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More "Excellence" Quotes from Famous Books



... of excellence, the sanitary quality of the water during the greater part of the time is beyond criticism. In view of the close parallelism of turbidity and bacterial results in the applied and in the filtered water, it is entirely logical to conclude ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXXII, June, 1911 • E. D. Hardy

... a disciple, he remarked, "A superior man indeed is the like of him! But had there been none of superior quality in Lu, how should this man have attained to this excellence?" ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... them to have the casting vote. If any one of them do have the casting vote, it is more likely to be the strength of his desire and passion, the strength of the interest he takes in what is proposed. Concentration, memory, reasoning power, inventiveness, excellence of the senses,—all are subsidiary to this. No matter how scatter-brained the type of a man's successive fields of consciousness may be, if he really care for a subject, he will return to it incessantly from his incessant ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... fulfilled their engagements both in the letter and the spirit; so that the “U.S.” (abbreviation of United States) which he pencilled on all provisions that had passed his inspection became in the eyes of officers and soldiers a guarantee of excellence. Samuel’s old friends, the boys of Troy (now enlisted in the army), naïvely imagining that the mystic initials were an allusion to the pet name they had given him years before, would accept no meats ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... scarcely exceeded by any English poet. To say that Sir Egerton Brydges's Essay exaggerates the merit of some of his productions may produce the retort which has been made to Johnson's criticism, that he was too deficient in feeling to be capable of appreciating the excellence of the pieces which he censures. It is not, however, inconsistent with a high respect for Collins, to ascribe every possible praise to that unrivaled production, the Ode to the Passions, to feel deeply the beauty, the pathos, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... of skilled labor, it would be a mere article of luxury from its excessive costliness. It is now a most useful instrument in education. For educational purposes the most inexpensive globe is as valuable as that of the highest price. All that properly belongs to the excellence of the instrument is found in combination with the commonest stained wood frame, as perfectly as with the most highly-finished frame ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... prince from his palace, merely for the pleasure of contemplating its beauty and excellence; but only add the rapturous idea of property, and what allurements can the world offer for the loss of so glorious ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson

... them.' CHAP. IX. The philosopher Tsang said, 'Let there be a careful attention to perform the funeral rites to parents, and let them be followed when long gone with the ceremonies of sacrifice;— then the virtue of the people will resume its proper excellence.' ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge

... he exclaimed, suddenly; "both, voice and elocution perfect—you possess the greatest of all accomplishments, madam, next to conversational excellence," rising to his feet, and bowing low and seating himself again, in a formal way of his own. "Music is a mockery compared to such reading! as well set a jew's-harp against the winds of heaven! You understand my meaning, of course; it is not precisely ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... agreed that nobody willingly missed one of her parties. There were those who said this was not so much because of her and Mr. Freddy, though they were eminently likeable people; not merely because you met 'everybody' there, and not even because of the excellence of their dinners. Notoriously this last fact fails to appeal very powerfully to the majority of women, and it is they, not men, who make the social reputation of the hostess. There was in this particular case a theory, held even ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... the city of Florence reformed its government with the help of the Friar Girolamo Savonarola, whose writings declare his learning, his wisdom, and the excellence of his heart. Among other ordinances for the safety of the citizens, he caused a law to be passed, allowing an appeal to the people from the sentences pronounced by "the Eight" and by the "Signory" in trials ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... though I had ability to teach and to preach with power beyond that of any man or angel, with words of perfect charm, with truth and excellence informing my message—though I could do this, "but have not love [charity]," and only seek my own honor and profit and not my neighbor's, "I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal." In other words, "I might, perhaps, thereby teach others ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... from perceiving the points where Voltaire, despite his scepticism, had planted his feet on firm ground. Coleridge was aware that Voltaire, in common with every Frenchman until the present generation, held it as a point of faith that the French drama was inapproachable in excellence. From Lessing, and chiefly, from his Dramaturgie, Coleridge was also aware, on the other hand, upon what erroneous grounds that imaginary pre-eminence was built. He knew that it was a total misconception of the Greek unities ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... passing to the work which afforded the main pretext of the quarrel, it may be well to quote once more the celebrated satire. It may be remarked that its excellence is due in part to the fact that, for once, Pope does not lose his temper. His attack is qualified and really sharpened by an admission of Addison's excellence. It is therefore a real masterpiece of satire, not a simple lampoon. That it is an exaggeration ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... and aristocrats of the earth. She was wont to say that those of her race had redder blood and larger veins than others,—which I incline to believe; for, if moral and physical energy constitute in reality the excellence of races, we cannot deny that this energy is compelled to diminish in those who lose the habit of labor and the courage of endurance. This aphorism is certainly not without exception, and we may add that excess of labor and of endurance enervates the organization as much as the excess of luxury ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... knowest, in women's dresses. Many a one have I taught to dress, and helped to undress. But there is such a native elegance in this lady, that she surpasses all that I could imagine surpassing. But then her person adorns what she wears, more than dress can adorn her; and that's her excellence. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... not particularly rich in great actors, although she has always a goodly number who come up to a fair standard of excellence. The great actors of the day in Madrid are Maria Guerrero and Fernando Diaz de Mendoza. They obtained a perfect ovation during the last season in the play, El loco Dios, of Echegaray—a work which gives every opportunity for the display ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... have been crossed once, for the sake of modifying some particular character; but with most of the improved races of the pig, which now breed true, there have been repeated crosses,—for instance, the improved Essex owes its excellence to repeated crosses with the Neapolitan, together probably with some infusion of Chinese blood.[200] So with our British sheep: almost all the races, except the Southdown, have been largely crossed; "this, in fact, has ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... word "Victorian" in literature to distinguish what was written after the decline of that age of which Walter Scott, Coleridge, and Wordsworth were the survivors. It is well to recollect, however, that Tennyson, who is the Victorian writer par excellence, had published the most individual and characteristic of his lyrics long before the Queen ascended the throne, and that Elizabeth Barrett, Henry Taylor, William Barnes, and others were by this date of mature age. ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various

... acquainted. The effect of such a power is, therefore, to excite the imagination, but that, assuredly, is not the faculty of mind we would evoke to preside over the laborious and elaborate observations by which we strive to attain to a knowledge of the greatness and excellence of the laws of ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... noticed, reader, while perusing this narrative, that nearly all the characters introduced have been more or less tainted with crime?—Even Sydney, good, generous and noble as he was, had his faults and weaknesses. Alas! human excellence is so very scarce, that had we taken it as the principal ingredient of our book, we should have made a ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... previous stories, and his own opinion is not to be questioned that it was in a hundred points immeasurably the best of them thus far; less upon the surface, and going deeper into springs of character. Nor would it be difficult to say, in a single word, where the excellence lay that gave it this superiority. It had brought his highest faculty into play: over and above other qualities it had given scope to his imagination; and it first expressed the distinction in this respect between his earlier ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... only a temporary loss, and much as we sympathize with the proprietor, the public may trust to his well-known ability and energy to soon renew a place of amusement which was a source of so much innocent pleasure, and had in it so many elements of solid excellence." ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... became quite unintelligible to his uneducated audience. The serfs listened attentively, but understood nothing. He might as well have spoken to them, as he often did in another kind of society, about the comparative excellence of Italian and German music. At a second attempt he had rather more success. The peasants came to understand that what he wished was to break up the Mir, or rural Commune, and to put them all on obrok—that is to say, make them pay a yearly sum ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... for they were all very proud of the young man's success, and some of them had won money over him. Still more did they applaud, being great judges of culinary matters, when the Spaniard began his speech by an elegant tribute to the surpassing excellence of the supper. Rarely, he assured them, and especially did he assure the honourable widow Van Ziel (who blushed all over with pleasure at his compliments, and fanned herself with such vigour that she upset Dirk's wine over his new tunic, cut in the Brussels style), the fame of whose ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... simple, and seems devoid of all rational meaning: Je viens." They started. "Tu viens." They gaped. "Il vient," I cried triumphantly, and their chairs shot back as they sprang to their feet, astonishment vivid on their faces. For me, I sat there laughing in sheer delight at the excellence of my aim and the shrewdness of ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope

... which the stories in this volume are printed is not intended as an indication of their comparative excellence; the arrangement is alphabetical ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... such wonderful natural abilities as are found in this young Spaniard. Here is a player par excellence if he develops as he gives promise. Alonzo is young, about 25, slight, attractive in personality and court manners, quick to the point of almost miraculous court covering. He is a ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D

... he would be, and she pressed the thought triumphantly to her heart. He was that true and victorious man, that Christian able to subdue life, and to show, in a perfect and healthy manly nature, a reflection of the image of the superhuman excellence. Her prayers that night were aspirations and praises, and she felt how possible it might be so to appropriate the good and the joy and the nobleness of others as to have in them an eternal and satisfying ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... Mr. Dunlop, in his History of Fiction, and of an author in the Penny Encyclopedia, are scarcely worth notice. The complaint is, want of benevolence in the hero of the tale. How singular it is, and what a testimony to its excellence, that an intelligent writer upon fictions should have been so overpowered with this spiritual narrative, as to confound it with temporal things. Christian leaves his wife and children, instead of staying with them, to be involved in destruction—all this relates to inward spiritual feelings, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... peculiar to each, struck her with overwhelming amazement. But when she recovered from her short swoon, and found Wallace at her feet; when she felt that all the devotion her heart had hitherto paid to the simple idea of virtue alone would now be attracted to that glorious mortal, in whom all human excellence appeared summed up, she trembled under an emotion that seemed to rob her of herself, and place a new principle of ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... de Ville is supreme. If you are ever in France you should see it. It has been copied often by American architects. Infinite thought and skill were brought to bear on all the iron work door-handles, lanterns, and so forth. The artistic excellence of this work has not been equaled since this period of the Eighteenth Century. The greatest artists of that day did not think it in the least beneath their dignity and talent to devote themselves to designing the knobs of doors, the ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe

... to be again reabsorbed into the system. Oh, the foulness of it all! The spirits of the departed, as well as the still incarnate patients, demand of the healing art safe and sane hygienic methods of cure. The enema, regularly and properly used, is the remedy par excellence. ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... this condition, sad was it for the heedless wretch who omitted to address him as "Your Excellence the Supreme, Most Excellent Lord and Perpetual Dictator!" Equally sad was it for the man who, wishing to speak with him, dared to approach too closely and did not keep his hands well in view, to show that he had no concealed weapons. Treason, daggers, and assassins ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris

... paces are sufficiently showy and imposing—a high-stepper, of thoroughbred appearance, and a mouth sensitively alive to the lightest touch of the curb, easy to ride or drive, warranted neither a kicker nor a bolter—is a quadruped of rare excellence, not to be met with every day. Just such a stalking-horse was Captain Paget; and Mr. Sheldon lost no time in putting him into action. It is scarcely necessary to say that the stockbroker trusted his new acquaintance only so far ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... to be used only as an instrument of action, not as the representative of civil honors and moral excellence.—Jane Porter. ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins

... thing and education another, it might be all right to separate them. Culture of the head over a desk, and indoor gymnastics for the body, are not the ideal, and that many succeed in spite of the handicap is no proof of the excellence of the plan. Ships that go around the world accumulate many barnacles, but barnacles as a help to the navigator ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... his name depraved taste and the abandonment of that noble simplicity which had produced the masterpieces of the age of Pericles. Euripides was no ordinary writer, that is beyond question; but the very excellence of his qualities made his influence ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... writing when he did, and not consciously exaggerating, was yet less trustworthy (though 'wonderfully accurate') than Christoval. Garcilasso, however, is 'scrupulously truthful.'[23] 'The excellence of his memory is perhaps best shown in his topographical details.... He does not make a single mistake,' in the topography of three hundred and twenty places! A scrupulously truthful gentleman, endowed with an amazing memory, and a master of his native language, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... striking effect of novelty at the first view. Their brilliant and various colourings—so unlike our sombre brick-work—is the next cause of the novel impression they produce. The general strangeness of the effect is completed by the excellence of the pavement, which is of stones, shaped like those of our best London carriage-ways, but as white as marble in all weathers, and as regular as the brick-work of a house-front. The uniformity of the "Place" is broken (not very agreeably) by the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various

... with a rather irritating slowness, for which perhaps the excellence of Cicely's buffet arrangements was partly responsible. The great drawing-room seemed to grow larger and more oppressive as the human wave receded, and the hostess fled at last with some relief to the narrower ...
— When William Came • Saki

... to the heart; and Dr. Phillips spoke with surpassing beauty, and charming power. The latter two are both Welshmen, and Methodists—the former a Wesleyan, and the latter a Whitfield Welsh Methodist. The Rev. Mr. Nolan spoke with great excellence; Lord Shaftesbury speaks as a matter of business, naturally, simply, but with dignity, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... pier and beg matches," suggested Isabel. "I don't fancy skipping all the way to Third Avenue 'as is,' whatever way that may be, but I believe it applies to any sort of goods not up to the best mark, and with bare feet I don't feel quite par excellence." ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis

... could not help smiling at his simplicity, that all the while he was doing his best to make me one of the vainest and most egregious coxcombs, by his unfeigned wonder at some puny effort of my puny muse, and by his injudicious praises; he would lecture me parentally, by the hour, upon the excellence of humility, and the absolute necessity of modesty, as a principal ingredient to make ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... alimentive blood; which, on the contrary, in contact with these parts becomes cooled, coagulated, and, so to speak, effete; whence it returns to its sovereign, the heart, as if to its source, or to the inmost home of the body, there to recover its state of excellence or perfection. Here it resumes its due fluidity, and receives an infusion of natural heat—powerful, fervid, a kind of treasury of life—and is impregnated with spirits and, it might be said, with balsam; and thence ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... without his special leave and licence. He taught him to ride, indeed, but would not give him much opportunity for practising it. Once or twice a-week he would take him out, but seldom oftener. Sam, who never dreamt of questioning the wisdom and excellence of any of his father's decisions, rather wondered at this; pondering in his own mind how it was that, while all the lads he knew around, now getting pretty numerous, lived, as it were, on horseback, never walking a quarter of a mile on any occasion, he alone should ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... rebuke:—which in his eyes, was completely out of the question. Had the Archbishop of York been the speaker, he might possibly have condescended so far. But the whims of an old nurse—a subject—a woman—he told himself, must needs be utterly beneath the notice of any one so exalted. The excellence of the medicine offered him could not even be considered, if it were presented in a vessel of common pottery, chipped ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... notwithstanding these discouragements, all the most generous and liberal spirits are eager to crowd into them. Two different causes contribute to recommend them. First, the desire of the reputation which attends upon superior excellence in any of them; and, secondly, the natural confidence which every man has, more or less, not only in his own abilities, but ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... is his character that matters. We must consider not in what part of the world, but with what purpose he set out to live his life. Vendors of wine and cabbages are permitted to enhance the value of their wares by advertising the excellence of the soil whence they spring, as for instance with the wine of Thasos and the cabbages of Phlius. For those products of the soil are wonderfully improved in flavour by the fertility of the district which produces them, the moistness of the climate, the mildness of the winds, the ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... and intrepid horsemen; but for a century past there had not been the improvements either in the armament of the troops or in the tactics of the generals which were necessary to bring them up to the standard of excellence of the Greek army. The Persian king placed great faith in extraordinary military machines. He believed in the efficacy of chariots armed with scythes; besides this, his relations with India had shown him what use his Oriental neighbours made of elephants, and having determined to employ these animals, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... organisation for the construction of their nests (a beak and feet), but how infinitely do their nests vary in appearance, mode of construction, attachment to surrounding objects (they stand, are glued on, hang, &c.), selection of site (caves, holes, corners, forks of trees, shrubs, the ground), and excellence of workmanship; how often, too, are they not varied in the species of a single genus, as of parus. Many birds, moreover, build no nest at all. The difference in the songs of birds are in like manner ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... one's ideal of a summer resort, and yet in the good time coming, we can imagine an improvement—that even Congress Hall, with its gentlemanly and courteous proprietor, its sumptuous appointments and army of waiters, may yet have an added excellence; when, by the possession of the ballot, woman becomes a possible proprietor and actual worker; when to earn money is as honorable for a woman as it now is for a man, we may hope to find in every hotel not only a host, but a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... Calabrian Gulf, whose attractions were such as to make the delights of Tarentum a common proverbial expression. But what were these delights as celebrated by our poet?—the perfection of its honey, the excellence of its olives, the abundance of its grapes, its lengthened spring and temperate winter. For these, its merits, did Horace prefer, as he tells us, Tarentum to every other spot on the wide earth—his beloved Tibur only and ever excepted. In truth, Horace valued ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various

... printed Books in the Lambeth Library, pp. 115. 368.) Any person who has happened to obtain the Vitas Patrum, decorated with the curious little woodcuts of which Dr. Maitland has carefully represented two, will cheerfully agree with him in maintaining the excellence of the acquisition. In a copy of this work bearing date 1520, eleven years later than the Lambeth volume (List, p. 85.), the reverse of the leaf which contains the colophon exhibits the same sudarium, in company with the words "Salve sancta Facies." This circumstance inclines ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various

... way. There were speeches, I dare say, though no word of them remains; but I have a distinct recollection of peeping into the tents or tent, where the diners were at work, and of receiving from some one or other of them a bit of plum-pudding prepared for that day, which seemed to me of unusual excellence. I have a distinct recollection also of the fireworks in the evening, the first I had ever seen, on the Castle plain, and of the dense crowd that had turned out to see the sight; but I can well remember that I enjoyed ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... of Ferrara became under him the most splendid Court in Europe—famous for the excellence of its music and its dancing and the superiority of its theatre—Carnival lasted from New Year's Day to Ash Wednesday. Duchess Renata never loved her husband nor his people. Until she fell under the influence of Calvin she was discontented, passionate, and bigoted. The Duke scouted ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... on that occasion were protracted to an unusual length. The country was in a most excited state, and party feeling ran fearfully high. Nothing was talked of but the two trials, par excellence, to wit, that of Whitecraft and Reilly; and scarcely a fair or market, for a considerable time previous, ever came round in which there waa not a battle on the subject of either one or the other of them, and not ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... master, Saris, soon proved that he did not possess the capacity essential to success. He was self-opinionated, suspicious, and of shallow judgment. Though strongly urged by Will Adams to make Uraga the seat of the new trade; though convinced of the excellence of the harbour there, and though instructed as to the great advantage of proximity to the shogun's capital, he appears to have harboured some distrust of Adams, for he finally selected Hirado in preference to Uraga, "which was much as though a German going to England to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... dishonored by the voluptuary, or forbidden by the fanatic, the arts have not, till now, been extinguished by analysis and paralyzed by protection. Our lecturers, learned in history, exhibit the descents of excellence from school to school, and clear from doubt the pedigrees of powers which they cannot re-establish, and of virtues no more to be revived: the scholar is early acquainted with every department of the Impossible, and expresses in proper ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... pumpkins, beans, etc, were and are raised there every year. Under modern conditions many other localities now vie with it, and some surpass it in output of agricultural products, but not many years ago De Chelly was regarded as the place par excellence. ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff

... is not for any class or nation; it is primarily for "the hungry man," no matter what has given him an appetite. It may be that he has pushed a pen all day, or reckoned up vast columns, or wielded a sledge-hammer, or ridden a wild horse from morning to night; but the savour of peculiar excellence to the nostrils of this universal hungry man is the ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... Dagon. It is alike admirably calculated to convey the most important truths to the inmates of a palace or of a workhouse,—to the young or to the aged,—to the ignorant Roman Catholic, or to the equally ignorant Protestant. Its broad catholicity is its distinguishing excellence. In the separate communions included within the general church of Christ are various, and in many respects, inestimable compendiums of Christian truth, arranged for the catechetical instruction ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... this point in a clearer light. The action of striking, in so far as it is considered physically, and in so far as we merely look to the fact that a man raises his arm, clenches his fist, and moves his whole arm violently downwards, is a virtue or excellence which is conceived as proper to the structure of the human body. If, then, a man, moved by anger or hatred, is led to clench his fist or to move his arm, this result takes place (as we showed in Pt.II.), because one and the same action can be associated with various mental ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza

... would come in. Ellen joyfully allotted the whole morning to the examination and trial of her new possessions; and as soon as breakfast was over and the room clear she set about it. She first went through the desk and everything in it, making a running commentary on the excellence, fitness, and beauty of all it contained; then the dressing-box received a share, but a much smaller share, of attention; and lastly, with fingers trembling with eagerness she untied the packthread that was wound round the work-box, and slowly took ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... is deliberate, and is persistently maintained. The effect is that the Free Press cannot give in space and quality of paper, excellence of distribution, and the rest, what the Official Press can give; for it lacks advertisement subsidy. This is a very grave economic ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc

... to a hundred thousand francs a year, he had made about seven per cent profit on the amount, and his living had absorbed one half of that profit. Such was his record. His neighbors, little envious of such mediocrity, praised his excellence ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... almost everybody, and brought the affairs of his embassy nearly to a standstill by the fetters he imposed upon them in the most necessary transactions. Tired at last of the resistance he met with, he determined to refuse the title of "Excellence," although it might fairly belong to them, to all who refused to address him as "Highness." This finished his affair; for after that determination no one would see him, and the business of the embassy ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... amazingly. We longed to be afloat. There is a great manufactory of salt carried on upon these heights—at the foot of which was said to be the best inn in the town. Thither we drove: and if high charges form the test of the excellence of an inn, there is good reason to designate this, at Inderlambach, as such. We snatched a hasty meal, (for which we had nearly fifteen florins to pay) being anxious to get the carriage and luggage aboard one of the larger boats, used in transporting travellers, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... than I could hope I from those interested brutes, who sent me from you; yet brutish as they are, I know thou art safe from their clownish outrages. For were they senseless as their fellow-monsters of the sea, they durst not profane so pure an excellence as thine; the sullen boars would jouder out a welcome to thee, and gape, I and wonder at thy awful beauty, though they want the tender sense to know to what use it was made. Or if I doubted their humanity, I cannot the friendship of ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... marked by a sincere desire to do justice to all under him, a feature that was sadly deficient in too many officers of the time that is spoken of. He was a perfect example of sobriety, and his case certainly was a commendation of the excellence of education of the academy at West Point, of which he was an ...
— Frontier service during the rebellion - or, A history of Company K, First Infantry, California Volunteers • George H. Pettis

... well it might be when Apollo waved the baton. The poems were—as usual on such occasions—of varied excellence, as the youthful speakers tried to put old truths into new words, and made them forceful by the enthusiasm of their earnest faces and fresh voices. It was beautiful to see the eager interest with which the girls listened to some brilliant brother-student, and ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... as comprehensive as the interests involved, and to provide for the support of the glorious superstructure of universal suffrage,—the basis of universal education."[754] In his defence, Dickinson maintained the excellence of Seward's suggestion, and it deeply angered the Steuben farmer that the Tribune's editor, who knew the facts as well as he, did not also attempt to silence the arguments of the two most influential Lincoln delegates, who boldly based their ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... could be in no danger while it retained the attachment and confidence of its subjects; attachment, in this instance, not blindly adopted—confidence not implicitly given, but arising from the conviction of its excellence, and the experience of its blessings. I can not, indeed, help admiring the wisdom and fortune of this great man. By the phrase 'fortune,' I mean not in the smallest degree to derogate from his merit. But, notwithstanding his extraordinary talent and exalted integrity, it must be considered as ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... world and beyond. All subsequent philosophies borrowed from it, as it in its later developments borrowed from them; and thus along with them it formed the mind of the world, for further apprehensions, and yet more authentic revelations, of divine order and moral excellence. ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall

... the half nor the whole. The stage is ultimately the touchstone of dramatic excellence. But if it is to be such a touchstone, it must have an audience with a penetration of intelligence and a soundness of taste such as had long ceased to characterize Roman audiences. The Senecan drama has lost touch with the ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... too, on their part, were more inclinable to receive a Sabine king elected by themselves than to see a Roman exalted by the Sabines. Consultations being accordingly held, they named Numa Pompilius, of the Sabine race, a person of that high reputation for excellence, that, though he were not actually residing at Rome, yet he was no sooner nominated than accepted by the Sabines, with acclamation almost greater than that of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... proceeded to knit, or net, an article which ultimately took the shape of a silk purse. As the work went on, I remembered to have seen just such purses before; indeed, I was the possessor of one. Their peculiar excellence, besides the great delicacy and beauty of the manufacture, lay in the almost impossibility that any uninitiated person should discover the aperture; although, to a practised touch, they would open as wide as charity or prodigality ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the present age, disfigure our language. It has been well remarked in the review of that ancient poem, Jack and Jill, that the reader's interest in the hero and heroine is not divided with subordinate characters. But the poem of Jack Horner possesses this excellence in a more eminent degree; in the former the interest, is divided between two, in the latter it is concentrated in one; and, notwithstanding the ingenuity of the reviewer, it must be confessed that so little is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various

... number of publications secure and hold their clientage by making the best possible goods, pushing them upon public patronage by aggressive and business-like means, and selling at the lowest price consistent with excellence of product and fairness alike to producer and consumer. But of the baser sort there are always enough to make rugged paths for those who walk uprightly, and to contribute to instability of values on the one hand, and on the other ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various

... tripod of silver dedicated by Entemena to his god is now in the Louvre. A frieze of lions devouring ibexes and deer, and incised with great artistic skill, runs round the neck, while the eagle crest of Lagash adorns the globular part. The vase is a proof of the high degree of excellence to which the goldsmith's art had already attained. A vase of calcite, also dedicated by Entemena, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... two nights at Auchinleck, and you may figure the joy of my worthy father and me at seeing the Corsican hero in our romantic groves.' Garrick Corres. i. 436. Johnson was not blind to Cromwell's greatness, for he says (Works, vii. 197), that 'he wanted nothing to raise him to heroick excellence but virtue.' Lord Auchinleck's famous saying had been anticipated by Quin, who, according to Davies (Life of Garrick, ii. 115), had said that 'on a thirtieth of January every king in Europe would rise with a crick ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... bronze—round bowls on feet decorated with lions and dragons, vases, dishes, cups, and jugs, all of dark, heavy bronze executed with the finest and most artistic detail. The porcelain manufacture attained its greatest excellence in the time of Kang Hi and Kien Lung. Then were made vases, bowls, and dishes of such exceeding perfection that neither the Chinese themselves nor any other people at the present time can produce their match. The arrangement of colours and the glaze excite the admiration of all connoisseurs. Porcelain ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... soul of man for an harmony: let the precedent of their error be a privilege for mine. I see not, if souls do not partly consist of music, how it should come to pass that so noble a spirit as your's, so perfectly tuned to so perpetual a tenor of excellence as it is, should descend to the notice of a quality lying single in so low a personage as myself. But in music the base part is no disgrace to the best ears' attendancy. I confess my conscience is untoucht ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... his illustrious contemporary, Canova, Thorwaldsen, born at Copenhagen in 1771-2, has occupied the public eye as head of the modern school. The character and powers of this master are doubtless of a very elevated rank: but neither in the extent nor excellence of his works, do we apprehend his station to be so high as sometimes placed. The genius of the Danish sculptor is forcible, yet is its energy derived more from peculiarity than from real excellence. His ideal springs less from imitation of the antique, or of nature, than from the workings of his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various

... of Light indeed, Refined, subtil, piercing, quick and pure; And as they do the sprightly winds exceed, Are worthy longer to endure; They far out-shoot the Reach of Grosser Air, With which such Excellence may not compare. But being once debas'd, they soon becom Less activ than they ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... followed some twenty feet behind them. Quickly The Laird and his family entered the waiting limousine; it was the first occasion that anybody could remember when he had not lingered to shake hands with Mr. Tingley and, perchance, congratulate him on the excellence of his sermon. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... which is not often attained without fruitful effort, and which is the very opposite of the blind and diseased impulse of mind which is what we mean to blame when we blame curiosity. Montesquieu says: "The first motive which ought to impel us to study is the desire to augment the excellence of our nature, and to render an intelligent being yet more intelligent." This is the true ground to assign for the genuine scientific passion, however manifested, and for culture, viewed simply as a fruit of this passion; and it is a worthy ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... depict the most famous and remarkable features of scenery, architecture, and art, as well as the various processes of mechanics and manufactures. Although intended for instruction rather than embellishment, no pains have been spared to insure their artistic excellence; the cost of their execution is enormous, and it is believed that they will find a welcome reception as an admirable feature of the Cyclopaedia, and worthy ...
— The Electoral Votes of 1876 - Who Should Count Them, What Should Be Counted, and the Remedy for a Wrong Count • David Dudley Field

... Country. This has, indeed, been the aim of all my endeavours in Poetry, which, you know, have been sufficiently laborious to prove that I deem the Art not lightly to be approached; and that the attainment of excellence in it, may laudably be made the principal object of intellectual pursuit by any man, who, with reasonable consideration of circumstances, has faith in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... Pine-apples, those "illustrious foreigners," are so successfully petted at home, that they will scarcely condescend now to flourish out of England. Nectarines refuse to ripen, and apricots to have any taste elsewhere. Our pears and apples are better, and of more various excellence, than any in the world. And we really prefer our very figs, grown on a fine prebendal wall in the close of Winchester, or under Pococke's window in a canon's garden at chilly Oxford. Thus has the kitchen-garden refreshed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... male or female, in the very heyday of youth, strength, and beauty, or of the most dignified maturity and old age. My hosts always bowed their heads as they passed one of these shrines, and it shocked me to see statues that had no apparent object, beyond the chronicling of some unusual individual excellence or beauty, receive so serious a homage. However, I showed no sign of wonder or disapproval; for I remembered that to be all things to all men was one of the injunctions of the Gentile Apostle, which for the present I should do well ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... came to the fair city of Ormuz or Armusium, second to none in excellence of situation, and abundance of pearls. It stands in an island twelve miles from the Continent, being in itself very scarce of water and corn, so that all things required for the sustenance of the inhabitants are brought ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... was very handsome, and knew it. He was a fair man, with light-brown hair and whiskers; grey, roving, well-shaped eyes, with lashes darker than his hair; and a figure rendered easy and supple by the athletic exercises in which his excellence was famous, and which had procured him admission into much higher society than he was otherwise entitled to enter. He was a capital cricketer; was so good a shot, that any house desirous of reputation for its bags on the 12th or the 1st, was glad to have him for a guest. He taught ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... university career, and his start as a professional musician, all took place in Leipsic. There, too, he met the famous opera singer, Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient, whose gifts made such an impression on the young composer. It was the excellence of her acting, as well as her singing, that gave the embryo reformer his first ideas of the intimate union of drama and music that is one phase of his later operatic greatness. Many of his leading roles were written for her, and as late as 1872 he ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson

... lazy and dirty. The Chinese are the servants par excellence. So are the Japanese, when you find a good one, but not so good as the Chinese. The Japanese maidservants are pretty and merry, but you never know the moment they'll leave you. The Hindoos are not strong, but very obedient. They look upon sahibs and memsahibs as gods! I was a memsahib—which ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... contributed to a magazine years ago, he compares the artist in paint or in words to the keeper of a booth at the world's fair, dependent for his bread on his success in amusing others. In his volume of poems he almost apologises for his excellence in literature: ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh

... converting the sea into glass, with islands of frosted silver on its bosom. It was a gorgeous scene, worthy of its great Creator, who in His mysterious working scatters gems of beauty oftentimes in places where there is scarce a single human eye to behold their excellence. ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne

... did not so materially change the New England colonies as might have been supposed, considering that they were hotbeds of Puritanism. In the younger Winthrop the qualities of human excellence were mingled in such happy proportions that, while he always wore an air of contentment, no enterprise in which he engaged seemed too lofty for his powers. He was a man whose power was felt alike in the commonwealth and the restoration. The new king ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... was in France a few weeks ago I heard much about the relative qualities of different classes of men as soldiers. And one of the most frequent themes was the excellence of the "black sheep." It was not merely that he was brave. That one might expect. It was not even that he was unselfish. That also did not arouse surprise. The pride in him, I found, was chiefly due to the fact that he ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... of the merits of this acknowledged on all hands to be one of the very best boy's books ever written. "Tom Brown" does not reach the point of ideal excellence. He is not a faultless boy; but his boy-faults, by the way they are corrected, help him in getting on. The more of such reading can be furnished the better. There will never be too much of ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous

... moral, and especially intellectual assistant in his school,—that were he to lose him he could not hope to find any one that would be his equal, or at all approaching to him in capacity. This second conscience went further, and assured him that the man's excellence as a schoolmaster was even increased by the peculiarity of his position. Do we not all know that if a man be under a cloud the very cloud will make him more attentive to his duties than another? If a man, for the wages which he receives, can give to his employer ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope

... great Jeffersonian Democrat, not by excellence, rather by newspaper courtesy, and that, to be specific, by his own newspaper. He had come up from New York that day to deliver his already famous speech. He was one of the many possibilities in the political arena for the governorship. And as he was a multimillionaire, ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... turned her sweet face to him, and coaxed and charmed him into being satisfied that all was well, dwelling on the loyalty and excellence of the ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge

... well-known pineapple, the fruit of which was described three hundred years ago, by Jean de Lery, a Huguenot priest, as being of such excellence that the gods might luxuriate upon it, and that it should only be gathered by the hand of a Venus. It is supposed to be a native of Brazil, and to have been carried from thence to the West, and afterwards to the East Indies. It first became ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders

... us have grown familiar by reading Tom Brown's School Days. After fitting for the university at Winchester and at Rugby, Arnold entered Balliol College, Oxford, where he was distinguished by winning prizes in poetry and by general excellence in the classics. More than any other poet Arnold reflects the spirit of his university. "The Scholar-Gipsy" and "Thyrsis" contain many references to Oxford and the surrounding country, but they are more noticeable for their spirit of aloofness,—as if Oxford ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... thou leave behind, and in the flower of thine own age didst die, Eurymedon, and win this tomb. For thee a throne is set among men made perfect, but thy son the citizens will hold in honour, remembering the excellence ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... All improvements have been the result of observation, there being nothing original in any one, nor an iota new under the sun. It is in the application of the natural elements only in which one individual excels another, his capacity for excellence, of course, favoring observation. As the bee sips honey from the flower, so does man inhale the poetry of nature, daguerreotyping it upon his understanding, either from the mountain's top, from the summit of the ocean wave, or from the wreck of battle; ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... in the brief account of Honora's life at boarding-school, than to add an humble word of praise on the excellence of Miss Turner's establishment. That lady, needless to say, did not advertise in the magazines, or issue a prospectus. Parents were more or less in the situation of the candidates who desired the honour and privilege ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... live is essentially of a practical character, and the predominant principle influencing all classes is a marked desire for cheapness. Cheapness, however, is too often found without excellence, and hence this proposition to supply a deficiency at present existing in the popular literature of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various

... and fashions pleased the Khalif and the excellence of his composition and his frankness, and he said in himself, "I will assuredly make him my cup- companion and sitting-mate." So he rose forthright and saying to Mesrour, "Take him up," [returned to the palace]. Accordingly, Mesrour took up Aboulhusn and carrying him to the palace of the Khalifate, ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... differences of their moisture and juice arise from the difference of particles and various other causes, and they are discriminated by the various particles that feed them. And this is apparent in vines for the excellence of wine flows not from the difference in the vines, but from the soil from whence they ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... was established 1870; it was celebrated for the excellence of its cuisine, and the high scale ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... author with subject in Boswell's Johnson is one of the happiest and most sympathetic the world has known. So close is it that one cannot easily discern what great qualities the work owes to each. While it surely derives more of its excellence than is commonly remarked from the art of Boswell, its greatness after all is ultimately that of its subject. The noble qualities of Johnson have been well discerned by Carlyle, and his obvious peculiarities and prejudices somewhat ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... with those of national defence could not but be productive of far-reaching consequences. The fishing industry not only throve exceedingly because of it, it in time became, as Cecil clearly foresaw it would become, a nursery for seamen and a feeder of the fleet as unrivalled for the excellence of its material as it was inexhaustible in its resources. Its prosperity was in fact its curse. Few exemptions were granted it. Adventurers after whale and cod had special concessions, suited to the peculiar conditions of their calling; but with these exceptions craft of every ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... nothing whatever is known about its internal sense, and for this reason it is not believed that so much wisdom lies hid in it. The angels said that although the style of the Word seems simple in the sense of the letter, it is such that nothing can ever be compared to it in excellence, since Divine wisdom lies concealed not only in the meaning as a whole but also in each word; and that in heaven this wisdom shines forth. They wished to declare that this wisdom is the light of heaven, because it is Divine truth, for that ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg

... sure that the knowledge of the infirmities under which this author writes will secure to him a lenient spirit of criticism, whilst it inspires admiration in view of the great excellence of his work. Not a line, not a word of complaint against the Providence that has afflicted him—not the slightest allusion to his personal disabilities—will be found anywhere in this volume. The spirit of the writer ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... appear as if Hamilton had procured a letter from Sir J. Herschel, which indicated the importance of Macullagh's memoir in such a way as to decide the issue. It then became Hamilton's duty to award the medal from the chair, and to deliver an address in which he expressed his own sense of the excellence of Macullagh's scientific work. It is the more necessary to allude to these points, because in the whole of his scientific career it would seem that Macullagh was the only man with whom Hamilton had ever even an approach to ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... thee, 't is my will Thou wear this corollary. Nature ever Finding discordant fortune, like all seed Out of its proper climate, thrives but ill. And were the world below content to mark And work on the foundation nature lays, It would not lack supply of excellence. But ye perversely to religion strain Him, who was born to gird on him the sword, And of the fluent phrasemen make your king; Therefore your steps have ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... Anglo-Saxon Judith, which is thus restricted as compared with Beowulf, may be more like Milton for these restrictions, if it be less like Homer. Exemption from them is not a privilege, except that it gives room for the attainment of a certain kind of excellence, the Homeric kind; as, on the other hand, it excludes the possibility of the literary art of Virgil ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... are to-day. We of this generation had no conscious share in the production of this grand and beneficent result. Any and every generation which preceded us had just as little share. The favoured organisms whose garnered excellence constitutes our present store owed their advantages, first, to what we in our ignorance are obliged to call accidental variation;' and, secondly, to a law of heredity in the passing of which our suffrages were not collected. With characteristic felicity and precision Mr. Matthew Arnold lifts this ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... perchance, to endow him with a faint, far halo of diminished glory such as plodding students occasionally win, by following humbly yet ardently ... even as he now followed Sah-luma ... in the paths of excellence marked ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... does not set itself up to be a benevolent institution. Its directors know that its profits depend on the excellence of its service. There is one exchange in the Borough of Brooklyn which handles a large part of the Long Island traffic. This traffic is very heavy in summer on account of the number of summer resorts along the coast. In the fall and winter the traffic is very light. Six months in the year ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr

... has gathered to such an extent that it is difficult to see her plainly through the mass of it. Much has been cleared away; much remains. Mrs. Oliphant's dreadful theories are still on record. The excellence of Madame Duclaux's monograph perpetuates her one serious error. Mr. Swinburne's Note immortalizes his. M. Heger was dug up again ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... introduction into the Balearic isles of the Latin language and culture was a better justification than the easy victory for Metellus's triumph and his assumption of the surname of "Baliaricus".[567] The islands flourished under Roman rule. They produced wine and wheat in abundance and were famed for the excellence of their mules. But their chief value to Rome must have lain in their excellent harbours, and in the welcome addition to the light-armed forces of the empire which was found in ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... writers on the subject of Rationalism we give the palm of excellence to the devout and learned Hugh James Rose, of Cambridge University. As far as we know he was the first to expose to the English-speaking world the sad state to which this form of skepticism had reduced Germany. ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... read your eighth chapter. What you facetiously call "the three trifles" seem to me to be three most important points, even if you had described them simply as fine taste, deep feeling, and a good ear. Who expects superlative excellence from the age in which he lives, and who dares to attack it, in its most vulnerable parts? You grow more harsh and disagreeable, and you do not seem to consider how many enemies you make, among those who think that they have long ago advanced beyond ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck

... hero as the most interesting mortal that ever left a woman in the lurch. No, not in Walter's worth do I seek for the measure of the forsaken lady's despair. Indeed, Juffrouw Laps's pain was not caused by any reflections as to the beauty or excellence of the vanished knight. There was another element in the matter that was filling her with horror and driving her to distraction. With all due respect for the suffering of other abandoned ladies, Asnath, Ariadne, Medea, Phaedra—but Juffrouw Laps had to face Walter's ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli

... Sometimes other houses would actually win one of the cups, but, when this happened, Seymour's was always their most dangerous rival. Other houses had their ups and downs, were very good one year and very bad the next; but Seymour's had always managed to maintain a steady level of excellence. It always had a man or two in the School eleven and fifteen, generally supplied one of the School Racquets pair for Queen's Club in the Easter vac., and when this did not happen always had one of two of the Gym. Six or Shooting Eight, or a few men who had won scholarships at the 'Varsities. ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse

... received from flourishing newspaper proprietors and speculative booksellers, sums of money which it would be difficult to earn with equal facility in any other learned profession. An appointment on the editorial staff of a leading daily paper is in itself a small fortune to a man. The excellence of the articles is, for the most part, in proportion to the sum paid for them; and a successful morning journal will generally find it good policy to pay its contributors in such a manner as to secure the entire produce of their minds, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... and mothers were gathered into the white north-room, exchanging glad looks and hearty salutations, as if each had been autumn itself, smiling in great and abundant heart on the scene; and they were discussing the beauty of the day, and the excellence of the season; relating each other's history; and recalling incidents of the olden time, when the country was new, and neighbors were farther apart and more friendly; while the young people, happy as a flock of birds in the sunny days of mate-choosing, and freshly blooming as ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee

... country,—my chosen, my glorious Africa!—and to her, in my heart, I sometimes apply those splendid words of prophecy: 'Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee; I will make thee an eternal excellence, a ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... The excellence of this military organization, which became the primary cause of the superior political position of the Roman community, chiefly depended on the three great military principles of maintaining a reserve, of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... fancying it had only caught temporarily, tried to force it, and in so doing the spring broke, and the handle turned uselessly round and round in his hand. This was a streak of bad luck, and no mistake! The rod was not his, and what was worse, it was (so Cripps said) a rod of extraordinary excellence and value. Loman had his doubts now about this. A first-rate top-piece would bend nearly double and then not break, and a reel that broke at the least pressure could hardly be of the best kind. Still, Cripps thought a lot of it, and Loman had undoubtedly himself alone to blame ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... antiquity and the excellence of the art of tapestry on the Continent, we cannot pretend that there can be the same general interest in that of our English looms. But to ourselves it naturally assumes the greatest importance; and I have tried to trace the efforts of our ancestors in this direction, by noting every certain ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... of the friendship of Jesus. It has been suggested by an English preacher that Christ exhibited the blended qualities of both sexes. "There was in him the womanly heart as well as the manly brain." Yet tenderness is not exclusively a womanly excellence; indeed, since tenderness can really coexist only with strength, it is in its highest manifestation quite as truly a manly as a womanly quality. Jesus was inimitably tender. Tenderness in him was never softness or weakness. It was more like true motherliness than almost any other human ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... has said, with meagre commendation, that it has "some sentiments which leave a strong impression," and "others of excellence, universally acknowledged." This, even when the admiration of the scene betwixt Dorax and Sebastian has been sanctioned by that great critic, seems scanty applause for the chef d'oeuvre of Dryden's dramatic works. The reader will be disposed to look for more unqualified praise, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... fine eulogy of Crome in the succeeding chapter, should inspire every reader's genuine interest. Here is the memorable Crome passage: "A living master? Why, there he comes! thou hast had him long, he has long guided thy young hand towards the excellence which is yet far from thee, but which thou canst attain if thou shouldst persist and wrestle, even as he has done, midst gloom and despondency—ay, and even contempt; he who now comes up the creaking stair to thy little studio in the second floor ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper

... in the higher grades of the army was not retrieved by any excellence on the part of the private soldier. The Prussian army was recruited in part from foreigners, but chiefly from Prussian serfs, who were compelled to serve. Men remained with their regiments till old age; the rough character of the soldiers and the frequency of ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... the repeated acts of violence to which at every moment they were liable, and under the successive infringements upon the Edict of Amboise, the Huguenots urged the Prince of Conde to represent their grievances to the monarch, in the excellence of whose heart they had not yet lost confidence. The Protestant leader did not repel the trust. His appeal to Charles and to the queen mother was urgent. He showed that, even where the letter of the edict was observed, its ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... class of the country. The class of farmers were men of some capital, and frequently of intelligence and enterprise, though rarely of education, who held on lease from the landlords farms of some one, two, or three or more hundred acres, paying relatively large rents, and yet by the excellence of their farming making for themselves a liberal income. The farm laborers were the residuum of the changes which have been traced in the history of landholding; a large class living for the most part miserably ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... current affairs. He was familiar with the history of the United States and Great Britain, and having a lively admiration of learned men, statesmen, scholars, and divines, he was a reader of biographies. While emulating the excellence which he admired, these stores of information were employed to enliven conversation and to furnish material for public discourses. In the gathering of the people, whether for secular or religious purposes, he was ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various

... blank verse, the undercurrent of mediocrity in Macaulay, the absurdities of Ruskin's etymology. And, as in great matters, so in small. Whatever literary production was brought under his notice, his judgment was clear, sympathetic, and independent. He had the readiest appreciation of true excellence, a quick eye for minor merits of facility and method, a severe intolerance of turgidity and inflation—of what he called "desperate endeavours to render a platitude endurable by making it pompous," and a lively horror of affectation and unreality. These, in literature ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... city of Florence reformed its government with the help of the Friar Girolamo Savonarola, whose writings declare his learning, his wisdom, and the excellence of his heart. Among other ordinances for the safety of the citizens, he caused a law to be passed, allowing an appeal to the people from the sentences pronounced by "the Eight" and by the "Signory" in trials for State offences; a law he had long contended for, and carried at last ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli

... Like a bright planet, thou has passed before me!—like a being of a superior order! And I never, never can debase my nature to change that love. Thy image shall follow me into solitude—shall consecrate my soul to the practice of every virtue! I will emulate thy excellence, when, perhaps, thou ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... enlisting in the army that fights for womanhood to-day, whose organic repugnance to the defeminized woman is so intense, and whose perception of the distinctive characters of real womanhood and of their supreme excellence is so acute that, so far from aiding the cause of, for instance, woman's suffrage, he is one of its most bitter and unremitting enemies. There must be many such—to whom the doctrine of sex-identity, ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

... that other conditions were essential to success. "I have no intention," I wrote, "to impute everything to, and demand everything from, power itself. I shall not say to it, as has often been said, 'Be just, wise, firm, and fear nothing;' power is not free to exercise this inherent and individual excellence. It does not make society, it finds it; and if society is impotent to second power, if the spirit of anarchy prevails, if the causes of dissolution exist in its own bosom, power will operate in vain; it is not given to human wisdom to rescue a people who refuse to co-operate ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... value, if not to the world generally, at least to themselves. And this notion, however undefined it may be, is held to with a singular tenacity of belief. The greater part of mankind, indeed, seem never to entertain the question whether they really possess points of excellence. They assume it as a matter perfectly self-evident, and appear to believe in their vaguely conceived worth on the same immediate testimony of consciousness by which they assure themselves of their personal existence. Indeed, the conviction of personal consequence may be said ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... the plains of India in modern times. But Brahmanism, while extinguishing the principle of liberty in all its branches, and exposing its adherents to the mercy of every conqueror, has succeeded, through the caste system, in bringing internal order, security, and peace to a high pitch of excellence. This end, the caste system, like most other religious institutions, did not and does not have directly in view; but the human race often takes circuitous routes to attain its ends, and while apparently aiming at one object, ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... proficiency in the arts of spinning, weaving, and dyeing. For their cloth they used cotton and the wool of four varieties of the llama, that of the vicuna being the finest. Some of their cloth had interwoven designs and ornaments very skillfully executed. Many of their fabrics had rare excellence in the eyes of the Spaniards. Garcilasso says, "The coverings of the beds were blankets and friezes of the wool of the vicuna, which is so fine and so much prized that, among other precious things from that land, they have been brought for the bed of Don Philip II." Of their dyes, ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin

... nature, and the temptations that daily surround it, it must be exceedingly difficult to fulfil. But, whatever difficulties may have lain in the way, or however, on account of the necessary weakness of human nature, the best individuals among the Quakers may have fallen below the pattern of excellence, which they have copied, nothing is more true, than that the result has been, that the whole society, as a body, have obtained from their countrymen, the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... his best; and such was the excellence of the roads, that, notwithstanding the rate at which our hero travelled, he arrived safely in Dublin, just in time to put his letter into the post-office, and to sail in that night's packet. The wind was fair when Lord Colambre went on board, but before ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... agreeable talents he was now so familiarized, was, on every account, singled out by him as the person who could best introduce him historically to the public. It is ridiculous to mention Grammont as the author of his own Memoirs: his excellence, as a man of wit, was entirely limited to conversation. Bussy Rabutin, who knew him perfectly, states that he wrote almost worse than any one. If this was said, and very truly, of him in his early days, it can hardly ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... book treats the subject of pathology with a thoroughness lacking in many works of greater pretension. The illustrations—many of them original—are profuse and of exceptional excellence." ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... whom she would be satisfied with as a husband for her daughter; but then came the further speculation—would Gwendolen be satisfied with him? There was no knowing what would meet that girl's taste or touch her affections—it might be something else than excellence; and thus the image of the perfect suitor gave way before a fluctuating combination of qualities that might be imagined to win Gwendolen's heart. In the difficulty of arriving at the particular combination which would insure that result, the mother even said to herself, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... skies over our heads shed health and vigor. But what are lands, and seas, and skies, to civilized man, without society, without knowledge, without morals, without religious culture; and how can these be enjoyed, in all their extent and all their excellence, but under the protection of wise institutions and a free government? Fellow-citizens, there is not one of us, there is not one of us here present, who does not, at this moment, and at every moment, experience, in his own ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... Chavis, a Negro, rose to such excellence as a teacher of white youth that he is pronounced in a biographical sketch, contained in a history of education in that State, published by the United States Bureau of Education, as one of the most eminent men produced by that State. Though an ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... been intelligence given to his Excellence by that renowned person, and his then great acquaintance, Mons. Grotius, lieger in Paris for the crown of Sweden, of a very valuable manuscript of many volumes, being the body of the civil law in Greek, commonly called the 'Basilics,' in the hands of the heirs of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various

... products of Media celebrated by ancient writers. Of its animals, those which had the highest reputation were its horses, distinguished into two breeds, an ordinary kind, of which Media produced annually many thousands, and a kind of rare size and excellence, known under the name of Nisaean. These last are celebrated by Herodotus, Strabo, Arrian, Ammianus Marcellinus, Suidas, and others. They are said to have been of a peculiar shape; and they were equally ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson

... dogmatic manner. "Them that understands knows the difference between mankind, and I'm sure it can be no great sacret to the Lord, when it is so well known to a poor fellow like myself. There's a plenthy of fellow-cr'atures that has a mighty good notion of their own excellence, but when it comes to r'ason and thruth, it's no very great figure ye all make, in proving what ye say. This chapel is the master's, if chapel the heretical box can be called, and yonder bell was bought wid his money; and the rope is his; and the hands that mane to pull it, is his; and so there's ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... face of his visitor. He looked honest, and the little tailor had a good deal of confidence in the excellence ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... know him not and his appointment throws no additional labour upon the staff of Messrs. COX AND CO. Unofficially he is known as O.C. Split Infinitives. His duties are to see that the standard of literary excellence, which makes the correspondence of the Corps a pleasure to receive, is maintained at the high level set by the Corps Commander himself. Indeed the velvety quality of our prose is the envy of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various

... way, but not once of Redgrave; her theme was the excellence of Alma's playing, which, she declared, had moved ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... the most wonderful collection of fruit. Here pears, peaches, lemons, guavas, and strawberries flourished equally well in the accommodating Argentine climate, and the pears of South America, the famous peras de agua, must be tasted before their excellence can be imagined. The garden was traversed by an avenue of fine eucalyptus trees, amongst whose dusky foliage little screaming green parrakeets darted in and out all day long, like flashes of vivid emerald light. The garden was also, unfortunately, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... power to rob, albeit oblivious years May veil the radiance of their glorious works, Or slight their excellence, their light appears But brighter, statelier in its splendor calm, Or like the flowers that sleep through winter's snow To bloom more fair, their lives' pure ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field

... I am either. Still the social idea exists, and my increased years make its excellence more obvious to ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... simple,—2dly, by circumstantial proof,—this is difficult, and requires care and pains. The connection of the intention and the circumstances is plainly of such a nature as more to depend on the sagacity of the observer than on the excellence of any rule. The pains taken by the Civilians on that subject have not been very fruitful; and the English law-writers have, perhaps as wisely, in a manner abandoned the pursuit. In truth, it seems a wild attempt to lay down any rule for the proof of intention by circumstantial ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... knowing that he had sons, I asked him: 'Callias,' I said, 'if your two sons were foals or calves, there would be no difficulty in finding some one to put over them; we should hire a trainer of horses, or a farmer probably, who would improve and perfect them in their own proper virtue and excellence; but as they are human beings, whom are you thinking of placing over them? Is there any one who understands human and political virtue? You must have thought about the matter, for you have sons; is there any one?' 'There is,' he said. 'Who is ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato

... not a man and a brother?' the latter, instead of giving him the hug fraternal, did beat him to death. Cain's only object, it should seem, was a quiet life, and Abel had disturbed his repose by setting up a higher standard of excellence than the elder brother could afford to maintain. It was only to 'conquer a peace' that Cain thus acted. He desired 'indemnity for the past and security for the future,' and so he took up arms against his brother and ended ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... regarded some few years ago, nor the persecutions to which they were exposed. He had been from youth the victim of the state of feeling inspired by the reaction of the French Revolution; and believing firmly in the justice and excellence of his views, it cannot be wondered that a nature as sensitive, as impetuous, and as generous as his, should put its whole force into the attempt to alleviate for others the evils of those systems from which he had himself suffered. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... God," (1) was descended from a family which itself belonged to the elect of Israel. Those ancestors of his who are enumerated in the Bible by name are all of them men of distinguished excellence. Besides, David was a descendant of Miriam, (2) the sister of Moses, and so the strain of royal aristocracy was reinforced by the priestly aristocracy. Nor was David the first of his family to occupy the throne of a ruler. ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... her impotent Reichstag, her effete Churches. Her army, Parliament, and Churches are symptoms of weakness and not of strength. The true greatness of Germany is largely due to a factor ignored by most writers, ignored even by Mr. Dawson in all his previous works—namely, the excellence of German municipal institutions, the intensity of her civic life. We have been too much accustomed to think of Germany only as a despotic empire. She might be far more fittingly described as a country ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... Then down went her head again, and the scrape, scrape of pens continued until four o'clock, by which time the girls were thankful to fold the sheets in their envelopes and make them ready for post. Rhoda read over her second effort in a glow of virtue, and found it a model of excellence. No complaints this time, no weak self-pity; but a plain statement of facts without any personal bias. Her father and mother would believe that she was entirely contented; but Harold, having been through the same experiences, would read between the lines and understand ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... indeed, all of them together, stood any chance when confronting him. They clamored to be taught, offering good money for the lessons, believing that if they acquired but a tithe of his excellence with the blade they might venture to wear it at night, and let their skill save them from capture. But the young fellow refused their money, and somewhat haughtily declined the role of fencing-master, whereupon they unanimously elected him a member of the coterie, waiving for this one ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... must have been the case with Colonel Leining's son before his exile to Marburg. The old butler had hinted at the truth. The portrait drawn by Herbert Thorne, a picture of such technical excellence that it was doubtless a good likeness also, had given an ugly illustration to Franz's remarks. And there was something even more tangible to prove it: "Theo's" letter from Marburg pleading with Winkler for "discretion and silence," ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner

... and completely unintentional act there are various stages, depending on the degree of consciousness, as explained above. The excellence of the motive does not obliterate the mischievousness of the act; nor vice versa; but the mischief may be aggravated by a bad motive, as pointing to greater likelihood of repetition. This is less the case, however, when the motive is dissocial, such motives ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... expansion need not detain us here. The excellence of the Cossack methods in foraying, pioneer-work, and the forming of military settlements, consolidated the Muscovite conquests. The Tartars were fain to submit to the Czar, or to flee to the nomad tribes of Central Asia or Northern China. The invaders reached ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... instance, in Benvenuto Cellini; nor is it power in the vulgar sense of dominion which seems to be the confused ideal of some ultra-contemporaries; virtue is power in the sense of the Greek ideal that virtue is human excellence. It was therefore very natural for Nietzsche who consciously went back to the Greeks to hail Spinoza as his only philosophical forerunner, the only philosopher who dwelt with him on the highest mountain-tops, perilous only for those who are born for the base ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... gained his fortune, and by which it afterwards came to my wife; the state of Ireland; the original and virtuous poverty of the Coxes—from which he glanced passionately, for a few minutes (until the judge stopped him), to the poverty of his own country; my excellence as a husband, father, landlord; my wife's, as a wife, mother, landlady. All was in vain—the trial went against us. I was soon taken in execution for the damages; five hundred pounds of law expenses of my own, and as much ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to do his honest best for his embloyer; there is hardly any branch of industry in which he is nod ad leasd the equal, if not very greadly the suberior of the foreigner; and id is even yet in his power to recover the command of the world's market by the suberior excellence of his broductions, if he could only be brevailed upon do abandon sdrikes and do be satisfied with a wage which will allow the cabidalist a fair and moderade redurn for the use of his money and brains and for the risks he has ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... which I owe to your and Charlotte's goodness—it contains too much sense, sentiment, and good spelling. It is impossible that even you two, whom, I declare to my God, I will give credit for any degree of excellence the sex are capable of attaining-it is impossible you can go on to correspond at that rate; so, like those who, Shenstone says, retire because they have made a good speech, I shall, after a few letters, hear no more of you. I insist that you shall write whatever comes first—what you see, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... etc. Member of a lot of Societies and Clubs, all of which cost him a mint of money. Considered a rising man and not a bad fellow by his friends—per contra greatly over-estimated and a bitter savage critic by his enemies. Perhaps they are both right. I have a high standard of excellence and am no respecter of persons, and I am afraid I show the latter peculiarity rather too much. An internecine feud rages between Owen and myself (more's the pity) partly on this ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... breathes suspicion. It supposes that men are but men; it confides in no integrity; it trusts to no character. It annexes responsibility, not only to every action, but even to the inaction of the powers it has created. I will risk my all upon the excellence of this bill. I will risk upon it whatever is most dear to me—whatever men most value—the character of integrity, of present reputation, and future fame; these will I stake upon the constitutional safety, the enlarged policy, the equity and wisdom of the measure. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... me off, in one masterly sentence, on my epitaph. Here lies Wragge, embalmed in the tardy recognition of his species: he plowed, sowed, and reaped his fellow-creatures; and enlightened posterity congratulates him on the uniform excellence of his crops." ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... the Butter Walk at Dartmouth, and the famous "Rows" of Chester. It was used for many years as a market where the country folk brought their produce, being then known as the "Penthouse". The mints established on the site by Athelstan were noted for the excellence of the coinage made there. In the Westgate Museum an old leaden box is shown which was discovered at Beauworth by a shepherd. It was found to contain some six thousand silver pennies of the coinage of William I and Rufus. In addition to its famous mints Winchester was the chief trading ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath

... convinced that Switzerland has a mission, and are none the less aware that Switzerland lacks capacity to fulfil that mission. With ingratiating modesty, they disclaim any desire "to play the pharisees to Europe." Whilst they believe in the excellence of the principles which underlie the Switzerland of their dreams (though not Switzerland as she exists to-day), "we must not suppose," says Patry, "that this is a fresh instance of the monopolisation of the Good and the Beautiful by a single country, which will become the only fatherland of ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland

... nothing more operative than sedulity and diligence. A man would wonder at the mighty things which have been done by degrees and gentle augmentations. Diligence and moderation are the best steps whereby to climb to any excellence, nay, it is rare that there is ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston

... excellence without labor; and the time to [5] work, is now. Only by persistent, unremitting, straight- forward toil; by turning neither to the right nor to the left, seeking no other pursuit or pleasure than that which cometh from God, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... culture, and of extensive experience, there are more complex and delicate shades and half-shades of light in the face, so in the palm the lines are correspondingly varied and broken. Take a man of intellect and a peasant, of equal excellence of figure according to the literal rules of art or of anatomy, and this subtile multiplicity of variety shows itself in the whole body in favor of the "gentleman," so that it would almost seem as if ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... and education another, it might be all right to separate them. Culture of the head over a desk, and indoor gymnastics for the body, are not the ideal, and that many succeed in spite of the handicap is no proof of the excellence of the plan. Ships that go around the world accumulate many barnacles, but barnacles as a help to the ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... Olympic games, and Nero repaired to the spot, following the vast throngs that were proceeding thither from every part of Greece, and there entered into competition with all the common singers and players of the time. The prize for excellence in music was awarded to him. It was, however, generally understood that the judges were bribed to decide in his favor. Nero entered as a competitor, too, in the chariot race; and here he was successful in winning the prize; though in this case it was ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... the Corporal they heard nothing but the praises of Colonel Fitzdenys, of his bravery, his gentleness, and his excellence as an officer; all of which they passed on in the evening to Lady Eleanor, who seemed quite content to ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue

... and delightful object, when, guess the consternation that prevailed upon seeing, instead of the new "Defiance," the poor old Subscription trotting nimbly up to the George Inn door, and Tom Goodman, the guard, playing on the key-bugle, with his usual excellence, "Should auld acquaintance be forgot?" The scene is more easily imagined than described; it would have been a fine subject for Hogarth. The bells were now ordered to cease; the Squire walked off and was ...
— Hints on Driving • C. S. Ward

... difficile dans laquelle je me suis trouve depuis trois mois—la delicatesse de celle dans laquelle je suis place maintenant vis-a-vis M. le President de la province de Maragnon, m'imposant le devoir de porter a la connoissance de votre Excellence les justes motifs de plainte que j'ai a lui exposer centre la conduite de M. le President Bruce envers un Agent de Sa Majeste le Roi de France, et venir a ce titre reclamer un appui que je ne puis plus dorenavant ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... opportunities for proper stimuli and response the nervous system must possess good tonicity, or vigor. This depends in large degree on general health and nutrition, with freedom from overfatigue. No favorableness of environment nor excellence of training can result in an efficient brain if the nerve energy has run low from depleted health, want of proper ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts

... at the party, Dorothea," continued Daniel. "Do you realise that I never heard you play? I will frankly confess to you that heretofore I have been afraid to hear you. I could tolerate only the excellent; or the promise of excellence. You may show both; and yet, what is the cause of my fear? You have not practised in a long while; not once since we have been living together. And yet you wish to play in public? That is strange, Dorothea. Be ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... which she had come with her three children to live at Arked House. I never could guess how she came to marry an Irish landlord, and I always thought she must have exasperated his people. She was viewed as the perfection of a Lady Bountiful and pattern of excellence; but, I confess, that I always thought of her when I heard of the devout and honourable women who were stirred up against St. Paul. She was a person who was admired more than she was liked, and who was ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... first observed by Sir James Ross at about 70 degrees 5' north latitude, and 96 degrees 43' west longitude. This was not the exact point assumed by Gilbert, and his scientific predictions, therefore, were not quite correct; but such comparatively slight and excusable errors mar but little the excellence of his work as ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... russet-coloured mantle, and wore a steel cap in lieu of a bonnet on his head, while a long sword dangled from beneath his cloak. When within a few paces of the youth, whose back was towards him, and who did not hear his approach, he announced himself by a loud cough, that proved the excellence of his lungs, and made the old walls ring again, startling the jackdaws ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... to me that I recalled the curve of sweet, proud lips. I knew that I should be thinking of my papers, my future; but a quick perversity made me dwell for a long trotting time in a dream of feminine excellence, in a dream of feminine beauty which was both ascetic and deeply sensuous. I know hardly how to say that two eyes, a vision of lips, a conception of a figure, should properly move me as I bounced along the road with Jem Bottles. But it is certain that ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... had her ring off my finger by day or night, except for an instant at a time, to wash my hands, since she died. I have never had her sweetness and excellence absent from my mind so long. I can solemnly say that, waking or sleeping, I have never lost the recollection of our hard trial and sorrow, and I feel that I ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens

... fears, a peace with me would prove Of ill concernment to his haughty love; Retire, fair excellence! I go to meet New honour, but to ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... feel any little paternal jealousy on this account. He knew that his own son was highly gifted in moral and intellectual endowments, and he was satisfied; and if Ishmael Worth was even his son's superior in these respects, the generous man only rejoiced the more in contemplating the higher excellence. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... terms. 'Master's whistle.' In Shakespeare's time naval commanders wore great whistles of gold. A modern boatswain's badge is a silver whistle suspended to the neck by a lanyard. Holt extols the excellence of Shakespeare's sea-terms, but makes an exception of Gonzalo's 'cable,' which he says is of no use unless the ship is at anchor, and here it is plainly sailing; to which Furness replies, Shakespeare anchors ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke

... man, coupled with the excellence of the spirit, opened Norbert's heart in a very short space of time. Up to the present the conduct of poor Norbert had been blameless, but now, without knowing anything of the Counsellor's character or reputation, he poured out ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... talk, her hearers would admire her; but Caelia's tongue runs incessantly, while Iras gives herself silent airs and soft languors; so that 'tis difficult to persuade one's self that Caelia has beauty, and Iras wit: each neglects her own excellence, and is ambitious of the other's character: Iras would be thought to have as much beauty as Caelia, and Caelia as ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... behaviour, O Yudhishthira, of all the righteous kings of old, was excellent, and I approve of it wholly. That king who desires his own prosperity should seek for conquests by the aid of every kind of excellence but never with that of deceit ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... may now be considered complete. As I have stated above, an improvement might yet be made in our Transit Circle; nevertheless I do not hesitate to express my belief that no other existing meridional instrument can be compared with it. This presumed excellence has not been obtained without much thought on my part and much anxiety on the part of the constructors of the instrument (Messrs Ransomes and May, and Mr Simms). But it would be very unjust to omit the further statement that the expense of the construction ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... by Mr. Trouvelot indicate changes in the ring-system, and especially in the dark ring, which place every other theory save that to which we have thus been led entirely out of the question. It should be noted that Mr. Trouvelot has employed telescopes of unquestionable excellence and varying in aperture from six inches to twenty-six inches, the latter aperture being that of the great telescope of the Washington Observatory (the largest refractor in ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... free from enthusiasm and superstition; its outward form is decent and respectful, without affected ostentation; and what shews its excellence above all others is, that every other church allows it to be the best, except itself: and it is an established rule, that he has an undoubted right to the first rank of merit, to whom every ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... the manner in which these combats were regulated, may consult the learned Montesquieu, where they will find a copious summary of the code of ancient duelling. ["Esprit des Loix," livre xxviii. chap. xxv.] Truly does he remark, in speaking of the clearness and excellence of the arrangements, that, as there were many wise matters which were conducted in a very foolish manner, so there were many foolish matters conducted very wisely. No greater exemplification of it could be given, than ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... bride. "If she is nice," Letty was in the habit of adding, "and of course she will be nice,"—and at that thought the heart of the young lover escaped, and put forth its wings, and went off into that heaven of ideal excellence and beauty, more sweet, because more vague, than anything real, which stands instead of the old working-day skies and clouds at such a period of life. He had to drop down from a great height, and get rid in all haste of his celestial ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... as he had expected to do. After all, if you judged matters with such rigidity, who was there without guilt? what public appointment was given and held according to abstract right, as, formally speaking, it ought to be? Those in the highest offices were appointed, not because of their personal excellence, but because of being some other man's son or brother; and yet, on the whole, public duty was well done, and the unjust ruler and hireling priest were exceptions. Even men whose entry into the fold was very precipitate, over the wall, violently, or by some rat-hole of private interest, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... and argued incessantly and amiably. And they were all devoted to Mr. Dinwiddie, whom they addressed as Excellence, ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... chosen was a little hostel, frequented by racing men, and famed for the excellence of its steaks. And as they sat down opposite each other in the almost empty room, Miltoun thought: Yes, he does know! Can I stand any more of this? He waited almost savagely for the attack he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Britain by the Romans, the Collegia, without which no Roman society was complete, made their advent into the island, traces of their work remaining even to this day. Under the direction of the mother College at Rome, the Britons are said to have attained to high degree of excellence as builders, so that when the cities of Gaul and the fortresses along the Rhine were destroyed, Chlorus, A.D. 298, sent to Britain for architects to repair or rebuild them. Whether the Collegia existed in Britain ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... produces iron of great excellence, won from its celebrated mines of Dannemora, and largely imported into England for ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston

... no small sense of the use and excellence of Christ, and such longings and breathings of his soul after him, that when mention has been made of Christ, he hath been ready to leap out ...
— Stories of Boys and Girls Who Loved the Saviour - A Token for Children • John Wesley

... of meeting men of many different tastes and men from all parts of the country. So it gave free play to the development of individual talents, and its standard of scholarship was already sufficiently high to ensure the excellence of the best scholars it trained. One quality which we probably took little note of, although it must have affected us all, sprang from the fact that Harvard was still a crescent institution; she was in the full vigor of growth, of expansion, of increase, and we shared insensibly from being ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... with piano fingers and baldish head much too big for his body, who flitted about among the chorus girls, followed by a pale, drab woman with pins, and touched their dresses and sniggered and made remarks with a certain touch of literary excellence in a slightly guttural voice. This was Poppy Shemalitz, the frock expert, the man milliner of the firm, who was required to make bricks out of straw, or as he frequently said to the friends of his "bosom," "make fifteen dollars look like fifty." Self-preservation ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... "Chronicles." This work is important; first, as a record, generally accepted as eminently trustworthy, and second, for its literary excellence, in which sense it has been held in peculiar esteem. George Saintsbury remarks that those chronicles "are by universal consent among the most attractive works of the Middle Ages." They comprize one of the oldest extant examples of French prose. The passage here given was translated for this ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... when mixed in masonry, it has no binding power on the rubble, which consequently settles and down comes the load which the walls can no longer support. Fresh pitsand, however, in spite of all its excellence in concrete structures, is not equally useful in stucco, the richness of which, when the lime and straw are mixed with such sand, will cause it to crack as it dries on account of the great strength of ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... In all-around excellence, the pecan is equalled by none of the native American nut-bearing trees and certainly it is surpassed by no exotic species. It stands in the list of nut trees with but few equals and no superiors. With this fact known and admitted by all, it seems reasonable to suppose that the pecan ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume

... of the North American Review, and in this magazine continued the second series of the Biglow Papers, begun in the Atlantic Monthly, the series in which is expressed his finest power as a poet-patriot. Of the same excellence is the famous Commemoration Ode written for memorial ceremonies held at Harvard College in honor of the students who had fallen during the war. Among other contributions to these periodicals were numerous ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... are passing away. But the sharp sorrow of parting from them is relieved by the memory of their self-denying and useful work, and especially where these dear friends threw over those dark days and trying experiences the halo of personal excellence, sweetness of disposition and a manner full of ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 44, No. 4, April, 1890 • Various

... principles by means of daily examination, reflection, and resolution. What leads to the permanent sorrowfulness of burglars is that their principles are contrary to burglary. If they genuinely believed in the moral excellence of burglary, penal servitude would simply mean so many happy years for them; all martyrs are happy, because their conduct and their ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett

... of his "fund-bred" companions, as he calls them, at Mr. Morton's Academy in Newington Green, was such as to excite Defoe's contempt, he bears testimony to Mr. Morton's excellence as a teacher, and instances the names of several pupils who did credit to his labours. In one respect Mr. Morton's system was better than that which then prevailed at the Universities; all dissertations ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... of the raiders. He had personally endeavored to track Red Mask, but the rustler had evaded him in the thick bush that lined the river; and his men had been equally unsuccessful with the rest of the band. The hills had been their goal, and they had made it through the excellence of their horses. Although the pursuers were well mounted their horses were heavier, and lost ground hopelessly in the midst of the broken ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... folk" of the Old Dominion. In Hanover County, in which this tribune of the people was born and reared and which he now represented, there were, as in all the backcountry counties, few great estates and few slaves, no notable country-seats with pretension to architectural excellence, no modishly dressed aristocracy with leisure for reading and the cultivation of manners becoming a gentleman. Beyond the tide-water, men for the most part earned their bread by the sweat of their brows, lived the life and esteemed the virtues of a primitive society, and braced ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker

... loudly, "Ah, Provence! you come too late! you have missed a fine sight, the reception of M. de Suffren. Really, it was one that a Frenchman can never forget. How the devil did it happen that you were not here—you who are generally the punctual man par excellence?" ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere

... a poetical question, has a right to be heard, said, "That he would regulate his opinion of the reigning taste by the fate of Dyer's 'Fleece;' for, if that were ill-received, he should not think it any longer reasonable to expect fame from excellence." ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... this Constitution and of its happy effect in elevating the character and in protecting the rights of the nation as well as of individuals. To what, then, do we owe these blessings? It is known to all that we derive them from the excellence of our institutions. Ought we not, then, to adopt every measure which may be ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson

... the cool of evening and morning. Being confined to the tropical coast, away from the centres of population, and flowering at a season when visitors avoid the north, the scented Ixora has so far remained uncommended. Those who are familiar with it in its native scene dwell on its unique excellence, and are proud to reflect that when a comprehensive catalogue of the flowering and perfumed plants of Australia comes to be compiled it will stand high in order of merit, being unique and characteristic of the richness of that part ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... eat a Bouillabaisse, the like of which was never eaten in Marseilles or Paris." Which is much, very much, from the laureate of Bouillabaisse, as native to Marseilles. The reason of superiority is not far to seek—it lies in the excellence and flavor of the fish native to the Gulf of Mexico. Lacking Pompano, Red Snapper, and Redfish, even Milly could not quite do her knowledge justice. But she made shift with what the market offered, choosing generally halibut, ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams

... hath green spots, the sea Small islands scattered amid stormy waves, So that disastrous period did not want Bright sprinklings of all human excellence, To which the silver wands of saints in Heaven 485 Might point with rapturous joy. Yet not the less, For those examples in no age surpassed Of fortitude and energy and love, And human nature faithful to herself Under worst trials, was I driven to think 490 Of the glad times ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth









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