"Pre-eminently" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interest with which these volumes were welcomed did much to lighten the last years of a somewhat sombre and solitary life. His posthumous poems were collected in 1902. The characteristics of De Tabley's poetry are pre-eminently magnificence of style, derived from close study of Milton, sonority, dignity, weight and colour. His passion for detail was both a strength and a weakness: it lent a loving fidelity to his description of natural objects, but it sometimes ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... Wordsworth found in the peasants of Cumberland, and the painter Franois Millet in the peasants of Brittany, may well have had its prototype in early Greece. And so, even before the development, by the poets, of their aweful and passionate story, Demeter and Persephone seem to have been pre-eminently the venerable, or aweful, goddesses. Demeter haunts the fields in spring, when the young lambs are dropped; she visits the barns in autumn; she takes part in mowing and binding up the corn, and is the goddess of sheaves. She presides over all the pleasant, significant details of the farm, the ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Political freedom, which is rather a different matter, is perhaps pre-eminently the ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... reasons for the veneration of the cross were pointed out; nothing being more natural than that primitive Man should, or more certain than that he did, find pleasure in connecting with other objects of his regard than Life itself, that which as the Symbol of Life was pre-eminently a symbol of ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... of the public will, and the last pre-eminently so: because, both the question of the expurgation, and the form of the process, were directly put in ...
— Thomas Hart Benton's Remarks to the Senate on the Expunging Resolution • Thomas Hart Benton
... because the Christian religion commands meekness, and despotism claims arbitrary power to the whims and passions of a frail mortal; and still it is more than 1,500 years since the Christian religion became dominant, and through that long period despotism has been pre-eminently dominant; you can scarcely show one single truly democratic republic of any power which had subsisted but for a hundred years, exercising any influence upon the condition of the world. Constantine, raising the Christian religion to Rome's imperial throne, ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... Boston," that lady was remarking impressively, "you will, of course, wish to avail yourself of those means of culture and advancement so sadly lacking in your own environment. This, my dear Philura, is pre-eminently the era of progressive thought. We can have at best, I fear, but a faint conception of the degree to which mankind will be able, in the years of the coming century, to shake off the gross ...
— The Transfiguration of Miss Philura • Florence Morse Kingsley
... of Mr. Rennell Rodd's poetry; for, while there is much in his work that may interest the intellect, much that will excite the emotions, and many-cadenced chords of sweet and simple sentiment—for to those who love Art for its own sake all other things are added—yet, the effect which they pre-eminently seek to produce is purely an artistic one. Such a poem as The Sea-King's Grave, with all its majesty of melody as sonorous and as strong as the sea by whose pine-fringed shores it was thus nobly conceived ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... the prestige of local authority, to reduce the villages to confusion, to spread cynicism and scandals, together with complete disbelief in everything and an eagerness for something better, and finally, by means of fires, as a pre-eminently national method, to reduce the country at a given moment, if need be, to desperation. Are those your words which I tried to remember accurately? Is that the programme you gave us as the authorised representative of the central committee, which is to this day utterly ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... runs farther in from the Atlantic than any other tide from this or any other ocean. And its 'Great Lakes' are appropriately known by their proud name because they contain more fresh water than all the world beside. Size for size, this one river system is so pre-eminently first in the sum of these three attributes that there is no competing second to be found elsewhere. {2} It forms a class of its own. And well it may, even for its minor attributes, when the island of Newfoundland at its mouth exceeds the area of Ireland; when the rest of its mouth could ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... man is pre-eminently a useful man. He does not cramp his mind, nor take half-views of men and things. He knows that there is much misery, but that misery need not be the rule of life. He sees that in every state people may be cheerful; the ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... will not move us to either pity or fear; pity is occasioned by undeserved misfortune, and fear by that of one like ourselves; so that there will be nothing either piteous or fear-inspiring in the situation. There remains, then, the intermediate kind of personage, a man not pre-eminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought upon him not by vice and depravity but by some error of judgement, of the number of those in the enjoyment of great reputation and prosperity; e.g. Oedipus, Thyestes, and the men of note of similar families. The perfect Plot, ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... strong man—strong with that peculiar combination of mental and moral force which reveals itself in masculine common sense. His friends not unfrequently compared him to Dr. Johnson, and, much as the two men differed in some ways, there was a real ground for the comparison. Fitzjames might be called pre-eminently a 'moralist,' in the old-fashioned sense in which that term is applied to Johnson. He was profoundly interested, that is, in the great problems of life and conduct. His views were, in this sense at least, original—that they were the fruit of his own experience, and ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... features of exceptional import. What wonder that it has had so direct a bearing on the spiritual development of the people on its banks, and that it entered into the very texture of their lives! It was, for the Egyptian, pre-eminently the sacred river—deemed to be one of the primitive essences—ranked with those highest deities who were not visible objects of adoration. As a form of God "he cannot (says an ancient hymnist) be figured in stone; he is not to be seen in the sculptured ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... "That is pre-eminently one of the things that no fellow can find out," he answered. "In a dream you are likely to have any kind of weather, and on a submerged planet we have no precedents at hand to tell us what to expect. By replanting the vegetables right along we have had a perpetual ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... there is a truthfulness to human nature, and a truthfulness to that particular phase of human nature which is pre-eminently manifested by a high-minded race in its primitive ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... he been an ancient Egyptian instead of a modern German, he would doubtless have performed a weekly sacrifice to it, with the same stiff but ready outward courtesy, and prompted by the same inward adherence to the principles of household peace, which so pre-eminently ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... throughout the arid States and Territories, plans for reclaiming works being prepared and passed upon by boards of engineers before approval by the Secretary of the Interior. In Arizona and Nevada, in localities where such work is pre-eminently needed, construction has already been begun. In other parts of the arid West various projects are well advanced towards the drawing up of contracts, these being delayed in part by necessities of reaching ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... was more devout, or more constant to the service of its gods, than were the Egyptians; and hence, being superstitious, they were pre-eminently under the control of priests, as the people were in India. We see, chiefly in India and Egypt, the power of caste,—tyrannical, exclusive, and pretentious,—and powerful in proportion to the belief in a future state. Take ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... sore need of a practical soldier to contend with the scientific and professional tyrants against whom they had so long been struggling, and Maurice, although so young, was pre-eminently a practical man. He was no enthusiast; he was no poet. He was at that period certainly no politician. Not often at the age of twenty has a man devoted himself for years to pure mathematics for the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... snow-tipped against the blue sky, a wonderful wistaria blue drifted smoke-like about the valley; and the tall trees—poplars and cypresses—stood like spires. No wonder the French are spirituel, a word so different from our "spiritual," for that they are not; pre-eminently citizens of this world—even the pious French. This is why on the whole they make a better fist of social life than we do, we misty islanders, only half-alive because we set such store by our unrealised moralities. Not one Englishman in ten now really believes ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... spoken of as the one quality distinctive of true generalship, there are two respects in which a general of cavalry at Athens should pre-eminently excel. Not only must he show a dutiful submission to the gods; but he must possess great fighting qualities, seeing that he has on his borders a rival cavalry equal to his own in number and backed by a large force of heavy infantry. (1) So that, ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... questions of moral right, Harold Transome, alike congenitally and circumstantially, could scarcely by possibility have been animated by it even in slight degree, nor does it ever betray its presence in him through those slight but graceful courtesies of life which are pre-eminently the sphere of its manifestation. Equally untenable is the hypothesis which ascribes these manifestations of character wholly to the influence of a nature higher than his own appealing to him—that of Felix Holt, the glorious old Dissenter, or Esther Lyon. Such appeals ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... than most men of standing alone, and of arranging his observations on life and the world in ways of his own, he had pre-eminently above all men round him, in the highest and noblest form, the spirit of a disciple. Like most human things, discipleship has its good and its evil, its strong and its poor and dangerous side; but it really has, what is much forgotten now, a good ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... use that I already find I cannot get on without it, pilikia. It means anything, from a downright trouble to a slight difficulty or entanglement. "I'm in a pilikia," or "very pilikia," or "pilikia!" A revolution would be "a pilikia." The fact of the late king dying without naming a successor was pre-eminently a pilikia, and it would be a serious pilikia if a horse were to lose a shoe on the way to Kilauea. Hou- hou, meaning "in a huff," I hear on all sides; and two words, makai, signifying "on the sea-side," and mauka, "on the mountain ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Vosburgh had rented for his summer residence a pretty cottage on the banks of the Hudson. The region abounded in natural beauty and stately homes. There was an infusion of Knickerbocker blood in the pre-eminently elect ones of society, and from these there was a gradual shading off in several directions, until by some unwritten law the social line was drawn. Strangers from the city might be received within the inner circle, or they might not, as some of the leaders practically ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... talked a good deal about liberty over the way, but he kept the goddess under his roof. One memorable occasion in which our enthusiasm was kept at white heat for two hours I must try to describe, though words cannot do it justice, as it was pre-eminently a spectacular performance. The imagination even cannot do justice to the limp, woe-begone appearance of the actors in the closing scene. These romps were conducted on a purely democratic basis, without regard to color, sex, or previous condition ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... an end to posting, no relays existing in this part of Switzerland, and I had been compelled to confide in the honesty of an unknown voiturier; a class of men who are pre-eminently subject to the long-established frailty of all who deal in horses, wines, lamp-oil, and religion. Leaving this functionary to follow with the carriage, we walked along the banks of the river, by a common-place and dirty road, among forges and mills, to the cataract ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Hindus at a period prior to the Muhammadan invasions, though bangles may not have been made from it. Another reason for the use of lac bangles on the occasions noticed is that lac, as already seen, represents blood. Though blood itself is now repugnant to the Hindus, yet red is pre-eminently their lucky colour, being worn at weddings and generally preferred. It is suggested in the Bombay Gazetteer [85] that blood was lucky as having been the first food of primitive man, who learnt to suck the blood of animals ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... could see his way without other impediments. But the other impediments were there in such strength and numbers as to make him feel that it could not have been intended by Fate that he should take to himself a wife. Although those letters of his to the Daily Record had been so pre-eminently successful, he had never yet been able to earn by writing above twenty-five or thirty pounds a month. If that might be continued to him he could live upon it himself; but, even with his moderate views, it would not suffice for ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... themselves. Everybody has been rolling downhill, and every one has known for ages that they have nothing to clutch at. I am persuaded of the success of this mysterious propaganda, if only because Russia is now pre-eminently the place in all the world where anything you like may happen without any opposition. I understand only too well why wealthy Russians all flock abroad, and more and more so every year. It's simply instinct. If the ship is sinking, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... let us retain our independence of judgement; but this is pre-eminently a matter in which pure agnostics must abstain from arrogance and consider the facts impartially as ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... thus reacts upon "What is." Meanwhile, until we can make the system better, our appreciation of "What is" affects our sense of "What should be." And the more so, as we are sensible. For "What should be" is pre-eminently an affair of relativity. A man may hold very strongly that equal pay to every individual is desirable, as he puts it, as an ideal. But this will not prevent him, in a world in which managers are paid far more than manual workers, from maintaining hotly (at any rate, ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... the language of a people who live pre-eminently close to nature, and are at home amongst the animals of the wilderness, beasts and birds, winds, and woods, and waters, falling snows, and flying sands, and rolling rocks, and these are carefully ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... his 'avant toute chose.' Perhaps it seems very like 'de la musique.' But it tells us more about Hopkins's music than Verlaine's line told us about his. This music is of a particular kind, not the 'sanglots du violon,' but pre-eminently the music of song, the music most proper to lyrical verse. If one were to seek in English the lyrical poem to which Hopkins's definition could be most fittingly applied, one would find Shelley's 'Skylark.' A technical progression onwards from the 'Skylark' ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... capital, Hsiang Ling by name, and that she had after all become an inmate of the household of that big fool Hsueeh. Since she's had her hair dressed as a married woman she does look so much more pre-eminently beautiful! But that big fool Hsueeh has really brought contamination ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... to face a foreign foe, so did the American, North and South, unite beneath the banner of Washington and hurl down the gage of battle to Britain's mighty power, and no historian has yet presumed to say which was the better soldier. Washington belongs to no section. He was truly an American, pre-eminently a patriot. The nobility of his character was his very own; the dazzling splendor of his undying fame is the brightest jewel in Columbia's crown of glory, for it was born of the dauntless valor and nurtured with the priceless blood of a people whom kings could not conquer ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... glory into one which the other could not attain to,—and Bismarck, too, was a man of old Prussia, of her ancient traditions and formalities, while the crown prince was modern amongst moderns—a soldier, yes! but pre-eminently a man, a citizen; but though each felt his conviction differently, its strength was one and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... constitution does not impose religious beliefs or the practice of a cult as a condition of political privileges" (l. c. p. 225). Yet "nobody in the United States believes that a man without religion might be an honest man" (l. c. p. 224). Yet North America is pre-eminently the country of religiosity, as Beaumont, Tocqueville and the Englishman Hamilton assure us with one voice. Meanwhile, the North American States only serve us as an example. The question is: What is the attitude of completed political emancipation towards ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... into a knot at the crown of the head, in the fashion so trying to those who have neither bloom nor beauty, so exquisitely becoming to those who have both; and the maiden, even amid Spartan girls, was pre-eminently lovely. It is true that the sun had somewhat embrowned the smooth cheek; but the stately throat and the rounded arms were admirably fair—not, indeed, with the pale and dead whiteness which the Ionian ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... April was nearing its end, when, one spring morning, Lashka asked permission to go down the creek several miles to Siwash Pete's cabin. Pete's wife, a Stewart River woman, had sent up word that something was wrong with her baby, and Lashka, who was pre-eminently a mother-woman and who held herself to be truly wise in the matter of infantile troubles, missed no opportunity of nursing the children of other women as ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... concern was for the gospel and for the removal of abuses which no one could deny to exist; how, at the same time, they had resisted the iconoclasts and other riotous fanatics, nay, how the suppression of the Anabaptists and the peasants was pre-eminently due to them, and how they had been the first to bring to light and vindicate the rights and majesty of authority. A representation of this kind, he hoped, must surely have an influence on the Emperor. He flatly rejected any alliance with those,—namely, the Swiss,—who 'strive ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... infinite delicacy and suggestiveness of musical rhythm and cadence. Spenser found the secret of it. The art has had many and consummate masters since, as different in their melody as in their thoughts from Spenser. And others at the time, Shakespere pre-eminently, heard, only a little later, the same grandeur, and the same subtle beauty in the sounds of their mother-tongue, only waiting the artist's skill to be combined and harmonized into strains of mysterious fascination. But Spenser was the first to ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... middle classes to hold their own against royalty, sanctioning, and, at the same time strengthening, their sway over the workers, parliamentary rule is pre-eminently a middle-class rule. The upholders of this system have never seriously maintained that a parliament or a municipal council represent a nation or a city. The most intelligent among them know that this is impossible. ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... pre-eminently ethical in its design. It is expressly devoted to the question—Is Virtue teachable? Sokrates as usual confesses that he does not know what virtue is. He will not accept a catalogue of the admitted virtues as a definition of virtue, and presses for ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... man? Where he came from? Who he was? Whither he was advancing? They sought his origin; his first appearance on the stage of the people; his first connection with the celebrated personages of his time. They sought in mysteries the cause of his prodigious popularity. It was pre-eminently in his nature. ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Joppa to the Syrian pirates, by which the very same number perished as in the Napoleon massacre, viz. something about 4000. In the 200 years of the Crusades, Joppa revived again into military verdure. The fact is, that the shore of Syria is pre-eminently deficient in natural harbors, or facilities for harbors—those which exist have been formed by art and severe contest with the opposition of nature. Hence their extreme paucity, and hence their disproportionate ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... to the table. It is evident from what we have found, that there is no colour which pre-eminently appears to be the colour of the table, or even of any one particular part of the table—it appears to be of different colours from different points of view, and there is no reason for regarding some of these as more really its colour than others. And we know that even from a ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... delivered at Bristol, England, near the close of the nineteenth century, by Professor William Crookes, president of the British Association for the advancement of science; he says; 'Wheat pre-eminently demands as a dominant manure, nitrogen fixed in the form of ammonia or nitric acid. Many years of experimentation with nitrate of soda, or Chili salt-petre, have proved it to be the most concentrated form of nitrogenous food demanded by growing wheat. This substance ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... of literature, and exercised supreme jurisdiction over author, printer, publisher, and licenser. Either House separately, or both concurrently, assumed the exercise of this power; and, if a book were sentenced to be burnt, the hangman seems always to have been called in aid. In an age which was pre-eminently the age of pamphlets, and torn in pieces by religious and political dissension, the number of pamphlets that were condemned to be burnt by the common hangman was naturally legion, though, of course, a still greater number escaped with some lesser form of censure. It is only with the former ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... of Mayor Bryant, his person clad in a rigorously accurate full dress costume, was not less noticeable. But the ladies! Oh, there began the tempest of the soul of any man who tried to pick out any one who was more pre-eminently attractive than the other. The eye could travel on forever through the boxes from east to west, from Mission street to Market, from the main floor to the roof, and every prospect was pleasing and man was utterly outvied. At half past two the tall and graceful ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... pre-eminently the land of backsheesh, and Alexandria, as the chief port of arrival and departure, naturally comes in for its share of this annoying attention. From ship to hotel, and from hotel to railway-station, the traveller has to run the gauntlet of people deeply versed ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... wish our nomenclature to tell us something about the plant itself, or only to tell us the place it holds in relation to other plants: as, for instance, in the Herb-Robert, would it be well to {179} christen it, shortly, 'Rob Roy,' because it is pre-eminently red, and so have done with it;—or rather to dwell on its family ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... of Zeus, Castor and Pollux, a stalwart pair of youths, of the Doric stock, great the former as a horse-breaker and the latter as a boxer; were worshipped at Sparta as guardians of the State, and pre-eminently as patrons of gymnastics; protected the hearth, led the army in war, and were the convoy of the traveller by land and the voyager by sea, which as constellations they ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... rational conversation with a woman on questions of public policy. He answered all her questions, though the commentators volunteer the opinion that some may have been frivolous and captious. As the text suggests no such idea, we have a right to assume that her conduct and conversation were pre-eminently judicious. Solomon did not suggest to the queen that she was out of her sphere, that home duties, children and the philosophy of domestic life were the proper subjects for her consideration; but he talked with her as one sovereign should ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... tameness, and disgusting habits of the carrion-feeding hawks of South America make them pre-eminently striking to any one accustomed only to the birds of Northern Europe. In this list may be included four species of the Caracara or Polyborus, the Turkey buzzard, the Gallinazo, and the Condor. The Caracaras are, from their structure, placed among ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... and, of course, an appropriate excellence, of the romantic drama. For these unities were to a great extent the natural form of that which in its elements was homogeneous, and the representation of which was addressed pre-eminently to the outward senses;—and though the fable, the language and the characters appealed to the reason rather than to the mere understanding, inasmuch as they supposed an ideal state rather than referred to an existing reality,—yet it was a reason which was obliged to accommodate ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... lip assumed the contempt of which it was pre-eminently capable. She made no immediate reply. James Polder's fingers absently clasped the goblet before him; he drew it toward his plate, tipped the thick liquid it contained. "Just what do you recommend me to do?" Mariana challenged Howat. ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... understandable. The normal, as the perfect or nearly perfect balance of forces in the organism, at any given moment, emerges as a more definite and real concept than that which would abstract it from a curve of variations. Moreover, since the directive forces within the organism are pre-eminently the internal secretions, the normal becomes definable as their harmonious balancing or equilibrium, a state which tends not to undo (as the abnormal does) but ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... short stay in Philadelphia on this occasion, I visited several of its prisons, philanthropic institutions, et cet. These are pre-eminently the glory of this beautiful city; yet as they have been often described, I shall pass them by in silence, with the exception of two, the Refuge, and the Penitentiary; which I briefly notice because I may offer a few general remarks in another place, on the important ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... the latter was the Rev. Mr. Byrne, who, up to that hour, had taken an advanced position among those who were most forward in the cause of the country. Not a fortnight before, he delivered a speech to nearly one hundred thousand persons in the town of Carrick, pre-eminently insurrectionary in its tendency; and he had acted more than once as controller and regulator of the violent passions his own vehemence aroused. For this duty, which he effectively discharged because of his known disloyalty, he received the public approval of ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... understanding of children, it has never been our privilege to meet with before. We are disposed to envy those young friends who are fortunate enough to number them among their literary possessions, for although pre-eminently children's books, they are yet well able to impart instruction to children of ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... concluded was characterized by some very remarkable features. It was on the part of Britain the war of a highly civilised country, in a pre-eminently mechanical, and, with all its faults, singularly humane age,—in an age, too, remarkable for the diffusion of its literature; and hence certain conspicuous traits which belonged to none of the other wars in which our country had been previously engaged. Never before did such completely equipped fleets ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... VIII. In reality, there was nothing old in India that could be displaced by us; at least amongst the Mahometan princes. Some ancient Hindoo Rajahs there were in obscure corners, but without splendour of wealth or military distinction; and the charge of usurpation was specially absurd, since we pre-eminently were the king-makers, the king-supporters, the king-pensioners, in Hindostan; and excepting the obscure princes just mentioned, almost every Indian prince, at the time of our opening business in the political line, happened to be a usurper. We ourselves made ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... fatigued by a long march, destitute of necessaries, but slowly recruiting in numbers, and virtually diminishing in strength, soon found the design of seizing London beyond its ability. "The loyal city of Worcester," as it has the honour of being pre-eminently styled, opened its gates to refresh its Sovereign, and offered itself as a temporary retreat, where he might muster his forces, and re-consider his measures. Here the King was proclaimed, but the events which attended that solemnity augured ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... judgment and critical discrimination, which gave large promise of future usefulness and eminence. Before his retirement from the State Department, he commended the youthful statesman to the favorable regard of President Washington, as one pre-eminently fitted ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... the islands are tropical in appearance, Cebu is pre-eminently luxuriant. We were sorry not to stay longer and learn more of its ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... glow of some sixpenny patent hat reviver, often applied and constantly tending to produce a worse state of the original surface than the ruin it was applied to remedy. He has a collar and cuff of celluloid; and his brown Chesterfield overcoat, with velvet collar, is still presentable. He is pre-eminently the respectable man of the party, and is certainly over forty, possibly over fifty. He is the corner man on the leader's right, opposite three men in scarlet ties on his left. One of these three is the Frenchman. Of the remaining two, who are ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... to the influence and guidance of correct theory. His main consideration in laying out his lines of railway was what would best answer the intended purpose, or, to use his own words, to secure the maximum of result with the minimum of means. He was pre-eminently a safe man, because cautious, tentative, and experimental; following closely the lines of conduct trodden by his father, and often ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... and pre-eminently in the popular vein. Counterparts exist elsewhere in the languages derived from Latin, and ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... the Poet was to degrade or to sublimate into the Politician, at the bidding of that gay magician, Jack Wilkes. That this man was much better than a clever and pre-eminently lucky scoundrel, is now denied by few. He had, indeed, immense pluck and convivial pleasantry, with considerable learning and talent. But he had no principle, no character, little power of writing, and did not even possess a particle of that mob ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... greater extent of distribution of water plants is not I think correct, in the sense he seems to entertain it; to be so, the species should be the same, which they are certainly not. It is only with pre-eminently aquatic forms that the annual temperature can be more equalised than obtains with strictly terrestrial plants. The humidity which may appear connected with the rapid evaporation in these countries, and which obtains? in the vicinity of ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... as well as at home, were pre-eminently students and exponents of Holy Scripture. Sedulius wrote a commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul; John Scotus Erigena composed a work, "De Praedestinatione" ("Concerning Predestination"); Dungal was not only ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... only (as Shakespeare's only untried style was the simple one) almost never simple ones; and certainly he has controlled them all to profoundly interesting artistic ends by his own powerful personality. The world and all its action, as a show of thought, that is the scope of his work. It makes him pre-eminently a modern poet—a poet of the self-pondering, perfectly educated, modern world, which, having come to the end of all direct and purely external experiences, must necessarily turn for its entertainment to ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... of flowers in pre-eminently the language of refined and modest Courtship; millions have conveyed a message by presenting a flower which they dare not have uttered ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... auxiliary preparatory exercises."[120] So far was S. Clement from thinking that the teaching of Christianity should be measured by the ignorance of the unlearned. "He who is conversant with all kinds of wisdom will be pre-eminently a Gnostic."[121] Thus while he welcomed the ignorant and the sinner, and found in the Gospel what was suited to their needs, he considered that only the learned and the pure were fit candidates for the Mysteries. "The Apostle, in contradistinction to Gnostic perfection, ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... been given to few men to inspire more passionate attachment in the minds of his contemporaries; it has been given to few statesmen to be regarded abroad, by eyes for the most part envious or hostile, as pre-eminently representative of the qualities that made his country at once disliked and feared. His political instincts were for the most part admirable, and if it had been his fortune to serve a sovereign more reasonable, more temperate, and ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the crown of theological virtues, charity in both its branches pre-eminently characterized our saint. This divine virtue burned so warmly in his heart, as to be transfused through his features, over which it spread a superhuman and celestial glow, and gave to his discourse ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... our ordinary sensations carry with them a spatial meaning and implication, and that indirectly, therefore, our sensations do supply us with the idea of Space. It will readily be agreed that if this is so of any sensations it is pre-eminently true of the sensations of vision and touch. Indeed, it will perhaps not be disputed that the ordinary vident man derives from the sensations of vision his most common spatial conceptions. We propose, therefore, to inquire very briefly how the character of spatial extension becomes ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... doubt that Washington, like the Virginian of his time, was pre-eminently social. It is true that late in life he complained, as already quoted, that his home had become a "well resorted tavern," and that at his own table "I rarely miss seeing strange faces, come as they say out of respect for me. Pray, would not the word curiosity answer as well?" but even ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... in ameliorating the condition of mankind. And it is a duty, as I conceive, that devolves particularly on you, from your known philosophical and enlarged view of subjects, and from the principles you have professed and practiced through a long and useful life, pre-eminently distinguished as well by being foremost in establishing on the broadest basis the rights of man, and the liberty and independence of your country, as in being throughout honored with the most important trusts of your fellow citizens, whose confidence and love you have carried with you into ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... no neurotic; no genius of the first rank ever is or was. He never lost control of himself, and so did not, like some of his brilliant contemporaries, tread the primrose path which leads down to futility and death. He was always pre-eminently sane. While composing his transcendent Lear and Othello, he was suing Philip Rogers for L1 15s. 10d. While his fancy roamed in the fairyland of Midsummer Night's Dream, his investments were in ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... vacancy, concluded a bitter speech by saying that if Mr. Everett, holding views in opposition to the South, was confirmed, the Union would be dissolved! Mr. Clay sprang to his feet, and pointing his long arm and index finger at Mr. King, said: "And I tell you, Mr. President, that if a gentleman so pre-eminently qualified for the position of Minister should be rejected by the Senate, and for the reason given by the Senator from Alabama, this Union ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... reorganisation, its renewed temporal and spiritual powers. Of this, the city proper, the Acropolis of Athens, the Temple of Jerusalem, the Capitol and Forum of Rome are classic and central examples, and in the mediaeval city, pre-eminently the cathedral; though beside this we must not forget the town house and its belfry, the guild houses, the colleges, the great place, the fountains, the city cross, and if last, still best if good at all, the streets and courts and homes. Returning once more to the history ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... Schools is far below the pedagogic level of the common schools. Yet the subject which is dealt with in the Sunday Schools, instead of being of less importance than that dealt with in the common schools, is of pre-eminently greater importance. Because of its subtlety, its intimacy with the hidden springs of conduct, it calls for the exercise of ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... from which he somewhat receded in the later editions of his works, on account of criticisms and objections which I have endeavoured to show are unsound. Even in rejecting that phase of sexual selection depending on female choice, I insist on the greater efficacy of natural selection. This is pre-eminently the Darwinian doctrine, and I therefore claim for my book the position of being ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... you better than her; and if she could be transported hither by the stroke of a fairy's wand; if she could entertain him this evening at supper; if she were familiar with all his tastes, there would, perhaps, be sufficient reason for you to tremble for your power. But Princes are, above all, pre-eminently the slaves of habit. The King's attachment to you is like that he bears to your apartment, your furniture. You have formed yourself to his manners and habits; you know how to listen and reply to his stories; he is under no constraint with you; he has no fear of boring you. How do you ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... it. The magistrate was friendly next morning, but inelegant in his friendly expedients; he remanded Lady Harman until her mental condition could be inquired into, but among her fellow-defendants—there had been quite an epidemic of window-smashing that evening—Lady Harman shone pre-eminently sane. She said she had broken this window because she was assured that nothing would convince people of the great dissatisfaction of women with their conditions except such desperate acts, and when ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... convince, and no man is competent to judge in the last resort of the force of an argument who is not on something like an equality of knowledge and dialectical skill with the person using it. This is true in all fields of discussion; it is pre-eminently true in scientific fields. Of course, therefore, the real public of the scientific man—the public which settles finally whether he has made out his case—is a small one. Outside of it there is another ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... one of those pre-eminently sweet resting-places which are vouchsafed to some, though not to all, of the pilgrims of earth, in their toilsome journey through the wilderness towards that eternal rest, in the blessedness of which all minor ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... appearance of the town, and it is a comfortable, well-to-do place, monopolising the trade of a large countryside. St. Machuda's Cathedral will repay inspection. The Castle is the Irish seat of the Duke of Devonshire. It was an ancient fortress, dating back to the reign of King John. It stands in a pre-eminently commanding position, over the Blackwater, and was the scene of many a hard-fought fight, especially in the wars of the Commonwealth, when Castlehaven captured it from the Roundheads. A magnificent view of the surrounding country may be had from its higher-storied windows. The public ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... to my mind is the belief that Socrates corrupted the young. This man, who, beyond what has been already stated, kept his appetites and passions under strict control, who was pre-eminently capable of enduring winter's cold and summer's heat and every kind of toil, who was so schooled to curtail his needs that with the scantiest of means he never lacked sufficiency—is it credible that such a man could have made others irreverent or lawless, or licentious, ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... became more and more entertaining, by reason of use and effort developing new capacities and talents that might in less favourable circumstances have lain altogether dormant. All this was due very much to their leader; for, besides being a God-fearing man, Hayward was pre-eminently cheery, and full of fun as well as vigour. The coxswain, too, was like-minded, and of great capacity in every way; while his wife's voice was so charming that the party became almost dependent on it. They could scarcely have gone to rest at last without Nellie's hymn or song as a lullaby! ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... was, from the beginning, pre-eminently significant of the duke's magnificent state existence, wherein his Portuguese consort proved herself an efficient and able helpmeet. Again and again during a period of thirty years, rich in diplomatic parleying, did Isabella act as confidential ambassador for her husband, and many ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... only a detail and an occasion. Back of that lay an immensely greater thing; the defense of their rights—the most sacred cause given men on earth, to maintain at every cost. It is the cause of humanity. Through ages it has been, pre-eminently, the cause of the Anglo-Saxon race, for which countless heroes have died. With those men it was to defend the rights of their States to control their own affairs, without dictation from anybody outside; a right not given, but guaranteed by the Constitution, which those ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... that the relation of our Universities to the study of English literature is a matter of great public importance; and I have more than once taken occasion to express my conviction—Firstly, that the works of our great English writers are pre-eminently worthy of being systematically studied in our schools and universities as literature; and secondly, that the establishment of professional chairs of philology, under the name of literature, may be a profit to science, but is really a ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... story of Watt's childhood that proclaims the coming man. Precocious children are said rarely to develop far in later years, but Watt was pre-eminently a precocious child, and of this several proofs are related. A friend looking at the child of six said to his father, "You ought to send your boy to a public school, and not allow him to trifle away his time at home." "Look how he is occupied before you condemn him," said the father. ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... form, it laid down that the whole scene of a play should be in one place, its whole action deal with one single series of events, and the time it represented as elapsing be no greater than the time it took in playing. He was always pre-eminently an Englishman of his own day with a scholar's rather than a poet's temper, hating extravagance, hating bombast and cant, and only limited because in ruling out these things he ruled out much else that was essential to the spirit of the time. As a craftsman he was uncompromising; he never bowed ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... within easy reach of Rome. At that time, before Vesuvius had rekindled those wasteful fires which first shook down, and then deluged under lava and scoriae, the little cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, the scene which it commanded was even more pre-eminently beautiful than now. Vineyards and olive-groves clothed the sides of that matchless bay, down to the very line where the bright blue waters seem to kiss with their ripples the many-coloured pebbles of the beach. Over all, with its sides dotted with picturesque villas and happy villages, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... is diametrically opposed to Sir Narayan's. I do not believe that the Gita teaches violence for doing good. It is pre-eminently a description of the duel that goes on in our own hearts. The divine author has used a historical incident for inculcating the lesson of doing one's duty even at the peril of one's life. It inculcates performance of duty irrespective of the ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... Government, under Sir Robert Walpole, established the constitutional and parliamentary system which characterizes modern freedom, that the puissance accumulated through successive centuries by the House of Vipont became pre-eminently visible. By that time its lands were vast; its wealth enormous; its parliamentary influence, as "a Great House," was a part of the British Constitution. At this period, the House of Vipont found it convenient to rend itself into two grand divisions,—the peer's branch ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the action of the authorities. May be they kept him at the Emergency Bureau for the express purpose of infusing confidence, by his bright manner, into the minds of despondent patriots like myself, and of keeping the flag flying in a general way—a task for which he, a German Jew, was pre-eminently ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... under them, success could not have been achieved, the historian still finds that Lincoln's judgment and will were by no means governed by those around him; that the most important steps were owing to his initiative; that his was the deciding and directing mind; and that it was pre-eminently he whose sagacity and whose character enlisted for the administration in its struggles the countenance, the sympathy, and the support of the people. It is found, even, that his judgment on military matters was astonishingly acute, and that the advice and instructions he gave to the generals ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... at a bound: his powers were gradually and slowly developed, and owing partly to this fact, but partly also to unfavorable circumstances, the recognition of them was tardy and grudging. For many years after his debut on the London boards he, who at a later period was almost disparaged as a pre-eminently intellectual actor, owed his chief successes to his performance of melodramatic parts like Rob Roy and William Tell, for which his mental as well as physical endowments were considered especially to qualify him. When at length he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... of the dragon-flies are pre-eminently beautiful; one species, with rich brown-coloured spots upon its gauzy wings, is to be seen near every pool.[1] Another[2], which dances above the mountain streams in Oovah, and amongst the hills descending towards Kandy, gleams in the sun as ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... is a calm, luminous and dispassionate discussion of the business questions of the canvass. It is pre-eminently an educational speech which any man can hear or read with pride. Senator Sherman excels in the faculty of lucid and logical statement. His personal participation in all our fiscal legislation gives him an unequaled knowledge both of principles ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... you did. No. What I have always admired in your character, Lucy, is a firm, logical consistency; a clearness of mental vision that leaves no side of a subject unsearched; and an unwavering constancy of purpose. You may say that these traits are characteristic of ALL women; but they are pre-eminently characteristic of you, Lucy." Miss Galbraith looks askance at him, to make out whether he is in earnest or not; he continues, with a perfectly serious air. "And I know now that if you're offended with me, it's for no trivial cause." She stirs uncomfortably ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... quickly learned to leave him alone, neither venturing hostile acts nor making overtures of friendliness. If they left him alone, he left them alone—a state of affairs that they found, after a few encounters, to be pre-eminently desirable. ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... Wales is pre-eminently the land of castles. There are between thirty and forty in Glamorgan alone. The accompanying map, though it is by no means exhaustive, shows the general lie of the castles, which may be divided into three ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... into its own again. The man of vision of a wholesome aspect, the man who can so completely forget himself in his work of service as to engage in tasks whose merits nobody save himself and those pursuing like tasks can or will understand—which is pre-eminently the engineer—is the one man best fitted to administrate in public affairs. More important still than this statement is the fact that the world at large is beginning to realize the truth of it. Engineers as a body stand poised upon the rim of big things. Nor will they as ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... Smellie was downright ill, so much so that it soon became evident it would be quite impossible for us to prosecute our journey, for that day at least. Daphne's distress at this unfortunate state of affairs was very keen, but she was a pre-eminently sensible little body, seeing almost at a glance what was wanted; and promptly diverting her sympathies into a practical channel, she at once set off in search of a more suitable abiding place than the one we had occupied ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... retinal hemorrhages. The case may easily become one of hemorrhagic glaucoma. It may run a very chronic course. But it may become suddenly worse, or go on to complete blindness with pain, demanding enucleation, after some temporary perturbation, as the performance of a glaucoma operation. It is pre-eminently the kind of a case you would prefer would ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various
... Evidently she considered herself superior to no matter what guest. Her eyes announced that she had lived and learnt, that she knew more about life than any one whom she was likely to meet, and that having pre-eminently succeeded in life, she had tremendous confidence in herself. The proof of her success was the unique Frensham's. A consciousness of the uniqueness of Frensham's was also in those eyes. Theoretically Matthew Peel-Swynnerton's mental ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... continued Sheila, while a sigh of sheer rapture rose from the crowd, "is pre-eminently the car for a medical man or pushful undertaker. No horn is supplied, though this will be fitted if desired. The car is not cheap, but properly used will soon repay itself. Amongst the accessories supplied with the standard chassis I should like to call your attention to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... compelled to state thus much of these orders. The associations connected with persons of their sex and supposed rank, who have taken the veil; their apparent devotedness to such amiable and pre-eminently serviceable duties; their solemnity of exterior, and other incidents—are so calculated to strike the eye and possess the imagination of the beholder, that we are not surprised to perceive that they ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... been common to most countries, from very ancient times, for the inhabitants of a particular district, town, or village to be popularly regarded as pre-eminently foolish, arrant noodles or simpletons. The Greeks had their stories of the silly sayings and doings of the people of Baeotia, Sidonia, Abdera, etc. Among the Perso-Arabs the folk of Hums (ancient Emessa) are reputed to be exceedingly stupid. The Kabail, or wandering tribes of Northern Africa, ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... France are burdened, at least they are defended—at least they are armed for conflict and victory. There seems to be a good deal of doubt as to how far this is true of the nation which has hitherto been known as the pre-eminently pugnacious one. Where France and Germany and Russia count by hundreds, England counts by tens; and it is only, strictly speaking, on the good old principle that one Englishman can buffet a dozen foreigners that a very hopeful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... unusual it might seem in an ancient university. Fantastic, from first to last that was the descriptive epithet; and the very word, carrying us to Shakespeare, reminds one how characteristic of the age such habit was, and that it was pre-eminently due to Italy. A bookman, yet with so vivid a hold on people and things, the traits and tricks of the audience seemed to revive in him, to strike from his memory all the graphic resources of his old readings. He seemed to promise ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater
... whence I came immediately abroad. My residence in Europe confirms the belief that crossed the Atlantic with me, that in beauty, grace, and all the nameless charms that constitute the perfect, peerless, fascinating woman, my own country I pre-eminently bears the palm. Broad as is her domain, and noble her civil institutions, the crowning glory of America dwells in her ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... sick-chamber just as a doctor is more or less wont to do on such occasions, and pre-eminently when the room is that of a humble cottager, looking round towards the patient with that preoccupied gaze which so plainly reveals that he has wellnigh forgotten all about the case and the whole circumstances since he dismissed them from ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... sole case that came under my observation of a social visit made by an Ata in a Bagobo house; for the Ata live far to the northwest of the Bagobo, and are extremely timid, and "wild" in the popular sense. Recent ethnic influences from higher peoples, pre-eminently the Moro and the Spaniard, will have to be reckoned with. The story of "The Monkey and the Turtle" is clearly modified from a ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... a grand reunion, a soiree, a garden-party; the duchess had been at such an entertainment; when a long description of her dress or costume would follow. Nor was it only among the upper ten thousand that she was so pre-eminently popular. If a bazar, a fancy fair, a ball, were needed to aid some charitable cause, she was always chosen as patroness; her vote, her interest, one ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... ignominious death the symbol, of his victory and glory. Little wonder that Albert Duerer, and Michael Angelo found such deep satisfaction in Him as the object of their worship—his method of docility was next-of-kin to that of their art. Respect and solicitude create the soul, and these two pre-eminently docile passions preside over the soul's creation, whether it be a society, a life, or a ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... from unshaded windows, signal lamps from the railway, navigation lights from the river. Except for the sound of the retreating car and the dull roar of a distant train, the night was very still, a night, in fact, pre-eminently suitable for the ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... elegance, if measured by other than severely classical standards. Not as a man of letters, but as an historian does he enjoy the perennial honour to which in life he aspired. Observation is the foundation of history, and Martyr was pre-eminently a keen and discriminating observer, a diligent and conscientious chronicler of the events he observed, hence are the laurels of the historian equitably his. Similar to the hasty entries in a journal, daily written, his letters ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... discord, and dejection that mark the latter part of the reign of Alexander II, one Maskil stands out pre-eminently in interest and importance,—one whom assimilation did not attract nor reformation mislead, who under all the mighty changes remained loyal to the ideals ascribed to the Gaon and advocated by Levinsohn,—Perez ben Mosheh Smolenskin (Mohilev, February 25, 1842-Meran, Austria, ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... and local political questions are discussed and contested, and by the hearty way in which all classes throw themselves into all really patriotic movements, when their party feeling occasionally sleeps for a month or two." Norwich is pre-eminently a town of churches, into the construction of which flint enters largely, it being dressed with great skill into ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... she said peremptorily. "My interests pre-eminently consist in being obeyed by those whom I pay for doing my behests. Now you and your worthy husband live here rent free and derive a benefit of ten pounds every time our guests assemble.... Well! in return for that, I make use of you ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... "He is thus pre-eminently the poet of nature; not, be it understood, of inanimate nature only, but of nature also, as it exists in our thoughts, and words, and acts of nature as it is to be found living and moving in humanity. But we cannot paint him so well as he paints himself. ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... I should pronounce Lord Byron, from my own experience, to be one of them,—but it would not be difficult, perhaps, to show, from the very nature and pursuits of genius, that such must generally be the lot of all pre-eminently gifted with it; and that the same qualities which enable them to command admiration are also those that too often incapacitate them ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Atlantis were pre-eminently an agricultural people; so were the civilized nations of America and the Egyptians. In Egypt the king put his hand to the plough at an annual festival, thus dignifying and consecrating the occupation of husbandry. In Peru precisely ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly |
