"High-flown" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Guli Springett, whom I have seen sundry times, and think high-flown, in spight of her levelling Principles and demure Carriage. The Youth is bewitched with her, I think; what has a Woman to do with Logique? My Belief is, he might as well hope to marry the Moon as to win Mistress Springett's Hand; however, his Self-opinion ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... tyranny, which the presentiment of its speedy end had driven into madness, the bewitching strains of the new Hebrew lyre resounded through Lithuania. They came from Micah Joseph Lebensohn, the son of "Adam" Lebensohn, author of high-flown Hebrew odes [1]—a contemplative Jewish youth, suffering from tuberculosis and Weltschmerz. He began his poetic career in 1840 by a Hebrew adaptation of the second book of Virgil's Aeneid [2] but soon ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... really do wish to lunch with me, Doctor von Kammacher, you must not have high-flown notions, like Mr. Ritter," said Miss Burns halting in front of a tidy ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... favourably with the florid, exaggerated accounts of the engagement which are published in this morning's papers. I am glad to find that France possesses at least one man who tells the truth, and who can address his fellow-citizens in plain language. The credulity of the Parisians, and their love of high-flown bombast, amount to a disease, which, if this city is not to sink into a species of Baden Baden, must be stamped out. Mr. O'Sullivan recently published an account of his expedition to the Prussian headquarters in the Electeur Libre. Because ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... was a laborious compiler; but his Lives of Burns and Fergusson are written in the most high-flown and exaggerated style imaginable. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... were disposed of at those stated gatherings, which combined popular games, chariot races for the nobles, and markets for the merchants. A Bard of the tenth or eleventh century, in a desperate effort to vary the usual high-flown descriptions of the country, calls it "Erin of the hundred fair greens,"—a very graphic, if not a ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... was one of Landor's favorite topics, and his ire was rarely more quickly excited than by placing before him a specimen of high-flown sentimentality. He would put on his spectacles, exclaim, "What is this?" and, having read a few lines, would throw the book down, saying, "I have not the patience to read such stuff. It may be very fine, but I cannot understand it. It is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... Street relations. Eliza was a source of continual irritation, and the Westbrook family did its best, by interference and suggestion, to refrigerate the poet's feelings for his wife. On the other hand he found among the Boinville set exactly that high-flown, enthusiastic, sentimental atmosphere which suited his idealizing temper. Two extracts from a letter written to Hogg upon the 16th of March, 1814, speak more eloquently than any analysis, and will place before the reader the antagonism which had sprung ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... forced him to abandon the colony and return home. His lieutenant, Luis Vaez de Torres, separated from him, discovered and passed the Torres Straits, a feat of excellent seamanship. Quiros returned to America. His high-flown descriptions of his discovery did not help him much, for the king simply ignored him, and his reports were buried in the archives. Quiros died in poverty and bitterness, and the only traces of his travels are the names Espiritu Santo, Bay San Iago ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... occasion, when Ben Zoof had mounted his hobby-horse, and was indulging in high-flown praises about his beloved eighteenth arrondissement, the captain had remarked gravely, "Do you know, Ben Zoof, that Montmartre only requires a matter of some thirteen thousand feet to make it as high as ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... though the description undoubtedly partook of George's usual high-flown couleur-de-rose style, the manor being only a manor provided the owner sacrificed his interest in Swillingford by driving off its poachers, and the river being only a river when the tiny Swill was swollen into one, still Hanby House was ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... younger and more high-flown she sometimes talked of sweeping crossings; but her sister-in-law Susie would not hear of crossings, and dressed her beautifully, and took her out, and made her dance and dine and do as other girls did, ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... permanent interest of the book lies in the skilful stage-managing of her lively adventures. There is hardly an attempt at characterisation. The people are mere masqueraders, who amuse us by their costume and mannerisms, but reveal no individuality. The plot is a wild extravaganza, crammed with high-flown, mock-romantic episodes. Cherry Wilkinson, as the result of a surfeit of romances, perhaps including The Misanthropic Parent or The Guarded Secret (1807), by Miss Smith, deserts her real father—a worthy farmer—to look for more aristocratic ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... else it was sixteen— Yes; I'd shook hands wid Washington And likewise General Greene. I tole him all de generals' names Dar ebber was, I guess, From General Lee and La Fayette To General Distress. Den dar's dem high-flown ladies My old tings came to see; Wanted to buy dem some heirlooms Of real Aunt Tiquity. Says I, "Dat isn't dis chile's name, Dey calls me Auntie Scraggs," And den I axed dem, by de pound How much dey gabe for rags? De missionary had de mose Insurance ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... beauty, herself the fairest of all. These fascinating, light-hearted girls grew up in an age of coarseness and vice, and were surrounded by temptation, which all, alas! did not resist, in spite of their royal mistress's example and courage. It was an age of meaningless gallantry and real brutality; the high-flown compliment and pretended adoration covered cynical intention and unabashed effrontery. Caroline herself preserved an untainted name, and her influence must have been a rock of salvation to the giddy, laughing girls. Leigh ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... 17, and in my chief work, bk. i., Sec. 62. But at the sound of certain words, like Right, Freedom, the Good, Being—this nugatory infinitive of the cupola—and many others of the same sort, the German's head begins to swim, and falling straightway into a kind of delirium he launches forth into high-flown phrases which have no meaning whatever. He takes the most remote and empty conceptions, and strings them together artificially, instead of fixing his eyes on the facts, and looking at things and relations as they really are. It is these things and relations which supply the ideas of Right and Freedom, ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... risk of being compelled so to do. At one o'clock in the morning their boat came alongside, when Paroissien solicited an interview, Spry remaining in the boat, having his own reasons for not wishing to attract my attention. Paroissien then addressed me with the most high-flown promises, assuring me of the Protector's wish, notwithstanding all that had occurred, to confer upon me the highest honours and rewards, amongst others the decoration of the newly-created order of "the Sun," and telling ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... division of literature to proclaim boldly the refusal to consider anything human as alien from human literary interest. But, as nearly always happens, it had exaggerated its protests, and become sordid, merely in revolt from the high-flown non-sordidness of previous romance. Lesage took the principle and rejected the application. He dared, practically for the first time, to take the average man of unheroic stamp, the homme sensuel moyen of a later French phrase, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... against our liberties? The Massachusetts legislature protested; the people of Connecticut meditated resistance. A convention was held at Middletown in December, at which two thirds of the towns in the state were represented, and the best method of overruling Congress was discussed. Much high-flown eloquence was wasted, but the convention broke up without deciding upon any course of action. The matter had become so serious that wise men changed their minds, and disapproved of proceedings calculated to throw Congress into contempt. Samuel Adams, who had almost violently opposed ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... five years' disappearance, still less in his speedy arrival. Moreover, in the "officer's" first letter which had been shown to Mitya, the possibility of his new rival's visit was very vaguely suggested. The letter was very indefinite, high-flown, and full of sentimentality. It must be noted that Grushenka had concealed from him the last lines of the letter, in which his return was alluded to more definitely. He had, besides, noticed at that moment, he remembered afterwards, a certain involuntary proud contempt for this missive ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... work? For methinks, O most erudite, the 'maternal dame,' on domestic cares intent, hath confided to her offspring the recreation of your highness." The gay creature dropt him a curtsey, and fled to tell Mrs. Dodd the substance of "the sweet letter the dear high-flown Thing had written." ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... partly to visit a sister who lived in their neighborhood. The elder Huntington said something of the rapid growth of New York, of its new high buildings. His English was curiously interspersed with a bookish phraseology that seemed to be traceable to the high-flown advertisements of his department in the newspapers. I veered the conversation from the architectural changes that had come over New York to changes of an ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Macgregor might have known by now, it was always a mistake to try to hustle Christina in any way. Her reply condescended neither to explanations nor defence. Written in her superior, and rather high-flown English, which she was well aware he detested, it practically ignored his epistle and took the form of an essay on the delights of travel, the charm of residence in the Northern City, the kindliness and generosity ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... principle is one of extensive application. For the very point respecting which your whole school, and yourself most especially, who are such a diligent investigator of ancient instances, are in the habit of vaunting yourself and using high-flown language, namely, the mention of brave and illustrious men, and the extolling of their actions, as proceeding not from any regard to advantage, but from pure principles of honour and a love of glory, is entirely upset, when once that rule in the choice of things is established which I mentioned ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... generally are, drew back muttering and fumbling in his pocket, evidently with some dire intent lowering in his eyes. To the amusement of all, and to my increased consternation, he drew forth a volume of the Wild Irish Girl, and reading with his deep, emphatic voice one of the most high-flown of its passages, he paused, and patting the page with his fore finger, with the look of Hamlet addressing Polonius, he said, 'Little girl, why did you write such nonsense? and where did you get all those damned hard words?' Thus taken by surprise, and smarting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... is a specimen of a Gipsy poetic effusion, which my Gipsy admirers will not consider an extraordinarily high-flown production—the outcome of nearly one million Gipsies who have wandered up and down Europe for more than three hundred years, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... well understand the elation with which I announced my success to Gladys Todd. It was magnified by the month of disappointment, and to her I felt that I owed a debt. Though I had come to look with irony on her high-flown expressions of faith in me, I realized that the fear of her equally high-flown scorn had more than once kept me from abandoning my project. With pride I enclosed in my letter my account of the funeral of Mr. Weinberg, though I refrained from ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... will always endeavor to dazzle his prince with high-flown ideas of the prerogative and honor of the crown, which the minister will make a parade of firmly maintaining. I wish as much as any man in the kingdom to see the honor of the crown maintained in a ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... custom, and said, "These formalities are not required from you; an oath would add nothing to the authority of your words." Such, Bailly presents himself to the reader of his Posthumous Memoirs. None of his assertions leave any room for indecision or doubt. He needs not high-flown expressions or protestations in order to convince; nor would an oath add authority to his words. He may be deceived, but he is never ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... was accustomed to the high-flown compliments of polite society, but she could not doubt the sincerity of this man, who had no place in a world where idle flattery was the small coin of talk. She blushed slightly and changed the subject, and as he talked, less and less haltingly, of the ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... my best endeavour to promote your happiness throughout our married life, Mary, so far as I considered it compatible with your highest welfare. I do not pretend I can enter into the high-flown and romantic feelings engendered by your reprehensible habit ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... is all very pretty and very high-flown," said the countess, with a contemptuous laugh; "but you will find a few thousand pounds a very comfortable matter in ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... by men to prevent fools from making themselves disagreeable; on which theory, laws must be confessed to have been in all ages somewhat of a failure. He seems to have been, like his master, an impudent light-hearted fellow, who took life easily enough, laughed at patriotism, and all other high-flown notions, boasted that the world was his country, and was no doubt excellent after-dinner company for the great king. Hegesias, his fellow Cyrenaic, was a man of a darker and more melancholic temperament; and while ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... could I pass the highway without relieving the distress or lightening the burden of a fellow-creature. And," continued the stranger, after a momentary pause, colouring while he spoke, and concluding in the high-flown gallantry of the day, "methinks it were sufficient reward, had I saved the whole church instead of one of its most valuable members, to receive the thanks of a lady whom I might reasonably take for one of those celestial beings ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the hardness of the life, they reasoned that it "helped toughen a youngster, and make a man of him." To them, Sara's ideas were foolish and high-flown, their notion of a "gentleman" being too often associated with city "lubbers" who came down to spy out the land—and sea—in their ridiculous knickerbockers and helmets, and who did not know a jib from a spanker, or had any idea when a sailor spoke of the "hull" of his ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... of May, a month after Danton's death, Robespierre delivered a long speech before the Convention, a speech that marks his apogee. It was a high-flown rhapsody on civic morality and purism. Voltaire and the Encyclopedists were bitterly attacked; Jean Jacques Rousseau was deified. The State should adopt his religious attitude, his universal church of nature. In that ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... I should get more money by going elsewhere. "It is for you," said he, "to think whether our names on your title-page are not worth more to you than the increased payment." This seemed to me to savour of that high-flown doctrine of the contempt of money which I have never admired. I did think much of Messrs. Longman's name, but I liked it best at the bottom of ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... fate, the paramount desire to find some sympathising sage—some guide, philosopher, and friend—was so strong and rooted in my father, that I observed, a few weeks ago, in a magazine, an original letter, written by him about this time to Dr. Vicesimus Knox, full of high-flown sentiments, reading indeed like a romance of Scudery, and entreating the learned critic to receive him in his family, and give him the advantage of his wisdom, his taste, and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... price, Sir Harry," said the lawyer. Then Sir Harry's eyes were opened, and so excellent did this mode of escape seem to him that he was ready to pay almost any price for the article. He saw it at a glance. Emily had high-flown notions, and would not yield; he feared that she would not yield, let Cousin George's delinquencies be shown to be as black as Styx. But if Cousin George could be made to give her up,—then Emily must yield; and, yielding in such manner, having received so rude a proof of her lover's unworthiness, ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... representations of dreadful eruption, and sores covering all parts of the body, are submitted to the patient's horrified inspection. Frightened by the hideous pictures before him, and at the same time soothed and charmed by the high-flown encomiums which the quack pronounces on his particular "non-mercurial mode of treatment," the patient becomes anxious to submit himself to the process. The quack is equally ready to take the case in hand, and the only stumbling-block likely to be in the way, may be the patients' inability ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... monument marks thy resting-place! No eulogistic sermon, no high-flown panegyric was ever delivered, on thy life and death! Yet that silent tear of old Isaac's outspoke a thousand eulogies! It told of all thy kindness, charity, love, angelic purity of heart, and called thee "Guardian Angel" of ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... here and there be found of considerable merit, and Cardan was evidently studious to let his ideas be presented in intelligible form, for he records that in 1535 he read through the whole of Cicero, for the sake of improving his Latin. His style, according to Naude, held a middle place between the high-flown and the pedestrian, and of all his books the De Utilitate ex Adversis Capienda, which was begun in 1557, shows the nearest approach to elegance, but even this is not free from diffuseness, the fault which Naude ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... As the high-flown language which he occasionally employed in addressing or discussing women, has originated a theory that the basis or essence of his character was romance, it may be as well to contrast what he said in soberer moods on love. He remarked to Dr. Maxwell, that "its violence and ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... least bit abashed at the presence of strangers. There was no polished veneer about the widow's hospitality. She did not pretend to be what she was not. She knew that she was poor and was not ashamed of it. She was perfectly natural, and indulged in no high-flown airs. ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... called upon, and quietly triumphant. This is almost more than mortal can achieve, and bridegrooms generally manifest some shortcomings at the awful moment. Daniel Thwaite was not successful. He was silent and almost morose. When Lady Fitzwarren congratulated him with high-flown words and a smile,—a smile that was intended to combine something of ridicule with something of civility,—he almost broke down in his attempt to answer her. "It is very good of you, my lady," said he. Then she turned her back and ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... indomitable. He resisted Cromwell till it became a question which of the two should die, and the lot was as likely to have fallen to him as to his rival. He would have murdered Elizabeth with the forms of law or without, but Elizabeth was the hope of all that he most detested. He was no dreamer, no high-flown enthusiast, but he was a man of clear eye and hard heart, who had a purpose in his life which he pursued with unflagging energy. Living as he did in revolutionary times, his hand was never slow to strike when an enemy ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... to help themselves. Ennobling as the idea was, it had been narrowed by the refusal of the gentlemen to extend the rules of chivalry beyond their own order, and they were, therefore, ready to exercise cruelty upon those who were not gentlemen, whilst proffering the most high-flown compliments to those who were. In France, too, this broad distinction of ranks told upon the military strength of the crown. The fighting force of the French king was his feudal array of armour-protected ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... rather be Mr. Falkland's miss, than the wife of a plain downright yeoman. But I shall take care of you.—Ay, this comes of indulgence. You must be taken down, miss. You must be taught the difference between high-flown notions and realities. Mayhap you may take it a little in dudgeon or so; but never mind that. Pride always wants a little smarting. If you should be brought to shame, it is I that shall bear ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... fain offer, my dear Sir, a word of sympathy with your misfortunes; but it is a tender string, and I know not how to touch it. It is easy to flourish a set of high-flown sentiments on the subjects that would give great satisfaction to—a breast quite at ease; but as ONE observes, who was very seldom mistaken in the theory of life, "The heart knoweth its own sorrows, and a ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... nothing to do," old goody Liu said, "a few of us too often come together and play this sort of game; but the answers we give are not so high-flown; yet, as I can't get out of it, I'll ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... a success at that dinner. For one thing I could speak German, and so had a pull on Blenkiron. For another I was in a good temper, and really enjoyed putting my back into my part. They talked very high-flown stuff about what they had done and were going to do, and Enver was great on Gallipoli. I remember he said that he could have destroyed the whole British Army if it hadn't been for somebody's cold feet—at which Moellendorff ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... some years ago quoted from a magazine article on American elections a sentence which said: 'A little sound common-sense often goes further with an audience of American working men than much high-flown argument. A speaker who, as he brought forward his points, hammered nails into a board, won hundreds of votes for his side at the last Presidential election.'[22] The 'sound common-sense' consisted, not, as Mr. Chesterton pretended to believe, in the presentation of the hammering as a logical argument, ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... great ladies to perform when asked by his accomplished friend Lawes: but he is already {120} the man who was later to denounce "court amours, Mix'd dance and wanton masque"; and if he writes a mask himself it will be to take the old "high-flown commonplace" of the magic power of chastity and give it an entirely new seriousness and beauty. The notion of Mr. Newbolt that there were two Miltons, one before and the other after the Civil War, and that the one was "sincerely engaged on the side of liberal manners" while ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... actors. His hopes were speedily dashed to the ground; when he finished reading the second act every actor but one had left the room, and Meyer thrust a dagger into the poet's heart by declaring that "Fiesco" was nothing but high-flown rubbish. Having, however, heard but two acts of the play, and probably stirred to compassion by Schiller's mournful countenance, the regisseur requested that the manuscript should be left with him; and the following morning the poet was compensated for the intervening night of misery, by ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Dacre took up the tale. "I've considered myself free ever since we separated, after only six weeks together. Any man would. It was nothing but a passing fancy. Heaven knows why I was fool enough to marry her, except that I had high-flown ideas of honour in those days, and I got drawn in. She never regarded it as binding, so why in thunder should I?" He spoke indignantly, as one who had the right ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... Perhaps he might have truckled down, Like other brethren of his gown. For party he would scarce have bled: I say no more—because he's dead. What writings has he left behind? I hear, they're of a different kind; A few in verse; but most in prose— Some high-flown pamphlets, I suppose;— All scribbled in the worst of times, To palliate his friend Oxford's crimes, To praise Queen Anne, nay more, defend her, As never fav'ring the Pretender; Or libels yet conceal'd from sight, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... is the "magic of bounty" and the "incomparable man," and also to have an idea that all these people have come to his house to see him.—While the Merchant examines the jewel, the first who spoke, the high-flown individual, is pacing and talking to himself near the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... something in the earnest manner of Simon which arrested the attention of the broker, in spite of the former's high-flown speech. He was satisfied that something had been done, and he was disposed ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... Saxon gentlemen, being Bastard-Royal and important to conciliate, Friedrich has in a high-flown way assigned the Schloss of Budischau for quarters, an excellent superbly magnificent mansion in the neighborhood of Trebitsch, "nothing like it to be seen except in theatres, on the Drop-scene of The ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... comrades of the office or the workshop without having a red sash, an embroidered cap, and magisterial gestures! Others will bury themselves in official papers, trying, with the best of wills, to make head or tail of them. They will indite laws and issue high-flown worded decrees that nobody will take the trouble to carry out—because revolution ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... a duke nor an archbishop, but a humble member of the lower automobiling classes, the high-flown title startled me. ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... my place will not please God, I cannot please him at all. Why then should I try, if my way of trying is of no use? Why should I try to be honest, sober, and useful, if that is not true religion?—if what God wants of me is not virtue, but a certain high-flown religiousness which I cannot feel or even understand?'—and so they grow weary in well-doing, and careless about the plain duties of morality. They become careless, likewise, about the plain duties of religion; and so they are demoralised, because they are told that justice and the holiness ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... sentiments, and no men had the sense of the ridiculous to a higher degree than the new rulers of the English country. At the same time with their chivalrous literature, they had a mocking one. They did not wait for Cervantes to begin laughing; these variable and many-sided beings sneered at high-flown sentiments and experienced them too. They sang the Song of Roland, and read with delight a romance in which the great emperor is represented strutting about before his barons, his crown on his head and his sword in his hand, asking the queen if he is not the most admirable prince in the world.[203] ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... was not peculiar to Hawaiian poetry. The Roman Senate bestowed divinity on its emperors by vote; the Hawaiian bard laureate, careering on his Pegasus, thought to accomplish the same end by piling Ossa on Pelion with high-flown phrases; and every loyal subject added his contribution to ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... the Indemnity Company which insured The owners of the mine. I pulled the wires with judge and jury, And the upper courts, to beat the claims Of the crippled, the widow and orphan, And made a fortune thereat. The bar association sang my praises In a high-flown resolution. And the floral tributes were many— But the rats devoured my heart And a snake made a nest ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... his notions are so high-flown," the colonel admitted, with evident pride in the lofty bearing of the ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... literature, and their art. Their virtues and their vices turned upon it. Hence the golden mean is eminently a Greek conception, a leading idea of the Hellenic race. The Greek hated a thing overdone, a gaudy ornament, a proud title, a fulsome compliment, a high-flown speech, a wordy peroration. Nothing too much was the inscription over the lintel of the national sanctuary at Delphi. It is the surpassing grace of Greek art of the best period, that in it there shines out the highest power, with nothing too much ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... saw the gentle cadence of the landscape—violet hills, the silver gauze of water, oliveyards all of a green mist; read the Fioretti and the dolorous ecstasies of Perugino's Sebastian, and straightway adapted the high-flown parallel worked out in detail by Giotto. Umbria for him was the Galilee of Italy, and Francis son of Bernard an avatar of Christ. But Renan was apt to allow his emotions to ride him. Another ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... writing is associated with the greater number of them. Give a clever young medical student a book about aural or dental surgery to review, and the chances are ten to one that the criticism will be little else than a high-flown grandiloquent treatise on the wonders of the creation. A regular "literary hack" will do the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... found a bit of her own blue ribbon between the faded leaves. A tremor ran through her limbs, and going to the window she placed the book upon the sill and read the words aloud in the fragrant stillness. Behind her in the dim room Dan seemed to rise as suddenly as a ghost—and that high-flown chivalry of his, which delighted in sounding phrases as in heroic virtues, was loosened from the leaves ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... Commons in searching into the disorders in the Indian administration, and all its endeavors for the reformation of the government there, without any distinction of times, or of the persons concerned, will appear from the following extract from a speech of the present Lord Chancellor. After making a high-flown panegyric on those whom the House of Commons had condemned by their resolutions, he said:—"Let us not be misled by reports from committees of another House, to which, I again repeat, I pay as much attention as I would do to the history ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... their utmost to dissuade him, but he was as infatuated as a young lover of two and twenty. Finding that these friends disapproved, he dropped away from them, and they, being bored with his egotism and high-flown ideas, were not sorry to let him do so. Of course, he said nothing about his speculations—indeed, he hardly knew that anything done in so good a cause could be called speculation. At Battersby, when his father urged him to look out for ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... Crowdy,—Crowdy, whose high-flown ideas hardly tallied with the stern realities of his life. Crowdy was the leader of those who had once held firmly by Protection. Crowdy had been staunchly true to his party since he had a party, though it had been said of him that the adventures of Crowdy in search of a party had been very ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... relative, Mulai el Hadj of Tamsloht, to whom he offered to send me with letters and an escort. Moreover, he offered an escort to see us out of the city and on the road to the coast, but I judged it better to decline both offers, and, with many high-flown compliments, left him by the entrance to his great house, and groped back through the mud to put the finishing touches ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... has been goin' about casooal, an' his air is a heap high-flown. He's been pesterin' an' irritatin' about the post-office for mighty like an hour, when all at once he crosses over to the Red Light an' squar's up to the bar. He don't invite none of us to licker—jest himse'f; which onp'liteness is shore ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... help referring, with some pain, to a speech delivered by an honourable and learned friend of mine (Sir J. Mackintosh), last night, in which he dwelt upon this subject in a manner totally unlike himself. He pronounced a high-flown eulogy upon M. Arguelles; he envied him, he said, for many things, but he envied him most for the magnanimity which he had ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... grow dangerous. High-flown romantic fancies ill-beseem Your age and wisdom. 'Tis a statesman's virtue, To guard his country's safety by what means 220 It best may be protected—come what will Of these ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of Rome and the monks of the East. The edifying example of the Anician family was soon imitated by the rest of the nobility: the Bassi, the Paullini, the Gracchi, embraced the Christian religion; and "the luminaries of the world, the venerable assembly of Catos (such are the high-flown expressions of Prudentius) were impatient to strip themselves of their pontifical garment; to cast the skin of the old serpent; to assume the snowy robes of baptismal innocence, and to humble the pride of the consular ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... functions: he, therefore, appointed or agreed upon the appointment of somebody else to act as his substitute. This was, in nine cases out of ten, the eminently unromantic cavalier servitude of fact. The high-flown, complimentary language, the profound bowing and hand-kissing of the period, combined to mystify strangers as to its real significance. Sometimes, when there was really a lover in the question, the cavalier servente must ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... sweetest colour that ever came upon a lady's cheek. And I tell myself that another grace has been added to the face which of all faces in the world is to my eyes the most beautiful." What was she to say in answer to a compliment so high-flown as this, to one from whose mouth compliments were so uncommon? She knew that he could not have so spoken without a purpose, declared at any rate to his own heart. He still held her by the arm, but did not once progress with his speech, while ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... said stiffly, "is neither the rendezvous nor the time for high-flown sentiments, especially if ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... it put as baldly as that. The alien inhabitants of Tunisia are well hated by a certain type of Frenchmen. The country has been compared to a wine-bottle that bears some high-flown label indicative of fine stuff within—the French administration—but is filled, unfortunately, with a poisonous mixture from round the corner, the Jews, Sicilians, ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... The wealthy patron held strict principles of honour which made no allowance for temptations and weaknesses; and was moreover influenced by high-flown notions of his responsibilities as a legislator (he was a member of Parliament) to the laws of his country. He appeared accordingly, and gave evidence against the prisoner; who was found guilty, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... hyperbol, cattychraysis, prolipsis, mettylipsis, superbaton, pollysyndreton, hustheronprotheron, prosodypeia and the like, in ordher that he may never be at a loss for shuitable sintiments when he comes to their high-flown passidges. For unless we thrate them Fathers liberally to a handsome allowance ov thropes and figures they'd set up heresy at onc't, ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... Don Jose's dagger plunged into my heart, not Carmen's. That sounds high-flown, but I mean it—a sudden, sick, cold sensation, as if everything was numb. Lady Ver turned round pettishly to Christopher. "What on earth is the ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... informed him that his position of Quartermaster General in the old army did not entitle him to a field command and that Lee's rank as field commander was higher, he replied in a letter which became the text of his champions. Its high-flown language and bombastic claims showed only too plainly that a consuming ambition had destroyed all sense of ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... his father's wishes for the Church. That Sydney was an affectionate and dutiful son nobody need doubt: he was always affectionate, and in his own way dutiful. But he is about the last man one can think of as likely to undertake an uncongenial profession out of high-flown dutifulness to a father who had long left him to his own resources, and who had neither influence nor prospects in the Church to offer him. The Fellowship would have kept him, as it had kept him already, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... example. This exchanges the world of sober conduct, intelligible and straightforward thinking for an unfettered dreamland, compounded of fairy beauty, flashes of mystical and intuitive understanding intermixed with claptrap magic, a high-flown commercialism and an ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... angry passions were subsiding; but I was mistaken; for, urging her warmly for the day; and that for the sake of our mutual honour, and the honour of both our families; in this high-flown and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Rationalism, which, basing itself on the facts of life, was not to be crushed by high-flown German words, the master-shoemaker showed him marked favor and often invited him to stay on to supper. Although the Beadle felt this was but the due recognition of one intellect by another, if an inferior intellect, he was at times ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... to me, my dear Mrs. Halm, that all your children have pretty high-flown ideas," he said impressively. "I can only hope that before long they will learn that in this world it is not possible for everybody to do ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... much pleased. The note from Miss Inches, over which he and Katy had laughed, but which was not shown to the rest, had prepared him for a visitor of rather high-flown ideas, but he did not like having Johnnie singled out as the subject of this kind of praise. However, he said to himself, "It doesn't matter. She means well, and jolly little Johnnie won't be harmed by a few ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... in the same way as ordinary folk in other parts of the world, except that unseemly allusions are freely admitted into general conversation in a way which would not be tolerated in a Christian country. The absurd, high-flown conversational rhapsodies in the average Anglo-Indian novel are purely imaginary. "Kim's" talk fairly represents the ordinary talk of the Indian, although he ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... idea and of the language had evidently offended him. But this is exactly where the true merit lies. Macaulay is giving the rough, blunt words with which a simple-minded soldier appeals to two comrades to help him in a deed of valour. Any high-flown sentiment would have been absolutely out of character. The lines are, I think, taken with their context, admirable ballad poetry, and have just the dramatic quality and sense which a ballad poet must have. That opinion ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... them—they please and they pass, and they may have shed kindly influence, but what are they? The life that lies before us is, in some way, too, below us, like yon vast amplitude of plain; but it must be traversed foot by foot, and laboriously travailed, without the cloudy vaporing or the high-flown meditation. And all that must be done by me, alone, with none to love me, and (which for a woman is so much worse) nobody ever to have for my own, to ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... repeat, use the word virtue in the ordinary acceptation and meaning of the term, and do not let us define it in high-flown language. Let us account as good the persons usually considered so, such as Paulus, Cato, Gallus, Scipio, and Philus. Such men as these are good enough for everyday life; and we need not trouble ourselves about those ideal characters which are nowhere ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... vividly imaginative correspondents, or—anywhere but among the Federal rank and file. Such a feeling is utterly foreign to the national character; nor have I seen a trace of it in any one of the many soldiers with whom I have spoken of the war. All the high-flown sentiment of the Times or Tribune will not prevent the Yankee private from looking at his duty in a hard, practical, business-like way; he is disposed to give his country its money's worth, and does so, as a rule, very fairly; but military ardor in the States is not exactly a consuming fire at ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... artifice, on the first pretext, the slightest reverse, all is overturned and broken up. [Footnote: The original [Greek: anechaitise] is "shakes off," or "throws off," as a horse does his rider, when he rears and tosses up his neck. It will be observed that Demosthenes is very high-flown in his language here, passing from one metaphor to another. Leland translates these words, "overthrows him, and all his greatness is dashed at once to the ground." Francis: "hath already shaken ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... to Angela, he favoured her with a tender pressure of the fingers and an elaborate and high-flown speech of welcome, both of which were inexpressibly disagreeable to her. But here Lady Bellamy intervened, and skilfully forced him into a conversation with her, in ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... to talk in high-flown, blank verse sort of a way. "Ere long!" that wus somethin' new ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... arguing, trifling plenipotentiaries of the powers had burst into gigantic laughter—literally, actual merriment, albeit of a somewhat grim character!—when they received the news of Napoleon's return. They were not laughing at Napoleon but at themselves. They had been dividing the lion's skin in high-flown phrases, which meant nothing, endeavoring to incorporate the Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount in their protocols and treaties, when they suddenly discovered that the Emperor was ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... and Sergius, and we fear lest he fly his imagination too high. It is true the period was still roseate with knighterrantry; men wore armor, and did battle behind shields; women were objects of devotion; conversation between lovers was in the style of high-flown courtesy, chary on one side, energized on the other by calls on the Saints to witness vows and declarations which no Saint, however dubious his reputation, could have listened to, much less excused; yet it were not well to overlook one or two qualifications. The usages referred to were ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... and Latin sometimes told lies; he showed us that ancient history might be related in such a manner as to furnish not only allusions to schoolboys, but important lessons to statesmen. From that love of theatrical effect and high-flown sentiment which had poisoned almost every other work on the same subject his book is perfectly free. But his passion for a theory as false, and far more ungenerous, led him substantially to violate truth ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bet, my lord," said Dashwood aloud, and in the same moment turned to mademoiselle with some high-flown compliment about the beauty of her complexion, and the dangers of going without a veil ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... was a verdict which condemned the woman to death. Those mischievous members of the community, whose topsy-turvy sympathies feel for the living criminal and forget the dead victim, attempted to save her by means of high-flown petitions and contemptible correspondence in the newspapers. But the Judge held firm; and the Home Secretary held firm. They were entirely right; and ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... come, egad, Our turn for sport, my reverend lad. And then, O'Mulligan—oh then, When mounted on our nags again, You, on your high-flown Rosinante, Bedizened out, like Show-Gallantee (Glitter great from substance scanty);— While I, Bob Fudge, Esquire, shall ride Your faithful Sancho, by your side; Then—talk of tilts and ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... until the moral effect is reached, or the description fully turned. The rhythm seems to have been much more often trochaic [1] than iambic, at least than trimeter iambic, for the tetrameter is more frequently employed. This is not to be wondered at, since even in comedy, where such high-flown cadences are out of place, the people liked to hear them, measuring excellence by stateliness of march ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... in a thoughtless manner, towards poverty, I one day received, by the penny post, a letter written in a woman's hand, containing a great many high-flown compliments, warm protestations of love, couched in a very poetical style, an earnest desire of knowing whether or not my heart was engaged, by leaving an answer at a certain place, directed to R. B., ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... wrote except for money." The doctrine is, of course, perfectly outrageous, and specially calculated to shock people who like to keep it for their private use, instead of proclaiming it in public. But it is a good expression of that huge contempt for the foppery of high-flown sentiment which, as is not uncommon with Johnson, passes into something which would be cynical if it were not half-humorous. In this case it implies also the contempt of the professional for the amateur. Johnson despised gentlemen who dabbled in ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... meek-eyed sheep lay sunning themselves upon the trampled graves, and the slow- measured sound of a bell dinged now and then as cattle browsed on the scanty herbage in this most neglected of God's Acres. Could Charles Lamb have turned from the pompous epitaphs and high-flown panegyrics of that English cemetery, to the rudely-lettered boards which here briefly told the names and ages of the sleepers in these narrow beds, he had never asked the question which now stands as a melancholy epigram on family favoritism and human frailty. Gold ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... noble and beautiful thing is mind!" and it went on in the same high-flown strain to no particular end. But the editor praised it, after having declined the verdict of the audience that she was its author; and I felt sufficiently flattered ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... stranger—this possible adventuress? Lyon looked very solemn over this proposal from his wife. He hesitated for a moment; but her large, clear, honest eyes were fixed full upon him, waiting for his reply. Could he refuse her request? Did he not owe everything to her, and to that very high-flown spirit of generosity which was not only a fault (if it were a fault) of Sybil, but a trait ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... art right, Mapela the Wise One," answered the king, kindly overlooking—or perhaps not noticing—the rather lame and impotent conclusion of the induna's high-flown speech. "Yes; perhaps thou art right," (this rather regretfully). "But there is no reason why I should not at once show myself to my wives; and, by the bones of my royal father, I will! There be those among them who of late have ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... has effectually kept his secret; the search is futile, in spite of all the "scholastic labour-lost" devoted to it. Equally tantalising are the fleeting symbolisms that suggest themselves now and then. The confession sometimes made by the poet, that high-flown compliment and not true despair is intended, prepares us to accept the symbolic application where it forces itself upon us, and to feel the presence here and there of platonic or spiritual shadowings. ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... ready, but this remembrance pricked her own conscience and paved the way to a reconciliation. Nancy had no high-flown notions. She loved money, but it must be got without palpable dishonesty; per contra, she was not going to denounce her sweetheart, but then again she would not marry him so long as he differed with her about the meaning of ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... but they are all old and unfit for field service. A French Colonel has lately been imported to fill the combined offices of War-Minister and Commander-in-Chief. This, and, indeed, the whole of the recent internal policy, leaves very little doubt of the source whence emanate these high-flown ideas. It cannot be better expressed than as a politique d'ostentation, which is, if we may compare small things with great, eminently French. The oscillation of French and Russian influence, and the amicable manner in which their ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... her beautiful mansions—the Tuileries (still unfinished), Saint Maur, Monceaux, and Chenonceaux. Also she favoured men of genius and gladly read, or had read to her, the works which they presented to her or which she knew they had written, even the high-flown invectives which they launched against her, at which she scoffed and laughed, but took no other notice of, calling the writers ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... at any rate only partially understood what she was doing. The poor child had been bitterly humiliated by the discovery that he did not love her, and felt that she was disgraced for life by her ill-judged advance. The feeling was high-flown and exaggerated no doubt, but one hardly expects to find all the cool wisdom of Ecclesiastes in a brain of seventeen. Lottie, flying from Percival's scorn as she supposed, was ready for any desperate leap. What wonder that she took one into Horace's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... rebels; these are the men whom you adopt as your friends; it is with them that you dine at la Rapee, so that the general of the national guard is obliged to gallop about for two hours to receive your orders before he can find you, and you seek in vain to conceal your embarrassment by high-flown phrases. You seek in vain to conceal this banquet given to assassins beneath the pretext of a banquet in honour of liberty. But these subterfuges are no longer available; the moment is urgent, and you will no longer deceive the sections, the army, or the eighty-three departments. Those who rule you, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... regarded as brutal tyranny the tax on tea, considered in England as a mild expedient for raising needed revenue for defense in the colonies. The men of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, meeting in September, 1774, had declared in high-flown terms that the proposed tax came from a parricide who held a dagger at their bosoms and that those who resisted him would earn praises to eternity. From nearly every colony came similar utterances, and flaming resentment at ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... of an old friend. If you were then of an observant nature, you will understand how much of the effect of any composition upon the human mind depends upon the printing, upon the placing of the points, even upon the position of the sentences on the page. A grand, high-flown, and sentimental climax ought always to conclude at the bottom of a page. It will look ridiculous, if it ends four or five lines down from the top of the next page. Somehow there is a feeling as of the difference between the night before and the next morning. It is as though ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... coat and gold buttons—to which coat were attached several orders—had been seen hovering about from chair to chair through the rooms. He attached himself specially to elderly ladies, his contemporaries. To these he repeated the identical high-flown compliments he had addressed to them thirty years before, in the court circle of the Duke of Lucca—compliments such as elderly ladies love, though conscious all the time ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... bed-clothes. I was very happy to hear this—I was very happy to hear that a man, whom I really liked so well, had got the better of a passion for a woman who I knew was utterly incapable of being to him what his romantic high-flown notions required a wife to be. "If this happy result," I said to myself, "can be rendered the more sure by ridicule, that shall not be wanting. Meanwhile, I will sue for peace, and see how it ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... to have his opportunity. The Speaker's eye is ever travelling to the accustomed spots. Mr. Turnbull rose slowly and began his oration very mildly. "There was nothing," he said, "that he admired so much as the poetic imagery and the high-flown sentiment of his right honourable friend the member for West Bromwich,"—Mr. Monk sat for West Bromwich,—"unless it were the stubborn facts and unanswered arguments of his honourable friend who had brought ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... have the ceremonious Lisbon lover Lemos, the high-flown Castilian of fearful presence and a lion's heart, however threadbare his capa[128], the starving gentleman who makes a tost[a]o ( 5d.) last a month and dines off a turnip and a crust of bread, ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... myself are acting in perfect harmony together—he is likely to be of great service both to the cause and to the Committee, and is publicly as well as personally a very valuable acquisition to our party on every account. He came up (as they all do who have not been in the country before) with some high-flown notions of the sixth form at Harrow or Eton, &c.; but Col. Napier and I set him to rights on those points, which is absolutely necessary to prevent disgust, or perhaps return; but now we can set our shoulders soberly to the wheel, without quarrelling with the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... well known that Malachi had an undying hatred for words of four syllables and over, and the use of them was always sufficient to forfeit any good opinions he might have previously entertained concerning the user. "I hate them high-flown words," he would say—"I got a book at home that I could get them out of if I wanted them; but I don't." The book referred to was a very dilapidated dictionary. Malachi's hatred for high-flown words was only ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... Heaven knows what—to legalise gambling for existence to a people who delight in high play, and yet not involve us in a civil war—was a grand policy, Kearney, a very grand policy. Not that I expect a young, ardent spirit like yourself, fresh from college ambitions and high-flown hopes, will ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... felt themselves a part of the moving scene. Perhaps the part taken by their own small force was seen out of perspective; but with all due discount for the patriotic exaggeration of Canadian newspaper correspondents and for the generosity of Lord Roberts's high-flown praise, the people of Canada believed that they had good reason to feel more than proud of their representatives on the veldts of Africa. After Zand River and Doornkop, Paardeberg and Mafeking, it was plain that the Canadian soldier could hold his own on the ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... extreme literal-mindedness of Alice, and the exaggerated imitation of human beings: a really moral person must have balance as well as sympathy, else he sees things out of proportion. These examples make evident that we are not to seek for anything very patently high-flown in the stories for children; it is life in all its phases that gives the material, but it must be true life: not false or sentimental or trivial life: this will rule out the "pretty" stories for children written by trivial people in teachers' papers, or the pseudo-nature ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... what one does not learn from books," the lad said. "At any rate, not from such books as I have been working at. I could do a high-flown sentence, and offer to kiss your hand and to declare that all I have is at your disposal. But if I wanted to say, 'When are we going to halt for dinner? I am feeling very peckish,' I should ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... the land operations. Stockton, however, claimed to hold supreme land command by instructions from Commodore Sloat already quoted. Through the internal evidence of Stockton's letters and proclamations, it seems he was a trifle inclined to be bombastic and high-flown, to usurp authority, and perhaps to consider himself and his operations of more importance than they actually were. However, he was an officer disciplined and trained to obedience, and his absurd contention is not in character. ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... the unfamiliar contours, that were most apparent, that seemed to thrust upon his consciousness the city's gigantic, self-centered indifference. Yet it was just that quality that he had loved most in London. She had let him alone. She had been—he recalled the high-flown phrase of his youth—the supremely indifferent friend! Perhaps, he thought to himself, when one is fifty, one cares less to be "let alone"; less for indifference as the supreme attribute ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... all went well, and the President, who accompanied the commando in person, succeeded in reducing a mountain stronghold, which, in his high-flown way, he called a "glorious victory" ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... deeply gratified an old soldier to-night by describing scenes that carry me back to the grand era of my life. I believe I was born to be a soldier; and my old campaigns stand out in memory like sun-lighted mountain-tops. Forgive such high-flown talk—I know it's not like me—but I've had to-night some of my old battle excitement. I never thought to feel it again. We'll hear the rest of your story to-morrow. I outrank you all, by age at least; and I ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... little book is written with admirable good taste and judgment, and with notable self-restraint. It does not weary the reader with critical discursiveness, nor with attempts to search out high-flown meanings and recondite oracles in the plain 'yea' and 'nay' of life. It is a graceful and unpretentious little biography, and tells all that need be told concerning one of the greatest writers of the time. It is a deeply interesting if not fascinating ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... men," she repeated. "It would seem that you have somehow blundered through long years, preserving always the ignorance of a child, and the blindness of a child. I cannot understand how this is possible; nor can I keep from smiling at your high-flown notions; and yet,—I ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... understand, is the last time we meet here; but I have a long score to demand payment of from you. You have loved to show your superiority in school over me and others older and better than yourself; I saw your supercilious looks at me as you spouted your high-flown declamation to-day; ay, and I caught expressions in it which you may live to rue, and that very soon. Before you leave us, I must have my revenge. If you are worthy of your name let us fairly contend in more manly strife than that ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools |
