in the very fervour of disillusion, he seemed to be composing—Hosper epigraphas chronon kai holon ethnon—the sepulchral ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... Zembla and other Northern Regions what stupendious Things may be effected by Cold, they would not perhaps think it so despicable. And not to repeat what I lately recited to You out of Paracelsus himself, who by the help of an intense Cold teaches to separate the Quintessence of Wine; I will only now observe to You, that the Conservation of the Texture of many Bodies both animate and inanimate do's so much depend upon the convenient motion both of their own Fluid and Looser Parts, and of the ambient ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... authority, was the cause of the most dreadful error among the Jews from which any nation can suffer. The tradition says that the same Nehemias Todros who had a princely title, Nassi, was the first to bring to Poland the book, Zohar, in which was explained the quintessence of the perilous doctrine, and from that day there comes from Poland the mixture of the Talmud with Kabalistic ideas which has influenced very badly the minds and the lives of the Polish Jews. History is silent regarding ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... 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 ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... in his latter days Wagner was thoroughly feminini generis—? Again I say, the Christians of to-day are too modest for me.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} If Wagner were a Christian, then Liszt was perhaps a Father of the Church!—The need of salvation, the quintessence of all Christian needs, has nothing in common with such clowns; it is the most straightforward expression of decadence, it is the most convincing and most painful affirmation of decadence, in sublime symbols and practices. The Christian ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... she abstracts their forms, And draws a kind of quintessence from things; Which to her proper nature she transforms To bear them ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... recognise him, and after having stared at him for some time he hastened towards him with open arms exclaiming, "A happy meeting with the mirror of chivalry, my worthy compatriot Don Quixote of La Mancha, the flower and cream of high breeding, the protection and relief of the distressed, the quintessence of knights-errant!" And so saying he clasped in his arms the knee of Don Quixote's left leg. He, astonished at the stranger's words and behaviour, looked at him attentively, and at length recognised him, very much surprised to see him there, and made great efforts to dismount. This, however, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Rub-a-dub, it is said, dropped his pipe upon the ground in the extremity of his 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, as he took the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... than a symbol—it is a sacrament and an initiation. It is the sap that rises in the world's recurrent spring. It is the ichor, the quintessence of the creative mystery. It is the blood of the sons of the morning. It is the dew upon the paradisic fields. It is the red-rose light, upon the feet of those who dance upon graves. Wine is a sign to us how there is required ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... butterflies haunted rather different sites. If I had to cut up myself in a review I would have [worried?] and quizzed sexual selection; therefore, though I am fully convinced that it is largely true, you may imagine how pleased I am at what you say on your belief. This part of your letter to me is a quintessence of richness. The fact about butterflies attracted by coloured sepals is another good fact, worth its weight in gold. It would have delighted the heart of old Christian C. Sprengel—now many years ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... 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
... beside Yeager must have been in her very early twenties, but her pretty face, finely modeled, had the provocative effrontery that is the note of twentieth-century young womanhood. Its audacity, which was the quintessence of worldliness, held ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... give me pleasure by your letter—and even if the object had not been answered, I ought still to thank you. But it is thoroughly answered. Such a letter from such a hand! Sympathy is dear—very dear to me: but the sympathy of a poet, and of such a poet, is the quintessence of sympathy to me! Will you take back my gratitude for it?—agreeing, too, that of all the commerce done in the world, from Tyre to Carthage, the exchange of sympathy for gratitude is the ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Arabs.'"[103] Letourneau, 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
... I was made to hold a conference with three bishops. They all differed in their creeds, and so, taking the quintessence of their opinions, I formed a ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... 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 is, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... which represented to him the best of the day. The morning he reserved for hard work, and during the course of it he smoked but one pipe. A quotation from Fuller which was often on his lips expressed his point of view: "Spill not the morning, which is the quintessence of the day, in recreation. For sleep itself is a recreation. And to open the morning thereto is to add ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 saw handkerchiefs without number waved by ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... world. From a melancholy turn, from living reclusely, and from a little too much dignity, he never converses easily; all his words are measured and chosen, and formed into sentences: his writings are admirable—he himself is not agreeable." This volatile being in himself personified the quintessence of that society which is called "the world," and could not endure that equality of intellect which genius exacts. He rejected Chatterton, and quarrelled with every literary man and every artist whom he first invited to familiarity—and then ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Yet Sabae's lords before this babe unfold Their 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 ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... that 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 sheets ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... beauty," wonderfully constructed from divine quintessence and subtle pen and brush strokes, this academic mystery, had great success. In Italy it was much discussed in the environment of Mengs and of Winckelmann, ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... question I may call attention to the fact that the germs of civilization were first planted in China by people strongly imbued with the belief that the pearl was the quintessence of life-giving and prosperity-conferring powers:[169] it was not only identified with the moon, but also was itself a particle of moon-substance which fell as dew into the gaping oyster. It was the very people who held such views about pearls and ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... been forced to hide his true personality behind the mask of a Scarpia, a Tonio, an Iago, and last but not least, the most repulsive yet subtle of all his villains—Chim-Fang, in L'Oracolo. Perhaps the most famous of them all is Scarpia. But what a Scarpia, the quintessence of the polished, elegant knave! The refinement of Mr. Scotti's art gives to each role distinct characteristics which separate ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... again. At the end of an hour she discovered that she had dressed up Trennahan in velvet and gold, doublet and hose. She laughed with grim merriment. Ignorant as she was, she was quick to see the incongruity between modern man in his quintessence and the romantic garments of a buried century. Also, her hero had addressed his startled ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... 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
... in that matter the very quintessence of woman. Even I, who have known her for years, don't pretend ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... witchcraft and incubacy and succubacy which I will tell you about; or rather, I will get another more expert than I in these matters to tell you about them. Sacrilegious mass, spells, and succubacy. There you have the real quintessence of Satanism." ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... as it did, her love of a free, open-air life, was one of those strangely mysterious countenances met only once in a lifetime. It seemed to be the quintessence of pain and passion, conflict and agony, desire and despair. She was not one of those befrilled, fashion-plate dolls that one meets at the after-war crushes and dances, but was austerely simple in dress, with a face which betrayed a spiritual ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... love: love, which has its origin in Dream, its acme in Ecstasy, and its catastrophe in Disillusion: love, which is life's core and kernel and epitome, the focus and quintessence of existence. A life that is without it has somehow missed its mark: it is meaningless and plotless, "a string of casual episodes, like a bad tragedy." For what, after all, is Love? Who has given an account of it? Plato's fable, which makes Love the child of Satiety and Want, or ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... contemplate a name without an owner—it is not to every one, but Mr. Flint likes to read the sign, and think that Snarle is dead. He was the reverse of Flint, and that his name should have been Snarle at all is odd, for in life he was the quintessence of quietness, and the oil of good nature. But Flint is well named; he is chalcedony at heart. Nobody says this, but everybody knows it. Nell, the pretty match-girl, who sells her wares in Wall-street, never approaches him, nor the newsboys; ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... matter she abstracts the forms, And draws a kind of quintessence from things, Which to her proper nature she transforms, To bear them light on her ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... would please God make conscience of believing; on pain, I say, of displeasing him; on pain of being, with Cain, rejected, and on pain of being damned in hell. 'He that believeth not shall be damned' (Mark 16:16). Faith is the very quintessence of all gospel obedience, it being that which must go before other duties, and that which also must accompany whatever I do in the worship of God, if it be accepted of him.[35] Here you may see a reason why the force and power ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... with the huge novels so much in vogue at this moment, they look like tiny models of massive machinery. Turgenev's method was first to write a story at great length, and then submit it to rigid and remorseless compression, so that what he finally gave to the public was the quintessence of his art. It is one of his most extraordinary powers that he was able to depict so many characters and so many life histories in so very few words. The reader has ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... compared with the hundreds of thousands or perhaps four or five millions of soldiers, and it is their suffering—bared as it is of the glory and excitement that usually lightens the life of the fighting man—that is the quintessence of war's tragedy. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... divided the teaching of the Buddha into five periods, regarded as progressive not contradictory, and expounded respectively in (a) the Hua-yen Sutra; (b) the Hinayana Sutras; (c) the Leng-yen-ching; (d) the Prajna-paramita; (e) the Lotus Sutra which is the crown, quintessence and plenitude of all Buddhism. He also divided religion into eight parts,[818] sometimes counted as four, the latter half of the list being the more important. The names are collection, progress, distinction and completion. These terms indicate different ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... Prescott's sanctum. Yet, though he accepted us at our face value, and began to talk of his strange discoveries there was none of the old familiar prating about matrix and flux, elixir, magisterium, magnum opus, the mastery and the quintessence, those alternate names for the philosopher's stone which Paracelsus, Simon Forman, Jerome Cardan, and the other medieval worthies indulged in. This experience at least was as up-to-date as the Curies, ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... Benjamin thinks there is some occult diplomatic danger in the papers—at least he is idle, and wants some diplomatic work on his hands, in the regular way. How to avoid doing anything whatever, diplomatically, with this matter before him, is the very quintessence of diplomacy! He can look at it, read it, handle it, and return it to Lord John, and then diplomatically prove that this government never had ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... that, 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
... coppice, but felt at once he could not manage that in this heat. He sat down instead under the oak tree by the swing, and the dog Balthasar, who also felt the heat, lay down beside him. He sat there smiling. What a revel of bright minutes! What a hum of insects, and cooing of pigeons! It was the quintessence of a summer day. Lovely! And he was happy—happy as a sand-boy, whatever that might be. She was coming; she had not given him up! He had everything in life he wanted—except a little more breath, and less ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... stumbled on sultry nights, were fingers, tapered by tomb life, that sprang up from the earth to detain them and cast them into each other's arms. That pungent and penetrating odour exhaled by the broken stems was the fertilising perfume, the mighty quintessence of life which is slowly elaborated in the grave, and intoxicates the lovers who wander in the solitude of the paths. The dead, the old departed dead, longed for the bridal of ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... 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 of ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... spiritual essence of the man, may have inclined him to laugh at all things. That at least is the value he now has for us. He is the portrait of perpetual irony, the spirit of the golden Sixteenth Century which delicately laughed at the whole world of thoughts and things, the quintessence of the poetry of Ariosto, the wit of Berni, all condensed into one incarnation and immortalised by truthfullest art. With the Gaul, the Spaniard, and the German at her gates, and in her cities, and encamped ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... of actually sharing in the banquet—is nevertheless as active and helpful as 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
... 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 ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... uniform manner. Just as the language of Utopia will be a 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 the interpretation of his feelings ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... considered with Reference to their Fitness for Stage-Representation," is, in the opinion of good judges, the noblest criticism ever written. The brief, "matterful" notes to his Specimens of the Old English Dramatists are the very quintessence of criticism,—the flower and fruit of years of thoughtful reading of the old English drama. Nay, even his incidental allusions to his favorite old poets and prose-writers are worth whole ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... The Ten 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 ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... importance, are of an impalpable kind. I doubt if 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 ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... little monster in my eyes, who ought to have been sent out of the way at once of all companions capable of abandon and enjoyment; and, as to the "father" she quoted from, I could imagine him as the embodiment of asinine wisdom, so to speak—the quintessence of the practical, which so often, I observe, inclines its devotees ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... beer, Wholesome as mutton, and as water clear, In wildflowers fertile, as thy fields of corn, And frolicksome as lambs, or sheep new shorn. I ask not ortolans, or Chian wine, The fat of rams, or quintessence of swine. Her spicy stores let either India keep, Nor El Dorado vend her golden sheep. And to the mansion house, or council hall, Still on her black splay feet may the huge tortoise crawl. Not Parson's butt my appetite can move, Nor, Bell, thy beer; nor ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... by his own might from all 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. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... the three buoyant logs lashed together with strips of cane which with sullen lurch, take the wash of the boat. The boys jerk their heads in the direction and murmur "wur-gun," and speculate on the last user. The day is young. For the time being the best the ancient river has to show—the quintessence of the season, superb October—shall be ours. The cloudless sky is richly blue, lighter in shade than the shapely mountain which seems to block the way miles ahead. The sun gives a taste of its quality, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... of the Anti-Lebanon. The mountain-sides were brilliant with flowers, and many new and beautiful specimens arrested our attention. The asphodel grew in bunches beside the streams, and the large scarlet anemone outshone even the poppy, whose color here is the quintessence of flame. Five hours after leaving Banias, we reached the highest part of the pass—a dreary volcanic region, covered with fragments of lava. Just at this place, an old Arab met us, and, after scanning us closely, stopped and accosted ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... 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 as she might have done ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of this world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... of thought that developed finally into scientific chemistry. Nor can the ultimate aim of the modern chemist seek a higher object than that of this sixteenth-century alchemist, who taught that "true alchemy has but one aim and object, to extract the quintessence of things, and to prepare arcana, tinctures, and elixirs which may restore to man the health and soundness he ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... cote moral a envisager, et c'est le parti que prit Rousseau. The general sentiment of the ode is handled with great dignity in Paradise Regained. Bk. III. l. 43—157—a passage which, as Thyer says, contains the quintessence of the subject. Dante has some noble lines on Fortune in the viith canto of the Inferno,—lines worthy of a great mystic poet. After referring to the vain complaints and maledictions of men against ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... to the above definition, tickles my fancy. I would give a great deal to be eumoirous. What a thing to say: "I have achieved eumoiriety,"—namely the quintessence of happy-fatedness dealt unto ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... call "spontaneous," because we are ignorant of their causation—is as wholly unknown to the historian of scientific ideas as it was to biological specialists before 1858. But that suggestion is the central idea of the 'Origin of Species,' and contains the quintessence of Darwinism. ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... 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 Devil ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... motive for everything we do. The friend who gave it to me had accepted it as scientific and authoritative and was thoroughly in accord with its conclusions. I may add that this particular "friend," as far as I have been able to observe, is the quintessence of selfishness. ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... PET. The quintessence. Maybe Witwoud knows more; he stayed longer. Besides, they never mind him; they say anything ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... setting forth the Catholic standpoint.] It is impossible, upon Catholic principles, not to admit the force of this reasoning; we can only not help smiling (with the writer) at the simplicity of the gulled editor, swallowing the dregs of Loyola for the very quintessence of sublimated reason in England at the commencement of the nineteenth century. We will just, as a contrast, show what we Protestants (who are a party concerned) thought upon the same subject, at a period rather nearer to the heroic project in question." This is the kind of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... given a human being, to remain absolutely stationary. They might be sealed up in the houses where you see them; their faces and their dresses are literally part of the fixtures of the town, and the province in which they dwell. They are its tradition, its memory, its quintessence, the genius loci incarnate. There is something frigid and monumental about these ladies; they know exactly when to laugh and when to shake their heads, and every now and then give out some utterance which passes ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... acknowledge that their meaning has been expressed even more plainly and forcibly than in their own prose. The reader will observe that of the whole twenty-three only two appear to have any knowledge on the subject, the famous A. R. Wallace and the brilliant Dr. Coues. The following is the essence or rather quintessence of the voluminous responses in the order in which they were published. The learned gentlemen ought to feel grateful for the increased candor, brevity and explicitness of their replies, when boiled down ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various |
