"Excel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Come to England! Our oysters are small I know; they are said by Americans to be coppery, but our hearts are of the largest size. We are thought to excel in shrimps, to be far from despicable in point of lobsters, and in periwinkles are considered to challenge the universe. Our oysters, small though they be, are not devoid of the refreshing influence which that species of fish is supposed to exercise in ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... thus, in respect of the riches and the poverty compared together, yet if a rich man and a poor man be both good men, there may be some other virtue beside in which the rich man may peradventure so excel that he may in heaven be far above that poor man who was here on earth in other virtues far under him. And the proof appeareth ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... her belt flew asunder; but her eye seldom left the leader's face, and she followed every motion with an agility and precision quite inspiring. Mr. Bopp's courage rose as he watched her, and a burning desire to excel took possession of him, till he felt as if his muscles were made of India-rubber, and his nerves of iron. He went into his work heart and soul, shaking a brown mane out of his eyes, issuing commands like general ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... equally in this guilt with you; however, it is not the less for being divided; but if this were all, you might pass undistinguished in the general censure. There is one species of iniquity, for so I must call it, in which you so much excel, in which you have acquired a pre-eminence so conspicuous, that all other writers, when you appear, must hide their diminished heads, like stars before the sun: that consists in drawing characters the most shockingly vicious, and giving examples of villainy the most infamous, and by that ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... backward learners. Some there are who excel in embroidery, crocheting, making ties and other fancy articles, but who have no aptitude for shaping and trimming hats. They plod on, and win at last. Then there is the girl whose parents wish her to open a millinery establishment in their town. She tries, but finally agrees with her ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... they are moulded with a so much more subtile art than his, and with an instinct of proportion so much more sure. But even in the earlier tales, taken all together, Hawthorne ranks higher than Irving in the heraldry of genius: he has more quarterings in his shield. Not only does he excel the other in brief essay, depending only on endogenous forces, whereas Irving is always adorning his paragraphs with that herb-o'-grace, quotation, but he also greatly surpasses him in the construction of his stories; and finally, his psychological analysis and symbolic imagination ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... of Paris are full of gorgeous splendor—how much vital religion they contain, it is not, perhaps, my province to decide. But in beauty of architecture, in the solemnity and grandeur of interior, no city in the world, except Rome, can excel them. The church of the Madeleine is the most imposing of all; indeed, it seemed to me that in all Paris there was no other building so pretentious. But Notre Dame has that mellow quality ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... talent upon the passionate impersonation of one peculiar phrase of feminine suffering and endurance—that of the outraged and neglected wife; and her favourite roles are 'Katherine' from Henry VIII., 'Hermione,' and 'Medea,' though she is said to excel in 'Deborah.' My brother who saw her last night as 'Medea' pronounced her fully equal to Rachel, and said that in that scene where she attempted to remove her children from the side of the new wife, the despairing fury ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... monopolized attention. It is true that within the last sixty or seventy years numerous works of fiction of different schools have been produced, mostly in the native language, and that these, when judged as stories, generally excel in their plots those of the classical period. The status, however, of these writers has never been recognized by the public, nor have they enjoyed the same degree of honor as scholars of a different ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... even put up with them if it was not for the inspector. For three months before his visit I didn't sleep soundly. And the Committee of Council are always changing the Code, so that you don't know what to teach, and what to leave untaught. I think father and mother are right. They say I shall never excel as a schoolmistress if I dislike the work so, and that therefore I ought to get settled by marrying Mr. Heddegan. Between us two, I like him better than school; but I don't like him quite so much as to ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Tecumseh Sherman, Hancock, and all of our noted Indian fighters. For cool judgment and thorough knowledge of all that pertains to military affairs, none of them, in my opinion, can be said to excel General Nelson ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... without making mendicants of the indolent and improvident? If we had pure socialism, we could never get the highest endeavor out of anyone, for it would seem not worth while to do more than the average. The race would then go backward instead of lifting itself higher by the insistent desire to excel and to reap the rich reward that comes ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... without serious accident. But after this, and very quickly, the number of airmen grew. New aviators appeared every day; contests were organised extensively; there were large sums of money to be won, provided that one pilot could excel another. And the spirit of caution was abandoned. Even while they were still using purely experimental machines—craft of which neither the stability nor the structural strength had been tested adequately—there grew a tendency among airmen to fly in higher winds, to ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... with the strictest care, The art bequeathed to his possession! Dost thou thy father honor, as a youth? Then may his teaching cheerfully impel thee: Dost thou, as man, increase the stores of truth? Then may thine own son afterwards excel thee. ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... despairingly to his caddie with the question, "What on earth shall I take now?" There was little encouragement in the answer, "Take the 4.5 train." There is a good story also of a certain Welshman of title who became enthusiastic over the game, though he did not excel at it. He conceived that it would be a good thing to make a tour of the famous Scottish courses with the object of improving his play, and in due season he arrived at a certain famous green, where he employed as ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... too, The science mathematical, he knew; The arts wherein fair courtezans excel, And all the lore of elephants as well. Through Shiva's grace, his eye was never dim; He saw his son a king in place of him. The difficult horse-sacrifice he tried Successfully; entered the fiery tide, One hundred years and ten days ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... Germans, lovers of show, liking to be followed, wherever they go, by troops of servants, who wear their master's arms, in silver, fastened to their left sleeves, and are justly ridiculed for wearing tails hanging down their backs. They excel in dancing and music, for they are active and lively, although they are of thicker build than the Germans. They cut their hair close on the forehead, letting it hang down on either side. They are good sailors, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... make this an ideal will produce a finer race of men, and other things equal, will excel in all that makes a ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... set your mind on your books; and that you should think of home when not engaged in reading. Whatever you do, don't romp together with them, for were you to meet our master, your father, it will be no joke! Although it's asserted that a scholar must strain every nerve to excel, yet it's preferable that the tasks should be somewhat fewer, as, in the first place, when one eats too much, one cannot digest it; and, in the second place, good health must also be carefully attended to. This is my view on the subject, and you should at all ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... moment when she had conspicuously won her triumphs of peace she threw them away, to establish in their stead what the world will no longer permit to be established, military and political domination by arms, by which to oust where she could not excel the rivals she most feared and hated. The peace we make must remedy that wrong. It must deliver the once fair lands and happy peoples of Belgium and Northern France from the Prussian conquest and the Prussian menace, but it ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... it) be a condescension, and a triumph over me?—And must I owe it merely to her goodness that she does not despise me?—To have her condescend to bear with my follies!—To wound me with an eye of pity!—A daughter of the Harlowes thus to excel the last, and as I have heretofore said, not the meanest of ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... of this state is by far the most considerable of any of the countries on the whole sea coast, because the Veneti both have a very great number of ships, with which they have been accustomed to sail to Britain, and [thus] excel the rest in their knowledge and experience of nautical affairs; and as only a few ports lie scattered along that stormy and open sea, of which they are in possession, they hold as tributaries almost all those who are accustomed to traffic ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... to the matter of dress. One says "Too much time is given by many young ladies to dressing. They scarcely think of anything else." Another names, "The love of dress, the inordinate desire to excel their companions in this particular," as among the common faults in young women, adding that it has led many of them to ruin. Another says they like to make themselves attractive by conspicuous colors, and suggests that if they would spend less time in shopping and more in some elevating occupation, ...
— Girls: Faults and Ideals - A Familiar Talk, With Quotations From Letters • J.R. Miller
... fail to keep, detains you, in order to obtain your tacit permission to some meditated expedition; if in order to obtain that permission she displays all the witcheries of those cajoleries in which women excel and whose powerful influence you ought already to have known, well, well, the professor implores you to allow her to win you over, while at the same time you sell dear the boon she asks; and above all convince ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... the city together combines within its precincts, if you take the word of the inhabitants on the subject, as much of historical interest as of natural beauty. Our claims in behalf of the Canongate are not the slightest. The Castle may excel us in extent of prospect and sublimity of site; the Calton had always the superiority of its unrivalled panorama, and has of late added that of its towers, and triumphal arches, and the pillars of its Parthenon. The ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... I for my part cannot believe that any one either could or ought to doubt that the Florentines, even if they do not excel all other nations, are at least inferior to none in those things to which they give their minds. In trade, whereon of a truth their city is founded, and wherein their industry is chiefly exercised, they ever have been and still are reckoned not less trusty and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... runner. I knew how to make amulets, which enable us to go without fire burning us and without the flood washing us away. No man could do this but I, and the eldest son of my body. Him has the god decreed to excel in art, and I have seen the perfections of the work of his hands in every kind of rare stone, in gold and silver, in ivory and ebony." Now since Mertisen and his son were the chief artists of their day, it is more than probable ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... all the dale, and confidently anticipated an easy victory over the thrall. But the unusual tumult of conflicting feelings in the young man's breast rendered him at the time incapable of exerting his powers to the utmost in a feat, to excel in which requires the union of skill with strength. At his first throw the stone fell ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... along Adown the lee that to them murmur'd low, As he would speak but that he lack'd a tongue, Yet did by signs his glad affection show, Making his stream run slow. And all the fowl which in his flood did dwell 'Gan flock about these twain, that did excel The rest, so far as Cynthia doth shend The lesser stars. So they, enranged well, Did on those two attend, And their best service lend Against their wedding day, which was not long: Sweet Thames! run softly, till ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... its several degrees, determined by the judgment of him whom they follow; and there is a great emulation among the companions, which shall possess the highest place in the favor of their chief; and among the chiefs, which shall excel in the number and valor of his companions. It is their dignity, their strength, to be always surrounded with a large body of select youth, an ornament in peace, a bulwark in war. And not in his own country alone, but among the ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... law, which is founded upon reason, appropriates everything to the person whom it best suits, as common and trivial things to the common people, things of more worth to persons in a higher and superior class, and things most excellent to those persons who excel all others; and because gold and silver are the most excellent things which the soil contains, the law has appointed them (as in reason it ought) to the person who is most excellent, and that is the King.—The second ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... didst love so well Too soon hath from our regions wing'd her flight, To find, I ween, a home 'mid realms of light; So much in virtue did she here excel Thy heart's twin key of joy and woe can dwell No more with her—then re-assume thy might, Pursue her by the path most swift and right, Nor let aught earthly stay thee by its spell. Thus from thy heaviest burthen being freed, Each ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... few women who excel you, and the team is unique," he remarked exultantly. "Drive around by some of the big stores and let folks see you before you turn into the park. Since that affair of Thurston's I am almost beginning to grow ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... disappointed everyone grievously. There were daughters in the family, and they were to learn to behave at table in the English way. That was why the father, arriving from Berlin, had on his own initiative brought them an English governess; for the English are admitted by their continental friends to excel in this special branch of manners, while their continental enemies charge them with being "ostentatiously" well groomed and dainty. The truth is, that if you have lived much with both English and Germans, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... at first, but a part of the continent. Utopus that conquered it (whose name it still carries, for Abraxa was its first name) brought the rude and uncivilized inhabitants into such a good government, and to that measure of politeness, that they now far excel all the rest of mankind; having soon subdued them, he designed to separate them from the continent, and to bring the sea quite round them. To accomplish this, he ordered a deep channel to be dug fifteen miles long; and that the natives might not ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... Talbot's tower, such as we might put over a cistern), so long as devotees will come and worship, with francs, at the shrine; whilst at Bayeux, as we have seen, the old work is handled with reverence and fear, and the nineteenth-century mason puts out all his power to imitate, if not to excel, ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... one's inclination was rather to escape from the room and be free, than to sit down to play something that demanded coolness and concentration. Dove, who was not sensitive to externals, came safely through the ordeal; but Maurice made a poor job of the trio in which he had hoped to excel. Schwarz did not even offer to turn the pages. This, Beyerlein, the new-comer, did, in a nervous desire to ingratiate himself; but he was still so flustered that, at a critical moment, he brought the music down on ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... skillful in the use of weapons and courageous in the battle-field. He is not, however, bound to have the special science of a general, nor must he in times of peace profess unique devotion to the art of war: that would argue a coarseness of nature or vainglory. Again, he must excel in all manly sports and exercises, so as, if possible, to beat the actual professors of each game, or feat of skill on their own ground. Yet here also he should avoid mere habits of display, which are unworthy of a man who aspires to be a gentleman and not ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... 'And no man with a finer taste. I have heard Mr. Walpole say that with a little training no man would excel Sir George Soane as a connoisseur. An exquisite eye! ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... Choiseul wisely remained faithful to his own first ideas. The restoration of the navy continued, and was accompanied and furthered by a spirit of professional ambition and of desire to excel, among the officers of the navy, which has been before mentioned, and which, in the peculiar condition of the United States navy at the present day, may be commended as a model. The building of ships-of-war continued with great activity and on a large scale. At the end of the war, thanks ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... me a pure sophism, and if it does not strike you as such you must admit that you do not love me wholly, for I cannot exist without mind, and you cannot cherish my heart if it does not agree with my mind. If your love cannot accept a different state of things it does not excel in delicacy. However, as some circumstance might occur in which you might accuse me of not having acted towards you with all the sincerity that true love inspires, and that it has a right to demand, I have made up my mind to confide to you a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... a prejudice against inconsistent characters in books, yet the prejudice bears the other way, when what seemed at first their inconsistency, afterwards, by the skill of the writer, turns out to be their good keeping. The great masters excel in nothing so much as in this very particular. They challenge astonishment at the tangled web of some character, and then raise admiration still greater at their satisfactory unraveling of it; in this way throwing open, sometimes to the understanding even of school ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... myself in struggles for supremacy between nations; it is indifferent which colour comes up, for humanity gains, no matter who is the winner. It is true, that in the contests of peace, the most vital, intelligent, and hard-working people, will always excel. But if the defeated competitors, or those who felt themselves falling behind, were to resort to violence to eliminate their successful rivals, it would be a monstrous thing. It would mean the sacrifice of the welfare of mankind to a commercial interest, and Country is not a business ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... ours, even some species. Their catfish is the only sort in which we excel; they have none that answer to our blue cat, either in size or flavor, and nothing like our mud-cat. Their catfish is from ten to fifteen inches in length, with a wide mouth, like the mud-cat of the Western waters; but their cat differ from both ours in substance and color; they are soft, pied ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... hand, with an account of the accident that caused the death, pasted on the back; and it is now in my possession. The lady was never known. No, Eusebius, we must not deny portrait-painters, nor portrait painting. It is the line in which we excel—and that we have above all others patronized, and had great men too arise from our encouragement—Who are so rich in Vandyks as we are? And some we have had better than the world allowed them to be—Sir Peter Lely was occasionally an admirable painter—though Sir Joshua ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... life was uniform: but not unhappy, because it was not inactive. I had the means of an excellent education placed within my reach; a fondness for some of my studies, and a desire to excel in all, together with a great delight in pleasing my teachers, especially such as I loved, urged me on: I availed myself fully of the advantages offered me. In time I rose to be the first girl of the ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... indeed, by thine they were; But Gardiner do thy worst, I fear thee not. My faith, compared with thine, as much shall pass, As doth the Diamond excel the glass. Attached of treason, no accusers by! Indeed, what tongue dares speak ...
— Cromwell • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... his prowess in riding, boxing, fencing, and even walking; but to excel in these things feet are as necessary as hands. It was difficult to avoid smiling at his boasting and self-glorification. In the water a fin is better than a foot, and in that element he did well; he was built for floating,—with ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... fast days when cooked food is forbidden. It is also sold at railway stations and the fresh fruit is prescribed by village doctors as easy of digestion. The Dhimar grows melons, cucumbers and other vegetables on the sandy stretches along the banks of streams, but at agriculture proper he does not excel. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... savage cannot, as a general rule, endure transplantation,—he cannot thrive in the country of the civilized man; whereas the latter, with time for training, can equal or excel him in strength and endurance on his own ground. As it is known that the human race generally can endure a greater variety of climate than the hardiest of the lower animals, so it is with the man of civilization, when compared ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... measuring everything by his own will and profit; and then put on him a golden chain that declares the accord of all virtues linked one to another; a crown set with diamonds, that should put him in mind how he ought to excel all others in heroic virtues; besides a scepter, the emblem of justice and an untainted heart; and lastly, a purple robe, a badge of that charity he owes the commonwealth. All which if a prince should ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... found that she rarely forgot them, and she had the grace to see when she could help and cheer. Attentions that must be constantly asked for have little charm. A day rarely passed that did she not give one or more of its best hours to her music and drawing; for, while she never expected to excel in these arts, she had already learned that they would enable her to give much pleasure to others. Her pencil, also, was of great assistance in her study of out-door life, for the fixed attention which it required to ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... caused much scandal and much unhappiness in the little Court of the Hague. Her influence over him she owed not to her personal charms,—for it tasked all the art of Kneller to make her look tolerably on canvass,—not to those talents which peculiarly belong to her sex,—for she did not excel in playful talk, and her letters are remarkably deficient in feminine ease and grace—, but to powers of mind which qualified her to partake the cares and guide the counsels of statesmen. To the end of her life great ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... critic, for my opinion of the Velasquez he is about to buy, I will tell him honestly what I think of it, as a work of art. I will tell him whether it moves me much or little, and I will try to point out those qualities and relations of line and colour in which it seems to me to excel or fall short. I will try to account for the degree of my aesthetic emotion. That, I conceive, is the function of the critic. But all conjectures as to the authenticity of a work based on its formal significance, ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... arm around its father's neck, the address on letters "My dear Wife" or "My beloved Mother" seem to them like caricatures of propriety. On the other hand, it is undoubtedly true that in reverence toward parents—or at least toward one of the parents—a Japanese child is apt to excel the one born even in a ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... Thyself had rais'd the gallant brow Of conscious intellect, to twine Th'imperishable verse of thine, That charm'st the world. Or can it be, That scenes like these were nought to thee? That Scottish hills so far excel, That so deep sinks the Scottish dell, That boasted PEN-Y-VALE had been[1], For thy loud northern lyre too mean; [Footnote 1: The respective heights of these mountains above the mouth of the Gavany, was taken barometrically by General Roy. Feet The summit of the Sugar-Loaf..........1852 ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... new series of Geographies, in two books, which will as far excel all geographical text-books hitherto published as our Readers are in advance of the old text-books ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... has encompassed a large amount of practical baseball instruction for boys; and, what is of greater value, he has shown the importance of manliness, sportsmanship and clean living to any boy who desires to excel in baseball or any other sport. These books are bound to sell wherever they are seen by boys or parents. Handsomely illustrated and bound. 12mo. Cloth. New and ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... For scope, points of view, topics, directions of interest, catholicity, many-sidedness, world-wideness, for all the raw material a large and powerful man must needs be made out of, nothing could possibly excel a daily newspaper. Plenty of smaller artists have been made in the world and will be made again in it—hothouse or parlour artists—men whose work has very little floor-space in it, one- or two-story men, and there is no denying that they have their place, but there never has been yet, and ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... are hoping, For all is room in the Promised Land! And, like, when fig-trees their buds are oping You know that summer is near at hand; Thus, when the chill Of your evening broaches, You feel, with thrill, That the friend approaches, To lead you homeward, where joys excel, United ever ...
— The Angel of Death • Johan Olof Wallin
... that is of the most eternal and tragical interest; and"—here Corey broke down in an old man's queer, whimpering laugh, as the notion struck him—"if it's very common with us, I don't know but we ought to be proud of it, as showing that we excel all the rest of the civilized world in the proportion of decayed moral natures to the whole population. But I wonder," he went on, "that it doesn't produce more moralists of a sanative type than it has. Our bad ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... toward the green valleys, one with the eye of an artist, who can perceive and differentiate varying shades of color, can not but admit that the Bernese Oberland is "par excellence" first. Even south of the Alps the verdure does not excel or even equal that to be seen here. There is something incomparably lovely about the Oberland valleys. It is indescribable, indefinable, for when one has exhausted the most extravagant terms of description, he ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... like the trout you swim, Nor like the deer, step swift and light, Nor match the eagle in your flight." They err who think that merit clings To knowledge slight of many things; He who his fellows would excel, Whate'er he does ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... did their duty and each appeared anxious to excel, it is very difficult to discriminate. It is, however, only rendering them their merited due, when it is declared of Lieutenants Reily and Bury, 1st and 3d of this vessel, and whose names will be found among those of the conquerors of the Guerriere and Java; and ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... various kinds of talk there is, perhaps, none in which talkers are more liable to fail than in humour. It is that in which most persons like to excel, but which comparatively few attain. It is not the man whose imagination teems with monsters, whose head is filled with extravagant conceptions, that furnishes innocent pleasure by humour. And yet there are those who claim to be humourists, whose humour consists ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... and could do more with them than any man living. That evening after the parade was over the officers and quite a number of ladies visited a grand Indian dance given by the Pawnees, and of all the Indians I have ever seen, their dances excel ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... a little dull, to take a run over to Philadelphia and be amused. The good Quakers have all the hail-holes in their windows mended now, and they are as lively as ever. Among other things, they have two rival variety theatres, "Fox's" and the "Chestnut;" and the efforts of each of these to excel the other creates the greatest excitement among the young Broadbrims. Each establishment is continually adding something new and wonderful to its attractions. A week or so ago the weather was very warm, and the vegetable theatre announced that it was the coolest place ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... all those executive departments in which Moses, by stress of the responsibilities which he had assumed, was called upon, imperatively, to act, there was but one, that of the magician or wise man, in which, by temperament and training, he was fitted to excel, and the functions of this profession drove him into to intolerably irksome and distressing position, yet a position from which throughout his life he found it impossible to escape. No one who attentively weighs the evidence can, I apprehend, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... complete even in America, and noblesse oblige! our code still reads: 'Zeus has unquestioned right to Io; but woe betide Io when she suns her heart in the smiles that belong to Hera!' Some women find exhilaration in the effort to excel, by flying closest to the flame without singeing their satin wings; by executing a pirouette on the extremest ledge of the abyss, yet escape toppling in; female Blondins skipping across the tight rope of Platonic friendship, stretched above the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... row to a lath many feet in length. Strong upright posts support the roof, hammocks being slung between them, leaving a free space for passage and for fires in the middle, and on one side is an elevated stage (girao) overhead, formed of split palm-stems. The Tucunas excel over most of the other tribes in the manufacture of pottery. They make broad-mouthed jars for Tucupi sauce, caysuma or mandioca beer, capable of holding twenty or more gallons, ornamenting them outside with crossed diagonal streaks of various colours. These jars, with cooking-pots, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... hearts can scarce conceive. "This jewel, that is next me in our heaven, Lustrous and costly, great renown hath left, And not to perish, ere these hundred years Five times absolve their round. Consider thou, If to excel be worthy man's endeavour, When such life may attend the first. Yet they Care not for this, the crowd that now are girt By Adice and Tagliamento, still Impenitent, tho' scourg'd. The hour is near, When for their stubbornness at Padua's marsh The water shall be chang'd, that laves Vicena ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... call it matters little. We have, however, shifted the battle from the purely physical to the mental and psychic plane. But it is competition still, and the reason competition will remain is because it is beautiful, beneficent and right. It is the desire to excel. Lovers are always in competition with each other to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... nation yields to none in admiration of his extensive genius. Other writers excel in some one particular branch of wit or science; but when the King of Prussia drew Voltaire from Paris to Berlin, he had a whole academy of ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... romances containing several of the old favorites in the field of historical fiction, replete with powerful romances of love and diplomacy that excel in thrilling and ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... must be able to prove that she has more dogs an' horses an' servants an' motor-cars, an' that she eats more meals in a day than any other woman in Connecticut. Then, maybe, she'll be happy. You know it's a woman's ambition to excel.' ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... angels in the Lord's celestial kingdom, from their more interior reception of the Divine of the Lord, far excel in wisdom and glory the angels that are in His spiritual kingdom; for they are in love to the Lord, and consequently are nearer and more closely conjoined to Him.{1} These angels are such because they have received and continue ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... of any constant and steady exertion. He had just so much solidity as kept on the windy side of insanity; so much wild wit as saved him from the imputation of idiocy; some dexterity in field sports (in which we have known as great fools excel), great kindness and humanity in the treatment of animals entrusted to him, warm affections, a prodigious memory, and ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... Oldmixon a prominent place in the Dunciad, where at a diving-match in the putrid waters of Fleet Ditch, which "rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to the Thames," the heroes are bidden to "prove who best can dash through thick and thin, and who the most in love of dirt excel." And thus ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... indeed, of black and white work the present age is strong. The illustrations to "Punch," for example, are often as good as anything that can be imagined. We know of nothing like them in any past age or country. This is the one kind of art—and it is a very good one—in which we excel as distinctly as the age of Phidias excelled in sculpture. Leonardo da Vinci would never have succeeded in getting his drawings accepted at 85 Fleet Street, any more than one of the artists on the staff of "Punch" could paint a fresco which should hold its own against Da Vinci's Last Supper. ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... felicitated the present advocates on their great superiority in these respects. She named the pioneers, one by one, paid warm tribute to their beautiful personality and commanding ability and asked where a woman could be found in all the present generation to excel, if, indeed, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... his father's commandment and taking him, carried him to the slave-dealer and said to the latter, 'Sell me this old man.' Quoth the dealer, 'Who will buy this fellow, and he a man of fourscore?' Then said he to the king, 'In what crafts dost thou excel?' Quoth he, 'I know the quintessence of jewels and I know the quintessence of horses and that of men; brief, I know the quintessence of all things.' So the dealer took him and went about, offering ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... been an unmixed evil. History shows us that before it was known the most splendid mental achievements were carried put, and the most heroic endurance exhibited, things done which if it be possible to rival, it is quite impossible to excel. The soldier, and sailor, the night-watchman especially in malarious districts may derive comfort and benefit from its use, and there I think it should be left; for my observation has induced me to think that nothing but evil ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... sons of nobles! 'tis ever Nature's test * That nobles born of nobles shall excel in noble deed: And shun the mean of soul, meanly bred, for 'tis the law, * Mean deeds come of men who are mean ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... by the most ample opportunities of cultivation and improvement. Such lessons and exhibitions, however, might have been thrown away upon many; but James had been born with those natural capacities which fitted him to excel in them. He possessed a fine and correct musical ear; a voice which was rich, flexible, and sufficiently powerful for chamber music; and an enthusiastic delight in the art, which, unless controlled by strong good sense, and a feeling of the higher destinies to which he was called, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... Ephraim the younger son was preferred to the older, any more than why Jacob was preferred to Esau. After Jacob had blessed the sons of Joseph, he called his other sons around his dying bed to predict the future of their descendants. Reuben the oldest was told that he would not excel, because he had loved his father's concubine and committed a grievous sin. Simeon and Levi were the most active in seeking to compass the death of Joseph, and a curse was sent upon them. Judah was exalted above them all, for he had ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... no distinction as a writer of verses, Mr Skinner did not conceal his ambition to excel in another department of literature. In 1746, in his twenty-fifth year, he published a pamphlet, in defence of the non-juring character of his Church, entitled "A Preservative against Presbytery." A performance ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Alberic must make himself an earthly providence for masses of workmen: he must create towns and govern markets. In the meantime, Fafnir, wallowing in dividends which he has done nothing to earn, may rot, intellectually and morally, from mere disuse of his energies and lack of incentive to excel; but the more imbecile he becomes, the more dependent he is upon Alberic, and the more the responsibility of keeping the world-machine in working order falls upon Alberic. Consequently, though Alberic in 1850 may have been merely the vulgar Manchester Factory-owner portrayed ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... rites, the supply of magistrates for the city, and the interpretation of the laws and customs sacred or profane, yet he placed them on an equality with the other citizens, thinking that the nobles would always excel in dignity, the farmers in usefulness, and the artisans in numbers. Aristotle tells us that he was the first who inclined to democracy, and gave up the title of king; and Homer seems to confirm this view by speaking of the people of the Athenians alone of all the states mentioned in his catalogue ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... applied it to the service of the senses and at the expense of our primitive intuition of right and wrong that guided us in the selection of that which was suitable to our preservation and health. We excel the animals in the possession of reason, but the animals excel us ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... others, woody and irregular. Wide vineyards and fences of Indian corn lay between, across which the Conte Nobili conducted us to his house, where we found prepared a very comfortable dinner. We drank the growth of the spot, and defied Constantia and the Cape to excel it. ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... the Great bequeathed to Prussia was universally regarded as the model of efficiency. Its methods were copied in other countries, and foreign officers desiring to excel in their profession made pilgrimages to Berlin and Potsdam to drink of the stream of military knowledge at its source. When it came in contact with the tumultuous array of revolutionary France, the performances of the force that preserved the tradition of the great Frederick were disappointingly ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... it well: but as I am not an Italian, and little more than book-learned in it, (for it is a long time ago since I lost my grandpapa, who used to converse with me in it, and in French,) I was not scrupulous to answer in it. To have forborne, because I did not excel in what I had no opportunity to excel in, would have been false modesty, nearly bordering upon pride. Were any lady to laugh at me for not speaking well her native tongue, I would not return the smile, were she to be less perfect in mine, than I am in hers. But Lady Olivia made ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... She could copy very exactly, and even make original sketches sometimes. Mr. Summers, the art master, thought well of her work, and had praised her study of a group of apples more highly than those of the other girls. It was quite a consolation to Patty to excel in something. She found the afternoon spent in the studio the pleasantest in the whole week, and wished the drawing lessons came oftener. She was not without a secret hope that some of her work might be considered good ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... in special achievements, so far as it exists, is a fact of small importance, because it is merely a corollary from her historic position of degradation. She has not excelled, because she has had no fair chance to excel. Man, placing his foot upon her shoulder, has taunted her with not rising. But the ulterior question remains behind. How came she into this attitude originally? Explain the explanation, the logician fairly demands. ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... believe this a mental infirmity of the race; for a very large number of the students in college at the present time do as well in mathematics, geometry, trigonometry, mensuration, and conic sections as the white students of the same age; and some of them excel ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... to excel in all things. Some had been famous for shorthorns before him, others for sheep, and others again for wheat. He would be celebrated for all. His shorthorns should fetch fabulous prices; his sheep should be known all over the world; ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... negotiators, and the wastage of life and property in carrying on a war is certainly to be attributed to men who are at the head of affairs being mere politicians, without any faculty whatever for carrying out great undertakings. They are simply mischievous shadows, and merely excel as intriguers in putting good men out of office and themselves in. It is the selection of men for the posts they are eminently suited to fill that counts in any department of life, but it is more manifestly important in affairs of Government. For instance, nothing but disaster ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... that, Because bodily delights are more generally known, "the name of pleasure has been appropriated to them" (Ethic. vii, 13), although other delights excel them: and yet happiness does not consist in them. Because in every thing, that which pertains to its essence is distinct from its proper accident: thus in man it is one thing that he is a mortal rational animal, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... showed the most adventurous spirit and ardent ambition to excel his mates, to do deeds of skill and dexterity that others could not do. When still a child he was running up an unsupported eight-foot ladder, and balancing himself upon the topmost round in a way to startle ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... would listen to was Newman, then Vicar of St. Mary's; of Pusey's interminable and prosy harangues he could not bear even to think. Although unable to bend himself to the drudgery of Oxford, Burton was already forming vast ambitions. He longed to excel as a linguist, and particularly in Oriental languages. Hence he began to teach himself Arabic; and got a little assistance from the Spanish scholar Don Pascual de Gayangos. When he asked the Regius Professor of Arabic to teach him, he was rebuffed with the information that it was the duty of ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... was a man who loved to excel his fellow-man even in the smallest things. He not only felt a first-place prominence in the little society of the village, he strove to surpass the least person in it if there was any point of competition between them. It would have been a source of mortification to him if the ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... select one another from all other humans for a lifelong physical union, it is an impertinence to suppose there could be any necessity to adjust economic relations. In love there is no first nor last! And that the desire of each must be to excel the other in service. That this should be so is true; that it is so now, in the case of union between two perfectly morally developed humans, is also true, and that this condition may in a distant future be almost universal is certainly true. But dealing with this matter as ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... Mueller," she said, turning to him, "I wish some day you could hear Hans play; I am sure you would like it. If only he could get lessons! I know he would excel in it." ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... be ambitious to excel in whatever you do. Slighted work and half-done tasks are sins. "I am as good as they are"; "I do my work as well as they"; are cowardly maxims. Not what others have done, but perfection, is the only true aim, whether it be in the ball-field or in ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... insignificant speck in Creation has been the scene of the wonder of the Incarnation, not because its magnitude was great, but because its need was desperate. Men, because they are sinners, have been subjects of an experience more precious than the 'angels which excel in strength' and hearken 'to the voice of His word' have known or can know. The wilder the storm of human evil roars and rages, the deeper and louder is the voice that peals across the storm. So for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... Arimant; I know My beauty's power, and what my charms can do. You your own talent have not learned so well; But practise one, where you can ne'er excel. You can, at most, To an indifferent lover's praise pretend; But you would spoil ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... to hear colored children say, "I can't." The colored mother should put success in the child's thought and teach it to believe in himself and his race. It is the duty of every mother to preach success and one's duty to aim to excel ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... letters has failed to bear witness to its charm and power. While most translations lose something of the beauty and meaning of the original, there are some parts of the English Bible which, as literature and as religion, excel the Hebrew or ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... resembles a gooseberry tart as much as it does harmony. We have not yet been at the Italian playhouse; scarce any one goes there. Their best amusement, and which, in some parts, beats ours, is the comedy; three or four of the actors excel any we have: but then to this nobody goes, if it is not one of the fashionable nights; and then they go, be the play good or bad—except on Moliere's nights, whose pieces they are quite weary of. Gray and I have been at the Avare to-night: I cannot ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... have mentioned, however, were but the commencement of a series of disasters to poor Jenkins, which went far to cure him of a desire to excel in the "noo purfession," and to induce a somewhat violent longing for a return to ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... have forsaken, And say the ancient bards were all mistaken. Apollo's lately abdicate and fled, And good king Bacchus reigneth in his stead: He does the chaos of the head refine, And atom thoughts jump into words by wine: The inspiration's of a finer nature, As wine must needs excel Parnassus water. ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... errors of predecessors, and to profit by all that. The ancient world was a spring which had only a few flowers. Nature indeed, in all ages, produces perfect works but it is not so with the creations of man, which require correction; and the men who live latest must excel in happiness and knowledge. Here we have both the assertion of the permanence of the forces of nature and the idea, already expressed by Bacon and others, that the modern age has advantages over antiquity comparable to those of ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... equivalent, "terra japonica," is prepared from the areca in Ceylon; but the nuts are exported in large quantities to the Maldive Islands and to India, the produce of which they excel both in astringency and size. The fibrous wood of the areca being at once straight, firm, and elastic, is employed for making the pingoes (yokes for the shoulders), by means of which the Singhalese coolie, like the corresponding ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... him great power in the sound leg, and he could hop to a distance, which was surprising. There was nobody in the country who could outgo him on a hunt. Even Paup-Puk-keewiss, in his best days, could hardly excel him. But he had a great enemy in the chief or king of the buffaloes, who frequently passed over the plains with the force of a tempest. It was a peculiarity of Aggodagauda, that he had an only child, a daughter, who was very beautiful, whom it was the aim of this enemy to carry ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... many beautiful and fertile provinces of India, none can, I think, much excel that of Behar for richness of soil, diversity of race, beauty of scenery, and the energy and intelligence of its inhabitants. Stretching from the Nepaul hills to the far distant plains of Gya, with the Gunduch, Bogmuttee and other noble streams watering its rich bosom, and swelling ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... more patriotism in Germany than in England? Why should the masses of Germany excel the masses ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... your rich beauty and rare parts Excel all flowers, exceed all arts. Live then, sweet lady, to inherit Your father's fortune, and his spirit, Your mother's face ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... concrete form. "I now possess six thousand 'desyatins' of land in the government of Samara, and three hundred horses—what then?" I could find no answer. Then came the question, "What if I could excel Shakespeare, and Moliere, and Gogol, and become the most celebrated the world has ever seen—what then?" Answer, there was none; yet I felt that I must find one in order ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... were hesitating, unable to decide who at that moment was superior to all other men in vigour of mind, Theodorus appeared to excel all the rest, a man who had already arrived at the second class of secretaries. And in truth he deserved the opinion which they entertained of him; for he was descended from an ancient and illustrious family in Gaul; he had been ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... at least have taught them a lesson of forbearance to each other. But it had no such effect. It would almost seem as if, true disciples in the school of the High Commission and Star Chamber, their ambition was to excel their former tyrants in the art of persecution. They imitated, with a pertinacious accuracy, the bad examples of their worst oppressors; and with far less to excuse them, repeated in America the self-same crimes from ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... suppose, Douglas, we all like best that in which we most excel. There are many knights in the English army who would assuredly overthrow me either in the tilting ring or in the field, for I had not the training on horseback when quite young which is needed to make a perfect knight, while I had every advantage in the learning of sword playing, ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... could to have the home-coming complete. George was now fifteen years old and William eleven. They had been going to school and had been promoted each year and would have much to tell their father, himself a man of letters and a graduate of Harvard University. His desire was that the boys should excel, as had all the Blakes, ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson |
