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Overtop   Listen
verb
Overtop  v. t.  (past & past part. overtopped; pres. part. overtopping)  
1.
To rise above the top of; to exceed in height; to tower above. "To o'ertop old Pelion."
2.
To go beyond; to transcend; to transgress. "If kings presume to overtop the law by which they reign,... they are by law to be reduced into order."
3.
To make of less importance, or throw into the background, by superior excellence; to dwarf; to obscure.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Overtop" Quotes from Famous Books



... rotundifolia,) and Dioscorea villosa, the Climbing Rose, (Rosa setigera,) Celastrus scandens, remarkable for its beautiful red fruits, Clematis Virginiana, Polygonum, Convolvulus, and other vines, these weedy herbs attempt to overtop the bushes." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... 244[obs3]; batophobia[obs3]. satellite, spy-in-the-sky. V. be high &c. adj.; tower, soar, command; hover, hover over, fly over;orbit, be in orbit; cap, culminate; overhang, hang over, impend, beetle, bestride, ride, mount; perch, surmount; cover &c. 223; overtop &c. (be superior) 33; stand on tiptoe. become high &c. adj.; grow higher, grow taller; upgrow[obs3]; rise &c. (ascend) 305;send into orbit. render high &c. adj.; heighten &c. (elevate) 307. Adj. high, elevated, eminent, exalted, lofty, tall; gigantic &c. (big) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... The river is still further swollen by the melting of the snow on the Himalaya, and now comes swirling along in dark and angry mood, rising higher and higher in its banks, eating into them, and threatening to overtop them and carry death and destruction far and wide. Men no longer go down to meet it. They shrink back from it. They uneasily watch it till the fulness of its strength is spent and it has returned to its normal ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... Shall I see them presently? Will they crush me with their reproaches? And—have my nerves broken down?—Is it fancy, or does that girl's pale face, with warning in her eyes, float between me and the wall? Well, I will drink to her, for her mind could even overtop my own. She was, at least, my equal, and I have driven her mad! ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... was then alive, and as we believe all his three Sons were so too, they were able to have inform'd them how absurd it was to suppose either the one or the other (viz.) (1.) that they could build up to Heaven, or (2.) that they could build firm enough to resist, or high enough to overtop the Waters, supposing such another Flood should happen; I would rather think it was only that they intended to build a most glorious and magnificent City, where they might all inhabit together; and that this Tower was to be built for Ornament and also for Strength, or ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... emotions utterly unknown and foreign to the followers of Buddhism in Ceylon. Yet, strange to tell, under all the icy coldness of this barren system there burns below the unextinguished fires of another and a darker superstition, whose flames overtop the icy summits of the Buddhist philosophy, and excite a deeper and more reverential awe in the imagination of the Singhalese. As the Hindus in process of time superadded to their exalted conceptions of Brahma, and the benevolent attributes of Vishnu, their dismal dreams and apprehensions, which ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... woman!" I said, "arise! I slay thee not! Who am I, that I should judge thy crime, that, with mine own, doth overtop all earthly judgment?" ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... us that when the cold of the Glacial Age was at its maximum glaciers streamed down from all the mountains of Scotland, Wales, and Northern England; that the ice was thick enough to overtop all the smaller hills, and on the plains it united in one great sea of ice some thousands of feet in thickness, that it stretched as far south as the latitude of London, England. But that to the west the ice streamed out across, the Irish Sea, the islands to the west of Scotland, ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... the tact with which it invariably seized it, and through the genius with which it always acted on it, the Circumlocution Office had risen to overtop all the public departments; and the public condition had risen to ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... the impression Aeschylus leaves on the minds of those who know him. They bear testimony to the fact that, however grand his style—like a Milton Carlylized in poetry—thought still seems to overtop it and to be struggling for expression through a ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... whole sea is there and beyond it, so now and then there comes a man head and shoulders above his fellow-men, showing that Nature has not lost her ideal, and after a while even the average man will overtop the highest wave of manhood ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... named differed considerably. The height now fixed for Mount Mitchell is 6711; that of Mount Washington is 6285. There are twelve peaks in this range higher than Mount Washington, and if we add those in the Great Smoky Mountains which overtop it, there are some twenty in this State higher than the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... framed in words. Below, all their earthward-looking branches are sapless and shattered, splintered by the weight of many winters' snows; above, they are still green and full of life, but their summits overtop all the deciduous trees around them, and in their companionship with heaven they are alone. On these the lightning loves to fall. One such Mr. Bernard saw,—or rather, what had been one such; for the bolt had torn the tree like an explosion from within, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... American merchant marine is such as to call for immediate remedial action by the Congress. It is discreditable to us as a Nation that our merchant marine should be utterly insignificant in comparison to that of other nations which we overtop in other forms of business. We should not longer submit to conditions under which only a trifling portion of our great commerce is carried in our own ships. To remedy this state of things would not .merely serve to build ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... get hold of one. Ordinarily, the bogey man has a bow with the arrow strung. Occasionally a farmer seeks to scare birds by means of clappers which he places in the hands of a child or an old man who sits in a rough shelter raised high enough to overtop the rice. Now and then there is a clapper connected with a string to the farm-house. I have also seen a row of bamboos carried across a paddy field with a square piece of wood hanging loosely against each one. A rope connecting all the bamboos with ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... the substances that are burning those ninety millions of miles away, in order to send down that ray of light to our earth. I have untangled the mysteries of the heavens, and find these only aggregations of matter like those of which my body is composed; but I deal with all these and overtop them, speeding with my thought with the rapidity that leaves the lightning behind. And I know that, because I can think God and can trace his thoughts after him as he goes through his creative processes, so I am more than ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... it well argued from one calamity, that we ought not to prevent another? Nor is Aristotle so good a commonwealths man for deriding the invention of Phaleas as in recollecting himself, where he says that democracies, when a less part of their citizens overtop the rest in wealth, degenerate into oligarchies and principalities; and, which comes nearer to the present purpose, that the greater part of the nobility of Tarentum coming accidentally to be ruined, the government of the few came by consequence to be ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... remarkable, not only for its frank statement of the terms on which England and the Continent might have peace, but also because it discloses the rank undergrowth of pride and ambition that is beginning to overtop his reasoning faculties. Even before he has heard the news of Moreau's great victory of Hohenlinden, he equates the military strength of France with that of the rest of Europe: nay, he claims without a shadow of doubt ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... awaited the result with confidence would not be at all true. Quite the contrary. Fear and trembling were far more the characteristics of my mind in that hour. Had I been allowed more time to build my cairn—time to have made it high enough to overtop the waves, and firm enough to resist them, I should have felt less apprehension. I had no fear that the signal-staff would give way. It had been well proved, for there had it stood defying the storm as long as I could remember. It was my newly-raised cairn that I dreaded, both its height and its ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... of the Law within man strive to bring forth themselves in writing to beget numbers of bodies on their sides. That power which begets the bigger number always rules as King or Lord in the creature and in the Creation, till the other side overtop him: even as light and darkness strive in day and night to succeed each other. Or as it is said—"The strong man armed keeps the heart of man till a stronger than he came ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens

... sound, than the glittering serpent raised his head out of the cave and uttered a fearful hiss. The vessels fell from their hands, the blood left their cheeks, they trembled in every limb. The serpent, twisting his scaly body in a huge coil, raised his head so as to overtop the tallest trees, and while the Tyrians from terror could neither fight nor fly, slew some with his fangs, others in his folds, and ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... He sets such bounds to the greatest mountains, that ye see they fall not upon the vallies, albeit they overtop them. The Lord hath set bounds to the great kings in the world which they could not pass, when they have set themselves against the Lord's people. We may see an example of this in Sennacherib. "Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... out her hands for silence, but the tumult only grew. 'Just a moment. I want to tell you men—here's a friend of yours—he's a new-comer, but he looks just your kind! Give him a hearing.' She strained her voice to overtop the ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... ever painted with that power and made so poetic?) detach themselves and live with a personal life. Two of the sisters stand hand in hand at the back, in the delightful, the almost equal, company of a pair of immensely tall emblazoned jars, which overtop them and seem also to partake of the life of the picture; the splendid porcelain and the aprons of the children shine together, while a mirror in the brown depth behind them catches the light. Another little girl presents herself, with abundant tresses and slim ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... on English lips, the name of Voltaire. No one would pretend that the multiform energy of this giant of literature did not take some unseemly directions and several unlovely shapes. But the qualities of Voltaire must, in the eyes of any unbiassed observer, vastly overtop his defects. If, however, we wish to see Voltaire at his best, we must contemplate him in relation to our soldier-philosopher. As soon as his health had recovered a little from the horror of the Bohemian campaign, ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... not sufficiently a thoroughfare to possess one of those monstrosities, a modern American tavern, or a structure whose roof should overtop that of all its neighbours. Still its inns were of respectable size, well piazzaed, to use a word of our own invention, and ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... this case, of the spout variety, being some of those erections of a superstitious age which were so frequently added to a mediaeval building; though whether as a mere decoration, or with greater significance, authorities do not seem to agree. The two uncompleted square towers overtop all, pierced by the two great lancets, which, with respect to mere proportions, are unusual ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... safety of all this war-ravaged country—Michael Strogoff felt within himself a fierce desire to dash on across the steppe, to accomplish the distance which separated him from Irkutsk as the crow would fly it, to be an eagle that he might overtop all obstacles, to be a hurricane that he might sweep through the air at a hundred versts an hour, and to be at last face to face with the Grand Duke, and to exclaim: "Your highness, from ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... her group when the wit of Aristophanes sought to overtop the stately lines of AEschylus; Praxiteles outdid Ictinus; and wayside words uttered by Socrates were ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... he, "I am fond of good horses; and, as I only keep a pair, I have the best. There is a certain degree of pretension in four horses, I do not much like—it appears as if you wished to overtop ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... a sad Reception from a Conquest, And puts an awful Gloom upon our Joy; I fear his Grief will overtop his Reason; A Lover weeps with more than common Pain. Nor flows his greatest Sorrow at his Eyes: His Grief is inward, and his Heart sheds Tears, And in his Soul he feels the pointed Woe, When he beholds the ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers

... TRIVMPHVS. If you take the pains to pick the Figures out of the several Words, and range them in their proper Order, you will find they amount to MDCXVVVII, or 1627, the Year in which the Medal was stamped: For as some of the Letters distinguish themselves from the rest, and overtop their Fellows, they are to be considered in a double Capacity, both as Letters and as Figures. Your laborious German Wits will turn over a whole Dictionary for one of these ingenious Devices. A Man would think they were searching after an apt classical Term, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... being by a word in her life, but that, that, sir, seems to be where you have missed it. Now look here," he went on, kindling in spite of himself, "I respect any man who has grounds—discoverable grounds—for respecting himself, and if you are a man, then 'sir' won't overtop you any." ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... for so it ought to be: and the "stock" company that plays its parts plays them well. The father is perhaps rather excessively foolish and unnatural, but then he almost had to be. The wicked and ugly stepmother tops, but does not overtop, her part, and her punishment is not commonplace. Gracieuse herself deserves her name, not only "by her comely face and by her fair bodie," but by her good but not oppressive wits, and her amiable but not faultless disposition. She ought not to have looked into the box; ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... affront your adversary a second time than to offend yourself by giving him so unmanly a satisfaction. You have braved him in your heat and anger, and you would flatter and appease him in your cooler and better sense; and by that means lay yourself lower and at his feet, whom before you pretended to overtop. I do not find anything a gentleman can say so vicious in him as unsaying what he has said is infamous, when to unsay it is authoritatively extracted from him; forasmuch as obstinacy is more excusable in a man of honour than pusillanimity. Passions are as easy for me to ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... garrulous gourd As o'er the palm tree's crest it poured Its spreading leaves and tendrils fine, And hung a-bloom in the morning shine. "A hundred years," the palm tree sighed.— "And I," the saucy gourd replied, "Am at the most a hundred hours, And overtop ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church

... and pleasures of life and one of the chief means of training the higher side of us. Unless His method changes we may surely hope that He will do something similar hereafter, for love is the plant that must overtop all others in the ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth

... steady onward movement. Prejudice builds its solid breakwaters; ignorance, inability, clumsiness, and awkwardness raise such obstacles as they can; but the delay of a century is but a moment. Slowly and surely the waters rise till they sweep away all obstacles, overtop all barriers, and plunge forward again with ever accelerating force. The record of iron is at once a record of our glory and of our humiliation,—a record of marvellous, inborn, God-given genius, reaching forth in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... to look out the spot for our house, we had to get a surveyor to go before us and cut a path through the dense underbrush that was laced together in a general network of boughs and leaves, and grew so high as to overtop our heads. Where the house stands, four or five great old oaks and chestnuts had to be cut away to let it in; and now it stands on the bank of the river, the edges of which are still overhung with old forest-trees, chestnuts and oaks, which look at ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... this little plant which should spring up like the poppies in the wheat, this plant which has never been seen growing higher than watercress, but which should overtop the oaks, this undiscoverable plant, I know where ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... tables, which stretch to the horizon, where appear, in a luminous haze, staircases placed one above another, successions of archways, colossi, towers; and, in the background, an unoccupied wing of the palace, which cedars overtop, making blacker masses ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... limit was not perceptible, and then spread over a considerable space, comparatively with the inclosures in its vicinity, until it reached the village. It was surrounded by high stone walls, which every now and then the dark spiral forms of a cypress or a cedar would overtop, and in the more distant and elevated part rose a tall palm tree, bending its graceful and languid head, on which the sunbeam glittered. It was the first palm that Tancred had ever seen, and his heart throbbed as he beheld ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... walls, built of alternate layers of stone and timber, were forty feet in thickness, and could neither be burnt nor driven in with the ram. The town could be taken only with the help of an agger—a bank of turf and fagots raised against the wall of sufficient height to overtop the fortifications. The weather was cold and wet, but the legions worked with such a will that in twenty-five days they had raised their bank at last, a hundred yards in width and eighty feet high. As the work drew near its end Caesar himself lay out all night ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... was the great festival which the Grand Constable gave with the king's permission in the king's own rose garden, the magnificent mascarado in the Italian manner, to which all who were associated with the court were summoned. This revelry which began at sunset was intended to overtop all possible courtly ceremonials in the splendour of its equipment, the lavishness of its display, the richness and profusion ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... Caius, who forthwith speaks and writes to no other end than to vex and put down Cneius, and give him pain. Each for his part strives his utmost to find out faults in his neighbor and to put him in the pillory, particularly if his antagonist is held the greater man, or is likely to overtop him. Listen to the girls at the well, to the women at the spindle; no one is sure of applause who cannot tell some evil of the other men or women. Who cares to listen to his neighbor's praises? The man who hears that his brother is happy at once envies ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... The green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and those produced during each former year may represent the long succession of extinct species. At each period of growth all the growing twigs have tried to branch out on all sides, and to overtop and kill the surrounding twigs and branches, in the same manner as species and groups of species have tried to overmaster other species in the great battle for life. The limbs divided into great branches, and these into lesser and lesser branches, were themselves ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... of the gates of Rome you have generally half-an-hour's progress through winding lanes, many of which are hardly less charming than the open meadows. On foot the walls and high hedges would vex you and spoil your walk; but in the saddle you generally overtop them, to an endless peopling of the minor vision. Yet a Roman wall in the springtime is for that matter almost as interesting as anything it conceals. Crumbling grain by grain, coloured and mottled to a hundred ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... the garden was not so pretty as it appeared from the street, and the doctor made rueful allusions to convents and prisons, and was not half satisfied to leave his dear little Bessie there. The morning sun had gone off the grass. The walls were immensely lofty—the tallest trees did not overtop them. There was a weedy, weak fountain, a damp grotto, and two shrines with white images of the Blessed Mary ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... soon as he gets an idea of whither he is being led, how thankful he will be for every pang that teaches him restraint, and purifies; while we—we shall suffer blind wrench after wrench, stung into feeling at any cost, and not till we painfully overtop the barrier shall we guess whither ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson

... extent, there is an exhilarating air and a rich herbage on which browse countless herds of cattle, horses, and flocks of sheep. The grass grows tall, and miles upon miles of rich scarlet, white, or yellow flowers mingle with or overtop it. Beds of thistles, in which the cattle completely hide themselves, stretch away for leagues and leagues, and present an almost unbroken sheet of purple flowers. So vast are these thistle- beds that a day's ride through them only leaves the traveller with the same purple forest stretching away ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... Mr. Kirkton that he followed the hounds on horseback until he was eighty, and from that period to one hundred he regularly attended the unkennelling of the fox in his single chair. Scott's "Dandy Dinmont" could scarcely overtop that. No one can read the "Annals of Yorkshire" without being struck with the number of persons who at their death left bequests to the poor, widows getting a ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman

... of life around us—of common life—of everyday events, and the common scenes which Nature has prepared on every side, are full of interest, full of means of gratifying a taste formed or cultivated to rational enjoyment. The Hymmalayen mountains may overtop the Andes, and the Amazon bear more water to the sea than the Susquehanna, but it follows not thence that the combination of scenery—points of beauty to be associated with the eye—are less attractive in the latter than ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... Regional or General Reserve." Vall told him. "This thing's going to have overtop priority till ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper

... extent and population, so that it had far more voters paying 10 pounds rent than any of the other towns. In Auldbiggin and Plainstanes parties were so equal that no majority on either side could be reckoned on, but the Whig majority in Ladykirk was expected to overtop the Tory majority in the two first towns by as much as would secure Hogarth's return. The Honourable Mr. Fortescue was again to be put up for the Tory interest, for though he had not distinguished himself last parliament, he was a perfectly safe party man, and connected by marriage, ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... mental quality. That monstrous braggadocio which Dickens properly satirized in Martin Chuzzlewit was partly, of course, the product of provincial ignorance. Doubtless there were, and there are still, plenty of Pograms who are convinced that Henry Clay and Daniel Webster overtop all the intellectual giants of the Old World. But that youthful bragging, and perhaps some of the later bragging as well, has its social side. It is a perverted idealism. It springs from group loyalty, from sectional fidelity. The settlement of "Eden" ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... head, as far as they are able to reach, causing the tree to assume a grotesque hour-glass shape, flat on the under part of the head, with a cone of green herbage at the ground. Sometimes pastures are full of little hummocks of trees that have not yet been able to overtop the grazers. ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey

... with mansanita underwood, a graceful and beautiful shrub. The trees and shrubbery, however, are not so thickly planted as to intercept the view, and the ground undulates so much that occasionally we overtop them, and obtain a glimpse of the wide vale before us. Over the whole landscape there is a golden sunny haze, that enriches while it softens every object, and the balmy atmosphere is laden with the sweet perfume called forth ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... continent or on an island; whether inhabited or not inhabited; whether in danger of wild beasts or not. There was a hill not above a mile from me, which rose up very steep and high, and which seemed to overtop some other hills, which lay as in a ridge from it northward. I took out one of the fowling-pieces, and one of the pistols, and a horn of powder; and thus armed, I travelled for discovery up to the top of that ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... you take the pains to pick the figures out of the several words, and range them in their proper order, you will find they amount to MDCXVVVII, or 1627, the year in which the medal was stamped: for as some of the letters distinguish themselves from the rest, and overtop their fellows, they are to be considered in a double capacity, both as letters and as figures. Your laborious German wits will turn over a whole dictionary for one of these ingenious devices. A man would think they were searching ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... thickness may have been something like this amount. So deep was it that, although almost all the people of these towns survived, it did not seem to them worth while to undertake to excavate their dwelling places. At Pompeii the covering did not overtop the higher of the low houses. An amount of labour which may be estimated at not over one thirtieth of the value, or at least the cost which had been incurred in building the city, would have restored it to ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... existing species; and those produced during each former year may represent the long succession of extinct species. At each period of growth all the growing twigs have tried to branch out on all sides, and overtop and kill the surrounding twigs and branches, in the same manner as species and groups of species have tried to overmaster other species in the great battle for life. The limbs divided into great branches, and these into lesser and lesser branches, were themselves once, when the tree ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... the Pyrenees, a glorious crimson sky tipping the distant peaks with pale pink, and deepening the purple shadows on the nearer mountains—the mountains that inclose and overtop Margotte Nevaire's pretty home. I had come for a quiet month to this picturesque, secluded village, and though my month was over, I was tempted to linger day after day, for the sake of the sunshine and the mountains, and not least, perhaps, for the sake of these two peasant girls, ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... thy heart be careful that thou go the right way to overpass this height, that thou mayest not miss of the delectable plains, and the pleasures that are above. Now, there is nothing so high, as to overtop this height; but Jacob's ladder, and that can do it: that ladder, when the foot thereof doth stand upon the earth, reacheth with its top to the gate of heaven. This is the ladder by which angels ascend thither: and this is the ladder by which thou mayest ascend thither. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... stone. A large and solid bridge which has been built against it by the states of Languedoc, appears by comparison to shrink into insignificance, and shelter itself behind the old Roman arches, the lower tier of which, eleven in number, overtop it in height by about three-fifths. The span of the largest arch is about 78 feet; of the other ten, 66 each: and they are surmounted by a row of thirty-five smaller arches. With the exception of two or three of these ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... usually rendered conspicuous by the absence of small vegetation, but Nelson writes that in the vicinity of Gallego, Chihuahua, they can be readily distinguished at a distance because of a growth of weeds and small bushes over their summits, which overtop the grass. In the vicinity of Albuquerque, N. Mex., Bailey reports (and this was recently confirmed by Vorhies) that the mounds about the holes of spectabilis are often hardly noticeable. Hollister writes that in ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor

... of a limb to assume the leadership is suppressed. A tree grown upon this principle has the faculty of growing a great many laterals, necessitating an annual pruning. As far as possible we prune to prevent laterals from becoming too numerous, from growing so as to overtop or shade lower limbs, to let in light and sunshine, so as to get the maximum amount of color on the fruit and in a measure to help in thinning the fruit. Having in view the idea of an annual crop instead of ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... its direction causing it to go down into the funnel-shaped outer casing of the stack. Here, the heavy embers and cinders are collected and prevented from directly discharging into the countryside as dangerous firebrands. Wire netting is stretched overtop of the deflecting cone to catch the lighter, more volatile embers which may defy the action of the cone. The term "bonnet stack" results from the fact that this netting is similar in shape to a lady's bonnet. The cinders thus accumulated ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White

... Hollyhocks are charming. They represent a kind of guard for the garden. Stand this hollyhock phalanx up against a wall like naughty boys, close to the house, or by an old fence. They are so tall that they must be in the background. They grace it. Otherwise they would overtop and shadow the other garden plants. If there is an old ash pile, an old dump or anything else unsightly, plant something tall before it. Hollyhocks would not do for this, since their foliage is too scanty. Castor beans are just the thing, however; and sunflowers, the old giant ones, are good, too. ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw

... however, as she stands there in the morning sunshine. She is looking back upon the enclosure where the white stones overtop the bluebells. They are headstones, and mark the cemetery where Miss Sally, not ordinarily given to sentiment, has a fancy for interring her ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... from whence it proceeds? But, on the other hand, it has been observed, that among mere enthusiastick and traditional Believers, of the Doctrine of Election, their Hypocrisy, Deceit and Dissimulation has overtop'd that of all the World besides, even beyond what human Nature could be thought capable of, in its most wicked and corrupt State; in short, they seem to have made the Deceit of Jacob, and all other parallel Places of Scripture, that furnish ...
— Free and Impartial Thoughts, on the Sovereignty of God, The Doctrines of Election, Reprobation, and Original Sin: Humbly Addressed To all who Believe and Profess those DOCTRINES. • Richard Finch

... has cost us Joe! He is promoted from the farm to the mansion-house, two miles off; there he cleans shoes, rubs knives, and runs on errands, and is, as his mother expresses it, 'a sort of 'prentice to the footman.' I should not wonder if Joe, some day or other, should overtop the footman, and rise to be butler; and his splendid prospects must be our consolation for the loss of this great favourite. In the meantime ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... creeping, spreading plant, like most plants that grow on the close-cropped sheep-walks, whose safety lies in their power to root themselves and live very close to the surface, yet must ever strive to lift its flowers into the unobstructed light and air and to overtop or get away from its crowding neighbours. On one side of the road, where the turf had been cut by the spade in a sharp line, the plant had found a rare opportunity to get space and light and had thrust out such a multitude ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... them, on the banks of the Charles, is as picturesque a ruin as time, fire and neglect are able to achieve in a hundred years. The walls of heavy blocks of stone, roofless and broken in outline, are still standing. Great trees have grown up within them and now overtop them. Here and there a poplar leans forth from a broken window casement, leaving scant room for the ghosts of ancient spinners and weavers to peer into the outer world at midnight. From a distance it resembles a green, enclosed orchard. Decay ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee

... and beauty of the tower is, if possible, heightened by the Great Cataract, in conjunction with which it is almost invariably seen. The falling waters vie with the Mountain Supporter in breadth, and overtop it by the height from which they are hurled; the one firm, stately, and magnificent in its solidity and repose, the other vapoury and grand in its gracefulness and movement; both inconceivably beautiful; ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... and a little man. Why, you'd overtop him more than half a head, Mr. Mason, but he has a great soul for battle. He's the kind that will strike and strike, and keep on striking, and that's the ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler

... what then became the lower chapel. Much battered during the sieges of the palace, it was restored and reconsecrated in 1411 and a century later the Gothic upper apse was added, whose external walls overtop the old nave. In consequence of these modifications the lower chapel has a Gothic nave and a Romanesque apse, whereas the upper chapel has a Gothic apse and a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... Point of Honduras," the superintendent of which was a native youth who had spent a year or two at Chapultepec. Against it lean barefooted, anemic "soldiers" in misfit overalls, armed with musket and bayonet that overtop them in height. The main post-office of the republic is an ancient adobe hovel, in the cobwebbed recesses of which squat a few stupid fellows waiting for the mule-back mail-train to arrive that they may lock up in preparation for beginning to look over the correspondence manana. It is ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... surface-scratchings of the heart soil there had sprung up a mixed growth in which the tares of self-righteousness began presently to overtop the good grain of humility. One must not be too exacting. If the world were not all good, neither was it all bad; at all events, it was the part of wisdom to make the magnanimous best of it, and to be thankful that the day-star of reason had at last arisen ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... eccentricities, however, in this respect. Specimens have been found quite black, as also mixed and pure white. The fur is a soft, thick down, resembling that of the beaver, but not quite so fine. There are long rigid hairs, red-coloured, that overtop the fur; and these are also sparely ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... path enjoying the contrast with the heat, glare, and noise of the day. The central one was a tall, slender lady, with a light shawl hung round her shoulders. On one side was a youth who had begun to overtop her, on the other a girl of shorter and sturdier mould, who only reached up ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... months old, the planter from this period must not be too fond of cleaning the plantation from grass and herbage, because they keep the ground cool; but all creeping, climbing plants, and such weeds as grow high enough to overtop the cacao, should be destroyed.' He gives the distance from tree to tree at 18 feet. I have long since been of opinion that it is of less consequence to clean the ground beneath the trees than to attend ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... spoke it was with a firm, natural, unshaken accent. "Why, yes, I think it very likely that I am being fooled all the time. But I don't think it matters the least bit in the world beside the fact that I love you. That's big enough to overtop everything else." ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... whim or chance, but has been evolved as the result of long experience of local requirements and conditions, and in every case I think it may be taken that the native boat is the one most suited to the conditions under which it is employed. So on the Nile these lofty sails are designed to overtop the high banks and buildings, and so catch the breeze which would otherwise be intercepted. The build of the boats also is peculiar; they are very wide and flat bottomed, and the rudders are unusually large, so as to enable them to turn quickly in the narrow ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly

... middle sea, Where broadest spread the waters and the line Sinks deepest, while no eye beholds thy work, Creator! thou dost teach the coral-worm To lay his mighty reefs. From age to age, He builds beneath the waters, till, at last, His bulwarks overtop the brine, and check The long wave rolling from the southern pole To break upon Japan. Thou bidd'st the fires, That smoulder under ocean, heave on high The new-made mountains, and uplift their peaks, A place of refuge for the storm-driven bird. The birds and wafting billows plant the rifts ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... published in the time of {567} Queen Elizabeth. I fear his memory deceived him, or why should a man of his sound learning afterwards incline to vail bonnet to the dogmatist Warburton? whose knowledge of dogs, by the way, must have been marvellously small, or he could never have imagined them to overtop one another in a horizontal course. Overrun, overshoot, overslip, are terms in hunting, overtop never; except perchance in the vocabulary of the wild huntsman of the Alps. Trash occurs as a verb in the sense above given, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various

... mayest thou be astonished—to the bride it came, even in the joy of the bridal hour (more animated). I am a woman, but I feel the nobleness of my blood. I cannot bear to see these proud Dorias thus overtop our family. The good old Andreas—it is a pleasure to esteem him. He may indeed, unenvied, bear the ducal dignity; but Gianettino is his nephew—his heir—and Gianettino has a proud and wicked heart. Genoa trembles before him, and Fiesco (much ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... the two rivers would be one. So instead of going to school, all the boys had gone to look, and the master followed them. Nor was the fear without foundation; for the stream was still rising, and a foot more would overtop the ground between ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... the torture of tomorrow! Oh, Agnes, the agony of success to a nervous, sensitive man; the dismal apprehension that fills his life and gives each victory a voice to cry out "Hear, hear! Bravo, bravo, bravo! But this is to be your last—you'll never overtop it!" Ha, yes! I soon found out the weak spot in my armour—the need of constant encouragement, constant reminder of my powers; [taking her hand] the need of that subtle sympathy which a sacrificing, unselfish woman alone possesses the secret of. [Rising.] Well, my very weakness might have been ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero

... and ever my creed that it is a man's best business to be in love as much and as often as he can, and I answered him according to my fancy. "I should scorn myself if I did not overtop every conceited fancy that lover has ever sighed or ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... mountains consist of a number of ranges; they extend 1,500 miles east and west, and are the sources of the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra. The highest is Mount Everest, the loftiest mountain in the world, 29,002 feet; and I could mention several other peaks which overtop any of the Andes. Himalaya means 'the abode of snow,' and the foot-hills are the resorts of the wealthy to obtain a cool climate in ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... so delightfully unfolded by Mr. ANDREWS, is one that must ere long overtop and engulf all others, seeing that it is, of itself, the science which embodies and contains all. It teaches that the universe exists in time and space—a fact never discovered till now—or that, rather, it ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various

... gorse-bush. The days varied: rain, the penalty for living near mountains, often swept down the valley, bringing glorious cloud-effects, and sending the stream swirling over its boulders with a boom of myriad voices. Sometimes the sudden swelling of its tributaries made the Craigwen River overtop its banks, flooding the low-lying meadows till, augmented by the high tide, its waters filled the valley from end to end like a lake. This occasional flooding of the marsh was good for the fields, and ensured a rich ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... pluck up gaiety of spirit, and whisper to myself, 'True, but it may be an enormous gain.' To get the left bank of the Rhine is a trifle; but to check in our next neighbour a growth which a few years hence would overtop us,—that is no trifle. And, be the gain worth the hazard or not, could the Emperor, could any Government likely to hold its own for a week, have declined to take the chance ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... close together but have ample space around them, and are all picturesquely placed along broad streets and lanes. In front of the large bright windows of many of the houses, beyond the kitchen gardens, dark green poplars and acacias with their delicate pale verdure and scented white blossoms overtop the houses, and beside them grow flaunting yellow sunflowers, creepers, and grape vines. In the broad open square are three shops where drapery, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, locust beans and gingerbreads are sold; and surrounded by a tall fence, loftier ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy

... them. Self-interest and self-preservation furnish motives enough to excite our exertions.' * * 'By thus repressing the rapid increase of blacks, the white population would be enabled to reach and soon overtop them. The consequence would be security.'—[African Repository, vol. iv. pp. ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... hills. Few of them are much over 150 feet high, large as they often loom in the deceiving light of the Soudan. Many are but 50 feet in height, and there are regular, peaky, and prettily-shaped little mountain ranges, the summits of which overtop the plain but five to ten yards. Such hills children might build in play by the sea-shore. Surgham was quite a big one, and the signallers soon took possession of it, flagging and "helioing" back to camp. From its top I was enabled to see Omdurman, with Khartoum ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... discouraged us in 1848, and who have so bravely faced ungenerous opposition and insult since, must look back on the result with unmixed astonishment and delight. Temperance, and finance—which is but another name for the labor movement—and woman's rights, are three radical questions which overtop all others in value and importance. Woman's claim for the ballot-box has had a much wider influence than merely to protect woman. Universal suffrage is itself in danger. Scholars dread it; social science and journalists attack it. The discussion of woman's claim has done ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... graveyard is set apart as a sort of potter's-field, where negroes, Indians, and stranger-paupers are buried. This region is bordered by a little jungle of poke-berry and elder-bushes, sumachs and brambles, so dense and thrifty that they overtop and hide the fence; and there is a tradition among the school-boys, that somewhere in the copse there is a black-snake hole, the abode of an enormous monster, upon whom no one, however, has ever happened to set ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... of human knowledge, we transcend the most splendid acquirements of the ancients, and therefore that it is so much time wasted which we devote towards keeping up an acquaintance with antiquity. But how is it that we so far overtop the ancients? Simply by preserving our conscious connection with them, just as manhood towers above childhood through the remembered experiences of childhood. As an evidence of this, we need only note the sudden impulse which modern civilization received through the revival ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... and the light poise of the head, while in the complexion there is a tender softness and a freshness of tints belonging only to the dewy morning of life. The princeliness of youth, the glow of joy and hope overtop and outshine the crown which she wears as lightly as though it were a May-queen's Coronal of roses; and the dignity of simple girlish purity envelops her more royally than velvet and ermine. The eyes have the softness of morning skies and spring violets, and the smile hovering about the red lips, ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood

... tangible proofs and causalities, of positive and logical effects of reason, of all outward and material processes, man is supreme; while in that finer, higher, more subtile sphere of intuitions, loves, faiths, spiritual convictions, which overtop our actual life, and lead it up from grossness to glory, woman is the oracle and priestess. In the basic qualities of our nature man is stronger—woman, in those which, in grace, beauty, and sweetness, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... shock by lowering stuffed sacks or other buffer material between it and the wall. At another point, in place of the shed, there is rolled forward a lofty construction like a tower built in several stories. When this approaches the wall it will overtop it, and a drawbridge with grappling irons may be dropped upon the parapet. Elsewhere there is mining and countermining. From a safer distance the artillery of the time is hurling its formidable missiles. There is the "catapult," which shoots ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... excelled states in their budgets and loomed bigger than whole commonwealths in their influence over the lives and fortunes of entire communities of men. Centralized business has built up vast structures of organization and equipment which overtop all states and seem to have no match or competitor except ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson

... indolent character of the Indians, it being entirely entrusted to the squaws, the men considering labor beneath their dignity. The object was attained, if the plants were sufficiently protected against the encroaching weeds to enable them to overtop the latter, after which they were left to take care of themselves. Yet, notwithstanding all this negligence, prodigal Nature rendered a rich return. It has been said (with what truth we know not) that the weeds of a soil depend upon the race which cultivates it—they which spring from the ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... beautiful, this forest of the Middle Ages; but it is monotonous, melancholy; and has a terrible eeriness in its endlessness. For there is nothing else. There are no meadows where the cows lie lazily, no fields where the red and purple kerchiefs of the reapers overtop the high corn; no orchards, no hayfields; nothing like those hill slopes where the wild herbs encroach upon the vines, and the goats of Corydon and Damoetas require to be kept from mischief; where, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... realize the effect they produce upon the mind of a European. As a rule comparatively shallow, in the dry weather they pursue a narrow winding course in the middle of a sandy waste, but in the Rains they fill their beds from side to side, overtop the banks, and make the country for miles around a series of great lakes, studded with heavily wooded islands. Amidst these one can wander for days hardly seeing a single human being, and hearing nothing but the rushing of the current and the weird cries of ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill

... visitors, come in great numbers, seeking the accessible pollen, and, in this case, nectar also, secreted in a conspicuous orange-colored disk. When a floret first opens, or even before, the already mature stigmas overtop the incurved, undeveloped stamens, so that any visitor dusted from other clusters cross-fertilizes it; but as the stigmas remain fresh even after the stamens have risen and shed their abundant pollen, it follows that in long-continued stormy weather, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... Tenedos, over the placid depths (I shudder as I recall) two snakes in enormous coils press down the sea and advance together to the shore; their breasts rise through the surge, and their blood-red crests overtop the waves; the rest trails through the main behind and wreathes back in voluminous curves; the brine gurgles and foams. And now they gained the fields, while their bloodshot eyes blazed with fire, and their tongues lapped ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... from our starting-point. In the morning, when I went on the platform, I saw two miles to windward, Hawaii, the largest of the seven islands that form the group. I saw clearly the cultivated ranges, and the several mountain-chains that run parallel with the side, and the volcanoes that overtop Mouna-Rea, which rise 5,000 yards above the level of the sea. Besides other things the nets brought up, were several flabellariae and graceful polypi, that are peculiar to that part of the ocean. The direction of the Nautilus was still to the south-east. It crossed the equator December ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... trees' of California, there is a cedar four hundred and eighty feet in height. It would overtop the Houses of Parliament, and even the Great Pyramid of Egypt. The trunk at the surface of the ground was one hundred and twenty feet in circumference, and the concentric layers of the wood disclosed an age of more than ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... will inspire his formative citizens with good portrayals of statesmen, educators, inventors, reformers, discoverers, pioneers, and philanthropists. He will charm them into greatness at the very time when a boy's ideals overtop the mountains. ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben

... drawn with equal force to several different spots, then we reproach the painter for having "scattered" the interest of the picture. Similarly with the novel. A novel must have one, two, or three figures that easily overtop the rest. These figures must be in the foreground, and the rest in the middle-distance ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett

... your propositions—wholly wrong,' cried the other. 'The party that will send you in won't want to be bribed, and they'll be proud of a man who doesn't overtop them with his money. You don't need the big families, for you'll beat them. Your religion is the right one, for it will give you the Priests; and your politics shall be Repeal, and it will give you the Peasants; and as to not knowing what to do when you're elected, are you so mighty well ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... a number of persons walking behind this wall, and carrying with them statues of men, and images of other animals, wrought in wood, stone, and all kinds of materials, together with various other articles, which overtop the wall; and, as you might expect, let some of the passers-by ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... a complex school system, where children are grouped by hundreds and thousands, to allow the detail of administration to overtop the functions of education is often irresistible. The teacher with forty pupils learns to look upon her pupils as units. The superintendent and principals, seeking ardently for an overburdened commercial ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing

... love to one another, and draw to themselves by their example the good and wise; believing also that if they planted the seeds of truth and unity they would be watered with deeds of faith, and by degrees overtop and destroy the evil undergrowth that abounded in the so-called ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... water swept towards the island, and before it became too dark to observe, in the early twilight one could see the wind-lashed waters of the bay begin to heap themselves into broken and irregular waves, each striving to overtop the other in their plunge upon the city. They broke, indeed, into the back door of the city, and then, with a suddenness that seemed to rock the very foundations of the earth, the wind struck ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... also thinks of it as a gigantic organ, whose many hundred pipes rise many feet in air. Its lofty position, seen from the viewpoint of the trail, is one of dignity; it overlooks the pines and firs surrounding the clearing in which the observer stands. The trees on the higher level scarcely overtop it; in part, it is ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... our soup, before we were so powerfully attacked by sea-sickness, that we were obliged to quit the table precipitately. I laid myself down at once, feeling unable to move about, or even to drag myself on deck to admire the magnificent spectacle of nature. The waves frequently ran so high as to overtop the flue of our stove, and from time to time whole streams of water ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... out of these dissolutions than heavy, secret, and sad sighs. He shall find nothing remaining but those sorrows which grow up after our fast-springing youth, overtake it when it is at a stand, and overtop it utterly when it begins to wither; insomuch as, looking back from the very instant time, and from our now being, the poor, diseased, and captive creature hath as little sense of all his former miseries and pains as he that is most blest, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... literature, which is now cultivated far more widely than heretofore, like tea, and the market is flooded with an article of sound moderate quality. At this moment we have in very truth a democracy of letters, for while no mighty masters overtop the rest, the number of writers who stand on an equality of merit, who can produce one or more excellent stories, is very large. Their field has widened with the expansion of British enterprise; they ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... 244 [Obs.]; batophobia^. satellite, spy-in-the-sky. V. be high &c adj.; tower, soar, command; hover, hover over, fly over; orbit, be in orbit; cap, culminate; overhang, hang over, impend, beetle, bestride, ride, mount; perch, surmount; cover &c 223; overtop &c (be superior) 33; stand on tiptoe. become high &c adj.; grow higher, grow taller; upgrow^; rise &c (ascend) 305; send into orbit. render high &c adj.; heighten &c (elevate) 307. Adj. high, elevated, eminent, exalted, lofty, tall; gigantic &c (big) 192; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... present style of criticism that can exceed the above. The author actually reached the climax, and all attempts to overtop him ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... on the forefront of the poem, that the brow so circled may, "like to a title-leaf, foretell the nature of a tragic volume." Not indeed that without these the ground would in either case be barren; but that in either field our eye rests rather on these and other separate ears of wheat that overtop the ranks, than on the waving width of the whole harvest at once. In the one play our memory turns next to the figures of Arthur and the Bastard, in the other to those of Wolsey and his king: the residue in either case is ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... quite the reverse of heroic. The note of heart-breaking despair is tragic enough, but there is a touch of comedy behind it. Though her words have the fire, the devotion, the abandon of Heloise, they leave a certain sense of disproportion. One is inclined to wonder if they do not overtop the feeling. ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... finally as a member of his profession. With his firm mouth, broad forehead, and clear-cut, somewhat hard-featured face, he was a man who, if he had no brilliant talent, was yet so dogged, so patient, and so strong that he might in the end overtop a more showy genius. A man who can hold his own among Scotchmen and North Germans is not a man to be easily set back. Smith had left a name at Glasgow and at Berlin, and he was bent now upon doing as much at Oxford, if hard work ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... there was a Tamerlane somewhere, but few people know anything of the empire he overshadows with his name; France has had two mighty warriors, Charlemagne and Napoleon—unfortunate France! As for ourselves, fortunate islanders! we have never had a great man so immensely great as to overtop the whole, like Charlemagne in his day. Fortunate for us, indeed, that it has been so. But the best example to the point is the case of the immense empire of Russia, which has had one Peter the Great, and one only. Great-uncle Richard was the Peter the Great of his family, ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... fishing down the Swiftwater in the early Spring. In a shallow pool, which the drought of summer will soon change into dry land, you see the pale-green shoots of a little plant thrusting themselves up between the pebbles, and just beginning to overtop the falling water. You pluck a leaf of it as you turn out of the stream to find a comfortable place for lunch, and, rolling it between your fingers to see whether it smells like a good salad for your bread and cheese, ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... hull of the bigger one, now she was so loaded up—a collision would have insured destruction to all in her, the huge billows of the Southern Ocean rolling in at intervals, and raising her so high aloft as to overtop the ship sometimes, and again carrying her down right under the Esmeralda's counter, thus making her run the risk of being ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... world,—which is saying a good deal, the world being, like Briareus, a very many-handed gentleman,—but, to be so, you must stand alone. Recollect that the scurvy buildings about St. Peter's almost seem to overtop itself." ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... which gave extra time for practice. In cricket, Betty Carlisle had come to the front at bowling, while Maggie Allesley and Irene Swinburne were heroines of the bat. It is inevitable that some girls should overtop the rest, but Winona would not on that account allow the others to slack. She knew the importance of a high general average of play, and urged on several laggers. She thoroughly realized the importance of fielding, ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... limit of our tax upon their lives. With the sky for roof, and the beech and the pine for friends and teachers, the body has time to strengthen, and the conscience and inner self to grow steadily upright, that they may overtop trifles, rise to the height of heavenly inspirations, and hence win power to withstand the surging floods of bewildering human passion. When men meet such souls, they are amazed at their calmness and simplicity, and dimly guess ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... unity of heart, for we cannot obtain true unity, unless the Spirit of God lights His flame in our heart. For this fire makes one and like unto itself all that it can overtop and transform. Unity gives a man the feeling of being concentrated with all his faculties on one point. It gives internal peace and repose of heart. Unity of heart is a bond which draws and binds together the body and the soul, and ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge

... antidote are near neighbours, repose on the same bosom, ripen under the same sun, equally court the hand of the incautious stranger. The rivers which man believes flow for no other purpose than to irrigate his residence, sometimes swell their waters, overtop their banks, inundate his fields, overturn his dwelling, and sweep away the flock and shepherd. The ocean, which he vainly imagines was only collected together to facilitate his commerce supply him with fish, and wash his shores; often wrecks his ships, frequently ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... around me, one after the other; the odour of their corpses awakes me in the night; I drive away the birds that come to peck out their eyes; and yet not for a single day have I despaired of Carthage! Though I had seen all the armies of the earth against her, and the flames of the siege overtop the height of the temples, I should have still believed in her eternity! But now all is over! all is lost! The gods execrate her! A curse upon you who have quickened ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... not have thought it was in woman! The poor, wailing, watery-eyed beings I had before encountered would not suffer me to suppose a female could possess the high courage of the daring, noble mind. Never but one short moment did I overtop her: nor are there any means but those I then used. Inspire her with the dread of offending what she thinks principle, and she becomes ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... aware of the fact can hardly explain this appearance to himself, nor understand the noise and surging of the stream. The little bridge in the centre would be taken for the ruins of a fallen bridge, and the chasm is not seen from the shore, because the foaming waves overtop it. An indescribable fear would seize upon the traveller when he beheld the venturous guide ride into the stream, and was obliged to ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer



Words linked to "Overtop" :   overshadow, lie, overlook, dominate, dwarf, command, shadow



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