"Grandiose" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... though it is not an easy thing to put into words, there is a certain grandiose and sonorous beauty, fresh and free and utterly unaffected, about these verses, and many others ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... stretches of maple and oak, groves of spruce and pine had the effect of passing rain-clouds. In the clear air, against the clear sky, every tree-top on the indented ridges stood out like a little pinnacle, till with a long, downward curve, both gracious and grandiose, the mountainside fell to the edge of a gem-like, broken-shored lake. It was a world extraordinarily green and clean. Its cleanness was even more amazing than its greenness. The unsullied freshness of a new creation seemed to lie on it ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... Balzac remarks with pleasure, five or six similar suites for guests. Everything was patriarchal. Nobody was bored in this wonderful new life. It was fairy-like, the fulfilment of Balzac's dreams of splendour, an approach of reality to the grandiose blurred visions of his hours of creation. He who rejoiced in what was huge, delighted in the fact that the Count Georges Mniszech had gone to inspect an estate as big as the department of Seine-et-Marne, with the object of dismissing ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... Hamburg vessel, their capture by Raleigh's factors is comfortably excused on the ground that these acts were only reprisals against the villainous Spaniard. It was well that these more or less commercial undertakings should be successful, for it became more and more plain to Raleigh that the most grandiose of all his enterprises, his determined effort to colonise Virginia, could but be a drain upon his fortune. After Captain White's final disastrous voyage, Raleigh suspended his efforts in this direction ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... lights and shadows of human life are duly blended in his romances, Scott had a preference for the delineation of the gentle, the grand (or grandiose), the noble and the beautiful: loving the medieval, desiring to reproduce the age of chivalry, he was naturally aristocratic in taste, as in intellect, though democratic by the dictates of a thoroughly good heart. He liked a pleasant ending—or, ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... can see the fact before their eyes: they are ill equipped with theoretical knowledge, but they understand the working of institutions and have a good eye for judging character: they have little constructive imagination of the more grandiose sort, but they have an instinct for the 'next step' which has often set them on paths which have led them far further than they dreamed; above all, they have a relatively high standard of individual character ...
— Progress and History • Various
... was a grandiose performance, and has been the theme of much ridicule by later writers. Hawthorne suggested its being dramatized, and put on to the accompaniment of artillery and thunder and lightning; and E. P. Whipple declared that "no critic in the last fifty years had read more than a hundred ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... continually satisfied through this ascent by the fine-drawn lines, faint tints, and immense air-spaces of Italian landscape. Each little piece reminds one of England; but the geographical scale is enormously more grandiose, and the effect of majesty ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... Bismarck exchanged lively flag signals. Yet the whole grandiose vision, from the moment of its appearance to its disappearance, lasted only three minutes. In that time the seething ocean was flooded with light. It was not until nothing remained of the Bismarck ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... for a time on a high bank above the lake, while the sunset turned the storm-clouds into mountains of brass and iron, with sulphurous caves and molten glowing ledges. This grandiose picture lasted but a few minutes, and then the Western gates closed and all was again gray and forbidding. "Open and shut is a sign of wet," quoted ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... not, on the contrary, give an electrical interpretation to the phenomena of matter and motion, and thus merge mechanics itself in electricity. One thus sees dawning afresh the eternal hope of co-ordinating all natural phenomena in one grandiose and imposing synthesis. Whatever may be the fate reserved for such attempts, they deserve attention in the highest degree; and it is desirable to examine them carefully if we wish to have an exact idea of ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... neither the technical experience requisite for a satisfactory arrangement of details, nor the subordinates who can repair the defects of the machine by the efficiency and honesty with which they tend it; and yet because the aim is grandiose, because the supporters of the scheme proclaim their readiness and their capacity to regenerate the State and human nature, they are hailed as the prophets of a new order; they are allowed to plead the excellence of their motives ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... where jaguars lie. If you could but see what we see daily; if you could see with us the strange combination of rich and luscious beauty, with vastness and repose, you would understand, and excuse, the tendency to somewhat grandiose language which tempts perpetually those who try to describe the Tropics, and know well ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... Nanterre to Saint-Cloud, broken only by an occasional clump of trees or the smoke from some factory chimney. Perhaps, too, in a measure, to the disproportion between the humble hamlet of Judaea and that grandiose structure, that villa in the style of Louis XIII., built of small stones and mortar, and showing pink through the leafless branches of the park, where there were several large ponds with a coating of green slime. Certain it is that on passing the place one's heart contracted. When one entered ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... I can only describe as the atmosphere of Infancy,—and a touching atmosphere it is too—is strengthened by keeping all the figures small and heightening this suggestion by contrast with a grandiose architecture. In both, too, the sacred scenes reveal themselves like visions unseen by the Oberriedt family, who face outward toward the altar and are supposed to be lighted by the actual lights of the church. The whole work must once have been a glorious creation, with its rich ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... euphuistic[obs3], euphemistic; sonorous; high-sounding, big- sounding; inflated, swelling, tumid; turgid, turgescent; pedantic, pompous, stilted; orotund; high flown, high flowing; sententious, rhetorical, declamatory; grandiose; grandiloquent, magniloquent, altiloquent[obs3]; sesquipedal[obs3], sesquipedalian; Johnsonian, mouthy; bombastic; fustian; frothy, flashy, flaming. antithetical, alliterative; figurative &c. 521; artificial &c. (inelegant) 579. Adv. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... plus triste, le plus incommode et le plus disgracieux, que la mode ait jamais invente, c'est surtout au milieu des champs que tous ses inconvenients et toutes ses laideurs revoltent.... Au milieu de ce cadre austere et grandiose, qui transporte l'imagination au temps de la poesie primitive, apparaisse cette mouche parasite, le monsieur aux habits noirs, au menton rase, aux mains gantees, aux jambes maladroites, et ce roi de la societe n'est plus qu'un accident ridicule, une tache importune dans le tableau. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... him at once see the truth. Stamboul and Welsley were beautiful; each possessed an enticing quality; but the one enticed by its grandiose mystery, by its sharp contrasts of marble stability and matchboard frailty, by its melancholy silences and spaces, by its obscure peace and its dangerous passion; the other by its delightful simplicity, its noble homeliness, its dignity and charm ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... deal concretely with the passions, it found itself impotent. Pope's "Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard" rings hollow: it is rhetoric, not poetry. The closing lines of "The Dunciad"—so strangely overpraised by Thackeray—with their metallic clank and grandiose verbiage, are not truly imaginative. The poet is simply working himself up to a climax of the false sublime, as an orator deliberately attaches a sounding peroration to his speech. Pope is always "heard," ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... On what may be called the faade, remains are still discernible of inlaid work in coloured stone, and within the gateway, on the smooth slabs of the pavement, the wheel-ruts are still visible. Connect them with those metal war-chariots in Homer, and you may see in fancy the whole grandiose character of the place, as it may really have been. Shut within the narrow enclosure of these shadowy citadels were the palaces of the kings, with all that intimacy which we may sometimes suppose to have been alien from the open-air Greek life, admitting, doubtless, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... which I ever saw; at the back of the hall were those chambers of ours overlooking the garden of which I have already spoken, and another kitchen, less noble than the first, but still sufficiently grandiose to make most New World kitchens seem very meekly minute and unimpressive. Between the two kitchens was another court, with another cistern, from which the painter's family drew water with a bucket on a long ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... manifested in the "Angelo", of which the scene is laid in old Padua and is, therefore, full of the mysterious spirit of mediaeval Italian, and especially Venetian life. Miss Cushman has played in an English version of this drama, called the "Actress of Padua". But it is hardly grandiose enough in its proportions to be very well adapted to the talent of Miss Cushman. It was remarkable how perfectly the genius which had, the evening before, adequately represented Phedre, could impersonate the ablest finesse of Italian subtilty. ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... barrows, and, well content, journeyed back to the scene of operations, and laid our stones round the base of the tub, more because we knew nowhere else to lay them than for any other reason, for the sergeant-major had apparently forgotten his grandiose designs in other schemes, and had disappeared. The fatigue party was thinning. The corporal said what may be freely translated as "disappear quietly," and we made off to our camp, where I found Henry, who had doctor's leave to ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... the rest, were the sketches and fragments, often the grandiose fragments, which represented his 'buried life'—the life which only Eugenie de Pastourelles seemed now to have the power to evoke. When some hours of other work had weakened the impulse received from her, he would look at these things sadly, ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... magnates had died; some had evaporated financially; others had come to perceive, either for themselves or through their children, that the road to social consideration now ran another way. In due course a congeries of bulky and grandiose edifices, built lavishly in the best taste of their own day, remained to stare vacantly at the infrequent passer-by, or to tremble before the imminent prospect of sinking to unworthy uses: odd, old-time megatheriums ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... beginnings of grotesqueness in Michael Angelo's style. There are a few somewhat distorted figures, Haman, the knot of men and women adoring the snake, Jonas, as he flings himself backwards, but except these, what calm, what grandiose perfection! And which was still more remarkable, what imposing charm! Eve, in the picture of "The Fall," is perhaps the most adorable figure that Art has ever produced; her beauty, in the picture on the left, was like a revelation of what humanity really ought ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... mountain chains of North America have been flung up into a continental divide, the country in many of its aspects is still terrible. In extent alone this mountain empire is grandiose. The swiftest transcontinental trains approaching its boundaries at night find night falling again before they have fairly penetrated it. Geologically severe, this region in geological store is the richest of ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... technical matters as to which his own knowledge was comparatively defective. He reserved to himself what may be called the "literary" aspect of his theme, recording the place of each animal in history, and relating its habits with such gusto as his ornate and grandiose style permitted. ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... women of all time. They live; Calderon's people, like Ben Jonson's, move. There is a resemblance between the autos of Calderon and the masques of Jonson. Jonson's are lyrical; Calderon's less lyrical than splendid, ethical, grandiose. They were both court poets; they both made court spectacles; they both assisted in the decay of the drama; they reflected the tastes of their time; but Calderon is the more noble, the more splendid in imagination, the more intense in his devotion to nature ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... a few yards to the settlement. A 'Steam-launch' sounds grandiose, and so does a 'Great Central Depot'—seen on paper. And touching this place I was told a tale. Some time ago two young French employes, a doctor and an engineer, were sent up to the mines, and fell victims to the magical influence ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... own consciousness, that world may be one of extreme beauty and splendour, but it is most unlikely that it will present any verisimilitude to actual life. It will be either vague and shadowy, or else so grandiose and unearthly in its magnificence as to have no point of connection with ordinary terrestrial life. But it is exactly here that the realism of the Homeric world strikes the student. It is not vague—on the contrary, the preciseness of its detail is almost as striking, sometimes ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... was more commensurate with the variety and competence of human nature than perhaps that of any ruling class has been before or since. As Shakespeare is the amplest of poets, so were theirs the most fruitful of courts. From the great Medicis to our own Elizabeth they all partake of a certain grandiose vitality ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... standard of craftsmanship was maintained by the Venetian school is well exemplified by 1673, a portrait by an unknown artist. 1352, The Visitation, by Sebastiano del Piombo, although much injured by restorers, is a fair example of that master's grandiose style in his Roman period. We now reach the Titians. 1577 and 1580, are good average Sante Conversazioni, the latter is, however, assigned by Mr. Berenson to a pupil. 1581, The Supper at Emmaus, a mature and genuine ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... preceded it, the operas which had seemed the most secure of popularity were soon consigned to oblivion. It is a significant fact that Donizetti's lighter works have stood the test of time more successfully than his more serious efforts. Though the grandiose airs and sham tragedy of 'Lucia' have long since ceased to impress us, we can still take pleasure in the unaffected gaiety of 'La Fille du Regiment' and 'Don Pasquale.' These and many similar works were written currente calamo, and though their intrinsic musical interest ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... illustrator, Abbey combined daintiness with a fair measure of dramatic feeling for the pose. A modicum of old Benjamin West's tendency to the grandiose would have done Abbey no harm; but if his imagination balked at the higher flights often attained by Gustave Dore, and sometimes by Elihu Vedder, yet there is a charm in his sobriety, there is something which compels our respect in the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... flower of ye Euphuists herself. But behold, these be they yt, having a specialty, and admiring it in themselves, be jealous when a neighbor doth essaye it, nor can abide it in them long. Wherefore 'twas observable yt ye quene waxed uncontent; and in time labor'd grandiose speeche out of ye mouth of Lady Alice, who manifestly did mightily pride herself thereon, did quite exhauste ye quene's endurance, who listened till ye gaudy speeche was done, then lifted up her brows, and with vaste irony, mincing saith 'O shit!' Whereat they alle did ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... the military guard on the Ile Royale, when in the course of my travels I reached Cayenne. I believe the story to be in the main true. It is the sort of story that no man, I think, would ever invent about himself, for it is neither grandiose nor flattering, nor yet funny enough to gratify a ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... to Utopian ideas by certain hereditary influences; his grandmother's nervous disorders became in him so much chronic enthusiasm, striving after everything that was grandiose and impossible. His lonely childhood, his imperfect education, had developed his natural tendencies in a singular manner. However, he had not yet reached the age when the fixed idea plants itself in a man's mind. In the morning, after he had dipped his head in a bucket of water, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... Africa, the United States, the West Indies, and everywhere else in the world. This was to control its people "just as the Pope and the Catholic Church control its millions in every land." The related ideas and activities were sometimes termed grandiose and they awakened much opposition on the part of the old leaders, the clergy, while conservative business stood aloof. At the same time the conception is one that deserves to be ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... silver with the moon; to command, to sing, to dream. And wilt thou believe that I, who have still sound judgment to the value of a sestertium, and sense to the value of an as, let myself be borne away by these fantasies, and I do this for the reason that, if they are not possible, they are at least grandiose and uncommon? Such a fabulous empire would be a thing which, some time or other, after long ages, would seem a dream to mankind. Except when Venus takes the form of Lygia, or even of a slave Eunice, or when art beautifies it, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... evident that the present war is but a violent phase in the unfolding of a grandiose ground idea—the subjugation of Europe by the Teuton—which was being steadily realized ever since the close of the Franco-German campaign of 1870. It is likewise clear that, despite her "swelled head," Germany's estimate of her ability to try issues with all ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... the deep-blue sky appears, with beautiful small cumulus clouds suspended in the atmosphere. With the exception, perhaps, of a large blue kingfisher sitting in solitary state on a branch extending over the water, or a distant hornbill with its cheerful grandiose laugh, there are no evidences of animal life, nevertheless the exquisite scenery seems to lure the beholder on and on. To pass through this superb and silent realm was like a pleasant dream. There are no mosquitoes and consequently ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... crossed his mind whether that majestic and vital woman was ever sincere about anything, even to herself—whether the whole of her daily existence, from her getting-up to her down-lying, was not a grandiose pretence. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the State chamber, which had been occupied by kings and queens in days of yore. That grandiose four-poster, with the carved ebony columns, cut velvet curtains, and plumes of ostrich feathers, had been built for Elizabeth, when she deigned to include Rood Hall in one of her royal progresses. Charles the First had rested his weary ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... rather drab assembly as a leaping flame. She turned about, fronting the perplexed and agitated congregation, her head carried high, her face austere for all its youthful softness, an heroic quality, something, indeed, superlative and grandiose in her bearing and expression, causing a shrinking in those who saw her and a certain ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... labored to express her full heart in as many ways as possible, when she made these lakes, moulded and planted their shores. Lago Maggiore is grandiose, resplendent in its beauty; the view of the Alps gives a sort of lyric exaltation to the scene. Lago di Garda is so soft and fair on one side,—the ruins of ancient palaces rise softly with the beauties of that shore; but at the other end, amid the Tyrol, it is so sublime, so calm, so ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... was something about her husband that was grandiose and princely, whenever he escaped from his accursed Machiavelli, and gave fair play ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gracefully efficient in whatsoever she set her hand to. To the young lady of to-day, belike, she will seem accordingly ridiculous—seem poor-spirited, and a pettifogger. True, she set her hand to no grandiose tasks. She was not allowed to become a hospital nurse, for example, or an actress. The young lady of to-day, when she hears in herself a 'vocation' for tending the sick, would willingly, without an instant's preparation, assume responsibility for the lives of a ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... choose to say about the "little galleries" and the "little ornamentations," nothing can be more grandiose than the dwelling of the splendid Francois. Thanks to I know not what indifference, to forgetfulness perhaps, the apartments occupied by Catherine de' Medici and her son Francois II. present to us to-day the leading features of that time. The historian can there restore the tragic ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... effect, while it lessens the painfulness of life, adds to life's picturesqueness. The man to whom evolution is but a name looks at the sea as a grandiose, monotonous spectacle, which he can witness in August for three shillings third-class return. The man who is imbued with the idea of development, of continuous cause and effect, perceives in the sea an element ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... Coumelie, the mule-path to the Cirque de Troumouse leading through a field above us, as we reached the zigzag's top. Still gently ascending round the foot of the Coumelie, the pointed summit of the lofty Taillon (10,323 ft.) came into view ahead, with the grandiose Campbieil (10,418 ft.) up the Heas valley; and the Pic de Saugue immediately above on the right, from whose height the splendid Cascade d'Arroudet, dashing past the shepherds' cottages, launches its foaming showers into the river below. A few more graceful curvings of the road ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... of its own in the middle of the steps. In most cases the chamber stands back behind a row, in some instances two rows, of columns, which support the characteristic entablature seen in the illustrations. In the case of the more grandiose temples a series of columns may run all round the building, carrying an extension of the roof, under which is thus formed a covered colonnade. More commonly the sides and back of the chamber have only what are known as "engaged" columns, as it were half-embedded in the ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... his mind, Phil had been conscious of that, but it had seemed an insignificant threat against the excitement arising from the grandiose impudence of the plan, the perhaps rather small-boyish delight at being able to put something over, profitably, on the greatest power of all. Even now it might have been only a natural wariness that brought the threat up for a final moment of reflection. ...
— Watch the Sky • James H. Schmitz
... view, Survey mankind from China to Peru." By all means, yes, or even further fare, And Afric's forest huge and poisonous Pigmies dare. But, to avoid the lonely traveller's pain, From Ludgate Circus drag the well-linked chain; As Amurath to Amurath succeeds, So COOK to COOK! THOMAS's grandiose deeds What Tourist may forget? The great one's gone, But his vast enterprise shall still march on. What THOMAS started, is pursued by JOHN. Peace to the dust of the Great Pioneer, "Great COOK is dead, long live Great COOK!" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... delight, therefore, that Elsa hailed the prospect of release, for the young man with his grandiose bearing and amorous sighs wearied her almost beyond endurance. Adrian was not equally pleased; indeed he had feigned symptoms which caused him to remain in bed an extra week, merely in order that he might keep her near him. But now the inevitable hour had come, and Adrian ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... a Czarina. Which proved to be the whole rule of his policy on that Russian side. "Good that Country cannot bring me by any quarrel with it; evil it can, to a frightful extent, in case of my quarrelling with others! Be wary, be punctual, magnanimously polite, with that grandiose Czarina and her huge territories and notions:" this was Friedrich's constant rule in public and in private. Nor is it thought his CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE EMPRESS CATHARINE, when future generations see it in print, will disclose the least ground ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... declared that Cooper was the only writer of stories worthy to be placed by the side of Walter Scott, and that his hero Leather-stocking was sublime. "I don't know," said he, "if the fiction of Walter Scott furnishes a creation as grandiose as that of this hero of the savannas and forests. Cooper's descriptions are the school at which all literary landscapists should study: all the secrets of art are there. But Cooper is inferior to Walter Scott in his comic and minor ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... Browning's writings, appear singularly appropriate that so cosmopolitan a poet was born in London. It would seem as though something of that mighty complex life, so confusedly petty to the narrow vision, so grandiose and even majestic to the larger ken, had blent with his being from the first. What fitter birthplace for the poet whom a comrade has called the "Subtlest Assertor of the Soul in Song," the poet whose writings are indeed a mirror of ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... stairway. We were waiting for the tide to fall, to go out to the mussel-bed. Meanwhile the prospect to be seen from this improvised seat was one made to be looked at. There is a certain innate compelling quality in all great beauty. When nature or woman presents a really grandiose appearance, they are singularly reposeful, if you notice; they have the calm which comes with a consciousness of splendor. It is only prettiness which is tormented with the itching for display; and therefore this ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... non-Jewish governments, to substitute therefor a Jewish world government, to obliterate all national boundaries, and to destroy all religions other than Judaism. This, it is alleged, is the concrete form in which the Jews visualize their destiny as the Chosen People. In order to attain this grandiose ideal, every means to weaken the non-Jewish elements and institutions in civilization is encouraged by the invisible Jewish government, the leaders of this ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... Henriette had foreseen the criticisms that would rise in my mind as soon as I saw the servile effects of a courtier's life upon him. Monsieur de Mortsauf, king in his own castle and surrounded by an historic halo, had, to my eyes, a certain grandiose dignity. I was therefore greatly astonished at the distance he placed between the duchess and himself by manners that were nothing less than obsequious. A slave has his pride and will only serve the greatest despots. I confess I was humiliated at the degradation ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... we had forgotten all the "conflagrations" except that in Chicago. There was something grandiose and unforgettable in the tales which told of the madly fleeing crowds in the narrow streets. These accounts pushed back the walls of my universe till its far edge included the ruined metropolis whose rebuilding was of the highest importance to us, for it was not only the source of all ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the man daring enough to risk his all in its acquisition. It was in accordance with human nature and the principles of political economy that this unknown extent of uninhabited transmontane land, widely renowned for beauty, richness, and fertility, should excite grandiose dreams in the minds of English and Colonials alike. England was said to be "New Land mad and everybody there has his eye fixed on this country." Groups of wealthy or well-to-do individuals organized themselves ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... an alien Muslim dynasty, would at first sight seem unlikely to produce illustrations of Hindu religion. Its main function was to illustrate works of literature, science and contemporary history—a function which resulted in such grandiose productions as the Akbarnama or Annals of Akbar, now preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum.[74] None the less there are two ways in which Mughal painting, as developed under Akbar, contributed ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... a simulation of the military is a favorite device. So we find Pseudolus addressing the audience in ringing blustering tones and with grandiose ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... since to help him in the gratification of his selfish ambitions.' Conceive of this, written with an air of conviction, and on the best information. Now, of the two imputations, I much prefer 'the inspiration from hell.' There's something grandiose about that, to say nothing of the superior ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... has been glorified by an imaginative soul with the title of "Royal Transportation Officer." As a matter of fact, the "R" does not stand for "royal," but for "railway," and the "T" is "transport," nothing so grandiose as "transportation." Now an R.T.O.'s job, though it may be a safe one, is not enviable. He is forced to combine the qualities of booking-clerk, station-master, goods-agent, information clerk, and day and night watchman all into one. In consequence of this ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... the obscure British chieftain Arthur a world conqueror. Arthur thus became already in Geoffrey's "Historia regum Britaniae" a conscious protagonist of Charlemagne and his rival in popularity. This grandiose conception of Arthur persisted in England, but this conception of the British chieftain did not interest the French. For Chretien Arthur had no political significance. He is simply the arbiter of his court in all affairs of justice ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... Baths of Caracalla, where the picture is not set in a frame of hideous houses, awakened her native enthusiasm. "A grandiose ruin," she exclaims, "of colossal proportions; it is shut away, isolated, silent and respected. There you feel the terrific power of the Caesars, and the opulence of a nation intoxicated with its ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... unconquered, and possessing an individuality of its very own, this now important prefecture has much to remind us of its past. History, archaeology, and "mere antiquarian lore" abound, and, in its grandiose Cathedral of St. Corentin, one finds a large subject for ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... dress and air, founded upon strict distinctions in law. The landed aristocrat with his laces and ruffles, his silks and his gold and silver ornaments and his expensive tableware, his consciously superior air and tone of grandiose authority, was far removed in established position from the mechanic or the laborer with his coarse clothes and mean habitation. Laws were long in force in various provinces which prohibited the common people from ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... a man in a melancholy mood is left tete-a-tete with the sea, or any landscape which seems to him grandiose, there is always, for some reason, mixed with melancholy, a conviction that he will live and die in obscurity, and he reflectively snatches up a pencil and hastens to write his name on the first thing that comes handy. And that, ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and quite unnecessary bursts of rage, and announce his refusal of anything under a million for them. And then he would exhibit them, taking them from a broken Libby, McNeill and Libby milk case under his camp-bed, and holding the rolled splendours aloft. And then, with a grandiose gesture, as of some insane nobleman showing his interminable pedigree, he would let the thing unfold and one beheld a sad animal of unknown species sitting in a silver winter landscape, or a purple silk sunset. And over it glared the mad artist, a sallow ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... built of stone, which rose from the waste at about two hundred yards from the tents to the east. Although they could see so little, however, they were impressed with a sensation that they were on the edge of some vast vision, of some grandiose effect of Nature, that would bring to them a new and astonishing knowledge of the desert. Perhaps it was the sight of the distant tower pointing to the grey clouds that stirred in them this almost excited feeling ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... and came to England about the year 1640. He wrote several theological tracts, edited sundry agricultural works, including, among others, those of Sir Richard Weston, and published his own observations upon the shortcomings of British husbandry. He also proposed a grandiose scheme for an agricultural college, in order to teach youths "the theorick and practick parts of this most ancient, noble, and honestly gainfull art, trade, or mystery." The work published under his name entitled "The Legacy," besides notices of the Brabant husbandry, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... actually have decided!... Life is very queer!" She had as yet no notion whatever of what she would do with her liberty and her income and the future; but she thought vaguely of something heroic, grandiose, and unusual. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... in a grandiose manner and voice that nicely trilled the r's, 'in the fourth chapter and ninth verse of Lamentations you will find these words—here he raised his voice a bit and began to tap the palm of his left hand with the index finger of his right, continuing: "They that be slain with ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... the hearts of the people of Villa Seca by the "formality" of his behaviour and language; for he tells us that in such remote places might still be found the gravity of deportment and the grandiose expressions which are scoffed at as exaggerations in the romances. He speaks of himself in one place as strolling about a town or neighbourhood, entering into conversation with several people whom he met, shopkeepers, professional men, and others. Near Evora he sat down daily ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... sometimes takes the form of elaborate affectations of which the favorite 'conceit' is only the most apparent. 5. It was in part a period of experimentation, when the proper material and limits of literary forms were being determined, oftentimes by means of false starts and grandiose failures. In particular, many efforts were made to give prolonged poetical treatment to many subjects essentially prosaic, for example to systems of theological or scientific thought, or to the geography of all England. 6. It continued ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... Great King was a far-way, tremendous, golden figure, moving in a splendor as of fairy tales; palaced marvelously, so travelers told, in cities compared with which even Athens seemed mean. Greek drama sought its subjects naturally in the remote and grandiose; always in the myths of prehistory, save once—when Aeschylus found a kindred atmosphere, and the material he wanted, in the palace of the Great King. To whom, as a matter of history, not unrecorded by ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... out the pieces of cardboard which had come in Cynthia's letter. He dared not look at Jethro, and his eye was fixed instead upon the somewhat grandiose signature of Isaac D. Worthington, which they bore. Jethro took them and tore them up, and slowly tossed the pieces into a cuspidor conveniently situated near the foot of the bed. He rose and thrust his hands ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a good speed over gentle curves rounding hill-sides, the grass of which bent under a light breeze. Here and there stood a minute white cottage—almost toy-like—where coffee gatherers lived. On the left we had a grandiose undulating region—what the Americans would call "rolling country"—combed into thousands of parallel lines of coffee trees, interrupted at intervals by extensive stretches of light green grazing land. Only now and then, as the engine puffed and throbbed under me, did I notice a rectangle ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... construction, particularly as compared with that immediately following ("With the Faithful deign to place us"), a tenor solo of a quaint and pastoral character. The next number for chorus ("While the wicked are confounded") affords still another striking contrast, being in the grandiose style and very dramatic, closing with phrases for the solo voices expressive of submission and contrition. Up to this point the "Dies Irae" has been monotonous in its sameness of general style; but the next verse ("Day of Weeping, Day of ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... almost thrusting itself on your imagination. It is a city for giants to dwell in, everything is on such an enormous scale, dealt out in such careless profusion. The river, first of all, is immense; the palaces grandiose, the very blocks of which they are fashioned seem to have been hewn by Titans. The names are full of romance and mystery. The fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, for instance, how it brings back a certain red and gold book of one's youth, full of innocent prisoners in clanking ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... He loved to do things upon a grand scale, to preside, to dominate. In his good humour there was something Jovian. When angry, everybody around him trembled. But he had not the genius for detail, was not patient. The certain grandiose lavishness of his disposition occupied itself more with results than with means. He was always ready to take chances, to hazard everything on the hopes of colossal returns. In the mining days at Placerville there was no more redoubtable ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... hotels which have been built for the purpose they now serve, but the fact that they were so built has very effectually prevented even the most splendid among them from rivaling, or indeed approaching, the grandiose magnificence of this superb hostelrie, which has chosen its name in no idle spirit of vaunting. For building is costly, space is precious, and the necessity of finding a due return for the capital employed is the paramount ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... nobody having the courage to take upon themselves the responsibility of the decisive "Yes." Finally the Count seized the bull by the horns. Adopting his most grandiose air, he turned with a bow to the embarrassed young woman and said, "We accept ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... but in the body also. The expression there is no different in essential kind from that found in the heroic classic sculpture. It is universal, typical, not individual, personal; of the gods, not of men. Its quality alone differs; it is monstrous, pathological, grandiose, instead ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... Let us add a quantity of fine, amusing, and varied streets, like the Rue de Rivoli, and I do not despair of Paris presenting to the eye, when viewed from a balloon, that richness of line, that opulence of detail, that diversity of aspect, that grandiose something in the simple, and unexpected in the ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Rome, its great character and incident, Merimee valued, as if it had been personal property of his, every extant relic of it in the art that had been most expressive of its genius—architecture. In that grandiose art of building, the most national, the most tenaciously rooted of all the arts in the stable conditions of life, there were historic documents hardly less clearly legible than the manuscript chronicle. By the mouth of those stately Romanesque [19] churches, scattered in so many ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... The distinctions which remain are the fine proportions of the apartments— the marble pillars and niches of one; the remains of a richly-carved chimneypiece in another; the highly-wrought ceilings, to which ancient history and allegory have supplied grandiose figures—their deep colours unfaded, the ruddy burnish of their gilding as splendid as ever. Here and there great black-and-gold court-stools, raised at the sides, and finished off with bullet heads of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... profited by the species of fame to be derived from men of letters. He knew their venality and their needs. His sumptuous, well-appointed table was placed in grandiose fashion at their disposal. Moreover, he made sure of their attachment and esteem by fees and enormous pensions. The worthy La Fontaine nibbled like others at the bait, and at any rate paid his share of the reckoning by the most profuse ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... cleared, the usual anticlimax came to the situation—the tumbling down of Germany's elaborate and grandiose defense of her misdeeds—by a tardy confession of error, which swept everything she had previously said into the discard. On May 8, 1916, the same day on which the American note had been dispatched, Germany sent a further communication acknowledging that, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... after a life of restless energy and incessant publicity, the great showman has lain down to rest. He gave, in the eyes of the seekers after amusement, a lustre to America. * * * He created the metier of showman on a grandiose scale worthy to be professed by a man of genius. He early realized that essential feature of a modern democracy, its readiness to be led to what will amuse and instruct it. He knew that 'the people' means crowds, paying crowds; that crowds love the fashion and ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... possibility of his whining the competition which for weeks past had engrossed him. It was a design for the new museum of sculpture, for which the city had recently voted half a million. Dick's taste ran naturally to the grandiose, and the erection of public buildings had always been the object of his ambition. Here was an unmatched opportunity, and he knew that, in a competition of the kind, the newest man had as much chance of success as the firm of most ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... need not be considered an error. But the relative proportions of the horse and rider are not quite accurately preserved, Gattamelata being, if anything, rather below the right scale. The monument is, however, so massive and grandiose that criticism seems out of place; indeed, in the presence of the statue one feels that everything is subordinated to the power and mastery of Gattamelata himself. The general is bareheaded, and the strong courageous face is modelled with directness and energy. The gesture is commanding, and ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... to choose from time to time men of true and sound religion, fearing God and of honest conversation. In spite of these somewhat grandiose qualifications it was found necessary to make a second regulation by which each Governor on his election should protest and swear before the Vicar of Giggleswick and the rest of the Governors to be true and faithful towards the School and its emoluments ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... rivalry of mounting armaments between army and army, navy and navy, of the Europe before 1914? The code, to be sure, of cunning, of greed, of might; the materialism of the philosopher and the naturalism of the sensualist, clothed in grandiose forms and covered with the insufferable hypocrisy of solemn phrases. There are no conceivable ethical or religious interests and no humane goals or values that justify these things. International diplomacy and politics, economic imperialism, using ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... their necks like so many pullets. And should the poor little woman who bore his name become a drag on him, she would be tossed on to the rubbish-heap with the rest. In a way, so complete a freedom from altruistic motives had something grandiose about it. But those who ran up against it, and could not fight it with its own weapons, had not an ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... of the last paragraph, and that he, usually the most indocile of men, had listened to it. For all but three decades he confined his production—at least in the sense of substantial publication[101]—to poetry almost invariably splendid, drama always grandiose and sometimes grand, and prose-writing of a chiefly political kind, which even sympathisers (one would suppose) can hardly regard as of much value now if they have any critical faculty. Even the tremendous shock of disappointment, discomfiture, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... direct progeny of these grandiose villains are to be included those of Lewis and Maturin, and the heroes of Scott and Byron. We know them by their world-weariness, as well as by their piercing eyes and passion-marked faces, their "verra wrinkles Gothic." In ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... that could be found. They, however, liked it for its space and its view. They looked sideways from their windows on to the upper end of the lake, three thousand feet below them. Opposite, across the blue water, rose a grandiose rampart of mountains, the stage on which from morn till night the sun went through a long transformation scene of beauty. The water was marked every now and then by passing boats and steamers—tiny specks which ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with all Klopstock's pathos, a love for the wild and grandiose in Nature, almost unique in Germany, in this time of idyllic sentimentality. But the discovery of the beauty of romantic mountain scenery had been made by Rousseau some time before, for Rousseau, too, was a typical forerunner, and his romances fell ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... territory through which the line was projected, and the promoters gave up. Then in 1845 the railway mania in England brought a revival of all colonial schemes. Sir Richard Broun took up the plan for a line from Halifax to Quebec, along with other grandiose projects connected with his endeavour to revive the lost glories of the baronetage of Nova Scotia, but did not get past the stage of forming a provisional committee. This discussion revived the flagging hopes of St Andrews, and, as will be seen in detail later, a beginning ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... me to make any such preparations. I could not tell what sort of sustenance she would look for from my sagacity. And as to taking stock of the wares of my mind no one I imagine is anxious to do that sort of thing if it can be avoided. A vaguely grandiose state of mental self-confidence is much too agreeable to be disturbed recklessly by such a delicate investigation. Perhaps if I had had a helpful woman at my elbow, a dear, flattering acute, devoted woman... There are in life ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Triple Indra, the Veda says. In that description is the preface to a theogony of which Hesiod wrote the final page. It was the germ of sacred dynasties that ruled the Aryan and the Occidental skies. From it came the grandiose gods of Greece and Rome. From it also came the paler deities of the Norse. Meanwhile ages fled. Life nomad and patriarchal ceased. From forest and plain, temples arose; from hymns, interpretations; from prayer, metaphysics; for always man has tried to analyze ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... the consciousness of this alone amounted to a kind of vocation. The house itself made demands upon him nearly as definite as those of the servants. It was a house of huge rooms, high ceilings, and grandiose fireplaces and stairways, which had seemed to him like a royal palace when he first beheld it, and still produced upon him an effect of undigestible largeness and strangeness. It was as a whole not so old ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... talked the head off any man who was not born in a country laved by the childish Mediterranean. Coleman could not understand what he said to the soldiers as they passed, but it was evidently all grandiose nonsense. ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... enceinte of Nineveh, at Nebbi-Younas; but it was chiefly upon Nimroud that Esarhaddon left marks of his magnificence. The palace called the South-western Palace, in consequence of its position in the mound, was commenced by him. It was never finished, but in plan it was more grandiose than any other of the royal dwellings. Had it been complete it would have included the largest hall ever provided by an Assyrian architect for the ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... the main street, Mr. Bernard had noticed a large house of some pretensions to architectural display, namely, unnecessarily projecting eaves, giving it a mushroomy aspect, wooden mouldings at various available points, and a grandiose arched portico. It looked a little swaggering by the side of one or two of the mansion-houses that were not far from it, was painted too bright for Mr. Bernard's taste, had rather too fanciful a fence before it, and had some fruit-trees planted in ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... ample period breathes the grandiose pride and intense patriotism of the ancient republics. Athens under Pericles, and Rome under the first Scipio cherished no prouder sentiments. At each step, here as elsewhere, in texts and in monuments, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... extravagant contract entered into by Mr. ASQUITH'S Government. The EX PREMIER, however, insisted that if a mistake had been made the Railway Department of the Board of Trade could have corrected it just as well as its grandiose successor and at an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... often loses herself in sentimentalism. That dangerous vertigo nature in her case adopted, and was to make respectable. As it sometimes happens that a grandiose style, like that of the Alexandrian Platonists, or like Macpherson's Ossian, is more stimulating to the imagination of nations, than the true Plato, or than the simple poet, so here was a head so creative of new colors, of wonderful gleams,—so iridescent, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... sure, we come upon something that makes us hesitate again whether, after all, Dryden was not grandiose rather than great, as in the two passages ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... the most innocent accomplice. Then I thought of that dark-eyed, sweet-voiced, young girl, as she lay on the green grass under the beech-tree in the wood and out-argued me on every point. Very suddenly, and, perhaps, in a manner somewhat grandiose, ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... of the first Viceroy of India was not so grandiose as that of his successor. He did not believe in building many forts or attempting to establish direct government in the East. He argued that Portugal had not sufficient inhabitants to occupy many posts, and his view was that the Portuguese ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens
... conception of Gustave Dore rather than that of the old fabulists. The modern Ahasuerus has no surety of an eventual peace. We have seen the German War Lord flitting hungrily from Lorraine to Poland, from Flanders to Nish, watching the failure of his troops before Nancy and Ypres, inditing grandiose proclamations to Europe, prophesying a peace which never comes. He is a figure worthy of Greek tragedy. The [Greek: hubris] which defied the gods has put him outside the homely consolations of mankind. He has devoted his people to the Dance of Death, and himself, ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... creep quietly up. One by one the casualties are lifted in or climb in stiffly. The doctor who has come up with them chats with the M.O., and the local gossip is exchanged for the wider knowledge (or more grandiose rumours) of the field ambulance. Our Jock, who has a bullet in his chest, is lifted in. Straps are fastened securely and tarpaulins tied. 'All aboard, sir!' 'Right! Well, so long, Hadley!' 'Cheero, Scott!' The ambulances start very cautiously, ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... Gentleman,—a very opulent, splendid city. A point of transit of much that is remarkable, and of permanence for much that is respectable. A great money-centre. San Francisco with the mines above-ground,—and some of 'em under the sidewalks. I have seen next to nothing grandiose, out of New York, in all our cities. It makes 'em all look paltry and petty. Has many elements of civilization. May stop where Venice did, though, for aught we know.—The order of its development is just ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... risen and the fog was now breaking rapidly. As it gave way, the moonlight poured into the breaches that the wind made; the vast black-and-silver spectacle, the Falls, the gorge, the town opposite, the bridge, the clouds, began to appear in fragments, grandiose and fantastical. ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... feudalism in Japan was finer and more sensitive, if it was less grandiose, than feudalism in Europe. There is nothing in Japan to compare with the churches and cathedrals of the West, for there is no stone architecture at all. But there is nothing in the West to compare with the living-rooms of Japan. Suites of these dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... in search of exhilaration and beauty, Alsace offers attractions innumerable, sites grandiose and idyllic, picturesque ruins, superb forests, old churches of rare interest and many a ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the part which describes the arrival of the pursuers at Argos is full of uncertainties. It remains a fine, though archaic, poem, with this special claim on our interest, that it is, probably, the earliest extant poetic drama. We see in it the tendency to grandiose language, not yet fully developed as in the Prometheus: the inclination of youth to simplicity, and even platitude, in religious and general speculation: and yet we recognize, as in the germ, the profound theology of the Agamemnon, and a touch of the political vein which appears ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... Church has said: "I feel there are two men in me." He would have spoken truly in saying this about Tartarin, who carried in his frame the soul of Don Quixote, the same chivalric impulses, heroic ideal, and crankiness for the grandiose and romantic; but, worse is the luck! he had not the body of the celebrated hidalgo, that thin and meagre apology for a body, on which material life failed to take a hold; one that could get through twenty nights without its breast-plate being unbuckled, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... Vinsauf was the author of a well-known mediaeval treatise on composition in various poetical styles of which he gave examples. Chaucer's irony is therefore directed against some grandiose and affected lines on the death of Richard I., intended to illustrate the pathetic style, in which Friday is addressed as "O Veneris lachrymosa dies" ("O ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... auditory hallucinosis (superior temporal atellitosis, data of the late W. L. Worcester); X, delusion of birth to superior station, possibly the object of mixed emotions, probably not pleasant; and XI, manic-depressive exaltation with grandiose utterances, long prior to death (if there had been lung tuberculosis at the basis of the ileac ulcers, ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... the universal gold-cap-banded continental hotel portier, so like all others in Europe that it seemed idle for him to be leading an individual existence. He took the colonel's passport and summoned a waiter, who went bowing before them up a staircase more or less grandiose, and led them to a pleasant chamber, whither he sent directly a woman servant. She bade them a hearty good morning in her tongue, and, kneeling down before the tall porcelain stove, kindled from her apronful of blocks and sticks a fire that soon penetrated ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... General de Sonis, on foot, with his wooden leg, and a painting representing St. Francois, the patron of the house. Those were the only artistic decorations of the modest habitation. The nobleman often said: "I have freed myself from the tyranny of objects." But with that marvellous background of grandiose ruins and that sky, the simple spot was an incomparable retreat in which to end in meditation and renouncement a life already shaken by the tempests of the senses and of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... against the grandiose exaggerations of later romanticism appears in the works of Jose SELGAS y Carrasco (1824-1882), a clever writer of simple, sentimental verses. At one time his poetry was highly praised and widely read, but for the most ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... of poetry is distasteful to many, who like to think that "Paradise Lost" came out in a jet. But all these grandiose conceptions belong to the obscurantist view of human life, which is popular with all who hate, in Matthew Arnold's phrase, "to think clear and see straight." People fancy that the dignity of human life demands ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... necessary revolution". Brave words which, as there is reason to believe, were invented for him and never spoken.[86] Beckford's friends believed that he had got the better of the king, and Chatham in a grandiose letter to him declared that "the spirit of old England spoke that never-to-be-forgotten day". Nevertheless, Beckford's conduct was highly indecorous. The sovereign never performs a public act on his own responsibility, and accordingly all addresses ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... beautiful binding, for three and six, and I am exceedingly indebted to Messrs. Newnes for creating that volume. It was sheer genius on their part to do so. I get charming sensations from it, but sensations not so charming as I should get from Mrs. Paget Toynbee's many-volumed and grandiose edition, even aside from Mrs. Toynbee's erudite notes and the extra letters which she has been able to print. The same letter in Mrs. Toynbee's edition would have a higher aesthetic and moral value for me than in the "editionlet" of Messrs. Newnes. ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... I start with surprise as I note one good thing after another, and tell myself that this is the best thing I have ever read. My head swims with a sense of satisfaction; delight inflates me; I grow grandiose. ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... in this lonely woman after so many years of hard working, and hard living, my Lords and Gentlemen and Honourable Boards! What is it that we call it in our grandiose speeches? British independence, rather perverted? Is that, or something like it, the ring ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... things in general, the Prince conducts us to Napoleon in particular, and enters largely into a discussion of the merits of the imperial system. Our author speaks of the Emperor's advent in the following grandiose way:— ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... they were voted cranks by the majority, and the Consolidated Provident Savings Company grew and flourished. It paid large dividends, and its stockholders were duly impressed with the magnificence of its buildings and the grandiose tone ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... of a saloon in an old-fashioned country house (Florence Towers, the property of Count O'Dowda) has been curtained off to form a stage for a private theatrical performance. A footman in grandiose Spanish livery enters before the curtain, on ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... narrative, but it does great injustice to Patrick Henry by representing him virtually as a mere declaimer, as an ill-instructed though most impressive rhapsodist in debate, and as without any claim to the character of a serious statesman, or even of a man of affairs; while, by the somewhat grandiose and melodramatic tone of some portion of the narrative, it is singularly out of harmony with the real tone of that famous assemblage,—an assemblage of Anglo-Saxon lawyers, politicians, and men of business, who were probably about as practical ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... seem most arbitrary and, to the judgment of their contemporaries, purposeless, acquire, upon a deeper scrutiny and in after ages, a profound enough significance. Behind the immediate occasion, trivial or capricious, sordid or grandiose, the destiny of the race, like the Nemesis of Greek Tragedy, advancing relentlessly, pursuing its own far-off and lofty ends, ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... half nude. There are other groups. Men in armour rush to meet the foe in futile agitation. On temple tops, on marble terraces and balconies, on the efflorescent capitals of vast columns that pierce the sky, swarms affrighted humanity. The impression is grandiose and terrific. Exotic architecture, ebon night, an event that has echoed down the dusty corridors of legend or history—these and a hundred other details are enclosed within the frame of this composition. Another picture which hangs hard by, the Destruction of Jerusalem, after Kaulbach, is colourless ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... winnings. Take it. I never started nothing in my life I couldn't see the finish to. Take it and forget it!" He crammed the bill into her reluctant fingers, closed them over it, and sealed her little fist with a grandiose ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... over the grandiose room with its lofty ceiling as if he were a stranger entering the apartment for the first time. His powerful ancestors had built for giants. Each room in the palace was as large as a modern house. The windows were without glass all over the house and in winter they had to ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and then with the wealth derived from their thefts, bought negro slaves, set themselves up in the glamour of a patriarchal aristocracy and paraded a florid display of chivalry and honor. And it was this same grandiose class that plundered Whitney of the fruits of his invention of the cotton-gin and ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... triumphing over that double anguish, equally agonizing, of soul and body. Such men will well understand the lancinating pains of the cancer which was now consuming Athanase; they have gone through those long and bitter deliberations made in presence of some grandiose purpose they had not the means to carry out; they have endured those secret miscarriages in which the fructifying seed of genius falls on arid soil. Such men know that the grandeur of desires is in proportion to the height and ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... declensions as we went on. The advance I had made in Bengali[27] stood me in good stead. My father also encouraged me to try Sanskrit composition from the very outset. With the vocabulary acquired from my Sanskrit reader I built up grandiose compound words with a profuse sprinkling of sonorous 'm's and 'n's making altogether a most diabolical medley of the language of the gods. But my father never scoffed ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... softened by smiling accidents, by a happy blending of the finest works of men's hands with the capricious lay of a land full of unexpected contrasts, by a something, hardly to be explained, which surprises, astonishes, and puzzles. In no other part of France can the traveller meet with such grandiose contrasts as those offered by the great basin of the Couesnon, and the valleys hidden among the rocks of Fougeres and the heights of Rille. Their beauty is of that unspeakable kind in which chance triumphs and all the harmonies of Nature do their part. ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... was noble, large, and without any second thought. This magnanimity struck Rodolphe greatly, for in it he recognized the difference between the Italian and the Frenchwoman. The waters, the land, the sky, the woman, all were grandiose and suave, even their love in the midst of this picture, so vast in its expanse, so rich in detail, where the sternness of the snowy peaks and their hard folds standing clearly out against the blue sky, reminded Rodolphe of ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... the little cup in grandiose manner to Paul, and Paul, meeting his humor, accepted it in like fashion. He had not tasted wine often in his life and he found it a strong fluid, but, in this crisis, it strengthened him and put a new ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sheer exploration can get it in any library: those in search of sheer romantic adventure can purchase plenty of it at any book-stall. But the majority want something different from either of these. They want, first of all, to know what the country is like-not in vague and grandiose "word paintings," nor in strange and foreign sounding words and phrases, but in comparison with something they know. What is it nearest like-Arizona? Surrey? Upper New York? Canada? Mexico? Or is it totally different from anything, as is the Grand Canyon? When you look out from your ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... have a mine of information as to the teachings of the early Christians. Origen held a splendid and grandiose view of the whole of the evolution of our system. I put it to you briefly. You can read it in all its carefully, logically-worked-out arguments, if you will have the patience to read his treatise for yourselves. ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... sayings—I am quoting from memory—I remember this solemn admonition: "Let all thy words have the accent of heroic truth." The accent of heroic truth! This is very fine, but I am thinking that it is an easy matter for an austere emperor to jot down grandiose advice. Most of the working truths on this earth are humble, not heroic; and there have been times in the history of mankind when the accents of heroic truth have moved it to ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... without a plentiful spending fund. He had told her they would go North from Reno and travel eastward by the Canadian Pacific, stopping at points of interest along the road. He imagined his courtship progressing in grandiose suites of rooms wherein were served delicate meals, his generous largesse to obsequious hirelings adding to her dazzled approval. He had to have that money; he couldn't go without it; he had set it aside to deck with fitting ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... mother, broad-footed, in gay petticoat and kerchief, sits in a starry meadow suckling her baby from a very ample white breast. I think that this movement towards the Church tradition may be unconscious and instinctive, and would perhaps be deplored by many Communists, for whom grandiose bad Rodin statuary and the crudity of cubism better express what they mean by revolution. But this revolution is Russian and not French, and its art, if all goes well, should inevitably bear the popular Russian ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... after all a question of somewhat restricted importance. The essential truth is that he was by nature an adventurer who, in the words of Hamilton, "believed all things possible to daring and energy," and that in 1806 he was a bankrupt and asocial outcast to boot. Whether, therefore, his grandiose project of an empire on the ruins of Spanish dominion in Mexico involved also an effort to separate some part of the West from the Union is a question which, if it was ever definitely determined in Burr's ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... write, soon after delivering to my students, in the library adjoining my study, a lecture on Preaching. Let me call it rather, a talk on Sermons, which is a term less grandiose and much more true; for in fact the discourse has been a most informal series of remarks and suggestions on topics suggested by a collection of sermons written for me, and which I now came to give back, annotated, ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... portieres and window curtains lined with white silk. Pictures, evidently from old panels, plant-stands, various pretty articles of modern upholstery, handsome lamps, and a rare old cut-glass chandelier, gave a grandiose appearance to the room. The carpet was a Persian rug. The boudoir, wholly modern, and furnished entirely after Madame Moreau's own taste, was arranged in imitation of a tent, with ropes of blue silk on a gray background. ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac |
