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More "Superlative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... parts would do. Why, everybody's heard about Hal Dunbar. Everybody's scared of him. He can ride anything that's big enough to carry him; he can fight like a wildcat with his hands; and he can shoot like"—his eye wandered toward a superlative—"like Pete Reeve, almost," he concluded with ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... it must be to the poatas to b' wearied so by stoopid people," observed a tall, stout, superlative fop with sleepy eyes and long whiskers to another fop in ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... a year the company had a superlative parade. This was when the military company from the north part of the town joined the villagers in a general muster. This was an infantry company, and not to be compared with that of the village in point of evolutions. There was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... At last an evening alone with her again. It seems as if Wanda had saved up all the love, which had been kept from her, for this superlative evening; never had she been so kind, so near, ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... only to follow the history of these Semitic names in order to see that, in spite of their superlative meaning, they proved no stronger bulwark against polytheism than the Latin Optimus Maximus. The very names which we saw explained before as meaning the Highest, the Lord, the Master, are represented in the Phenician mythology as standing to each other ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... of his journey thither; arid gravely asserts that he has often experienced, that if diamonds be wetted with May-dew, they will grow to a great size in a course of years. This probably is an improvement upon the Arabian philosophy or the production of pearls by the oysters catching that superlative seminal influence. The following singular article of intelligence respecting India, may be copied as a specimen of the work: "In that countree growen many strong vynes: and the women drynken wyn, and men not: and the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... any one in the world—to snatch her from the very jaws of destruction—she would have encountered a lion. To have this friend constantly with her; to make her mind easy with respect to her family, would it not be superlative bliss? ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... fruitfulness.[642] The Supreme Good is GOD himself, and he is designated "the good" because this term seems most fittingly to express his essential character and essence.[643] It is towards this superlative perfection that the reason lifts itself; it is towards this infinite beauty the heart aspires. "Marvellous Beauty!" exclaims Plato; "eternal, uncreated, imperishable beauty, free from increase and diminution... beauty which has nothing sensible, nothing corporeal, as hands or face: which does ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... haggled about the price;[23] or the statue, while stepping into his niche, would turn round on the author to assist his invention. A patron of Peter Motteux, dissatisfied with Peter's colder temperament, composed the superlative dedication to himself, and completed the misery of the author by subscribing it with Motteux's name![24] Worse fared it when authors were the unlucky hawkers of their own works; of which I shall give a remarkable instance in MYLES DAVIES, a learned man maddened ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... months at the Front—six and a half months as a despatch rider and two and a half months as a cyclist officer—I have decided that the English language has no superlative ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... considerable enjoyment resultant not only from her destination, long desired, now to be realized, but also from the sheer exuberance of handling the vehicle. Since pre-history, man's pleasure in the physical control of a speedy vehicle has been superlative, particularly when that vehicle is known by the driver to be unique in its class. The Hittite charioteer, bowling across the landscape of Anatolia, a Sterling Moss carefully tooling his automobile around the multi-curves of the Upper Cornice on the Riviera, or a Nadine Haer delicately ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... glance or a turn of his head did he let his bride see how wildly her superlative attraction had kindled ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... Grifoni? Alas! I owe her two letters, and where to find a beau sentiment, I cannot tell! I believe I may have some by me in an old chest of draws, with some exploded red-heel shoes and full-bottom wigs; but they would come out so yellow and moth-eaten! Do bow to her, in every superlative degree in the language, that my eyes have been so bad, that as I wrote you word, over and over, I have not been able to write a line. That will move her, when she hears what melancholy descriptions I write, of my not being able to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... knowledge of gambler's legerdemain, and the useful consciousness that he must prey or be preyed on. John Rex was no common swindler; his natural as well as his acquired abilities saved him from vulgar errors. He saw that to successfully swindle mankind, one must not aim at comparative, but superlative, ingenuity. He who is contented with being only cleverer than the majority must infallibly be outwitted at last, and to be once outwitted is—for a swindler—to be ruined. Examining, moreover, into the history of detected ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... opinions on various art questions, and some, as was natural, made pitiful slips. I observed with secret and scarcely concealed satisfaction his courageous loyalty in defence of his friends, and his hitting out in their defence when he believed them to be assailed. One superlative intelligence, eager to do honour to the guest, yet ignorant of his claim to such honour, gave him a wonderfully facile and racy comment on the pre-Raphaelite painters, and, in particular, made the ridiculous ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... says good old Stow, "is so called not of sweetness thereof, being very narrow and small and dark, but rather of often washing and sweeping to keep it clean." With all due respect to Stow, we suspect that the lane did not derive its name from any superlative cleanliness, but more probably from honey being sold here in the times before sugar became common and honey alone was used ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... more than that of empty house and echoing stair; more than that, even, of Crusoe's manless island; utterly beyond even that of an alien planet; of spaces not even coldly sown with God-aloof stars—the excellent, the superlative loneliness of one soul for another. It is a strange, misty, Columbus-voyage upon which that hardy soul goes who dares to be the last of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... may be in all these foregoing respects, Cookery has something more to recommend it, which gives it precedence before everything else in education; and though this is saying a great deal, I shall endeavour to demonstrate that it is perfectly true. I have already shown that Cookery is of superlative benefit, both in ensuring health and in acting as a preventive against habits of intemperance. But it is as a medium for training that Cookery is at its very best; for it is in reality an art; indeed, it is a master art. At the same time, also, it ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... living in the widow De Cusco's hotel, an establishment mounted, as they say now, not at the height, but at the depth of the superlative backwardness of the town. Lieutenant-colonel Pinzon visited him with frequency, in order that they might discuss together the plot which they had on hand, and for the successful conduct of which the soldier showed the happiest dispositions. New artifices and ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... a offered reward of ten pound, which was afterwards increased to twenty pound. Notwithstanding the most superlative, and, I may say, supernat'ral exertions on the part of this parish,' said Bumble, 'we have never been able to discover who is his father, or what was his mother's settlement, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... developed an unfortunate tendency to overstate, overdraw, and exaggerate. It seems strange that there should be so strong a temptation to exaggerate in a country where the truth is more wonderful than fiction. The positive is stronger than the superlative, but we ignore this fact in our speech. Indeed, it is really difficult to ascertain the exact truth in America. How many American fortunes are built on misrepresentation that is needless, for nothing else is ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... now Christian, acting on the dim glimpse he had had, just as Sweyn turned upon him, of something that moved against the sky along the ridge behind the homestead, was staking his only hope on a chance, and his own superlative speed. If what he saw was really White Fell, he guessed she was bending her steps towards the open wastes; and there was just a possibility that, by a straight dash, and a desperate perilous leap over a sheer bluff, he might yet meet ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... exactly alike in the way it is worn in Paris. Their figures have the last "look" and their jewels are simply divine. With all this beyond criticism, it is very difficult to say whether they are beautiful or not, naturally; the general effect is so perfect. They, as far as grooming and superlative "turnedoutness" is concerned (I had to make a new word), are ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... told you," he began, "I bought the picture from a small dealer in the Bowery. I happened to notice it in his window, and, the 'Red Duchess' being one of the half-dozen superlative portraits of the world, I was naturally interested. It was certainly a fine copy, and I was pleased ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... another Missouri Compromise. If you have the drink you'll have the drunkenness. If you have the cause you will have the effect. If you have the positive you will have the superlative: Positive drink, comparative drinking, superlative drunkenness. You may try high-tax and low-tax but all the time you will have sin-tax and more sin ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... being angry with Tanno than I had ever been in our lives. I comprehended why he, with all his superlative equipment of tact and intuition, had blundered; he could not but assume that circumstances were as they should have been rather than as they were; yet the blunder was, in a sense, unforgivable, and had created a social situation than which nothing ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... present, we do not see. Our ears are educated to music by his rhythm. Coleridge and Goethe are the only critics who have expressed our convictions with any adequate fidelity: but there is in all cultivated minds a silent appreciation of his superlative power and beauty, which, like Christianity, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... which unspeakably distinguishes him from all other past and present Sansculottists. The grand unparalleled peculiarity of Teufelsdroeckh is, that with all this Descendentalism, he combines a Transcendentalism, no less superlative; whereby if on the one hand he degrade man below most animals, except those jacketed Gouda Cows, he, on the other, exalts him beyond the visible Heavens, almost to ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... we had marched seven miles without being able to see thirty yards, and had yet hit off the direct track to a T; of course, it was only coincidence, though some people might credit themselves with superlative navigating powers on such evidence. The wind increased, and with the knowledge I now have of blizzards I would camp at once. Then I thought it better to shove on, as the ponies were marching splendidly. The danger lay in the ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... faith in the Christian religion and in the incarnation. He said that while love was the main principle in religion as a way of life, the most important contribution to humanity made by religion was hope. Hope in the destiny of man, in the superlative value of the individual, in the Personality of ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... the first or ground floor, are the shops; in the second, the merchants have their warehouses; and in the third, they usually live with their families. Those three different regions, sorry am I to say it, are all very dirty; indeed they may be said to be the positive, comparative, and superlative degrees of uncleanness. There are no glazed sashes in the windows, so that when it rains, and the shutters are closed, you are involved in utter darkness. The furniture is miserably scanty—some old fashioned, high backed, hardwood chairs, with a profusion of tarnished ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... we owe to thee, Accurst comparative degree! Thy paltry step can never give Access to the superlative; For he who would the wisest be, Strives to make others wise as he, And never yet was man judged best Who would be better than the rest; So does comparison unkind Dwarf and debase the ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... honor, madam. It is the superlative felicity of my sublunary existence to congratulate you on this auspicious occasion," replied Mr. Sneed, as he gently pressed the gloved ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... breathless, waiting for a shot. It did not come. Slowly, as silently as possible, he reached for the sheath knife he carried and drew it. He had a gun, but a knife, the old cracksman had said, was much better for a fight in the dark and it had the superlative virtue of noiselessness. He became motionless again, his eyes vainly straining to pierce the darkness, waiting for the other to make a move. The silence and inaction became unbearable. He gathered his ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... population of this terrestrial paradise; they are for the most part emigrations from the Sahara, several centuries ago, and speak the true Arabic language. These are a fine race of men, possessing, in a superlative degree, some of the noblest qualities of the human race. To these ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... the most active and daring of their number. Courage, cunning and cruelty were considered by them to be the most important qualifications of a bona-fide bucanier, and they soon found that these were possessed by Rowland, in a most superlative degree, and this added to the influence of his talents and early education, caused him to rise rapidly to a station of command among them. As it was his motto 'to make hay while the sun shines,' he sailed as ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... once and for all. She was the sublimation of every dream that his romantic heart had conceived. He felt faint for a moment at the difficulties which bristled between himself and this superlative being, but he was a youthful conqueror, and life had been very amiable to him. He shook courage into his spirit and asked to be presented to her ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... after the peace they spent some summer vacations in visits to the continent. They visited Switzerland, still unhackneyed, though Byron and Shelley were celebrating its charms. Long afterwards I used to hear from my mother of the superlative beauties of the Wengern Alp and the Staubbach (though she never, I suspect, read 'Manfred'), and she kept up for years a correspondence with a monk of the hospital on the St. Bernard. Her first child, Herbert Venn Stephen, was born September 30, 1822; and about this time ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... lovely remains, we, with our own eyes, saw deposited in the Saint-Meran and de Villefort vault at Pere Lachaise, one bitter cold autumn evening, and there listened most patiently and piously to a whole breviary of mournful speeches, declarative of the said Valentine's most superlative excellence?" ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... in this world; real mothers are rare. Can we lift the mammalia up into the high estate of motherhood? I believe so. Can we grow superlative children, as we grow superlative fruits and animals? Oh, a thousand times, yes. I beg for your support of this new idea. Let the spirit of inspiration enter into your reflections concerning it. Let that concentration of purpose which you have learned ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... South, to the "manor born," having shown their superiority in the superlative excellencies of murder, usurpation and robbery (and I maintain they have gone further in the execution of these infamies than was true of the Negro-Carpet-bag bacchanalia); having made majorities dwindle into iotas and vaulted themselves into power at the point of the shot gun and dagger (regular ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... desired type, and which show the least variation. From it plants are selected in the same way and to the same type as the previous year. It is better to make selections from such a block than to take the most superior plants from all of the blocks, or from one which produced but one or but a few superlative ones, the ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... entirely lost your enemy. If you do, by all means come, pay us a visit, and see what we are doing in England. I have done an etching of Turner's 'Calais Pier,' 30 inches square, which is by many degrees the finest thing (if I may be permitted so superlative an expression) I have done or ever shall do. I mean to publish it about the close of the year. I have built a press for printing it, and am having paper made expressly, and real sepia (which is magnificent—both in color and ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... is in the superlative degree. The king admires and ogles her as much as he dares to do in so holy ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... our zigzag through Belgium, following most of the time dirt roads which, though not of superlative excellence, were an improvement on stone blocks. It took us practically all day to reach Antwerp, a hundred and thirty ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... though He does not lay the guilt at the doors of all, yet the punishment falls on all, and, when the city is burned, the houses of the negligent and of the slayers are equally consumed; for simple refusal of the message and slaying the messengers were but the positive and superlative degrees of the same crime—rebellion against the king, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... more than a match for. supreme, greatest, utmost, paramount, preeminent, foremost, crowning; first-rate &c (important) 642, (excellent) 648; unrivaled peerless, matchless; none such, second to none, sans pareil [Fr.]; unparagoned^, unparalleled, unequalled, unapproached^, unsurpassed; superlative, inimitable facile princeps [Lat.], incomparable, sovereign, without parallel, nulli secundus [Lat.], ne plus ultra [Lat.]; beyond compare, beyond comparison; culminating &c (topmost) 210; transcendent, transcendental; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... purpose by the mere restlessness of elemental forces; the amount of probability of their having been so produced being, however, according to the formula already set forth in its proper place, as one to infinity multiplied more or less frequently by itself. But what adequate superlative shall we invent to express the credulity, the credulosity run mad, of those who, in a matter of scientific belief, deliberately accept such odds. Observe how at once extravagantly gratuitous and painfully elaborate such credulosity ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... Their women were "ladies"—gentle, refined, ethereal beings, passion and devotion wrapped in forms of ethereal mould, and surrounded by an impalpable effulgence which distinguished them from all others of the sex throughout the world. Whatever was of the South was superlative. To be Southern-born was to be prima facie better than other men. So the self-love of every man was enlisted in this sentiment. To praise the South was to praise himself; to boast of its valor was to advertise his own intrepidity; to extol its women was to enhance the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... had finished the reading, the chorister arose with superlative dignity, and gave the key. Unfortunately, the choir dropped a tone or two too low, and the first verse was sung at that disadvantage. Discovering the blunder, the key was again given, but the singers were now getting nervous, and instead of ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... Brother Bill by. Had he understood it, it would have made no difference to him whatever. But that was his way. He never saw much more than a single purpose ahead of him, and possessed an indestructible conviction of his ability to carry it out, even in the face of superlative or ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... Superficies suprajxo. Superfluity superfluo. Superfluous superflua. Superhuman superhoma. Superintend observi, zorgi pri. Superior supera. Superior, a superulo. Superiority supereco. Superlative (gram.) superlativo. Supernatural supernatura. Supernumerary ekstrulo. Superscription surskribo. Supersede anstatauxi. Superstition supersticxo. Superstitious supersticxa. Supervise observi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... storm. He had forgotten everything but the charm of the girl's hot enthusiasm. And the picture of superlative beauty she ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... that has yet been conceived, it is a sort of logical violation and unnaturalness; but the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with this very folly. The desire for "freedom of will" in the superlative, metaphysical sense, such as still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated, the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society therefrom, involves nothing ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... knowing men, dupes, jockeys, gamblers, and a large assemblage of mixed company. But this is a gayer scene than most others; and every epithet, appropriate to a course, diminutive or otherwise, must be in the superlative degree when applied to Ascot. This is the general, and often the only impression that most men carry away ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the leaders of that party, Vane, Fiennes, St. John, Martin, the men in England the most celebrated for profound thought and deep contrivance; and by their well-colored pretences and professions, they had overreached the whole nation. To deceive such men, would argue a superlative capacity in Cromwell; were it not that besides the great difference there is between dark, crooked counsels and true wisdom, an exorbitant passion for rule and authority will make the most prudent overlook the dangerous consequences of such measures as seem to tend, in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... the Clergy of this kingdom, who are promoted to bishoprics, have always some great advantages; either that of rich deaneries, opulent and multiplied rectories and dignities, strong alliances by birth or marriage, fortified by a superlative degree of zeal and loyalty; but, however, they were all at first no more than young beginners; and before their great promotion, were known by their plain Christian names, among their old companions, the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... its claims to preeminence among recognized forms of verse will soon convince any intelligent reader of its superlative worth and beauty. ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... and I was allowed to use all of his colours, except one; I was strictly forbidden to let a hair of my paint- brush touch the little broken mass of carmine which was all that he possessed. We believed, but I do not know whether this could be the fact, that carmine of this superlative quality was sold at a guinea a cake. 'Carmine', therefore, became my shibboleth of self-indulgence; it was a symbol of all that taste and art and wealth could combine to produce. I imagined, for instance, that at Belshazzar's feast, the loftiest epergne of gold, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... [the] impnis of my maisteris dere, Gowere and Chaucere, that on the steppis satt Of rethorike quhill thai were lyvand here, Superlative as poetis laureate, In moralitee and eloquence ornate, I recommend my buk in lynis sevin, And eke thair soulis ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... actual. It is also necessarily an effect of fine shades, delicate values, vanishing distinctions, of evasiveness, inconsequence, suggestion. It is also absolute, unrelated—it is positive or negative or superlative—it is never comparative. Well, the Anglo-Saxon public is totally insensible to such things. They can no more feel them, than a blind worm can feel the colours ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... laboratory, richly endowed, slendidly equipped, and in the present enjoyment of freedom that is without bounds, and in a secrecy that to-day is as complete as can be imagined. What can he learn with certainty of what goes on within? If he hears claims of superlative gains by the experiments there carried on, how is he to weigh and decide their value? If there is cruelty behind those barred doors, how is he to prevent its constant recurrence? What, in short, should be the reasonable attitude of every intelligent man or woman anxious ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... has seen it." "My taste is driving, my lord, mayhap your lordship has seen me handle the ribbons." "My horses are all bloods, mayhap your lordship has noticed my team." "I pride myself on my seat in the saddle, mayhap your lordship has seen me ride." "If I am superlative in anything, 'its in my wines." "So please your ladyship, 'tis dress I most excel in ... 'tis walking I pride myself in." No matter what is mentioned, 'tis the one thing he did or had better than any one else. This conceited fool was duped into believing a parcel of men-servants ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... well preserved, though over seventy years of age. He was a rough diamond, kindly in his judgments unless his feeling of justice was injured; then he was implacable. Many sayings of his were current, among them a dry answer to a senator from Texas who, having dwelt in high- flown discourse on the superlative characteristics of the State he represented, wound up all by saying, "All that Texas needs to make it a paradise is water and good society,'' to which Wade instantly replied, "That 's all they need in ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... up from a chair and curtsied fearsomely at the astonishing spectacle of Mr. Prohack, was fat in a superlative degree, and her obesity gave her a middle-aged air to which she probably had no right by the almanac. She looked quite forty, and might well have been not more than thirty. She made a typical London figure of the nondescript industrial ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... development of Spanish countries the mental activity of the people is principally manifested in an exuberant imagination which finds expression in superlative and poetical language. If there were any corresponding creative genius and executive ability in material affairs such a fertile and well-watered land as Puerto Rico would be the home of one of the richest communities ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... prophets and righteous men. It was so in the past, and in modified forms it is so today. The plain fact is that humanity has in it a depth of incapacity to behold, and of angry indisposition to admire, lofty and noble lives. The power of the darkness to blind men is set forth once in the superlative degree that we may all beware of it in the lower instances, by that fact, the most tragical in the history of the world, 'the Light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to write to Dr. Cocchi a letter myself to thank him for his Baths of Pisa, that it was impossible not to break my resolution. It was to be in Italian, because I thought their superlative issimos would most easily express how much I like it, and I had already gathered a tolerable quantity together, of entertaining, charming, useful, agreeable, and had cut and turned them into the best sounding! Tuscan adjectives I could find in my memory or my Crusca: ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... an inventor of the highest order, the Dance of Death also discloses an interpreter in wood of signal, and even superlative, ability. The designs are cut—to use the word which implies the employment of the knife as opposed to that of the graver—in a manner which has never yet been excelled. In this matter there could ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... still forbids it me The reverence for the keys superlative Thou hadst in keeping in ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... member of the Inter-Allied Council which sat on shipping problems, now Secretary of State in President Wilson's Cabinet, was approached as a suffragist, known to have access to the President. Mr. Colby had just returned from abroad when I saw him. He is a cultivated gentleman, but he knows how to have superlative enthusiasm. ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... the tone of ecstasy broke suddenly on the air upon this new entrance, shattering what little composure Nehemiah had been able to muster; a wide-mouthed exaggeration of welcome in superlative phrases and ready chorus. Swiftly turning, he saw nothing for a moment, for he looked at the height which a man's head might reach, and the new-comer measured hardly two feet in stature, waddled with a very uncertain gait, and although he bore himself with manifest complacence, he had ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... back with all the glory of its russet brown departed and a sort of limp, anaemic look about it. And when the wearer has lain upon the veldt at full length for long hours together in rain and sun and dust-storm his kit assumes an inexpressible dowdiness, and preserves only its one superlative merit of so far resembling mother earth that even the keen eyes behind the Mauser barrels fail to spot Mr. Atkins as he lies prone behind his stone ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... then, of but three powers that can open the stage door to a girl who comes straight from private life,—a fortune, great influence, or superlative beauty. With a large amount of money a girl can unquestionably tempt a manager whose business is not too good, to give her an engagement. If influence is used, it must indeed be of a high social order to be ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... to say, I regard your claim to the possession of good taste as completely established.... 'Ware the horse, there! Look out! look out!" His eyes had followed the tall figure of the Mother-Superior, moving with the superlative grace and ease that comes of perfect physical proportion, carrying the black nun's robes, wearing the flowing veil of the nun with the dignity of an ideal queen. And the next instant, his charger, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... West, struck by the rapidity with which a new society was unfolding under their gaze, it is not strange that the pioneers dealt in the superlative and saw their destiny with optimistic eyes. The meadow lot of the small intervale had become the prairie, stretching farther than their gaze ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... date," "antiquated," "superannuated."[*] A man, a woman, or a piece of furniture might be "out of date"; next, by a greater degree of imperfection, "antiquated"; but as to the last term, it was the superlative of contempt. The first might be remedied, the second was hopeless, but the third,—oh, better far never to have left the void of nothingness! As to praise, a single word sufficed him, doubly and trebly uttered: "Charming!" ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... exquisite sunset—one of those superlative sunsets that burn themselves into the consciousness with a joy akin to pain, and of which only a few are allotted to each human life. I stood watching the sinking sun throw a crimson net over the snow mountains as the ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... should make four-fold restitution. From this we may judge how much less desirable a citizen they esteemed the banker than the thief. When they sought to commend an honest man, they termed him good husbandman, good farmer. This they rated the superlative of praise.[9] Personally, I think highly of a man actively and diligently engaged in commerce, who seeks thereby to make his fortune, yet, as I have said, his career is full of risks and pitfalls. But it is from the ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... to most of the incidental quips. Pseudolus generously compliments Charinus on beating him at his own game of repartee (743). When Weise (Die Komodien des Plautus, p. 181) describes Ps. IV. 7 as "eine der ausgezeichnetsten Scenen, die es irgend giebt," his superlative finds a better ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... Minister my prisoner refers to as 'an uncouth bully who bellowed like a mad bull.' In this respect it is my impression that the ex-Empress indorses his state of mind. What he likes she will place in the superlative; what he merely hates, she elevates to positive abhorrence. In this way she seems to flatter his decisions, which makes him smile quite indulgently at her, and hold her ascendency over his apparently veering ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... It surely should be translated, "And he, whom the God so leads to [Greek: ate], fares a very short time without it." The best translation of [Greek: ate] is, perhaps, infatuation. Moreover, how is the above translation reconciled with the very superlative [Greek: oligoston]? ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... days of S. Thomas was the saint's scientific method more lacking. Everywhere there is need for a mystic doctrine, which in itself is neither hypnotism nor hysteria, and in its expression is neither superlative nor apostrophic, lest the hungered minds of men die of ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... was put in hand, and, after twelve months' hard work, was safely delivered to his Majesty, who declared it to be a "rich and rare jewel, and that there was no defect in the skill, care, and cost used in it, but a superlative diligence in all ...
— Little Gidding and its inmates in the Time of King Charles I. - with an account of the Harmonies • J. E. Acland
... received with a very decided "ho!" of assent, as it well might be, for during nearly all the year there was nobody in that uninhabited land to attempt any of those violent proceedings. Dilating his eyes and nostrils with a look of superlative wisdom, he continued: ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... the merit of the hymn of Cleanthes to Jupiter, which you ascribe to it. It is as highly sublime as a chaste and correct imagination can permit itself to go. Yet in the contemplation of a being so superlative, the hyperbolic flights of the Psalmist may often be followed with approbation, even with rapture; and I have no hesitation in giving him the palm over all the hymnists of every language, and of every ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... certain tastes of his own made a Continental life more congenial to him, and he had chosen early to enter a financial house which took him to the East and Constantinople. He was about twenty-seven years old at this period and was considered by himself and a number of women to be a creature of superlative charm. ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... genius from this piece, would undoubtedly suppose that he abounded in filthy images, and excelled in describing the lower scenes of life." Let all such blockheads suppose what they choose. Pope—says Roscoe—"was well aware as any one of the superlative beauties and merits of Spenser, whose works he assiduously studied, both in his early and riper years; but it was not his intention in these few lines to give a serious imitation of him. All that he attempted was to show how exactly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... holding him now, holding by the sleeve of his superlative black coat of ceremony, plucking at it, striving to stir him to sympathy and understanding; the face, hopeful and afraid, strained ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... inspires. For conscience is an inward thing, and none Can govern that aright but God alone. Nor can a well-informed conscience lower Her sails to any temporary power, Or bow to men's decrees; for that would be Treason in a superlative degree; For God alone can laws to conscience give, And that's a badge of His prerogative. This is the controversy of this day Between the holy God and sinful clay. God hath throughout the earth proclaim'd that He Will over conscience hold the sovereignty, That He the kingdom to Himself will take, ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... don't say they do it with malice prepense, or that they plot against us to our ruin; the thing operates rather as an extraordinary effect of their mere successful blatancy. They're blatant, truly, in the superlative degree, and I call them successfully so for just this reason, that poor Mother is to all appearance perfectly unaware of it. Maria is the one member of all her circle that has got her really, not only just ostensibly, into training; ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... for shelter that very evening, was miraculously restored to sight. And, truly with a notable, almost miraculous, speed, the feelings of all Norway for King Olaf changed themselves, and were turned upside down, "within a year," or almost within a day. Superlative example of Extinctus amabitur idem. Not "Olaf the Thick-set" any longer, but "Olaf the Blessed" or Saint, now clearly in Heaven; such the name and character of him from that time to this. Two churches dedicated to him (out ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... catalogue!—Yet it is not true, as Lord Byron asserts, that execution is everything, and the class or subject nothing. The highest subjects, equally well executed (which, however, rarely happens), are the best. But the power of execution, the manner of seeing nature, is one thing, and may be so superlative (if you are only able to judge of it) as to countervail every disadvantage of subject. Raphael's storks in the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, exulting in the event, are finer than the head of Christ would have been in almost any other hands. The cant of criticism is on the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... compared to the daring of the hourly existence of the heroic souls whose lives are cast upon the banks of Newfoundland. The fishermen may seem wild and reckless, rough and illiterate; but supreme danger and superlative sacrifice breed noble qualities, and beneath the rough exterior of the fisherman you will never fail to find a MAN, and no cheap imitation of the genuine article. None but a man can face for a second time the frown of ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... the farmers of the country and to all who work on the farms: The supreme need of our own nation and of the nations with which we are co-operating is an abundance of supplies, and especially of foodstuffs. The importance of an adequate food-supply, especially for the present year, is superlative. Without abundant food, alike for the armies and the peoples now at war, the whole great enterprise upon which we have embarked will break down and fail. The world's food reserves are low. Not only during the present emergency, but for some time after peace shall have come, both our own people ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... who had just returned from a lecturing tour in the United States, and were much amused with her experiences. Having taken prolonged trips over the whole country, from Maine to Texas, for many successive years, Miss Anthony and I could easily add the superlative to all ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... voice quavered. " It isn't anything. Really, it isn't anything." He had not known of these wonderful wounds, but he almost choked in the joy of Marjory's ministry and her half coherent exclamations. This proud and beautiful girl, this superlative creature, was reddening her handkerchief with his blood, and no word of his could have prevented her from thus attending him. He could hear the professor and Mrs. Wainwright fussing near him, trying to be ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... more the reasons influencing the author's design are not known. Very interesting is the story, to the cheerful character, and those not to be chilled by apparitions. At all events they get to Ombo[u]bori? The third Kikugoro[u], the first to take the part of O'Iwa, was a superlative actor, skilled in capturing the people. In the third scene, the dark room at Hebiyama, the ghost comes forth from the Bon lantern. Every day the kozo[u] (man or boy as apprentice) of the utility shop in Asakusa Umacho[u] slowly took down the ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... so swiftly Darrell was in a sort of waking dream, a state of superlative happiness, unmarred as yet by phantoms from the shrouded past or misgivings as to the dim, uncertain future; past and future were for the time alike forgotten. One image dominated his mind,—the form and face of the fair young hostess moving among her guests as a queen amid her court, ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... drew him to Schiller, whose splendor of imagery and impassioned rhetoric were the very gifts which he himself in a superlative degree possessed. The breath of political and religious liberalism which pervades the writings of the German poet was also highly congenial to Tegner, and last, but not least, they were both light-loving, beauty-worshipping Hellenists, and, though externally ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... of a one-word comparative degree in the case of both piano and forte seems to necessitate the hyper-superlative degree as given above, but the practice of using four, or even five p's or ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... set in the grand hall and was heavily laden with products of the State of New York. Owing to the approaching close of the Exposition, the agricultural and horticultural exhibits were heavily drawn upon. Great heaps of New York's superlative fruit and prize vegetables were used in decorating the table. Messrs. Bayno & Pindat served a tempting menu, features of which were those dishes always associated with Thanksgiving Day—roast turkey ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... opinion, as well as in that of the sultan, remained an unusual time in office, by an accusation enforced by a thousand purses of gold, he was enabled to produce a bowstring for his benefactor; and the sultan's "firmaun" appointed him to the vacant pachalik. His qualifications for office were all superlative: he was very short, very corpulent, very illiterate, very irascible, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... 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
... made; but in these times they are all nouns, and what we want are adverbs—'words that qualify verbs, participles, adjectives, and other adverbs.' We could get along well enough with the old adjectives, badly as the superlative degree of some of them has been used. They are capable of being qualified when they become too weak—or, rather, when our taste becomes too strong—just as old ladies qualify their tea when they begin to find the ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... legs,—from Mr. Brooke's failure to elicit a companion's ideas, or from Celia's criticism of a middle-aged scholar's personal appearance. I am not sure that the greatest man of his age, if ever that solitary superlative existed, could escape these unfavorable reflections of himself in various small mirrors; and even Milton, looking for his portrait in a spoon, must submit to have the facial angle of a bumpkin. Moreover, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... there were none. And the result was that Jan had to be put through his paces five separate times for the benefit of five separate prospective purchasers, not one of whom was really capable of appreciating his superlative quality, before the five hundred dollars demanded did eventually find its way into Jean's pouch and he was called upon to part with his leader. He intended to give Snip the leadership of his team now, because Snip was a curiously remorseless creature; and to buy a husky ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... the past. Beneath the ceiling of Veronese the dreaded Three still sat in secret council. Venice was still the city of subtle poisons and dangerous mysteries, but the days were gone when she had held the balance in European affairs, and she had become, in a superlative degree, the city of pleasure. Nowhere was life more varied and entertaining, more full of grace ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... a genuine love letter, for Ian was deeply in love and everything he said was in the superlative mood. Lovers like such letters. They are to them the sacred writings. It did not seem ridiculous to Thora to be called "an angel of beauty and goodness, the rose of womanhood, the lily on his heart, his star of hope, the sunshine of his life," and many other extravagant ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... to exhibit enthusiasm about anything, and he hides his genuine nature behind a cloud of slang. He belittles everything he touches, he is afraid to utter a word from his inner heart, and his talk becomes a mere dropping shower of verbal counters which ring hollow. The superlative degree is abhorrent to him unless he can misuse it for comic purposes; and, like the ridiculous dummy lord in "Nicholas Nickleby," he is quite capable of calling Shakespeare a "very clayver man." I have heard of the attitude taken by two flowers of our society in presence of Joachim. Think of ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... double-shuttered. Now, it seems to be a law of nature that we must show our true selves at some time, and as the Scot must do it at home, and squeeze a day into an hour, what follows is that there he is self-revealing in the superlative degree, the feelings so long dammed up overflow, and thus a Scotch family are probably better acquainted with each other, and more ignorant of the life outside their circle, than any other family in the world. And as knowledge is sympathy, the affection existing between them is almost painful ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... us rest. Many things are dark and impossible of explanation, but we have already been taught a few lessons of superlative importance. We have learned that the soul is made for the light; that it can be satisfied only with love and truth; that every hindrance may be overcome; that the animal was made to be the servant of the spirit; that the body makes a good servant but a poor master; ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... acres, and is as beautiful as an English park can be, and this is praise superlative. Flocks of sheep wander over the soft, green turf, and beneath the spreading trees are sleek cows which seem used to visitors, and with big, open eyes ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... despised and humble throng the doctrine of salvation through the grace and mercy of God alone, not through man's own merits. They cannot endure the teaching that their offering—the mass, regarded by the Papists as a work of superlative merit ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... the warm heart of the man, the passion of the man, the fresh blood of the man, Rick—and Ada, and little Cobweb too, for you are all interested in a visitor—that I speak of," he pursued. "His language is as sounding as his voice. He is always in extremes, perpetually in the superlative degree. In his condemnation he is all ferocity. You might suppose him to be an ogre from what he says, and I believe he has the reputation of one with some people. There! I tell you no more of him beforehand. You must not be surprised to see him take me under his protection, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... French, seems to be the more fashionable spelling; but Abulghazi Khan must have known the true name of his ancestor. His etymology appears just: Zin, in the Mogul tongue, signifies great, and gis is the superlative termination, (Hist. Genealogique des Tatars, part iii. p. 194, 195.) From the same idea of magnitude, the appellation of Zingis is bestowed on ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... said it will be seen that Dante's masterpiece is largely based on literature of Irish origin; but there are other superlative exhibitions of human genius of which the same is true. One of these is the story of Tristan and Isolde. Tristan is the paragon of all knightly accomplishments, the most versatile figure in the entire literature of chivalry; while Isolde is an Irish princess. By a trick of fate ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... that I must forgo the pleasure I promised myself of asking the ladies to take crepes with me," he said. "To offer these would be a poor compliment to their superlative efforts. But there is no reason why you should ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... for learning. Even the leaders of noted literary salons often lacked the common essentials of a modern education. But if they wrote badly and spelled badly, they had an abundance of that delicate combination of intellect and wit which the French call ESPRIT. They had also, in superlative measure, the social gifts which women of genius reared in the library or apart from the world, are apt to lack. The close study of books leads to a knowledge of man rather than of men. It tends toward habits of introspection which are fatal to the clear and swift vision required ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... finish. I have taken under my protection a superlative idea,—a journal, a newspaper, written for children. In our profession, when travellers have caught, let us suppose, ten subscribers to the 'Children's Journal,' they say, 'I've got ten Children,' just as I say when I get ten ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... dragoman began, "is either superlative, comparative, positive, or negative. And superlative morality is found, of course, only in the newspapers. It is the special prerogative of leader-writers. Its note, remote and unchallengeable, was well struck by almost every organ at the commencement of the Great Skirmish, and may ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... Dryden, one may safely say, would have been greater had he lived earlier, Fielding had he lived later. But one cannot imagine Pope thriving in any other air or producing equal work under different influences. The qualities most esteemed by his contemporaries he possessed in a superlative degree; his limitations were common to the society in which he moved, and neither he nor it was conscious of them as such; consequently, what would have been impediments to a different nature were to his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... surpassingly great though it is, is not the measure of the greatness of the leader of the Exodus. It is not in the deliverance from Egypt, it is in the constructive statesmanship that laid the foundations of the Hebrew commonwealth that the superlative grandeur of that leadership looms up. As we cannot imagine the Exodus without the great leader, neither can we account for the Hebrew polity without the great statesman. Not merely intellectually great, but morally great—a statesman aglow with the unselfish patriotism that refuses ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... I love a woman who is capable of loving as you do. "As you do" is a stronger expression than any superlative. How can you praise my words, when I, without wishing to, hit upon some that hurt you? I should like to say, I write too well to be able to describe to you my inward state of mind. Oh, dearest! Believe me, there is no question in you that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... not once, but a score of times. The brocades that I promised to show you after supper will be my witness. And there are some superlative satin and silk lengths which my Lady Rayne wished particularly to see. ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... Madrid and gaze upon his canvases, sumptuous and opulent, diffusing colour like a sunset, indifferent to their story or meaning, happy and content with the flaming feast outspread for our enjoyment. We stand before his Entombment at the Louvre, dumb before its superlative painting, with hardly a thought for the tragedy that it represents. Titian accepts the literary motive, and the artist in him straight forgets it. We walk from The Entombment to the little chamber where ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... transcriber of the record in 1906 has added a very illuminating note, revealing the immutability of the system and showing that the rulers possessed in a superlative degree the Bourbonesque trait of learning nothing and forgetting nothing: "Even when I was a missionary to the heathens from 1882 to 1892, I had occasion to observe the said policy, to inform the chief of the fortress of the measures that he ought to take, and to make a false show on the other ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... strong an influence in the formation of words during the transition period is exerted by the forms most frequently heard—here the imperative. The child used first of all the imperative; last the subjunctive. The superlative and comparative were not used by this child until the ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... said, but she was aware the next moment of what he was making of what she didn't see. "Is it your idea—since we're talking of these things in these ways—that the young lady you describe in such superlative terms is to be ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... which they are fools if they give themselves much to do. Nor would I quarrel with a man for his irreligion, any more than I would for his want of a musical ear, I would regret that he was shut out from what, to me and to others, were such superlative sources of enjoyment. It is in this point of a view, and for this reason, that I will deeply imbue the mind of every child of mine with religion. If my son should happen to be a man of feeling, sentiment, and ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... and take on unheard-of shapes. The highest building, the largest steamer, the fastest train, the book reaching the widest circulation have, in America, a clear title to respect. When the just functions of things are as yet not discriminated, the superlative in any direction seems naturally admirable. Again, many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are at least expected to make his children happier; and this pathetic hope is behind many exertions. An experimental materialism, spontaneous and divorced from reason and from ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... of his own troubles by an acquaintance with the heroic sorrows of the world. There is no page of history, however dark, there is no beautiful old tale, however tragic, which does not impart some strength and some distinction to the awakening mind. It is possible to overrate the superlative merits of insipidity as a mental and moral force in the ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... sense as separating her from all who might, through the working of natural affection, act as her helpers in time of need, but made it possible for the slavery of the wife to the husband to take on more cruel forms. Although, it must be said, even capture gave a few women of superlative charm a chance to take precedence of common wives gained in ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... run, play a few false notes in the next, strike the wrong bass note here and there, mumble trills and overlook the correct phrasing entirely, with the idea that you are doing the same thing you have seen some great virtuoso do, is simply the superlative degree ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... at Almack's would have given half her dowry, seemed to be anxious of trying the experiment of how far the heart of an Englishman was susceptible of the tender passion, especially when excited by objects of such superlative beauty. It may be supposed that neither Clapperton nor Houston had as yet taken any lessons in the art and mystery of African dancing, and as to waltzing, neither of them felt any great inclination to be encircled in the arms of a negress, who, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... soon to be delivered by our agent WILLIAM JEPHSON, we have made you aware of the legation intrusted to him; and we could not but there make some mention of your high qualities and signification of our goodwill towards you. Lest, however, we should seem only cursorily to have touched on your superlative services in the Protestant cause, celebrated so highly in universal discourse, we have thought it fit to resume that subject, and to offer you our respects, not indeed more willingly or with greater devotion, but yet somewhat more at large. And justly ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... it is easy to understand why this first city venture of the budding author is always successful. He is primed by necessity to a superlative effort; mid the iron and stone and marble of the roaring city he has found this spot of singing birds and green grass and trees; every tender sentiment in his nature is baffling with the sweet pain of homesickness; his genius is aroused as it never ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... as he seems, he would shudder to wrong A dog with the loss of a hair; And the angels of shine and superlative song See his heart ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... last year when they spoke of the enemy. Now it is Hun or, as I have heard, "Yahun," being a superlative of Yahoo. In the Napoleonic wars we called the Frenchmen too many names for any one of them to endure; but this is ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... smoke tranquilly mounting up into the sea-air from the cook's funnel as if it were a chimney in a city; and every thing looking so cool, and calm, and of-course, in the midst of what to me, at least, seemed a superlative marvel. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... conversion—being turned around. Ask Peter what it is and, as he looks back upon his old benighted condition, he cries that it is like coming out of the darkness into a marvelous light. Ask Paul what it is and, with his love of superlative figures, he cries that it is like being dead and being raised again with a great resurrection. Ask John what it is and, with his mystical spirit, he says that it is being born again. See the variety that comes from vitality—no stiff methods, no stiff routine of experience, but throbbing ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... this golden land; but melancholy is it to say, for the old purpose, as in olden times in the old country, 'FOR THE REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES;' and so yesterday we had a monster meeting on Bakery-hill, and I was the delegate of upwards of one thousand foreigners, or 'aliens,' according to the superlative wisdom ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... in clusters, on what is barefacedly called a bed, but which is nothing more nor less than a beggarman's shakedown, where the smell, the heat, the filth, and above all, the vermin, are intolerable to the very farthest stretch of the superlative degree. As soon as their eyes begin to close here, they are roused by the bell-man, and summoned at the hour of twelve—first washing themselves as aforesaid, in the lake, and then adjourning to the prison which I am about to describe. There is not on earth, with the exception of pagan rites,—and ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... gloomy dreams of an unoccupied, forsaken dog. But, when I slip my arms into the sleeves of my heavy great-coat, one would think that they were opening the gates of the most dazzling paradise. For this implies the car, the obvious, indubitable motor-car, in other words, the radiant summit of the most superlative delight. And delirious barks, inordinate bounds, riotous, embarrassing demonstrations of affection greet a happiness which, for all that, is but an immaterial idea, built up of artless memories ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... which Sir James was now placed, for while it required firmness to uphold the dignity of the empire which he represented, as the only diplomatic functionary as well as commander-in-chief in the North, tact, wisdom, and forbearance were equally indispensable. These qualities Sir James possessed in a superlative degree, and the Author, who from his knowledge of the Swedish language was employed confidentially on all the communications which subsequently took place, can testify that it is to the wise policy of the Admiral that ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... would be a success. So did you. Anything you might attempt would be successful. You'd have made a successful lawyer, or cook, or actress, or hydraulic engineer, because you couldn't do a thing badly. It isn't in you. You're a superlative sort of person. But that's no reason for being any of those things. If you won't admit a debt to humanity, surely you'll acknowledge you've an obligation ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... Putnam's bravery was of the sort requiring no artificial stimulus, and proceeded solely from the promptings of a nature superlative in every sense, was shown in the winter of 1757, when the barracks at Fort Edward were consumed by a fire which threatened and almost reached the powder magazine. Seeing the blaze from his aerie on the island, Putnam attacked the fire as he ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... that actually pull the most orders consist of proofs—cold, hard logic and facts that cannot be questioned. As you hope for the verdict of the jury you must prove your case. It is amazing how many correspondents fail to appreciate the necessity for arguments. Pages will be filled with assertions, superlative adjectives, boastful claims of superiority, but not one sentence that offers proof of any statement, not one logical reason why the reader ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... guarded with crowds, and shackled with formalities. The half hat, the whole hat, the half smile, the whole smile, the nod, the embrace, the positive parting with a little bow, the comparative at the middle of the room, the superlative at the door; and if the person be Pan huper sebastos, there's a Huper superlative ceremony then of conducting him to the bottom of the stairs, or to the very gate: as if there were such rules set to these Leviathans as are to the sea, "Hitherto ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... greatest mathematician of antiquity, a man of superlative inventive power, well skilled in all the mechanical arts and sciences of the day. When Syracuse was taken by the Romans, he was unconscious of the fact, and slain, while busy on some problem, by a Roman soldier, notwithstanding the order of the Roman general that his life should be spared. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... you had somehow got an undeserved iota subscript to your callous, scholarly heart. The situation put you at such a humorous disadvantage, made you appear so at variance with your hard, uncharitable theories of life, and with your superlative dignity of mien, that the terror I had felt in anticipation of your visit vanished away. I think the awkward helplessness with which you seemed always to be trying to domesticate yourself to Jack appealed to my sense of humour so keenly that your romantic proportions were suddenly reduced. ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... on such an occasion. I never felt deeply in my life if that poem did not make me, both lately, and when I read it in MS. No alderman ever longed after a haunch of buck venison more than I for a spiritual taste of that "White Doe" you promise. I am sure it is superlative, or will be when dressed, i. e., printed. All things read raw to me in MS.; to compare magna parvis, I cannot endure my own writings in that state. The only one which I think would not very much win upon me in print ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... feet. By the clock above the fire, as well as by these more speaking signs, the service had not long begun; and the unhappy sinner, if his father had really gone to church, might count on near two hours of only comparative unhappiness. With his father, the superlative degree returned infallibly. He knew it by every shrinking fibre in his body, he knew it by the sudden dizzy whirling of his brain, at the mere thought of that calamity. An hour and a half, perhaps an hour and three-quarters, if the doctor was long-winded, and then would begin again ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... disagreeable than I am by nature. And if I avoided her society, (which I am far from doing), it would be not for her sake, but for my own. For, though her society is to me a kind of anticipation of the joys of Heaven, yet when I leave it and find myself alone, the reaction is dreary in the superlative degree; and the fear, which perpetually haunts me (for I know nothing of her plans), lest I shall never see her again, is agonizing as a foretaste of—Heaven's antipode. Oh, ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... their chairs, and were too excellent themselves to value any condition at a high rate.—I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws than with a sloven and unpresentable person.—The person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts whole drawing-rooms to flight.—I esteem it a chief felicity of this country that it ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the word busyless existed in the poet's time; and if it did, whether he could possibly have used it here. Now it is clear that labours is a misprint for labour; else, to what does "when I do it" refer? Busy lest is only a typographical error for busyest: the double superlative was commonly used, being considered as more emphatic, by the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various
... be tired of all these fussy appreciations. But what one seems to miss nowadays is the presence of a writer of superlative lucidity and humanity, for whose books one waits with avidity, and orders them beforehand, as soon as they are announced. For one thing, most people seem to me to write too much. The moment a real success is scored, the temptation, no doubt adroitly whispered by publishers, to produce ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... we, then, to repine at an objection which, however potent, is single? Surely none. Oh if wholly unchecked were the happiness I now have in view, if no foul storm sometimes lowered over the prospect, and for the moment obscured its brightness, how could my heart find room for joy so superlative? The whole world might rise against me as the first man in it who had nothing left ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... same sort, a big man, a bigger man, the biggest man. These degrees are called positive, indicating possession of bigness; comparative, indicating possession of more bigness than some other man; superlative, indicating possession of more bigness than any other man. When we wish to tell the amount of the quality without comparing the possessor with any other object or group of objects we use a modifying word later to be described ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... least to have marred it for long years, and to have broken his sweet companionship with Paul. I think we may go further and say, that most good men are in more danger from trivial faults than from great ones. No man reaches the superlative degree of wickedness all at once. Few men spring from the height to the abyss, they usually slip down. The erosive action of the sand of the desert is said to be gradually cutting off the Sphinx's head. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... more than a match for. supreme, greatest, utmost, paramount, preeminent, foremost, crowning; first-rate &c. (important) 642, (excellent) 648; unrivaled peerless, matchless; none such, second to none, sans pareil[Fr]; unparagoned[obs3], unparalleled, unequalled, unapproached[obs3], unsurpassed; superlative, inimitable facile princeps[Lat], incomparable, sovereign, without parallel, nulli secundus[Lat], ne plus ultra[Lat]; beyond compare, beyond comparison; culminating &c. (topmost) 210; transcendent, transcendental;plus royaliste que le Roi[Fr], more catholic than the Pope increased ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... aerial exquisites. In descriptions of them superlative follows upon superlative. The cocks of most species are arrayed in scarlet and black; the hens are not a whit less brilliantly attired in yellow and sable. One species lives entirely in the plains, others visit them in the cold weather; the ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... work on the farms: The supreme need of our own nation and of the nations with which we are co-operating is an abundance of supplies, and especially of foodstuffs. The importance of an adequate food-supply, especially for the present year, is superlative. Without abundant food, alike for the armies and the peoples now at war, the whole great enterprise upon which we have embarked will break down and fail. The world's food reserves are low. Not only during the present emergency, but for some time after peace shall have ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... nearer to being angry with Tanno than I had ever been in our lives. I comprehended why he, with all his superlative equipment of tact and intuition, had blundered; he could not but assume that circumstances were as they should have been rather than as they were; yet the blunder was, in a sense, unforgivable, and had created a social situation than which nothing ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... with finite powers to compass the most stupendous designs in spite of physical or moral obstacles; submitting to every privation, braving danger and death, often even defying omnipotence, and all for the sake of some speculative tenet, some doubtful advantage, the post of honour burdened by superlative responsibility, or the eminence of power attended with perpetual care, is an object no less interesting to the philosopher, than it is miraculous to the peasant, who places enjoyment in ease and animal indulgence. It is on the motives ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... thought of passing thither. But if we do not know anything more—and we know very little more—let us be sure of this, that when God begins to compare His adjectives He does not stop till He gets to the superlative degree and that good begets better, and the better of earth ensures the best of Heaven. And so out of our poor little experience here, we may gather grounds of confidence that will carry our thoughts peacefully even into the great darkness, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in olden times in the old country, 'FOR THE REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES;' and so yesterday we had a monster meeting on Bakery-hill, and I was the delegate of upwards of one thousand foreigners, or 'aliens,' according to the superlative wisdom ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... ground, these evidently being, from the magnificence of their feather robes and the splendour of their barbaric ornaments, chiefs, to the number of about sixty, in the middle of whom sat an Indian who, by the superlative richness of his garb, the two white men at once decided must be the paramount chief, or king. The third side of this small open space was occupied by a front row of fantastically garbed men who ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... I do confess it; and am not a bit clever; but don't scold me; you see how humble I am; not only humble but umble, which I look upon to be the comparative, or, indeed, superlative degree. Or perhaps there are four degrees; humble, umble, stumble, tumble; and then, when one is absolutely in the dirt at their feet, perhaps these big people won't wish one ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... view then, Lammas stands as a day of account, and Latter Lammas will consequently signify the day of doom, which in effect, as to all payments of money, or worldly transactions in money, is never. Latter here is used for last, or the comparative for the superlative, just as it is in a like case in our version of the book of Job, "I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth," meaning of course the last day, or the end of the world. That the last day, or Latter Lammas, as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... could be continued three years longer, her shattered society would finally accept the gentle Joseph as its regenerator. It was not unnatural for the Emperor to regard his Confederation of the Rhine as safe and loyal; yet, just as in the Moscow campaign his superlative strategy far outran the remainder of his system, so he had failed, embodiment of the new social order as he believed himself to be, in fully estimating the creative force of the revolution in middle and southern Germany. Some inkling of the national ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... in men's minds about him, which cannot fail to produce a silent, but in the end a sensible effect upon his fortunes. It is remarkable that Lord Derby, who is a very shrewd and sagacious old man, never would hear of his grandson's superlative merits, and always in the midst of his triumphs ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... natural affection, act as her helpers in time of need, but made it possible for the slavery of the wife to the husband to take on more cruel forms. Although, it must be said, even capture gave a few women of superlative charm a chance to take precedence of common wives ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... of his day. His art and his methods are purely Spanish. I have already referred to the phenomenal success of Perez Galdos's Electra within the last few months. It must, however, be ascribed chiefly to the moment of its presentation rather than to any superlative merit in the drama. It is well written, which is what may be said of almost all Spanish plays, for the language is in itself so dignified and so beautiful that, if it be only pure and not disfigured by foreign slang, it is always ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... why any one else should; and I think Mrs. Bogus merits well of the republic, for doing what she can do towards the hospitalities of the season. I'm sure I never cursed her in my heart, even when her strong coffee has held mine eyes open till morning, and her superlative lobster-salads have given me the very darkest views of human life that ever dyspepsia and east wind could engender. Mrs. Bogus is the Eve who offers the apple; but, after all, I am the foolish Adam who take and eat what I know is going to hurt me, and I am too gallant to visit ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... disagreeing with her. I am still of the opinion that their admirable system of government, social and political, and their encouragement and provision for universal culture of so high an order, had more to do with the formation of superlative character than the elimination ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... is nothing less than atrocious; and, in our judgment, the Adapter's actual purpose in putting it forth is to make his own superlative goodness seem proved by ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... consideration of its claims to preeminence among recognized forms of verse will soon convince any intelligent reader of its superlative worth ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... monitored the end of the commercial. Two charming girls, radiant and lovely, raised their voices in grateful song, hymning the virtues of Rayglo Shampoo. There followed brisk reminders of the superlative, magical results obtained by those who used Rayglo Foundation Cream, Rayglo Kisspruf Lipstick, and Rayglo home permanent—in four strengths; for normal, ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... men!—No, no; keep that superlative exclamation for a future occasion. But now you behave like a reasonable creature, you deserve to hear the praises of your Belinda—I am so much charmed with ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... eloquence, and wisdom, of speech and persuasion; and by the sword. For martyrdoms, I reckon them amongst miracles; because they seem to exceed the strength of human nature: and I may do the like, of superlative and admirable holiness of life. Surely there is no better way, to stop the rising of new sects and schisms, than to reform abuses; to compound the smaller differences; to proceed mildly, and not with sanguinary persecutions; ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... the mind that can trade in corruption, and can deliberately pollute itself with ideal wickedness for the sake of spreading the contagion in society, I wish not to conceal or excuse the depravity. Such degradation of the dignity of genius, such abuse of superlative abilities, cannot be contemplated but with grief and indignation. What consolation can be had Dryden has afforded by living to repent, and to testify his repentance.' Johnson's Works, vii. 293. He quotes Congreve, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... My father's business was increasing; and after the peace they spent some summer vacations in visits to the continent. They visited Switzerland, still unhackneyed, though Byron and Shelley were celebrating its charms. Long afterwards I used to hear from my mother of the superlative beauties of the Wengern Alp and the Staubbach (though she never, I suspect, read 'Manfred'), and she kept up for years a correspondence with a monk of the hospital on the St. Bernard. Her first child, Herbert Venn Stephen, was born September 30, 1822; and about this time ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... suggests the inquiry whether, if self-restraint and wise discipline are desirable for every faculty of the mind and body, the tongue and hand alone should be allowed to riot in wanton excess. If even the legitimate superlative must be handled, like dynamite, with extreme caution, blackguardism of every degree is a nuisance to be summarily discountenanced and abated by those who know the difference between grandeur and bigness, between Mercutio and Tony Lumpkin, ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... in his intense pursuit of a girl who was able to twist him around her little finger and make him follow her about as if he were a green and callow youth. Palgrave, the lady-killer; Palgrave, the egoist; Palgrave, the superlative person, who, with nonchalant impertinence, had picked and chosen. Was ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... was, superlative to "tree-toading," "owl-hooting," and other divertisements, did not appear at this time; for a young man did, approaching from the front of the hotel, and came up to the group on the piazza with the question, "At what time do we set off ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... of Sanford: Sanford is the greatest college in the country; Sanford has the best athletes, the finest equipment, the most erudite faculty, the most perfect location, the most loyal alumni, the strongest spirit—the most superlative everything. Nonsense! Rot! Bunk! Sanford hasn't anything of the sort, and I who love it say so. Sanford is a good little college, but it isn't a Harvard, a Yale, or a Princeton, or, for that matter, a Dartmouth or Brown; and those colleges still have ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... characteristic idiom. "Darr"giving (rich) milk copiously and the phrase expresses admiration, "To Allah be ascribed (or Allah be praised for) his rich eloquence who said etc. Some Hebraists would render it, "Divinely (well) did he speak who said," etc., holding "Allah" to express a superlative like "Yah" Jah) in Gen. iv. 1; x. 9. Nimrod was a hunter to the person (or presence) ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... nature is intolerant; he may even corroborate his proof by pointing to my occasional acts of thoughtless disregard for another's opinion; yet all this array does not overwhelm me, for I know [Italics mine] that I am not intolerant." This superlative confidence in his own goodness makes me think of the congressman of whom it was said, "He is the most distinguished man in Washington. I know he is, for he ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... and Trones must be held in order to allow of elbow room for a mass movement over a broad front. The German realized this and after he had lost Mametz and Bernafay he held all the more desperately to Trones, which, for the time being, was the superlative horror in woods fighting, though we were yet to know that it could be surpassed by Delville and ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... know," he said, "what is most fearful about such an event, the things that really occurred, or the fact that one gradually digests it and forgets it." Still standing in the middle of the path, he continued: "What strikes a man hardest is the absurdity of it, the stupid senselessness of it, the superlative brutality. We know nature's brutality in theory; but to be able to live, we must forget it in its real extent, in its gruesome actuality. The most enlightened modern man somehow and somewhere in his soul still believes in something like an all-beneficent God. But such an experience ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... more poetical and elevated the ideas are which are clustered around marriage, the more probable it is that experience will produce disappointment. If one spouse enters wedlock with the belief that the other is the most superlative man or woman living, the cases must be very few in which disappointment and disillusion will not result. Moreover, pair marriage, by its exclusiveness, risks the happiness of the parties on a very narrow and specific condition of life. The ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Grand Canon itself did not dwarf everything else, the scenery of these plateaus would be superlative in interest. It is not all desert, nor are the gorges, canons, cliffs, and terraces, which gradually prepare the mind for the comprehension of the Grand Canon, the only wonders of this land of enchantment. These are contrasted with the sylvan scenery of the Kaibab ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... that two streams of life, in plant and animal, flow side by side, but under the guidance of different laws. The problems of vegetable life are, it must be said, extremely obscure, and for the penetrating of that darkness we have long had to wait for instruments of a superlative sensitiveness. This has been the principal reason for our long clinging to mere theory, instead of looking for the demonstration of facts. But to learn the truth we have to put aside theories, and rely ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... herself, using her favourite superlative with sublime disregard of suitability. She looked across the room to where Elma sat, resting her head against a brocaded blue cushion. One of the half-dozen cases of miniatures hung just behind the chair, and it was impossible not to notice the likeness between the living face and those portrayed ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... last an evening alone with her again. It seems as if Wanda had saved up all the love, which had been kept from her, for this superlative evening; never had she been so kind, so near, so full ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... measure of the Indian mind, his friendship and confidence must not suffer eclipse. It is a superlative task, for the inner Indian shrine is crossed by only a favoured few. The Indian is averse to being photographed, for he feels that every picture made of himself by so much shortens his life. He looks at ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... huts, with earthen floors,—it is yet wonderful to see how these people preserve not merely the decencies, but even the amenities of life. Their clothes are a chaos of patches, but one sees no rags; all their well-worn white garments are white in the superlative degree; and when their scanty supply of water is at the scantiest, every bare foot on the island is sure to be washed in warm water at night. Certainly there are fleas and there are filthinesses in some directions; and yet it is amazing, especially for one accustomed to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Wherein lies the superlative picturesque appeal of the typical ledge stonework of Germantown? As distinguished from surfaced stonework, it possesses that flexibility in use so essential to the many and varied requirements of domestic architecture imposed by the personality and mode of living of ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... great satisfaction, that you have entirely lost your enemy. If you do, by all means come, pay us a visit, and see what we are doing in England. I have done an etching of Turner's 'Calais Pier,' 30 inches square, which is by many degrees the finest thing (if I may be permitted so superlative an expression) I have done or ever shall do. I mean to publish it about the close of the year. I have built a press for printing it, and am having paper made expressly, and real sepia (which is magnificent—both in color and price) got from the Adriatic for ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... such garments! such daguerreotypes of the superlative of human wretchedness and degradation! These pupils were gathered from among the outcasts of London—those who have no family ties, no homes, no education, no religious training, but were born to wander ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... keys: and indeed I want some myself; for, as there are continually allusions to Parliamentary speeches and events, they are often obscure to me till I get them explained; and besides, I do not know several of the satirised heroes even by sight: however, the poetry and wit make amends, for they are superlative. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... in those glorious visions which come only to a man of superlative genius, and which make him insensible to heat and cold and scanty fare, even to reproach and scorn, this intrepid soul, inspired by a great and original idea, wandered from city to city, and country to country, and court to court, to present the ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... and soon showed that they thoroughly understood how to use their clumsy tools to the best advantage. They were led by and worked under the directorship of a lean, shrunken, withered old grey-haired hag of superlative ugliness, who did no work herself, but went constantly back and forth along the line of workers, bearing in her hand a long thin pliant rattan, which she did not hesitate to smartly apply to the shoulders of those who seemed to her to be doing less ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... "that is not so extraordinary: the King of Siam sent ambassadors to Louis the Fourteenth: but Louis the Fourteenth sent none to the King of Siam." This topic also enjoys another distinction. It is one of many proofs of the superlative excellence of Johnson's talk that it cannot be imitated. Hundreds of clever men have made the attempt, but, with the exception of a single sentence, not one of these manufactured utterances could impose for an instant ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... perfect, Mrs. Lane!" he summed up, and when Isabelle smiled at his enthusiasm, he grew red of face and stuttered in his effort to make her comprehend all that his superlative meant. "I know what I am saying. I have been all over Europe and this country. Every surgeon who comes here says the same thing. You can't even imagine anything that might be better. There isn't much ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... gift, intelligible language. What! do you call this 'loving the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and all your mind,—and your neighbour as yourself'? Whereas in truth you love nothing, not even your own soul; but only set a superlative value on whatever will gratify your selfish lust of enjoyment, and insure you from hell-fire at a thousand times the true value of the dirty property. If you have the impudence to persevere in mis-naming this "love," supply any one instance in which you ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... their rooms where they made their regulation toilet for dinner. The pair had asked questions of their guide, the gardener, who told them so much of Moreau's beauty that they felt the necessity of "rigging themselves up" (studio slang). They, therefore, put on their most superlative suits and then walked over to the steward's lodge, piloted by Jacques Moreau, the eldest son, a hardy youth, dressed like an English boy in a handsome jacket with a turned-over collar, who was spending his vacation like a fish in water on the estate ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... Harcourt has been told by any one that the Lagden Commission recommended any of these pitiless iniquities, then we are afraid that his informer is a romancer of the superlative degree. The Lagden report was never discussed in any South African legislature, much less adopted by any Parliament in South Africa; indeed, it is detested because it recommended a Native Franchise for South Africa like the ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... a success. So did you. Anything you might attempt would be successful. You'd have made a successful lawyer, or cook, or actress, or hydraulic engineer, because you couldn't do a thing badly. It isn't in you. You're a superlative sort of person. But that's no reason for being any of those things. If you won't admit a debt to humanity, surely you'll acknowledge ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... The superlative degree is expressed by the suffix adelo—as amasuet (plenty) and amasuadelo (an immense number); also tapsummary (long ago) and tapsumaneadelo (a very long time ago). Examples could be multiplied, but are not necessary. The suffix aloo has somewhat ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... practical-minded man that he is, he calls it conversion—being turned around. Ask Peter what it is and, as he looks back upon his old benighted condition, he cries that it is like coming out of the darkness into a marvelous light. Ask Paul what it is and, with his love of superlative figures, he cries that it is like being dead and being raised again with a great resurrection. Ask John what it is and, with his mystical spirit, he says that it is being born again. See the variety that comes from vitality—no stiff methods, no stiff routine of experience, ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... birth to it by virtue of its inexhaustible fruitfulness.[642] The Supreme Good is GOD himself, and he is designated "the good" because this term seems most fittingly to express his essential character and essence.[643] It is towards this superlative perfection that the reason lifts itself; it is towards this infinite beauty the heart aspires. "Marvellous Beauty!" exclaims Plato; "eternal, uncreated, imperishable beauty, free from increase and diminution... beauty which has nothing sensible, nothing corporeal, as hands or face: which does not ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Democracy where the poor rule for the poor alone, maybe a deadly engine of oppression; it may trample without appeal on the rights of minorities, and, in the name of the common good, establish and enforce an almost unconditioned tyranny. Carlyle's blindness to this superlative danger—a danger to which Mill, in many respects his unrecognised coadjutor, became alive—emphasises the limits of his political foresight. He has consecrated Fraternity with an eloquence unapproached by his peers, and with equal force put to scorn the superstition ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... said my father, familiarly, "you son would know that though a scholar is often a fool, he is never a fool so supreme, so superlative, as when he is defacing the first unsullied page of the human history by entering into it the commonplaces of his own pedantry. A scholar, sir,—at least one like me,—is of all persons the most unfit to teach young children. A mother, sir,—a simple, natural, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... shapes. The highest building, the largest steamer, the fastest train, the book reaching the widest circulation have, in America, a clear title to respect. When the just functions of things are as yet not discriminated, the superlative in any direction seems naturally admirable. Again, many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are at least expected to make his children happier; and this pathetic hope is behind many exertions. An experimental materialism, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... boxes, cribbed more voters, and knocked down more slip-shod citizens-that cove has, than, put 'em all together, would make a South Carolina regiment. A mighty man among politicians, he was! Now the devil has cribbed him-he'll know how good it is!" Mr. Glentworthy says this with an air of superlative satisfaction, resuming his tune. The dead man is Milman Mingle, the vote-cribber, who died of a wound he received at the hands of an antagonist, whom he was endeavoring to "block out" while going to the polls to cast his ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... him. You afterwards become so enamoured of this offspring of your brain, that you imagine it impossible, but he must produce something greater and more perfect than the present scene of things, which is so full of ill and disorder. You forget, that this superlative intelligence and benevolence are entirely imaginary, or, at least, without any foundation in reason; and that you have no ground to ascribe to him any qualities, but what you see he has actually exerted ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... Medicine, Mid-Upper caste, was driving and with considerable enjoyment resultant not only from her destination, long desired, now to be realized, but also from the sheer exuberance of handling the vehicle. Since pre-history, man's pleasure in the physical control of a speedy vehicle has been superlative, particularly when that vehicle is known by the driver to be unique in its class. The Hittite charioteer, bowling across the landscape of Anatolia, a Sterling Moss carefully tooling his automobile around the multi-curves of the Upper Cornice on the Riviera, or a Nadine ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. & T. J. O'Regan, Private ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... fresh blood of the man, Rick—and Ada, and little Cobweb too, for you are all interested in a visitor—that I speak of," he pursued. "His language is as sounding as his voice. He is always in extremes, perpetually in the superlative degree. In his condemnation he is all ferocity. You might suppose him to be an ogre from what he says, and I believe he has the reputation of one with some people. There! I tell you no more of him beforehand. You must ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... and left standing but the palaces built upon the rock of the Soul. The Soul made the Upanishads, as it mide Paradise Lost; it made the former in the Golden Age, and the latter in this Age of Iron; the former through men gifted with superlative vision; the latter through a blind old bard. Therein lies the difference: all our bards, our very greatest, have been blind,—Dante and Shakespeare, no less than Milton. Full-flowing Time washed away the impermanencies of that ancient age, and left standing ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... not take him too seriously. She only asked that he amuse and interest her. He did both, to a superlative degree. That is why and how he saw so much of the school-girl cousin whose naivete made him smile, it was ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... nothing of self-reliance. All she knew was to be a consequential young lady of distinction, full of exalted qualifying adjectives in the superlative degree. But she was not so much to blame as her parents for her simpering and tossing the head with overstocked affectation. She was to be pitied for her unfortunate surroundings. Her "splendid man," a "beautiful gentleman," was a coarse, ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... Linley's beauty is in the superlative degree. The king admires and ogles her as much as he dares to do in so ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... into the gravy you have made with the bones and trimmings; let it boil up for ten minutes, and then strain it through a hair-sieve; season it with a table-spoonful of white wine, or of catchup (No. 439), or sauce superlative (No. 429): give it a boil up, skim it, and then put in the brains and the slices of head and bacon; as soon as they are thoroughly warm (it must not boil) the hash is ready. Some cooks egg, bread-crumb, and fry the finest pieces of the ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... are compared either by using an adverb expressive of degree, or, more regularly, by adding to the stem of the positive the syllables ότερος or ίων for the comparative, and ότατος or ιστος for the superlative. Some euphonic changes occur in making these additions, which then take ...
— Greek in a Nutshell • James Strong
... sons"—so begins the best and most famous story in the world's literature. Use of the absolute superlative is always dangerous, but none will gainsay that statement, I am sure. This story, which follows that familiar tale afar off, indeed, begins in the same way. And the parallelism between the two is exact up to a certain point. What ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... can understand Medea. Fancy a woman of superlative beauty, of the highest courage and calmness, a woman of many resources, of genius, brought up by a petty princelet of a father, upon Tacitus and Sallust, and the tales of the great Malatestas, of Caesar Borgia and such-like!—a woman whose ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... great deal of its success to the admirable production of Mr. Kenelm Foss and the excellence of the cast. Miss Grace Croft was surely the true Patricia. Of the Duke of Mr. Fred Lewis it is difficult to speak in terms other than superlative. Those of my readers who have suffered the misfortune of not having seen him, may gain some idea of his execution of the part from the illustrations to Mr. Belloc's novels. The Duke was an extraordinarily good likeness of the Duke ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... then, nine kinds of union according to dimensions. Amongst all these, equal unions are the best, those of a superlative degree, i.e., the highest and the lowest, are the worst, and the rest are middling, and with them the high[33] are better than ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... title is the only one in the world compounded of greatness and the people in equal measure, is the pith of what the Germans brought to leaven the whole political world. He made the common man so great, that the world has consented to his unique and superlative baptismal title of Karl the Great, or Carolus Magnus, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... sort of limp, anaemic look about it. And when the wearer has lain upon the veldt at full length for long hours together in rain and sun and dust-storm his kit assumes an inexpressible dowdiness, and preserves only its one superlative merit of so far resembling mother earth that even the keen eyes behind the Mauser barrels fail to spot Mr. Atkins as he lies prone behind ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... she had so long been assistant, and was so near discovering herself to May Hettly, by betraying her acquaintance with the celebrated receipt for Dunlop cheese, that she compared herself to Bedreddin Hassan, whom the vizier, his father-in-law, discovered by his superlative skill in composing cream-tarts with pepper in them. But when the novelty of such avocations ceased to amuse her, she showed to her sister but too plainly, that the gaudy colouring with which she veiled her unhappiness afforded as little real comfort, as the gay uniform of the soldier when ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... really gain nothing in the end, but find it difficult sometimes to gain credence for so much as is really true; whereas, a person who is habitually sober and discriminating in his use of language, will not only inspire confidence, but be able to produce a fine effect by the occasional use of a superlative. ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... the contrary, I think it has assisted it. Every neighbourhood loves to have a mystery of its own, and we, you must confess, have got a superlative one. The man has been found scrupulously honest, regular, and exact in his dealings; and were we to lose him now, and get a mere common-place person to succeed him, half the housewives of Walworth would perish of inanition. And now," said Sainsbury, rising, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... in the tone of ecstasy broke suddenly on the air upon this new entrance, shattering what little composure Nehemiah had been able to muster; a wide-mouthed exaggeration of welcome in superlative phrases and ready chorus. Swiftly turning, he saw nothing for a moment, for he looked at the height which a man's head might reach, and the new-comer measured hardly two feet in stature, waddled with a very uncertain ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... of variation to express different degrees of comparison. The regular degrees have been reckoned three; positive, comparative, and superlative. These are usually marked by changing the termination. The positive is determined by a comparison with other things; as, a great house, a small book, compared with others of their kind. This is truly a comparative degree. The ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... things. They's two kinds, comparative and superlative," Smith replied promptly. He added. "Adjectives kind of ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... But, in a lecture one must not multiply miracles praeter necessitatem; and when Tyndale has been granted you have yet to face the miracle that forty-seven men—not one of them known, outside of this performance, for any superlative talent—sat in committee and almost consistently, over a vast extent of work—improved upon what Genius had done. I give you the word of an old committee-man that this is not the way of committees—that only by miracle is it the way of any committee. Doubtless the forty-seven ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... fine, gentle reader, is a work of such colossal force that to render justice to its abysmal greatness we have ransacked the vocabulary of superlative laudation in vain. SWINBURNE, compared to the needs of the situation, is as a shape of quivering jelly alongside of the Rock of Gibraltar. And here, O captious critic, is a Wonderwork which not only disarms but staggers, paralyses and annihilates all possibilities of animadversion, unless you wish ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... yonder? Here, Tom Leicester, you put my side-saddle on that gray horse, and the man's saddle on the piebald there. And now, Griffith Gaunt, it is your turn: you must withdraw your injurious terms, and end this superlative folly." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... left unspoken to her. He was back again before the fire, telling her all that he did not tell her then. One gorgeous image after another swarmed to his brain. He was like a poet gone mad. He crowded sentence upon sentence, superlative upon superlative, until he found himself upon his feet, his cheeks hot, and his breath coming short. Then he caught sight of the crimson stain upon the wall and felt himself a murderer. He staggered back and threw himself full-length upon the couch, ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... many factors,—age, size, thriftiness, care it has received, whether it has escaped frost and other injuries; and some varieties are much more prolific than others. Some apples are "shy bearers," and for this reason soon are lost to propagation unless they have some superlative merit; Yellow Bellflower is an example of a shy, or at least an irregular, bearer. The great commercial varieties are of course good bearers, as Baldwin, Ben Davis, Stayman, York Imperial, Oldenburg, Rome, McIntosh, ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... to consider a similar subject, also very worthy of attention: I mean what has been called "the vice of the superlative." If we study the inhabitants of a country, we notice differences of temperament, of which the language shows signs. Here the people are calm and phlegmatic; their speech is jejune, lacks color. Elsewhere temperaments are more evenly balanced; one finds ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... to clearer demonstration the superlative glory of Christ than a thoughtful consideration of the story of the forerunner. They were born at the same time; were surrounded from their birth by similar circumstances; drank in from their earliest days the same patriotic aspirations, the same sacred traditions, ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... Worse is a word that couldn't be applied to that man. Worse is comparative. Positive he certainly was, superlative is mild, but comparative—never!" ...
— The Courting Of Lady Jane • Josephine Daskam
... Yerkes of Chicago offered an unlimited sum for the provision of the University of that city with a "superlative" telescope. And it happened, fortunately, that a pair of glass discs, nearly 42 inches in diameter, and of perfect quality, were ready at hand. They had been cast by Mantois for the University of Southern California, when the erection ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... old Stow, "is so called not of sweetness thereof, being very narrow and small and dark, but rather of often washing and sweeping to keep it clean." With all due respect to Stow, we suspect that the lane did not derive its name from any superlative cleanliness, but more probably from honey being sold here in the times before sugar became common and honey alone was used by cooks ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... embroidered with the symbols of nobility and matrimonial felicity; the gold fingernail guards, the jade and flowering pearls, her earrings and tasseled tobacco pouch and ivory fan, were all in the most superlative manner. ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... This superlative organization produced upon Pa the effect of a state affair; it was something beyond him, above him; it interested him especially from the recruiting point of view; and what stimulated him above all was the troupes of trick cyclists. He had seen plenty of them in America, but ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... he had chosen early to enter a financial house which took him to the East and Constantinople. He was about twenty-seven years old at this period and was considered by himself and a number of women to be a creature of superlative charm. ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... once, but a score of times. The brocades that I promised to show you after supper will be my witness. And there are some superlative satin and silk lengths which my Lady Rayne wished particularly to see. Will ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... letter from Mr. Boyer in the usual style. He expects the superlative happiness of kissing my hand next week. O, dear! I believe I must begin to fix my phiz. Let me run to the glass, and try if I can make up one that will look madamish. Yes, ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... been picture-gazing this morning at the famous Domenichino and Guido, both of which are superlative. I afterwards went to the beautiful cemetery of Bologna, beyond the walls, and found, besides the superb burial-ground, an original of a Custode, who reminded me of the grave-digger in Hamlet. He has a collection of capuchins' skulls, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... they mean is nothing, they arrest a quiet decent-minded man like myself with the same spasmodic disgust as a pun in literature—the subject is a transparent excuse; they are mere indecent and unedifying exhibitions of himself. He thinks it is something superlative to do everything in a startling way. He cannot even sign his name without being offensive. He lacks altogether the fundamental quality of a gentleman, the magnanimity to be ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... shells, the mosses, the flowers I trampled on, were, each in its way, as perfect as those great stars: that on these— and on Harry—as surely as on the stars—God had spent, if not infinite pains, then at least so superlative a wisdom that to conceive of them as wastage was to deny the ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the writer above quoted was cold beside the statue of one of the fathers of his country, he atones for it by his eloquence beside the tomb of the Vendramin. I must not spoil the force of Italian superlative by translation. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... to New York by her own children, by the stranger within her gates, and by the stranger without her gates, at a safe distance. I, a newcomer, venture to apply what I believe to be a new superlative, and to call her the most maligned city in the world. Even sympathetic observers have exaggerated all that is uncouth, unbeautiful, unhealthy in her life, and overlooked, as it seems to me, her all-pervading charm. One must be a pessimist indeed to feel ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... was as superlative as was his helplessness. He could only bristle and tear his vocal chords with his rage. But it was a very ancient and boresome experience to Collins. He was even taking advantage of the moment to glance across the arena and size up what the bears ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... Fiennes, St. John, Martin, the men in England the most celebrated for profound thought and deep contrivance; and by their well-colored pretences and professions, they had overreached the whole nation. To deceive such men, would argue a superlative capacity in Cromwell; were it not that besides the great difference there is between dark, crooked counsels and true wisdom, an exorbitant passion for rule and authority will make the most prudent overlook the dangerous consequences of such measures as ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... strong characteristics he had inherited, in a superlative degree, the shrewd common-sense of Piero, and his mother's passionate love of Florence, with all her enthusiasm for what was pure, cultured, philanthropic, and religious. Niccolo Macchiavelli, somewhat unwillingly, admitted ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... 1682, the Benchers of the Temples, wishing to obtain for their church an organ of superlative excellence, invited Father Smith and Renatus Harris to compete for the honor of supplying the instrument. The masters of the benchers pledged themselves that "if each of these excellent artists would set up an organ in ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... those in Michigan as well, understood his visitor's attitude better; and besides, it suited his Scotch nature to refuse any approach to open admiration for anything out of the old land. His ordinary commendation was, "It's no that bad"; and his superlative was expressed in the daring concession, "Aye, it'll maybe dae, it micht be waur." So he followed the colonel about with disparaging comments that drove Coley to the verge of madness. When they came to the engine room, which was Urquhart's ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... any eyes, and any ears, and any sense, but the eyes and ears and sense of the dear one to whom they are sent, is very sweet;—but for the girl who has made a shirt for the man that she loves, there has come a moment in the last stitch of it, sweeter than any that stars, haycocks, poetry, or superlative epithets have produced. Nora Rowley had never as yet been thus useful on behalf of Hugh Stanbury. Had she done so, she might perhaps have been happier even than she was during this journey;—but, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... who, while recognising his general capacities, were not scientific, and had no direct appreciation of his superlative powers in science, thought he was following a course which would never allow him to marry, and urged him to give up his unequal battle with fate, and emigrate to Australia. Of this he writes on August 5, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... fear he goes astray after ignes fatui. He is a clever man. By the bye, I saw a miniature of his as far excelling any in his shew cupboard (that of your sister not excepted) as that shew cupboard excells the shew things you see in windows—an old woman—damn her name—but most superlative; he has it to clean—I'll ask him the name—but the best miniature I ever saw, equal to Cooper and them fellows. But for oil pictures!—what has he [to] do with Madonas? if the Virgin Mary were alive ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... fine about Ruth. In that moment she had it in her to kill Denry with a bodkin. But she merely smiled. The situation was terribly strained, past all Denry's previous conceptions of a strained situation; but she deviated with superlative sang-froid into frothy small talk. A proud and an unconquerable woman! After all, what were men for, if not ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... will be one of great honor. The special honor, therefore, of the church is that of being the glorious bride or associate of the Lord Jesus, the King of glory. His recognition of her station as his own wife pictures the superlative degree of her honor and glory. Jesus said: "Father, I will ... that they be with me where I ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... any individual in the great Piccadilly crowd had met Douglas and Mary on the boat, he or she would have looked at them with interest, but there would have been no cheering and throwing of roses. What the crowd does is to raise an emotion to a superlative degree. In a full hall you will laugh at a joke that would not bring a smile to your face in a room. You become absorbed in your crowd, and you are fully open to your crowd's suggestion. I generally laugh at Charlie Chaplin, but one night a cinema manager, ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... have already told you," he began, "I bought the picture from a small dealer in the Bowery. I happened to notice it in his window, and, the 'Red Duchess' being one of the half-dozen superlative portraits of the world, I was naturally interested. It was certainly a fine copy, and I was pleased to ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... the stranger the superlative of Swahili contempt. He did not know he spoke aloud; for it is not well for one white man to criticise another to ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... manage a third day's work in these parts as soon as possible. I should like to get to the third degree of comparison, and perhaps the superlative will turn up trumps for me somehow. Are there many more young women in the place as pretty as Mrs. Winburn? This marrying complaint ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... really, I suspect, as an artistic flourish, thrown in to make up in some way for the deficiency of her musical performance. If plainness of dress indicates powers of song as it usually does, then Phoebe ought to be unrivaled in musical ability, for surely that ashen-gray suit is the superlative of plainness; and that form, likewise, would hardly pass for a "perfect figure" of a bird. The seasonableness of her coming, however, and her civil, neighborly ways, shall make up for all deficiencies in song and plumage. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... in a temperate climate can form an idea of the beauty of the animal in its native desert. Born in the scorching sun, nursed on the burning sand of the treeless and shadowless wilderness, the gazelle is among the antelope tribe as the Arab horse is among its brethren, the high-bred and superlative beauty of the race. The skin is as sleek as satin, of a colour difficult to describe, as it varies between the lightest mauve and yellowish brown; the belly is snow-white; the legs, from the knee downwards, are also white, and are as fine as though carved from ivory; the ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... so leads to [Greek: ate], fares a very short time without it." The best translation of [Greek: ate] is, perhaps, infatuation. Moreover, how is the above translation reconciled with the very superlative [Greek: oligoston]? ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... salutation and joy in heart they parted. Densuke betook himself to the yashiki of Matsudaira Aki no Kami at Kasumigaseki. No difficulties were encountered. Taro[u]bei was not so superlative as a cook that the substitute could not be better than the original. At this place Densuke acted the part of the komatsukibatta. This is a narrow brown weevil, some three parts of an inch in length, and which stands on its head ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... rolled itself up again with loud cracklings, and cut him short. He spread it out once more, and securing its corners began to describe the effects of the various sorts of artificial manure on the different crops, his cleverness in combining them, and his latest triumphant discovery of the superlative mixture that was to strike all ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... the pattern of success in comparison with which poor Lorraine and I are nowhere. I don't say they do it with malice prepense, or that they plot against us to our ruin; the thing operates rather as an extraordinary effect of their mere successful blatancy. They're blatant, truly, in the superlative degree, and I call them successfully so for just this reason, that poor Mother is to all appearance perfectly unaware of it. Maria is the one member of all her circle that has got her really, not only just ostensibly, into training; and it's a part of the general irony of fate that ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... and locked by islands as to form a series of salt-water lakes running round the town. Of those islands there are, of course, three hundred and sixty-five. Travelers who write their travels are constantly called upon to record that number, so that it may now be considered as a superlative in local phraseology, signifying a very great many indeed. The town stands between two hills, the suburbs or outskirts running up on to each of them. The one looking out toward the sea is called Mountjoy, though the obstinate Americans ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... in, and thought how like a sacred picture he looked; this, for her, was superlative praise. Martha's brother was there, ringing the one bell, which gave such a small fugitive sound that it made the white chapel seem like a tinkling ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... giving the full splendour of Venetian colour, duly subordinated nevertheless to the main motive, which is the glorification of a beautiful human body as it is; in all these respects the picture is of superlative excellence, a representative example of the master and of Venetian art, a piece which it would not be easy to match even among his ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... conscious, as at the time of our visit to the Burge Plantation, of the superlative soft sweetness of ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... of Leeds, as a last resource, fell to denouncing Macaulay as a placeman; a stroke of superlative audacity in a party which, during eight-and-forty years, had been out of office for only fourteen months. It may well be imagined that he found plenty to say in his own defence. "The only charge which malice can prefer against me is that I am a placeman. Gentlemen, is it your wish that those ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... incidental quips. Pseudolus generously compliments Charinus on beating him at his own game of repartee (743). When Weise (Die Komodien des Plautus, p. 181) describes Ps. IV. 7 as "eine der ausgezeichnetsten Scenen, die es irgend giebt," his superlative finds a better ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... and to certain ends. It entertains every natural gift. Social in its nature, it respects everything which tends to unite men. It delights in measure.[426] The love of beauty is mainly the love of measure or proportion. The person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love measure. You must have genius, or a prodigious usefulness, if you will hide the want of measure. This perception comes in to polish and ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of Holies. The Ark was not there, but Jehovah was—in the faith of every child of Israel he was there a personal Presence. As a temple, as a monument, there was nowhere anything of man's building to approach that superlative apparition. Now, not a stone of it remains above another. Who shall rebuild that building? When shall the rebuilding be begun? So asks every pilgrim who has stood where Ben-Hur was—he asks, knowing the answer is in the bosom of God, whose ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... nectarines, Dead-ripe pomegranates, sweet Arabian dates, Peaches and plums, and clusters fresh from vines, And all imaginable sweets, and cakes, And here are drinking-cups, and long-necked flasks In wicker mail, and bottles broached from casks, In cellars delved deep, and winter cold, Select, superlative, and centuries old. What more can I desire? what book can be As rich as Idleness and Luxury? What lore can fill my heart with joy divine, Like luscious fruitage, and enchanted wine? Brimming with Helicon ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... retaining your native manner of statement; chastened where necessary, but not defaced by an imitation, even of a self-erected, yet artificial, standard. It does not do to meddle too much with yourself. But I do resort to a weeding process in revising; a verb or an adjective, an expletive or a superlative, is dragged out and cast away. Even so, as often as not, I have to add. The words above, "as far as I can see it," have just been put in. Of course, in the interest of readers, I resort to breaking up sentences; but to me personally the result is usually distasteful. ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... the hymis of my maisteris dere, Gowere and Chaucere, that on steppis satt Of rhetorick, quhill thai war lyvand here, Superlative as poets laureate, In moralitee and eloquence ornate, I recommend my buik in lynis seven, And eke their saulis unto ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... sat on shipping problems, now Secretary of State in President Wilson's Cabinet, was approached as a suffragist, known to have access to the President. Mr. Colby had just returned from abroad when I saw him. He is a cultivated gentleman, but he knows how to have superlative enthusiasm. ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... surprise, a pleasant one. Did one wicker basket equal so many fine products of superlative technology? Apparently it did. The natives had different values. To them, one pair of goggles was worth more than three carbines, a package of needles easily the equivalent ...
— Bolden's Pets • F. L. Wallace
... bad enough to give away, she made me darn first," cried Vera. "She is ever so much worse than the superlative about mending ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... really good flowers. It is fine for exhibition at flower shows, and is useful as a cut flower. For all of these reasons the Aster would be a standard flower. Their great popularity is based, however, on two qualifications not mentioned above, and both of which they possess in a superlative degree. These qualities are great beauty of flower and a wonderful diversity and perfection ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... a few minutes, but nothing occurred; so, we turned round to an unshorn, sallow-looking cobbler, who was standing next us with his hands under the bib of his apron, and put the usual question of 'What's the matter?' The cobbler eyed us from head to foot, with superlative contempt, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... whom one hint of human revelation outweighs in value a warehouseful of inexpressive furniture, a room of this type holds one superlative interest. It is an index of character no less infallible than its owner's face. Its salient features may tell the same tale as a dozen others in the same station—the tale of a soldier going ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... accusation enforced by a thousand purses of gold, he was enabled to produce a bowstring for his benefactor; and the sultan's "firmaun" appointed him to the vacant pachalik. His qualifications for office were all superlative: he was very short, very corpulent, very illiterate, very irascible, and ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... previously been estimated at its full value. In every loyal state there was a "war governor." Upon these men the burdens of the war had rested so heavily that they understood, as they would not otherwise have understood, the superlative weight of cares that pressed on the President, and they saw more clearly than they otherwise could have seen, the danger in swapping horses while crossing the river. These war governors rallied with unanimity and with great earnestness to the ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... mood. Not only did I enjoy the supper, which was most agreeable, but far more the conversation. Among the topics discussed, what gave me most delight was to hear your name mentioned by the Captain; nor was this all, for he still added to my pleasure, nay, to a superlative degree, by saying that, in the art of painting he held you to be sole and without peer in the whole world, and that so you were esteemed at Rome. I could not have been better pleased. You see that my judgment is confirmed; and ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... sailor, wrecked, The sea was dead grey walls Superlative in vacancy, Upon which nevertheless at fateful time Was written ...
— War is Kind • Stephen Crane
... anything worth mentioning. In addition to other drains they surrendered servants for the fleet, buying them if they had none, and the senators repaired the roads at their individual expense. Only those who wielded arms enjoyed superlative wealth. They, to be sure, were not satisfied with their pay, though it was in full, nor with their outside perquisites, though of vast extent, nor with the very large prizes bestowed for the murders, nor with the acquisition of lands, which was made almost without ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... I must forgo the pleasure I promised myself of asking the ladies to take crepes with me," he said. "To offer these would be a poor compliment to their superlative efforts. But there is no reason why you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... words he had left unspoken to her. He was back again before the fire, telling her all that he did not tell her then. One gorgeous image after another swarmed to his brain. He was like a poet gone mad. He crowded sentence upon sentence, superlative upon superlative, until he found himself upon his feet, his cheeks hot, and his breath coming short. Then he caught sight of the crimson stain upon the wall and felt himself a murderer. He staggered back and threw himself full-length upon the couch, ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... object of his arbitrary likes or dislikes under discussion. At such times he is no observer, much less worshipper, of proportion in his delineations. Thorough-paced, scarcely controllable, his enthusiasm for or against admits no degree in its expression, save and except the superlative. Hence Mr. Froude's statement of facts or description of phenomena, whenever his feelings are enlisted either way, must be taken with the proverbial "grain of salt" by all when enjoying the luxury of perusing his books. So complete is his self-identification with the ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... and remarkable rise was due, perhaps more than to anything else, to the superlative quality of her labour. The Chinese was the perfect type of industry. He had always been that. For sheer ability to work no worker in the world could compare with him. Work was the breath of his nostrils. It was to him what wandering and fighting in far lands and spiritual adventure ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... "out of date," "antiquated," "superannuated."[*] A man, a woman, or a piece of furniture might be "out of date"; next, by a greater degree of imperfection, "antiquated"; but as to the last term, it was the superlative of contempt. The first might be remedied, the second was hopeless, but the third,—oh, better far never to have left the void of nothingness! As to praise, a single word sufficed him, doubly and trebly uttered: "Charming!" was the positive of his admiration. "Charming, charming!" made ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... size, thriftiness, care it has received, whether it has escaped frost and other injuries; and some varieties are much more prolific than others. Some apples are "shy bearers," and for this reason soon are lost to propagation unless they have some superlative merit; Yellow Bellflower is an example of a shy, or at least an irregular, bearer. The great commercial varieties are of course good bearers, as Baldwin, Ben Davis, Stayman, York Imperial, Oldenburg, Rome, McIntosh, Wealthy, Yellow ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... to sight. And, truly with a notable, almost miraculous, speed, the feelings of all Norway for King Olaf changed themselves, and were turned upside down, "within a year," or almost within a day. Superlative example of Extinctus amabitur idem. Not "Olaf the Thick-set" any longer, but "Olaf the Blessed" or Saint, now clearly in Heaven; such the name and character of him from that time to this. Two churches dedicated to him (out of four ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... extremely oily as the superlative ao implies. There are no finer, fatter cheeses in the world than those made of rich sheep milk in the mountains of Portugal and ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... upon him. He is guarded with crowds, and shackled with formalities. The half hat, the whole hat, the half smile, the whole smile, the nod, the embrace, the positive parting with a little bow, the comparative at the middle of the room, the superlative at the door; and if the person be Pan huper sebastos, there's a Huper superlative ceremony then of conducting him to the bottom of the stairs, or to the very gate: as if there were such rules set ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... had seen the mills of the Ottawa River and those in Michigan as well, understood his visitor's attitude better; and besides, it suited his Scotch nature to refuse any approach to open admiration for anything out of the old land. His ordinary commendation was, "It's no that bad"; and his superlative was expressed in the daring concession, "Aye, it'll maybe dae, it micht be waur." So he followed the colonel about with disparaging comments that drove Coley to the verge of madness. When they came to the engine room, which was Urquhart's pride, the climax ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... meaning to be above) for the comparative, and apuedi for the diminutive. Ubura, from the verb uburau to be before in time, and adiki, from adikin to be after in time, are also used for the same purpose. The superlative has to be expressed by a circumlocution; as tumaqua aditu ipirrun turreha, what is great beyond all else; bokkia uessa dauria, thou art better than I, where the last word is a compound of dai uwuria of, from, than. The comparative ...
— The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations • Daniel G. Brinton
... the splendid mountain road that leads to the Schlucht, and nowhere else. From a giddy terrace cut in the sides of the shelving forest ridge we now get a prospect of the little lakes of Longuemer and Retournemer, twin gems of superlative loveliness in the wildest environment. Deep down they lie, the two silvery sheets of water with their verdant holms, making a little world of peace and beauty, a toy dropped amid Titanic awfulness and splendour. The vantage ground is on the edge of a dizzy precipice, but the picture ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... ground for framing it; then all the accumulated mass of sorrow, sorrows born from life and death, being recognized as attributes of body, and as this body is not 'I,' nor offers ground for 'I,' then comes the great superlative, the source of peace unending. This thought of 'self' gives rise to all these sorrows, binding as with cords the world, but having found there is no 'I' that can be bound, then all these bonds are severed. There are no bonds indeed—they ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... incapable of the superlative self-esteem here attributed to Wordsworth. His egotism is a curious variety of that Protean passion, compounded as skilfully as the melancholy of Jaques. It is not the fascinating and humorous egotism of Lamb, who disarms us beforehand by a smile at his ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... it is worn in Paris. Their figures have the last "look" and their jewels are simply divine. With all this beyond criticism, it is very difficult to say whether they are beautiful or not, naturally; the general effect is so perfect. They, as far as grooming and superlative "turnedoutness" is concerned (I had to make a new word), are ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... purpose, as in olden times in the old country, 'FOR THE REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES;' and so yesterday we had a monster meeting on Bakery-hill, and I was the delegate of upwards of one thousand foreigners, or 'aliens,' according to the superlative wisdom ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... Then she controlled herself and began to put on garment after garment, jewel after jewel, all of superlative magnificence. Every moment she glided to the great mirror; as often she tore off a garment or a jewel, flung it down impatiently, and seized others from her boundless store. At last she stood clad like a fabled daughter of old Bagdad; a robe of shimmering silk reached her ankles, outlining ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... faces! such garments! such daguerreotypes of the superlative of human wretchedness and degradation! These pupils were gathered from among the outcasts of London—those who have no family ties, no homes, no education, no religious training, but were born to wander about the docks, picking up a chance job now and then, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... we may as well confess that les Americaines do gown themselves with superlative taste. Our peeresses and visitors from the States know what to wear and how to wear it; they show so much tact in their choice of colors, they put on their gay gowns and hats with such a completeness of touch, and display so much instinct for style in the choice and use of ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... pituitary, composed of an anterior lobe and posterior lobe, supplies two fairly uncomplicated corresponding types, best described as the masculine pituitary type, and the feminine pituitary type. The masculine pituitary type is one determined by the rule of the anterior pituitary, representing superlative brain tone and action, good all-around growth and harmonious general function, the ideal masculine organism. The feminine pituitary type has an excess of post-pituitary, with susceptibility to the tender emotions, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... the newest, the largest and the fastest boats, we should be content to make our crossings in the older and less gaudy ships, which after all are quite as seaworthy. But we Americans must always have the superlative, and therefore many a steamer has had to be scrapped simply because it had no palm gardens, no swimming pools, no shore luxuries. We have not, however, wholly neglected naval construction for we have many fine steamships, a praiseworthy lot of battleships and ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... enamoured of this offspring of your brain, that you imagine it impossible, but he must produce something greater and more perfect than the present scene of things, which is so full of ill and disorder. You forget, that this superlative intelligence and benevolence are entirely imaginary, or, at least, without any foundation in reason; and that you have no ground to ascribe to him any qualities, but what you see he has actually exerted and displayed in his productions. Let your gods, therefore, O philosophers, be suited ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... is prized and appreciated, it is scarcely necessary to speak. Who does not remember the splendid languid swells, the bright-eyed rosy girls ("with no nonsense about them!") in pork pie hats and crinolines, the superlative "Jeames's," the hairy "Mossoos," the music-grinding Italian desperadoes whom their kind creator hated so? And then the intrepidity of "Mr. Briggs," the Roman rule of "Paterfamilias," the vagaries of the "Rising Generation!" There ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... and joy in heart they parted. Densuke betook himself to the yashiki of Matsudaira Aki no Kami at Kasumigaseki. No difficulties were encountered. Taro[u]bei was not so superlative as a cook that the substitute could not be better than the original. At this place Densuke acted the part of the komatsukibatta. This is a narrow brown weevil, some three parts of an inch in length, and which stands ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... afraid of himself; he fears to exhibit enthusiasm about anything, and he hides his genuine nature behind a cloud of slang. He belittles everything he touches, he is afraid to utter a word from his inner heart, and his talk becomes a mere dropping shower of verbal counters which ring hollow. The superlative degree is abhorrent to him unless he can misuse it for comic purposes; and, like the ridiculous dummy lord in "Nicholas Nickleby," he is quite capable of calling Shakespeare a "very clayver man." I have heard of the attitude taken by two flowers of our society in presence of Joachim. Think of ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... a great deal of its success to the admirable production of Mr. Kenelm Foss and the excellence of the cast. Miss Grace Croft was surely the true Patricia. Of the Duke of Mr. Fred Lewis it is difficult to speak in terms other than superlative. Those of my readers who have suffered the misfortune of not having seen him, may gain some idea of his execution of the part from the illustrations to Mr. Belloc's novels. The Duke was an extraordinarily good likeness of the Duke of Battersea, ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... urgent request that this was put in hand, and, after twelve months' hard work, was safely delivered to his Majesty, who declared it to be a "rich and rare jewel, and that there was no defect in the skill, care, and cost used in it, but a superlative diligence ...
— Little Gidding and its inmates in the Time of King Charles I. - with an account of the Harmonies • J. E. Acland
... it; he improved upon, and enlarged, it and made it a thing of magnitude; he and others of his quality discarded petty larceny and ascended into a sphere of superlative grand larceny. They knew with a cynical perception that society, with all its pompous pretensions to morality, had evolved a rule which worked with almost mathematical certainty. This rule was the paradoxical, but nevertheless true, one that the ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... to the farmers of the country and to all who work on the farms: The supreme need of our own nation and of the nations with which we are co-operating is an abundance of supplies, and especially of foodstuffs. The importance of an adequate food-supply, especially for the present year, is superlative. Without abundant food, alike for the armies and the peoples now at war, the whole great enterprise upon which we have embarked will break down and fail. The world's food reserves are low. Not only during the present emergency, ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... SYRACUSE, the greatest mathematician of antiquity, a man of superlative inventive power, well skilled in all the mechanical arts and sciences of the day. When Syracuse was taken by the Romans, he was unconscious of the fact, and slain, while busy on some problem, by a Roman soldier, notwithstanding the order of the Roman general ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... three degrees of comparison: the positive, the comparative, and the superlative. Adjectives are regularly compared by adding the syllables er and est to the positive to form the comparative and superlative degrees. In some cases, especially in the case of adjectives of more than one syllable, the adverbs more and most are placed before the positive degree in order to form the other two degrees [long, longer, longest; beautiful, more beautiful, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... bye, I saw a miniature of his as far excelling any in his shew cupboard (that of your sister not excepted) as that shew cupboard excells the shew things you see in windows—an old woman—damn her name—but most superlative; he has it to clean—I'll ask him the name—but the best miniature I ever saw, equal to Cooper and them fellows. But for oil pictures!—what has he [to] do with Madonas? if the Virgin Mary were alive and visitable, he would not hazard himself in a Covent-Garden-pit-door crowd to see her. It ain't ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... did not dwarf everything else, the scenery of these plateaus would be superlative in interest. It is not all desert, nor are the gorges, canons, cliffs, and terraces, which gradually prepare the mind for the comprehension of the Grand Canon, the only wonders of this land of enchantment. These ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... exclaimed, how tenderly does she beam her lovely eye upon me! How often have I drank delicious extacy from the delicacy of those unrivalled charms! How often have they taught me to anticipate superlative and uninterrupted bliss! Mistaken and delusive hope! [returning the miniature to his bosom.] Vain and presumptuous assurance. Then [pointing to the grave] there behold how my dearest wishes, my fondest expectations are realized!——Hallowed turf! ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... do not appreciate it, no one can blame you or quarrel with you; all that any one can do is to invite you to read again, and, perhaps through his eloquence, seek to inspire you with—his own enthusiasm. Every work of art is superlative. Just as the lover thinks his sweetheart the most beautiful woman in the world, so he who appreciates a work of art finds it supreme. And among superlatives there is no comparison, no ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... of adjectives the Slavic has two principal forms, according as they are definite or indefinite. The Old or Church Slavonic knows only two degrees of comparison, the positive and comparative; it has no superlative, or rather it has the same form for the comparative and superlative. This is regularly made by the suffix ii. mostly united with one of those numerous sibilants, for which the English language has hardly letters or signs, sh, tsh, sht, shtsh, etc. In the more modern dialects ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... foremost, crowning; first-rate &c. (important) 642, (excellent) 648; unrivaled peerless, matchless; none such, second to none, sans pareil[Fr]; unparagoned[obs3], unparalleled, unequalled, unapproached[obs3], unsurpassed; superlative, inimitable facile princeps[Lat], incomparable, sovereign, without parallel, nulli secundus[Lat], ne plus ultra[Lat]; beyond compare, beyond comparison; culminating &c. (topmost) 210; transcendent, transcendental;plus ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of oratory was received with a very decided "ho!" of assent, as it well might be, for during nearly all the year there was nobody in that uninhabited land to attempt any of those violent proceedings. Dilating his eyes and nostrils with a look of superlative wisdom, he continued: ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... each take our own again.' Was I so far out in my reckoning? Is not that my Rosinante yonder? Here, Tom Leicester, you put my side-saddle on that gray horse, and the man's saddle on the piebald there. And now, Griffith Gaunt, it is your turn: you must withdraw your injurious terms, and end this superlative folly." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... I'm bound to say, I regard your claim to the possession of good taste as completely established.... 'Ware the horse, there! Look out! look out!" His eyes had followed the tall figure of the Mother-Superior, moving with the superlative grace and ease that comes of perfect physical proportion, carrying the black nun's robes, wearing the flowing veil of the nun with the dignity of an ideal queen. And the next instant, his charger, held with some others by a mounted orderly ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... most critical private transactions of Condorcet's life were pale and insignificant. In the tranquil seasons of history, when the steady currents of circumstance bear men along noiseless, the importance of the relations which we contract seems superlative; in times of storm and social wreck these petty fortunes and private chances are engulfed and lost to sight. The ferment was now rapidly rising to its intensest height, and Condorcet was the last man in France to remain cold to the burning agitations of the time. We have already seen ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... the primeval forest has departed from its immediate vicinity, the region is still sylvan, the air is sweet and strong and almost alpine in quality, and the mountain panorama spread before one is superlative. Davidson showed a business faculty which I should hardly have expected from him, in organizing his settlement. He built a number of cottages pretty in design and of the simplest construction, and disposed them well for effect. He turned ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... in to make up in some way for the deficiency of his musical performance. If plainness of dress indicates powers of song, as it usually does, the ph[oe]be ought to be unrivaled in musical ability, for surely that ashen-gray suit is the superlative of plainness; and that form, likewise, would hardly pass for a "perfect figure" of a bird. The seasonableness of his coming, however, and his civil, neighborly ways, shall make up for all deficiencies ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... of Liszt there is a strong temptation to work the superlative to its limit. In this instance it is well to overcome temptation ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... saloons—great, gorgeous, gaudy places, with pianos and swift-footed waiters, tables and cards, and men, men, men. The famous Three Brothers' Saloon occupies a position about midway the alley, and at its doors, the acme, the culminating point, the superlative degree of unquietude and discontent is reached. It is the headquarters of nearly all the great labor organizations in the city. Behind its doors, swinging as easily between the street and the liquor-fumed halls as the soul swings ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... warfare by the Germans in 1914-1919 has now been so well established that it seems almost unnecessary to give yet another instance of this callousness. In the case about to be quoted, however, there is, as the reader will observe, an almost superlative cunning. ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... said Lutie, who did everything by extremes, and who wore the highest pompadour, and the highest heels, and who had the smallest waist and the largest hat that Anne had ever seen, and who always used the superlative when telling a tale. ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... the fine irony of her present renovation that those who were for ever belauding her pictures, and her saints, and her architecture, as we praise things dead, they are the most angered by her appearance on this modern field all armed, just as she was, with works and art and songs, sometimes superlative, often vulgar. Note you, she is still careless of art or songs, as she has always been. She lays her foundations in something other, which something other our moderns hate. Yet out of that something other came the art and song of the Middle Ages. And what art or songs have ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... this, it is hardly superlative to say that, since art began, no man has ever felt the exquisite and subtle harmony of line to the same degree as Ingres. Naturally the best examples of this, his greatest quality, are to be found in his rendering of the nude human ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... Johnson's own superlative powers of wit set him above any risk of such uneasiness. Garrick had remarked to me of him, a few days before, 'Rabelais and all other wits are nothing compared with him. You may be diverted by them; but Johnson ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... had, of course, another political duty besides that of securing the election of himself and his friends. His political system was designed, not merely to deprive him of grievances, but to offer him superlative opportunities. In taking the utmost advantage of those opportunities, he was not only fulfilling his duty to himself, but he was helping to realize the substantial purpose of democracy. Just as it was the function of the national organization ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... returned from a lecturing-tour in the United States, and were much amused with her experiences. Having taken prolonged trips over the whole country from Maine to Texas for many successive years, Miss Anthony and I could easily add the superlative to all her narrations. She dined with us one day at Mrs. Mellen's, where we also had the pleasure of meeting Miss Jane Cobden, a daughter of the great Corn-law reformer, who was much interested in forming Liberal leagues, to encourage the Liberal party and interest ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... nominally in the service, out of which in reality he had been absent four years and ten months either on furlough or without one, and already a general! Neither blind luck, nor the revolutionary epoch, nor the superlative ability of the man, but a compound of all these, had brought this marvel to pass. It did not intoxicate, but still further sobered, the beneficiary. This effect was partly due to an experience which demonstrated ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... God dealing in slaves; giving them to his own favourite child [Abraham], a man of superlative worth, and as a reward for his eminent goodness."—Rev. Theodore Clapp, of ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... would speake, my heart Checks its bold orator, my tongue, and tells it Tis traitorous to its Mr.—Noble Sir, [kneele I doe conceit you infinitly good, So pittiful that mercy is in you Even naturally superlative, (forgive me, If I offend) you doe in this transgresse Humanity, to let a lady love you Without requitall. But I must professe To heaven and you, that here Ile fix to earth, Weepe till I am a statue, but Ile gaine Your pitie for her: ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... of his quaintly-poised mind. No one who knew him failed to realize his worship for his wife. His was a love such as rarely falls to the lot of woman. And his devotion to his girl and boy twins was something quite beyond words. These things were the mainspring of his life, and drove him to such superlative degrees of self-sacrifice that could surely only have been endured by a man ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... supper bolted to his room and began to scrub for the superlative toilette, after collecting a pair of kid gloves from Butcher Stevens and a purple tie from Dennis de Brian de Boru, Snorky Green was finally convinced that matters ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... nefarious abuse of God's good gift, intelligible language. What! do you call this 'loving the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and all your mind,—and your neighbour as yourself'? Whereas in truth you love nothing, not even your own soul; but only set a superlative value on whatever will gratify your selfish lust of enjoyment, and insure you from hell-fire at a thousand times the true value of the dirty property. If you have the impudence to persevere in mis-naming this "love," supply ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... aggressor that for a long time he gave the men no excuse for legitimate complaint; the utmost that could be said against him being that he was, in the opinion of the men, unduly particular as to the set and trim of the sails, and the superlative cleanliness of everything about the decks. This was all very well during the daytime, but when in the night-watches the men were hustled incessantly about the decks, taking a pull here, there, and everywhere at the halliards, sheets, and braces of the ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... answers to the "accidental definition of a classic." Most certainly; but not necessarily to that of a poetical classic. Jeffrey thought him "original and powerful." Granted; but there are plenty of original and powerful writers who are not poets. Wilson gave him the superlative for "original and vivid painting." Perhaps; but is Hogarth a poet? Jane Austen "thought she could have married him." She had not read his biography; but even if she had would that prove him to be a poet? Lord Tennyson is said to single out the following passage, which is certainly ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... day while the daylight lasted they much preferred an evening of complete solitude. Rossiter's new robustness of taste included love of a gramophone. Money being no consideration with them, they acquired a tip-top one with superlative records; not so much the baaing, bellowing and shrieking of fashionable singers, but orchestral performances, heart-melting duets between violin and piano (what human voice ever came up to a good violin or violoncello?), racy comic songs, inspiriting ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... Messiah at the head; yet this new Teacher spoke of it as having so small a beginning as to be comparable to a mustard seed. To make the illustration more effective He specified that the seed spoken of was "the least of all seeds." This superlative expression was made in a relative sense; for there were and are smaller seeds than the mustard, even among garden plants, among which rue and poppy have been named; but each of these plants is very small in maturity, while the well-cultivated mustard plant is one of ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... fluctuation existed in English spelling in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, [8] but it has since been overcome. Great writers sometimes introduced spellings of their own. Caesar wrote Pompeiii (gen. sing.) for Pompeii, after the Oscan manner. He also brought the superlative simus into use. Augustus, following in his steps, paid great attention to orthography. His inscriptions are a valuable source of evidence for ascertaining the correctest spelling of the time. During and after the time of Claudius affected archaisms crept in, and the value both of inscriptions ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... His naturally impulsive disposition seldom found any middle ground on which he was permitted to stand. His father had one time laughingly declared that the comparative degree had been entirely left out of Will's make-up and that things were usually of the superlative. "Worst," "best," "poorest," "finest" were adjectives most commonly to be found in his vocabulary, and between the two extremes a great gulf appeared to be fixed. He had also declared that he looked for Will to occupy no ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... brilliant stars, in the silvery moonlight of love—how eloquent their song! All things in nature speak to me; they bless you for loving me! In the halo of that blessing, as I think of you, I am transfigured by a newly-born ecstacy! To breathe, to exist, is to realize the superlative degree of my exquisite happiness! Hidden away from the clouds and storms of life, by the golden mist which veils the measureless sea of love, infinite love, I sail serene and confident upon its heaving ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... purpose. For there, beyond the rocks and lawns and red japonicas, lay the blue and shining water-lake in its confining banks of green. And upon its softly quivering surface floated the rubber-neck-boat-birds, white and sweetly silent instead of red and screaming—and the superlative length and arched beauty of their necks surpassed the wildest of Ikey Borrachsohn's descriptions. And relying upon the strength and politeness of these wondrous birds there were indeed "mans und ladies und boys ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... ought not to forget, because it is the chief: My duty to God will, I hope, always employ some good portion of my time, with thanks for his superlative goodness to me; and to pray for you and myself: for you, sir, for a blessing on you, for your great goodness to such an unworthy creature: for myself, that I may be enabled to discharge my duty to you, and be found grateful for all the blessings I shall receive at the hands of Providence, ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... globe by him, to show the range of his commercial transactions, and letters with large red seals lying round, one directed conspicuously to The Honourable etc. etc. Great-grandmother, by the same artist; brown satin, lace very fine, hands superlative; grand old lady, stiffish, but imposing. Her mother, artist unknown; flat, angular, hanging sleeves; parrot on fist. A pair of Stuarts, viz., 1. A superb full-blown, mediaeval gentleman, with a fiery dash of Tory blood in his veins, tempered down with that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Rome has a superlative effect upon the family. Hawthorne's manner in the midst of the richest scene in history. A host of friends happen to congregate, at Carnival time. Miss Maria Mitchell, Miss Harriet Hosmer, and Miss Elizabeth Hoar described. Una's illness proves the true friendship of lifelong and new ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... were the zephyrs perfumed by the pine, The ivy, the balsam, the wild eglantine, But sweeter, O, sweeter superlative were The joys that I tasted in answer to ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... has formed the basis of the religious education of German youth ever since. Though preceded by other catechisms from the pen of this and that colleague or disciple, it speedily displaced them all, not simply because of its authorship, but because of its superlative merit, and has alone maintained itself in general use. The versatility of the Reformer in adapting himself with such success to the needs of the young and immature is no less than extraordinary. Such a little book as this it is that reveals most clearly the genius ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... if the cause of said deluge was in order to get a better generation, it may. I don't think the actual generation is better than it was the anti-deluge, pardon me if you can't digest what I say. I am a pessimist to the superlative grade, and it is not without reason that I say so. I had sad experience with the World. Thank God for having doted me with a generous dose of philosophic! Swimming against the tide, not me, not such a ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... became a far-reaching club. And, swinging it like a fiercely driven flail, he rushed into the crowd of savages, scattering them like chaff in a gale. The smashing blows fell on heads that split under their superlative force, and the ground about him became like a shambles. In a moment he discovered another figure in the shadowy darkness, fighting in a similar fashion, and he knew by the crude, disjointed oaths which were hurled with each blow, so full of a venomous hate, that Peigan ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... they were probably far more deadly in their effects than any of the ironical attacks which his adversaries, on their part, directed against his poetical ineptitude or halting "parts of speech." Despite his superlative coxcombry and egotism, he was, moreover, a man of no mean abilities. His Careless Husband is a far better acting play than any of Fielding's, and his Apology, which even Johnson allowed to be "well-done," is valuable in many respects, especially for its account of ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... sumptuous and opulent, diffusing colour like a sunset, indifferent to their story or meaning, happy and content with the flaming feast outspread for our enjoyment. We stand before his Entombment at the Louvre, dumb before its superlative painting, with hardly a thought for the tragedy that it represents. Titian accepts the literary motive, and the artist in him straight forgets it. We walk from The Entombment to the little chamber where Rembrandt's Christ at Emmaus hangs, and the heart of Rembrandt is beating there. To Titian ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... exclaimed Dick; "here's a bonnet, frightful—that's positive; another more frightful—that's comparative; and this with the superlative yellow tuft, I should call the most frightful of all. So, ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... have developed an unfortunate tendency to overstate, overdraw, and exaggerate. It seems strange that there should be so strong a temptation to exaggerate in a country where the truth is more wonderful than fiction. The positive is stronger than the superlative, but we ignore this fact in our speech. Indeed, it is really difficult to ascertain the exact truth in America. How many American fortunes are built on misrepresentation that is needless, for nothing else is half ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... working in these creatures as the Lord that He is, [271] for in that transit His mercy shines forth more; and thus said David (Psalm, XLVII, 21) Domini, Domini, exitus mortis; [272] whence that reduplication which the Hebrew grammar calls ohatsere, [273] signifies the superlative in name and action. The same is the declaration of divine wisdom (Proverbs, XX): In viis justitiae ambulo, in medio semitarum judicii, ut ditem diligentes me. [274] The Father celestial summons them for the relief of their burdens, and of the troubles which they have had during ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... Beauty is necessarily detached from all that is topical or historical, or documentary or actual. It is also necessarily an effect of fine shades, delicate values, vanishing distinctions, of evasiveness, inconsequence, suggestion. It is also absolute, unrelated—it is positive or negative or superlative—it is never comparative. Well, the Anglo-Saxon public is totally insensible to such things. They can no more feel them, than a blind worm can feel the ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... somewhat arbitrary symbols. The commonest form of abbreviation is the substitution for a word of its initial letter; but, with a view to prevent ambiguity, one or more of the other letters are frequently added. Letters are often doubled to indicate a plural or a superlative. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... map rolled itself up again with loud cracklings, and cut him short. He spread it out once more, and securing its corners began to describe the effects of the various sorts of artificial manure on the different crops, his cleverness in combining them, and his latest triumphant discovery of the superlative mixture that was to ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... her lodging in the Place de la Sorbonne, smiled a morning greeting to the statue of Auguste Comte, founder of Positivism. It would have puzzled her to explain what Positivism meant, or why it should be merely positive and not stoutly comparative or grandly superlative. As a teacher, therefore, Comte made no appeal. She just liked the bland look of the man, was pleased by the sleekness of his white marble. He seemed to be a friend, a counselor, strutting worthily on a pedestal labeled "Ordre et Progres"; for ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... difficult will it prove to even bring it before the notice of the public. The error of most original people is in being just a trifle too original. It was in his business qualities—and these, after all, are the most essential to success, that Mr. Darwin showed himself so superlative. These are not only the most essential to success, but it is only by blaspheming the world in a way which no good citizen of the world will do, that we can deny them to be the ones which should most command our admiration. ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... "Fritz" last year when they spoke of the enemy. Now it is Hun or, as I have heard, "Yahun," being a superlative of Yahoo. In the Napoleonic wars we called the Frenchmen too many names for any one of them to endure; but this is the age ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... man had two sons"—so begins the best and most famous story in the world's literature. Use of the absolute superlative is always dangerous, but none will gainsay that statement, I am sure. This story, which follows that familiar tale afar off, indeed, begins in the same way. And the parallelism between the two is exact up to a certain point. What ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... from England the year before, and had expended the whole of it in making electric light in Cetinje and building a Government house of superlative ugliness, and so vast that it seemed obviously intended to administer a ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... as well as in that of the sultan, remained an unusual time in office, by an accusation enforced by a thousand purses of gold, he was enabled to produce a bowstring for his benefactor; and the sultan's "firman" appointed him to the vacant pachalik. His qualifications for office were all superlative: he was very short, very corpulent, very illiterate, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... whom fortune has placed in such a station that they can give away much, and can only receive very little and quite inadequate returns for what they give. I have spoken of kings and princes, who alone can cause works to be accomplished, and whose superlative power depends upon the obedience and services of inferiors; but some there are, free from all earthly lusts, who are scarcely affected by any human objects of desire, upon whom fortune herself could bestow nothing. I must be worsted in a contest of ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... years of age. He was a rough diamond, kindly in his judgments unless his feeling of justice was injured; then he was implacable. Many sayings of his were current, among them a dry answer to a senator from Texas who, having dwelt in high- flown discourse on the superlative characteristics of the State he represented, wound up all by saying, "All that Texas needs to make it a paradise is water and good society,'' to which Wade instantly replied, "That 's all they need in hell.'' The nimbleness and ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... questions, and some, as was natural, made pitiful slips. I observed with secret and scarcely concealed satisfaction his courageous loyalty in defence of his friends, and his hitting out in their defence when he believed them to be assailed. One superlative intelligence, eager to do honour to the guest, yet ignorant of his claim to such honour, gave him a wonderfully facile and racy comment on the pre-Raphaelite painters, and, in particular, made the ridiculous blunder of a deliberate attack upon Rossetti, and then ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... altruism are visible in Greece. There are few Germanophiles. "Do not fear for us," said M. Kalogeropoulos, to the French. "Greece will not ally herself to a corpse"—meaning Germany. In fact, there is among the Greeks only Graecophilism. If superlative and clamorous love of country is a virtue—they have it. For Greece, when you are down, you are down. As for fallen Germany, so for Russia in her humiliation Greece has no extra thought or care. Not a humanitarian and philanthropic ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... President Wilson's Cabinet, was approached as a suffragist, known to have access to the President. Mr. Colby had just returned from abroad when I saw him. He is a cultivated gentleman, but he knows how to have superlative enthusiasm. ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... almost solely with the man who orders and pays for his labor, with a public which frequently follows only certain morbid impressions, with connoisseurs who make him restless, with auctioneers who receive every new work with praise and estimates of value such as would fitly honor the most superlative production. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... waiting for a shot. It did not come. Slowly, as silently as possible, he reached for the sheath knife he carried and drew it. He had a gun, but a knife, the old cracksman had said, was much better for a fight in the dark and it had the superlative virtue of noiselessness. He became motionless again, his eyes vainly straining to pierce the darkness, waiting for the other to make a move. The silence and inaction became unbearable. He gathered his nerve ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... atmosphere. Dryden, one may safely say, would have been greater had he lived earlier, Fielding had he lived later. But one cannot imagine Pope thriving in any other air or producing equal work under different influences. The qualities most esteemed by his contemporaries he possessed in a superlative degree; his limitations were common to the society in which he moved, and neither he nor it was conscious of them as such; consequently, what would have been impediments to a different nature were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... Barnabas's error, it seems to have wrecked his life, at least to have marred it for long years, and to have broken his sweet companionship with Paul. I think we may go further and say, that most good men are in more danger from trivial faults than from great ones. No man reaches the superlative degree of wickedness all at once. Few men spring from the height to the abyss, they usually slip down. The erosive action of the sand of the desert is said to be gradually cutting off the Sphinx's head. The small faults are most numerous. We are least on our guard against them. There is a microscopic ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... high: in the first or ground floor, are the shops; in the second, the merchants have their warehouses; and in the third, they usually live with their families. Those three different regions, sorry am I to say it, are all very dirty; indeed they may be said to be the positive, comparative, and superlative degrees of uncleanness. There are no glazed sashes in the windows, so that when it rains, and the shutters are closed, you are involved in utter darkness. The furniture is miserably scanty—some old fashioned, high backed, hardwood chairs, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... he says:—'Of the mind that can trade in corruption, and can deliberately pollute itself with ideal wickedness for the sake of spreading the contagion in society, I wish not to conceal or excuse the depravity. Such degradation of the dignity of genius, such abuse of superlative abilities, cannot be contemplated but with grief and indignation. What consolation can be had Dryden has afforded by living to repent, and to testify his repentance.' Johnson's Works, vii. 293. He quotes Congreve, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... overjoyed that the Prince had not been able to devour me; for whom do we labour? I know that we are obliged to act as we do; I know, too, that we cannot do better; but should we rejoice at the fatal necessity which pushes us on to exert an action comparatively good and which will unavoidably end in a superlative evil?" ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... little frivolous tune Which he felt to be pulsing with ecstasy, For he thought that success always followed desire, Such a very superlative ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... role of the philosopher was one of superlative dignity. In point of knowledge he was less easily satisfied than other men. He thought beyond immediate practical problems, devoting himself to a profounder reflection, that could not but induce in him a sense of superior intellectual worth. ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... substantivity. The sky is thus described apparently as a created, or made thing. Na (the aa in Aaron) is a qualifying particle of very general use. It appears to place substances to which it is affixed in a superlative sense, and always as exalting the object. Thus its meaning may be fair, admirable, or excellent. Applied to geezhik, it implies an excellent quality in only one sense, that is excellent or fair, for a spot on the blue profound, of which geezhik ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... but little time to Club meetings and there was nothing done beyond the making of some plans for the summer and the taking of a few long walks. The Ethels and Dorothy and Della were doing their best to make a superlative record, also. With Helen and Margaret life went more easily, for graduation days were yet two ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... And as His Holy Spirit them inspires. For conscience is an inward thing, and none Can govern that aright but God alone. Nor can a well-informed conscience lower Her sails to any temporary power, Or bow to men's decrees; for that would be Treason in a superlative degree; For God alone can laws to conscience give, And that's a badge of His prerogative. This is the controversy of this day Between the holy God and sinful clay. God hath throughout the earth proclaim'd that He Will over conscience hold the sovereignty, That He the kingdom ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... are visible in Greece. There are few Germanophiles. "Do not fear for us," said M. Kalogeropoulos, to the French. "Greece will not ally herself to a corpse"—meaning Germany. In fact, there is among the Greeks only Graecophilism. If superlative and clamorous love of country is a virtue—they have it. For Greece, when you are down, you are down. As for fallen Germany, so for Russia in her humiliation Greece has no extra thought or care. Not a humanitarian ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... what he is talking about. He may never have crossed the Pyrenees. He has no dream of the glories of Dresden, or Florence, or the Louvre. It is even possible that he has not seen the matchless collection he is boasting of. He crowns it with a sweeping superlative simply because it is Spanish. But the statement ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... some small height, while the mind was compelled to revert irreverently to the picture of Moses on Mount Pisgah. He was the personification of impudence, withal, looking back and showing his teeth in superlative appreciation of his own sinfulness. He descended, and I looked to see him arise again, but I ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... invited to admire, and so on to a score of topics. The first thing was to make Carter think and talk, which he did in the happy-go-lucky way of his class, uttering nine mighty simple remarks, and then a bit of superlative wisdom, or something that sounded like it. And when he had shot his random bolts, Mr. Eden would begin and treat each picture as a text, and utter much wisdom on it ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... cheerfully by all the nations of the globe. Poets of higher rank than Schiller—Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe—have never aroused such world-wide sympathies; and it is not without interest to inquire into the causes which have secured to Schiller this universal popularity. However superlative the praises which have lately been heaped on Schiller's poetry by those who cannot praise except in superlatives, we believe that it was not the poet, but the man, to whom the world has paid this unprecedented ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... defaced by an imitation, even of a self-erected, yet artificial, standard. It does not do to meddle too much with yourself. But I do resort to a weeding process in revising; a verb or an adjective, an expletive or a superlative, is dragged out and cast away. Even so, as often as not, I have to add. The words above, "as far as I can see it," have just been put in. Of course, in the interest of readers, I resort to breaking up sentences; ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... plains west of the Atlas, are the agriculturists of the country. They form the principal population of this terrestrial paradise; they are for the most part emigrations from the Sahara, several centuries ago, and speak the true Arabic language. These are a fine race of men, possessing, in a superlative degree, some of the noblest qualities of the human race. To these ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... journals serve—but ideal and even ordinary romantic literature, does not, I think, substantially advance. Behold the prolific brood of the contemporary novel, magazine-tale, theatre-play, &c. The same endless thread of tangled and superlative love-story, inherited, apparently from the Amadises and Palmerins of the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries over there in Europe. The costumes and associations brought down to date, the seasoning hotter and more varied, the dragons and ogres left out—but the thing, I should say, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... regard to the protagonist of his quaintly-called The Moon and Sixpence (HEINEMANN), since, for all his sly pretence of quoting imaginary authorities, we have really only his unsupported word for the superlative genius of Charles Strickland, the stockbroker who abandoned respectable London to become a Post-impressionist master, a vagabond and ultimately a Pacific Islander. The more credit then to Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... it is hardly superlative to say that, since art began, no man has ever felt the exquisite and subtle harmony of line to the same degree as Ingres. Naturally the best examples of this, his greatest quality, are to be found in his rendering ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... describin' things. They's two kinds, comparative and superlative," Smith replied promptly. He added. "Adjectives kind of stuck ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... that I do not wonder at even good people finding little stimulus, or much that cheers, in the thought of passing thither. But if we do not know anything more—and we know very little more—let us be sure of this, that when God begins to compare His adjectives He does not stop till He gets to the superlative degree and that good begets better, and the better of earth ensures the best of Heaven. And so out of our poor little experience here, we may gather grounds of confidence that will carry our thoughts peacefully even into the great darkness, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... fully confirm him in his esteem and affection for so superlative a daughter, he added—You tell me, Mr. Henley, that you freely informed my daughter you thought it was even her duty to prefer you to all mankind, even though her father and friends should disapprove ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... idea is nothing less than atrocious; and, in our judgment, the Adapter's actual purpose in putting it forth is to make his own superlative goodness seem proved ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... of the Temples, wishing to obtain for their church an organ of superlative excellence, invited Father Smith and Renatus Harris to compete for the honor of supplying the instrument. The masters of the benchers pledged themselves that "if each of these excellent artists would ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... sweet, clean, uneventful life. And then into this Arcadia dropped one day a stranger, with an amazing experience of the outer world, a kaleidoscopic brain, an extraordinary personal magnetism and a unique combination of driving force and superlative ambition. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... Trones must be held in order to allow of elbow room for a mass movement over a broad front. The German realized this and after he had lost Mametz and Bernafay he held all the more desperately to Trones, which, for the time being, was the superlative horror in woods fighting, though we were yet to know that it could be surpassed by Delville and ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... sunombrelo. Sunstroke sunfrapo. Sup noktomangxi. Superb belega. Superficial suprajxa. Superficies suprajxo. Superfluity superfluo. Superfluous superflua. Superhuman superhoma. Superintend observi, zorgi pri. Superior supera. Superior, a superulo. Superiority supereco. Superlative (gram.) superlativo. Supernatural supernatura. Supernumerary ekstrulo. Superscription surskribo. Supersede anstatauxi. Superstition supersticxo. Superstitious supersticxa. Supervise observi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... hymis of my maisteris dere, Gowere and Chaucere, that on steppis satt Of rhetorick, quhill thai war lyvand here, Superlative as poets laureate, In moralitee and eloquence ornate, I recommend my buik in lynis seven, And eke their saulis unto the blisse ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... According to such a view, that two streams of life, in plant and animal, flow side by side, but under the guidance of different laws. The problems of vegetable life are, it must be said, extremely obscure, and for the penetrating of that darkness we have long had to wait for instruments of a superlative sensitiveness. This has been the principal reason for our long clinging to mere theory, instead of looking for the demonstration of facts. But to learn the truth we have to put aside theories, and ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... with this sublime comparison, Methinks we may proceed upon our narrative, And, as my friend Scott says, "I sound my warison;"[752] Scott, the superlative of my comparative— Scott, who can paint your Christian knight or Saracen, Serf—Lord—Man, with such skill as none would share it, if There had not been one Shakespeare and Voltaire, Of one or both of whom he ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... before he had taken his final leap in the dark, Cruikshank had contrived to pick quarrels with the very class of men whom it was his special interest to conciliate, and had been driven to set up an opposition serial of his own—the celebrated "Table Book"—which, notwithstanding the superlative excellence of his own illustrations and the talent of his literary contributors, comprising such names as John Oxenford, Horace Mayhew, Shirley Brooks, Mark Lemon, W. M. Thackeray, and others, could not manage to prolong its existence beyond its first volume. In matters connected with his own ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... heard the men conversing with each other over their camp-fires upon the probable prospects of the next day. It was a question with them whether I should continue the march. Mostly all were of opinion that, since the master was sick, there would be no march. A superlative obstinacy, however, impelled me on, merely to spite their supine souls; but when I sallied out of my tent to call them to get ready, I found that at least twenty were missing; and Livingstone's letter-carrier, "Kaif-Halek"—or, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... found in Spitho-hates, Spita-mens, Spita-des, etc. This, in Spita-ces, is followed by a guttural ending, which is either a diminutive corresponding to the modern Persian -efc, or perhaps a suffixed article. In Spit-amas, the suffix -mas is the common form of the superlative, and may be compared with the Latin -mus in optimus, intimus, supremus, and the like. Ehambacas contains the root rafno, "joy, pleasure," which we find in Pati-ramphies, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... climes claim for the apple and the onion superlative qualities. In the papaw the excellences of both are blended and combined. The onion may induce to slumber, but the sleep it produces is it not a trifle too balmy? The moral life and high standard of statesmanship of an American Senator are cited ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... historical, or documentary or actual. It is also necessarily an effect of fine shades, delicate values, vanishing distinctions, of evasiveness, inconsequence, suggestion. It is also absolute, unrelated—it is positive or negative or superlative—it is never comparative. Well, the Anglo-Saxon public is totally insensible to such things. They can no more feel them, than a blind worm can feel the colours of ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... warehouses; and in the third, they usually live with their families. Those three different regions, sorry am I to say it, are all very dirty; indeed they may be said to be the positive, comparative, and superlative degrees of uncleanness. There are no glazed sashes in the windows, so that when it rains, and the shutters are closed, you are involved in utter darkness. The furniture is miserably scanty—some old fashioned, high backed, hardwood chairs, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... perceiving La Valliere, a frown came over his brow; but as soon as he saw D'Artagnan, who bowed to him—"Ah! monsieur!" cried he, "you have been diligent! I am much pleased with you." This was the superlative expression of royal satisfaction. Many men would have been ready to lay down their lives for such a speech from the king. The maids of honor and the courtiers, who had formed a respectful circle round ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... I repeat, how this scene would have ended, when there crossed the threshold a parsonage who came to take a part in the development of the drama. There entered, I say, a woman of twenty to twenty-two years of age, diminutive in body, superlative in audacity and grace. Neat and clean hose and shoes, short, black flounced petticoat, a linked girdle, head-dress or mantilla of fringed taffeta caught together at the nape of her neck, and a corner of it over her shoulder, she passed before my eyes with swaying hips, ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... crowning; first-rate &c. (important) 642, (excellent) 648; unrivaled peerless, matchless; none such, second to none, sans pareil[Fr]; unparagoned[obs3], unparalleled, unequalled, unapproached[obs3], unsurpassed; superlative, inimitable facile princeps[Lat], incomparable, sovereign, without parallel, nulli secundus[Lat], ne plus ultra[Lat]; beyond compare, beyond comparison; culminating &c. (topmost) 210; transcendent, transcendental;plus royaliste que ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... watched this extraordinary drama through the window. The stimulant habitually consumed by the Ninemilers had induced in them a state of superlative Dutch courage, and they looked upon the whole affair as a ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... description, whilst the discussion was going on between Farrar, Mr. Cooke, and myself as to the best place to land him. When considerately asked by my client whether he had any choice in the matter, he replied, somewhat facetiously, that he could not think of making a suggestion to one who had shown such superlative skill ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... however, in the resurrection of the superlative beauties of spring, we forgot our human deficiencies. In the first week of lilacs, the Americanised flower of Persia, we aspired to the breadth and height and the heaven of our gardens. The generous lilac, like a great purple sea of loveliness, swept over us in the ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... depression he had suspected that it was Jewdwine's coldness that preserved his incorruptibility; but he had so sincere a desire for purity in their relations, that he had submitted without resentment to the freezing process that ensured it. He had in reserve his expectation of the day when, by some superlative achievement, he would take that soul, hitherto invincible, by storm. But now, in his inmost heart he owned that he ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... That vast incog! For I suppose thou hast a living breath, Howbeit we know not from whose lungs 'tis blown, Thou man of fog! Parent of many children—child of none! Nobody's son! Nobody's daughter—but a parent still! Still but an ostrich parent of a batch Of orphan eggs,—left to the world to hatch Superlative Nil! A vox and nothing more,—yet not Vauxhall; A head in papers, yet without a curl! Not the Invisible Girl! No hand—but a handwriting on a wall— A popular nonentity, Still call'd the same,—without identity! A lark, heard out of sight,— A nothing shin'd upon,—invisibly bright, "Dark with ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... detailed account of his previous life; and, in this connection, they had several animated discussions about teaching, a calling to which Madeleine looked composedly forward to returning, while Maurice, in strong superlative, declared he had rather force a flock of sheep to walk in line. She told him, too, some of the gossip the musical quarter of the town was rife with, about those in high places; and, in particular, of the bitter rivalry that had grown up with the years between Schwarz and Bendel, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... this division, and it includes a goodly number of Spain's most important towns, Seville, "the pearl of cities," the birthplace of both Velazquez and Murillo, appeals most strongly to everyone. Many superlative adjectives rise to our lips as we think of its whiteness, of its sunny vineyard slopes, its orange and olive groves, its salubrious climate, and its ancient associations. We think of its wondrous cathedral, next in size to St. Peter's, of its storied ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... followed so swiftly Darrell was in a sort of waking dream, a state of superlative happiness, unmarred as yet by phantoms from the shrouded past or misgivings as to the dim, uncertain future; past and future were for the time alike forgotten. One image dominated his mind,—the form and face of the fair young ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... after the following directions, and you will have a delicious relish for made dishes, ragouts, soup, sauces, or hashes. Mushroom gravy approaches the nature and flavor of made gravy, more than any vegetable juice, and is the superlative substitute for it; in meagre soups and extempore gravies, the chemistry of the kitchen has yet contrived to agreeably awaken the palate and encourage ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... neither of whom could even steer, nor were they accustomed to go aloft; while he had fifteen prisoners below, who would naturally lose no opportunity of retaking the ship. His greatest difficulties were only now beginning. What consciousness of his superlative seaman-like qualities, what perfect and just self-reliance he must have possessed, to have undertaken the task of navigating a ship completely across the Atlantic with such means at his disposal! Considerate and ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... expose it; he improved upon, and enlarged, it and made it a thing of magnitude; he and others of his quality discarded petty larceny and ascended into a sphere of superlative grand larceny. They knew with a cynical perception that society, with all its pompous pretensions to morality, had evolved a rule which worked with almost mathematical certainty. This rule was the paradoxical, but nevertheless true, one that the ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... he summed up, and when Isabelle smiled at his enthusiasm, he grew red of face and stuttered in his effort to make her comprehend all that his superlative meant. "I know what I am saying. I have been all over Europe and this country. Every surgeon who comes here says the same thing. You can't even imagine anything that might be better. There isn't much in the world ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... he calls it conversion—being turned around. Ask Peter what it is and, as he looks back upon his old benighted condition, he cries that it is like coming out of the darkness into a marvelous light. Ask Paul what it is and, with his love of superlative figures, he cries that it is like being dead and being raised again with a great resurrection. Ask John what it is and, with his mystical spirit, he says that it is being born again. See the variety that comes from vitality—no stiff methods, no stiff routine ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... said. "I appreciate your spirit and, permit me to say, also your attempt to make me treat this terrible affair in a spirit of sport. But old Margaret is the superlative of stubbornness. We cannot expect to go to her to obtain information. I have lived in the house with her for more than six years. Can I say whether she is a saint or a crafty villainess? No. I know no more now than when I shook her in my anger on the evening the ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... profound recognition of the finely elaborated execution, and also of the inward perfection of vacancy,—and, to say truth, with considerable impatience at being treated so very like infants, though the lollipops were so superlative. We gladly changed for one Emerson's English Traits; and read that, with increasing and ever increasing satisfaction every evening; blessing Heaven that there were still Books for grown-up people too! ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... so long been assistant, and was so near discovering herself to May Hettly, by betraying her acquaintance with the celebrated receipt for Dunlop cheese, that she compared herself to Bedreddin Hassan, whom the vizier, his father-in-law, discovered by his superlative skill in composing cream-tarts with pepper in them. But when the novelty of such avocations ceased to amuse her, she showed to her sister but too plainly, that the gaudy colouring with which she veiled her unhappiness afforded ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... have a series of instantaneous photographs. Nobody else had enough knowledge or courage to make rigid bars of children's legs: here they swing on pivots from the hip-joint. It is the true picture of life, rendered with superlative skill and bravura. But Donatello's children serve a purpose, if only that of decoration. At Padua they form a little orchestra to accompany the duets. The singing angels there are among the most charming of the company; ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... have been picture-gazing this morning at the famous Domenichino and Guido, both of which are superlative. I afterwards went to the beautiful cemetery of Bologna, beyond the walls, and found, besides the superb burial ground, an original of a Custode, who reminded one of the grave-digger in Hamlet. He ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... idea Chaos and Cosmos are superlative antitheses of each other. Chaos being regarded as a past condition of confusion and disorder which has long since been entirely superseded by ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... "You're superlative. You haven't done a thing all these long, weary months except ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... see God dealing in slaves; giving them to his own favourite child [Abraham], a man of superlative worth, and as a reward for his eminent goodness."—Rev. ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... low; and the mechanical morality, the dull, meaningless round of useless lessons, the habit of herding in unhealthy rooms with unhealthy companions, all tend to develop a creature which can be regarded only as one of Nature's failures, if I may parody a phrase of the superlative Beau Brummel's. ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... ordinary death, as opposed to death by violence, saevitia principis.—Promptissimus quisque. The ablest, or all the ablest. Quisque with a superlative, whether singular or plural, is in general equivalent to omnes with the positive, with the additional idea however of a reciprocal comparison among the persons denoted ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... and body were ever subjected to such minute analysis as is exemplified in the present instance. Hands and feet, hair, eyes, ears, nose, and throat—all are depicted in most glowing and appreciative fashion; and, from the superlative degree of the adjectives, she must indeed have been fair to look upon and possessed of a great compelling charm. But from her lovely mouth—la bella bocca angelica, as he calls it—there never came a weak ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... called a bed, but which is nothing more nor less than a beggarman's shakedown, where the smell, the heat, the filth, and above all, the vermin, are intolerable to the very farthest stretch of the superlative degree. As soon as their eyes begin to close here, they are roused by the bell-man, and summoned at the hour of twelve—first washing themselves as aforesaid, in the lake, and then adjourning to the prison which I am about to describe. There is not on earth, with the exception ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... from this piece, would undoubtedly suppose that he abounded in filthy images, and excelled in describing the lower scenes of life." Let all such blockheads suppose what they choose. Pope—says Roscoe—"was well aware as any one of the superlative beauties and merits of Spenser, whose works he assiduously studied, both in his early and riper years; but it was not his intention in these few lines to give a serious imitation of him. All that he attempted was to show how exactly he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... with Hobhouse. Mrs. Jordan superlative in Hoyden, and Jones well enough in Foppington. What plays! what wit!—helas! Congreve and Vanbrugh are your only comedy. Our society is too insipid now for the like copy. Would not go to Lady Keith's. Hobhouse thought it odd. I wonder he ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... city talk from the lips of the two ladies had the merit of being perfect of its kind—softly insinuating and sweetly censorious, superlative in eulogy and infallible in opinion. The good visitors most conscientiously discharged what they deemed a great moral and social duty by enlightening the Lady de Tilly on all the recent lapses and secrets of the capital. They slid over slippery topics like skaters ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to express different degrees of comparison. The regular degrees have been reckoned three; positive, comparative, and superlative. These are usually marked by changing the termination. The positive is determined by a comparison with other things; as, a great house, a small book, compared with others of their kind. This is truly a comparative degree. The comparative adds er; as, a greater ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... or a turn of his head did he let his bride see how wildly her superlative attraction had kindled ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... Love magnifies the thing it loves!" Smiling she said: "when I look in the glass, I see a comely Miss; nay, perhaps pretty; That epithet is her superlative, So far as person is concerned, I fear. Grant her a cheerful temper; that she gets From both her parents. She is dutiful,— No wonder, for she never is opposed! Strangely coincident her way is yours; Industrious, but that's her mother's ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... a salesgirl of such superlative dress and manner that her long jet earrings were like exclamations at the audacity of her personality. An habitual counter line-up of Broadway mental brevities in the form of young men with bamboo sticks and ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... And I'm bound to say, I regard your claim to the possession of good taste as completely established.... 'Ware the horse, there! Look out! look out!" His eyes had followed the tall figure of the Mother-Superior, moving with the superlative grace and ease that comes of perfect physical proportion, carrying the black nun's robes, wearing the flowing veil of the nun with the dignity of an ideal queen. And the next instant, his charger, held with some others by a mounted orderly before the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... populous and powerful historical peoples of the world have been located on soils that thirst for water, may find its explanation in the intrinsic value of arid soils. From Babylon to the United States is a far cry; but it is one that shouts to the world the superlative merits of the soil that begs for water. To learn how to use the "desert" is to make ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... (Save, possibly, in the reticence of its advertisements! The Majestic would advertise bathrooms as a miracle of modernity, just as though common dwelling-houses had not possessed bathrooms for the past thirty years. Wilkins's had superlative bathrooms, but it said nothing about them. Wilkins's would as soon have advertised two hundred bathrooms as two hundred bolsters; and for the new Wilkins's a bathroom was not more modern than a bolster.) Also, other hotels resembled Wilkins's. The Majestic, too, ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... irritating and boring uncounted thousands. I begin placatingly enough, "Yes, I know you aren't going to believe this," I say. "Once I didn't believe it myself. I realize that it all sounds impossible. But after you've once been there—" Then I'm off. When I've finished, there isn't an hysterical superlative adjective or a complimentary abstract noun unused in my vocabulary. I've told all the East about California. I've told many of the countries of Europe about California. I even tell Californians about California. I will say to the credit of Californians though that they listen. Listen! did I say ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... interpreter of native life, of the ways and customs of the Eskimos, that he has done his greatest work. "Kununguaq"—that is his native name—is known throughout the country and possesses the confidence of the natives to a superlative degree, forming himself, as it were, a link between them and the rest of the world. Such work, as regards its hither side, must naturally consist to a great extent of scientific treatises, collections of facts and specimens, all requiring previous ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... evening had settled once more upon the place. The peace of it all was superlative. It was peace to which Effie was something more than averse. She dreaded it. For all her two years of life in the meagre home her husband had provided her with, it required all her courage and fortitude to endure it. ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... so," she breathed deeply in relief. "I knew you wouldn't fail me. Look at that field, Phares—oh, this is a perfect day! There should be a superlative form of perfect for a day like this! Those fields have as many colors as the shades reflected on a copper plate: lilac, tan, purple, ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... if she had been her own child. She worshipped her like an idol. As a matter of fact, being quite independent financially, it was not as a paid companion at all that she had lived with her, though she chose to appear in that capacity. And, besides, Hyacinth herself, Anne had, in a most superlative degree, enjoyed the house, her little authority, the way she stood between Hyacinth and all tedious little practical matters. Like many a woman who was a virago at heart, Anne had a perfect passion for domestic matters, for ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... Secretary of State in President Wilson's Cabinet, was approached as a suffragist, known to have access to the President. Mr. Colby had just returned from abroad when I saw him. He is a cultivated gentleman, but he knows how to have superlative enthusiasm. ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... under discussion. At such times he is no observer, much less worshipper, of proportion in his delineations. Thorough-paced, scarcely controllable, his enthusiasm for or against admits no degree in its expression, save and except the superlative. Hence Mr. Froude's statement of facts or description of phenomena, whenever his feelings are enlisted either way, must be taken with the proverbial "grain of salt" by all when enjoying the luxury of perusing his books. So complete ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... paid. In this view then, Lammas stands as a day of account, and Latter Lammas will consequently signify the day of doom, which in effect, as to all payments of money, or worldly transactions in money, is never. Latter here is used for last, or the comparative for the superlative, just as it is in a like case in our version of the book of Job, "I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth," meaning of course the last day, or the end of the world. That the last day, or Latter Lammas, as to all temporal ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... gloved hand was holding him now, holding by the sleeve of his superlative black coat of ceremony, plucking at it, striving to stir him to sympathy and understanding; the face, hopeful and ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... should undertake to wryte in prayse of a gentlewoman, I would neither praise her christal eye, nor her cherrie lippe, etc. For these things are trita et obvia. But I would either find some supernaturall cause whereby my penne might walke in the superlative degree, or els I would undertake to answer for any imperfection that shee hath, and thereupon rayse ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... all born that day that a whore began her profession; for," as she follows it, "her pride is greater than a rich churl's, she is more envious than the pox, as malicious as melancholy, as covetous as hell. If from the beginning of the world any were mala, pejor, pessima, bad in the superlative degree, 'tis a whore; how many have I undone, caused to be wounded, slain! O Antonia, thou seest [5706]what I am without, but within, God knows, a puddle of iniquity, a sink of sin, a pocky quean." Let him now that so dotes meditate on this; let him see the event and success of others, Samson, Hercules, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... up out of a flat in the form of a cone, and is planted with Scotch fir-trees. Here I used to take the eggs and young ones of crows and magpies. This hill was a famous object in the neighbourhood. It served as the superlative degree of height. 'As high as Crooksbury Hill,' meant with us, the utmost degree of height. Therefore, the first object my eyes sought was this hill. I could not believe my eyes! Literally speaking, I for a moment thought the famous hill removed, and a little heap put in ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... own troubles by an acquaintance with the heroic sorrows of the world. There is no page of history, however dark, there is no beautiful old tale, however tragic, which does not impart some strength and some distinction to the awakening mind. It is possible to overrate the superlative merits of insipidity as a mental and moral force ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... development and more abundant manifestation of womanly intellect in France? The primary one, perhaps, lies in the physiological characteristics of the Gallic race—the small brain and vivacious temperament which permit the fragile system of woman to sustain the superlative activity requisite for intellectual creativeness; while, on the other hand, the larger brain and slower temperament of the English and Germans are, in the womanly organization, generally dreamy and passive. The type of humanity in the latter may be grander, but it requires ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... sentence defined was the sum of daily shame, sorrow, homesickness and misanthropy. Shame in the proud man admits of no degrees of intensity. If it exist at all, it is superlative. To this was added the loss of Rachel. How little it would take to satisfy him, now that she was wholly denied to his eyes! Only to look down on her again, unseen, from his aery in ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... have been generally overlooked, and it seems evident that the only hope for the nut industry lies in the creation of a larger demand for these nutrients from the plant world by acquainting the public with their superlative merits. Of course, room must be made for the increased intake of nuts by lessened consumption of something which nuts may advantageously replace in the bill of fare. Most nuts consist almost exclusively of proteins and fat. Proteins and fats likewise are ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... objects are compared, the comparative and not the superlative degree should be used; thus, "Mary is the older of the two"; "John is the stronger of the two"; "Brown is the richer of the two, and the richest man in the city"; "Which is the more desirable, health or wealth?" "Which ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... stars, in the silvery moonlight of love—how eloquent their song! All things in nature speak to me; they bless you for loving me! In the halo of that blessing, as I think of you, I am transfigured by a newly-born ecstacy! To breathe, to exist, is to realize the superlative degree of my exquisite happiness! Hidden away from the clouds and storms of life, by the golden mist which veils the measureless sea of love, infinite love, I sail serene and confident upon its heaving tide. Gently rocked by the lapping lullaby of the rythmical ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... revulsion in men's minds about him, which cannot fail to produce a silent, but in the end a sensible effect upon his fortunes. It is remarkable that Lord Derby, who is a very shrewd and sagacious old man, never would hear of his grandson's superlative merits, and always in the midst of his triumphs ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... have stared in incredulous amazement at the sight of this love-sick man in his intense pursuit of a girl who was able to twist him around her little finger and make him follow her about as if he were a green and callow youth. Palgrave, the lady-killer; Palgrave, the egoist; Palgrave, the superlative person, who, with nonchalant impertinence, had picked ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... his Philosophical Works. A worthy friend of mine in London was lately consulted by a lady of quality, of most distinguished merit, what was the best History of England for her son to read. My friend recommended Hume's. But, upon recollecting that its usher was a superlative panegyrick on one, who endeavoured to sap the credit of our holy religion, he revoked his recommendation. I am really sorry for this ostentatious alliance; because I admire The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and value the greatest ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... spelling in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, [8] but it has since been overcome. Great writers sometimes introduced spellings of their own. Caesar wrote Pompeiii (gen. sing.) for Pompeii, after the Oscan manner. He also brought the superlative simus into use. Augustus, following in his steps, paid great attention to orthography. His inscriptions are a valuable source of evidence for ascertaining the correctest spelling of the time. During ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... idle. On hearing of the murder, his thoughts had immediately centred themselves on the bishop. To say that the chaplain was shocked is to express his feelings much too mildly; he was horrified! thunderstruck! terrified! in fact, there was no word in the English tongue strong enough to explain his superlative state of mind. It was characteristic of the man's malignant nature that he was fully prepared to believe in Dr Pendle's guilt without hearing any evidence for or against this opinion. He was aware that Jentham had been cognisant of ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... legerdemain, and the useful consciousness that he must prey or be preyed on. John Rex was no common swindler; his natural as well as his acquired abilities saved him from vulgar errors. He saw that to successfully swindle mankind, one must not aim at comparative, but superlative, ingenuity. He who is contented with being only cleverer than the majority must infallibly be outwitted at last, and to be once outwitted is—for a swindler—to be ruined. Examining, moreover, into the history of detected crime, John Rex ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... on the contrary, it seems to me that your clever woman will see the duty, as well as the pleasure, of ordering her husband's house in a becoming manner. Why should empty-headed girls, who haven't a word to say for themselves, nor an accomplishment to their back—why should they be the superlative concocters of custards, and menders of shirts and stockings? Do you mean to tell me that a woman must be a fool to have a light hand at pastry? I believe these libels on clever women have been propagated by designing mothers who had stupid daughters on their hands. Whenever ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... the grand hall and was heavily laden with products of the State of New York. Owing to the approaching close of the Exposition, the agricultural and horticultural exhibits were heavily drawn upon. Great heaps of New York's superlative fruit and prize vegetables were used in decorating the table. Messrs. Bayno & Pindat served a tempting menu, features of which were those dishes always associated with Thanksgiving Day—roast turkey and pumpkin pie. A spirit of hearty good ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... Dryden he says:—'Of the mind that can trade in corruption, and can deliberately pollute itself with ideal wickedness for the sake of spreading the contagion in society, I wish not to conceal or excuse the depravity. Such degradation of the dignity of genius, such abuse of superlative abilities, cannot be contemplated but with grief and indignation. What consolation can be had Dryden has afforded by living to repent, and to testify his repentance.' Johnson's Works, vii. 293. He quotes Congreve, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... geseit for "gewesen") (I have not been quiet), are worthy of note, because they show how strong an influence in the formation of words during the transition period is exerted by the forms most frequently heard—here the imperative. The child used first of all the imperative; last the subjunctive. The superlative and comparative were not used by this ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... among the Men of Honour Many were tainted with Pride and Superstition at the same Time; but there were others in whom superlative Bravery was united with the ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... it is so today. The plain fact is that humanity has in it a depth of incapacity to behold, and of angry indisposition to admire, lofty and noble lives. The power of the darkness to blind men is set forth once in the superlative degree that we may all beware of it in the lower instances, by that fact, the most tragical in the history of the world, 'the Light shineth in the darkness, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... it."[238] We may be sure that if Rousseau had a strong inclination towards a given course of action, he would have no difficulty in putting his case in a blaze of the brightest light, and surrounding it with endless emblems and devices of superlative conviction. In short, he submitted himself faithfully to the instruction of the pastor of his parish; was closely catechised by a commission of members of the consistory; received from them a certificate that he had satisfied ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... possessed by the noun especially as compared with other objects of the same sort, a big man, a bigger man, the biggest man. These degrees are called positive, indicating possession of bigness; comparative, indicating possession of more bigness than some other man; superlative, indicating possession of more bigness than any other man. When we wish to tell the amount of the quality without comparing the possessor with any other object or group of objects we use a modifying word later to be described ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... surly, and the poor, worn-out horses were so stiff that they could barely travel any longer. The village, however, was only a few miles off, so that they were not more than an hour in reaching a miserable hovel, at the door of which was a man in the superlative degree of astonishment. He, at least, had never heard of Louvois and Louvois's orders, so that, for the promise of a gold-piece, he was easily induced to receive the desponding party. But his only bed was of straw, ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
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