"Loftiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well from hence," cried he; "and how well he acquits himself on these solemn occasions! With what dignity, what loftiness, what high propriety, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... legends of Troy and Iceland, so also in the Nibelungen-lied, the story centres on a young hero glowing with beauty and victory, and possessed of loftiness of character; but who meets with an early and untimely death. Such is Baldur the Beautiful of Iceland, and such, also, are Hector and Achilles of Troy. These songs mark the greatness and the waning of the ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... in their mysterious and majestic silence, stood the eternal mountains; like gigantic watchers, they kept their vigil over the placid scene beneath—the vigil of untold centuries. Cloudless, unsympathizing, changeless, they had no part in the busy drama of human experience their loftiness overlooked, and now they loomed with shadowy outline, through the sanctifying light, habitants ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... in the words is hatred, as fixed as the knowledge is clear. God's supremacy and loftiness, and Christ's nature, are recognised, but only the more abhorred. The name of God can be used as a spell to sway Jesus, but it has no power to touch this fierce hatred into submission. 'The devils also believe and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... to that rock stretched from Olympus in its loftiness midst heaven and earth by golden chains, that mass of clay borne round with rapid revolutions, that in my plaints I might cry out to my ancient father Tantalus; who begat the progenitors of my family, who saw calamities, what time in the pursuing ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... citizen of the highest rank who fell an innocent victim to the angry passions which the discovery of this plot awakened in Nero's mind. It was the consul Vestinus. Vestinus was a man of great loftiness of character, and had never evinced that pliancy of temper, and that submissiveness to the imperial will, which Nero required. His position, too, as consul, which was the highest civil office in the commonwealth, gave him a vast ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... wild feeling of revolt ran through Julie's mind. The loftiness of his mood chilled her. An attitude more weakly, passionately human, a more selfish pity for himself would, in truth, have served him better. Had the pain of the living man escaped his control, avenging ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Owen is less indebted for his fame than almost any of the Puritans. Not to mention that his works have never been condensed into fresh pith and modern portableness by any congenial Fawcett, they never did exhibit the pathetic importunity and Demosthenic fervor of Baxter. In his Platonic loftiness Howe always dwelt apart; and there have been no glorious dreams since Bunyan woke amidst the beatific vision. Like a soft valley, where every turn reveals a cascade or a castle, or at least a picturesque cottage, Flavel lures us along by the vivid succession of his curious analogies ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... startled. In the sight of the figure that stood before him full of contempt there was something that disarmed him. It was the power of truth, the loftiness of innocence confronting the sinner. He pulled himself together with an effort. "Did he tell you so? Have you got so far already?" he said, forcing the words out between his teeth. Christiane wanted to go into the house; he stopped her. She wanted ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... thoughtful. He was a handsome man, turning forty. His face was strong, clean shaved, except a light mustache, with full sensual lips and an unusually fine brow. It was the brow of intellect—all in front. Behind and above there was no loftiness of ideality or of veneration. His smile was constant, and though slightly cold, was always approachable. His manner was decisive, but clever ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... stand, leave no doubt. If Mahler is not a great man, he is at least the silhouette of one. The need of expression that drove him to composition was indubitably mighty. The passion with which he addressed himself to his labor despite all discouragement and lack of success, the loftiness and nobleness of the task which he set for himself, the splendor of the intentions, reveal how fierce a fire burnt in the man. He was not one of those who come to music to form little jewels. On the contrary, in gesture ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... of remembrance, accept the deep gratitude of one who has learned in a few too brief months under your roof more than he could elsewhere have learned in a life-time, of the loftiness of faith ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... half dreaming, he mistakes her for an angel (he had already seen one in his sleep), but subsequently, growing suspicious, he repels her with a dignified disdain. For I must tell you that, whatever the guide-book may allege about the loftiness of her designs, the music gave her away. It reverted, in fact, to the motive of those passages which had already accompanied and illustrated the nuptial dance, the dance (as Herr Tiessen calls ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... founded on abstract principles so deep and broad that they form the groundwork of our English laws and constitution; that the Teuton creed concerning the unseen world, and divine beings, was of a loftiness and purity as far above the silly legends of Hiawatha as the Teuton morals were above those of a Sioux or a Comanche. Let any one read honest accounts of the Red Indians; let him read Catlin, James, Lewis and Clarke, Shoolbred; and first and best of all, the old 'Travaile in Virginia,' ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... say."[22] In consultations upon public affairs, when the most important things hung in peril, his contemporaries speak with amazement of the gigantic strength of his mind, the unexampled acuteness of his intellect, the breadth and loftiness ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... solitude and darkness, not because one flees the company of others and can endure only one's own, but because of their quality of loftiness and religion. Strange how all things pass distantly, yet all is near; we sit in an omnipresence. It must be God. It must be ourselves as a part ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... he was no Puritan; but we cannot think of the creator of Hamlet, Ophelia, Othello, Desdemona, Cordelia, Portia, Rosalind, Miranda, and Prospero as other than a man of a contrite spirit and a pure heart. As he surpassed his contemporaries in breadth and loftiness of intellect, so too he surpassed them in the reach and vigor of ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... one who lacks all these advantages, and who then would be far away from you. When I called to mind all the amiable qualities possessed by Maria Louisa, I could not but tremble at the thought that I should soon be indifferent to you, but surely I was then ignoring the loftiness and generosity of your soul, which still preserves the memory of its extraordinary devotedness, and of its tenderness toward me, a devotedness and tenderness whose superabundance was proportioned to those eminent qualities which have surprised Europe, and which ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... her with its loftiness. She thrilled to him suddenly, too. She saw that she was within the aura of a fiery spirit—a business man aflame. And she saw in a white light that the builders of things, even of perishable things, are as great as the weavers of immortal words—not so well remembered, of course, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... all over, and shout in a voice of thunder, "Hold your tongue!" so that the post office had long enjoyed the reputation of an institution which it was terrible to visit. Mihail Averyanitch liked and respected Andrey Yefimitch for his culture and the loftiness of his soul; he treated the other inhabitants of the town superciliously, as though ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... that be that lasts and rises, flash after flash, for an hour and a half! Some day or other, perhaps you will see some of the glittering splinters that I gathered up. I have written under his print these lines, which are not only full as just as the original, but have not the tautology of loftiness and majesty: ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... he would cripple at a blow all the virtues. I do not, however, place this noblest of sentiments on the somewhat isolated height where it is put by the exclusive adorers of liberty. Let us not confound dignity with mere loftiness. Moreover, by the side of dignity let us never forget that other inspiring sentiment, which is at least its equal in value, humanity; that is to say, the remembrance, the care, of that great number who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... believe," said Mr. Albert Spener with a little exaggeration of his natural stiffness. Perhaps he did not suspect that all the morning he had been manifesting considerable loftiness toward Loretz, and that he spoke in a way that made Leonhard feel that his departure from Spenersberg would probably take place within something less than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... of expressions that would necessarily occur in the course of the very long work he meditated forging. To judge from his handiwork, he was specially struck by certain peculiarities:—such as dignified and powerful expression, with extraordinary conciseness joined to loftiness of diction;—hence, his brevity, being dissembled, and altogether foreign to his own natural diction, which was most copious, has a hardness and obscurity, of which the brevity of Tacitus is totally void. He seems to have furthermore observed how the language of Tacitus has a poetical ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... case, was sometimes a great and legitimate political object, nothing less than the dominant interest of France, but far more often his own personal interest, something necessary to his own success or his own gratification. No loftiness, no greatness of soul, was natural to him; and the more experience of life he had, the more he became selfish and devoid of moral sense and of sympathy with other men, whether rivals, tools, or subjects. All found out before long, not only ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... We have noticed other instances in which Marcus Aurelius labored, at the risk of his popularity, to elevate the condition of human nature. But those, though equally expressing the goodness and loftiness of his nature, were by accident directed to a perishable institution, which time has swept away, and along with it therefore his reformations. Here, however, is an immortal act of goodness built upon an immortal basis; for so long ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... edging shadows of the town. The lights glimmer one by one; and one by one, like breaking hopes, they fade away from the houses. The full-risen moon, that dapples the ground beneath the trees, touches the tall church-spires with silver, and slants their loftiness—as memory slants grief—in long, dark, tapering lines upon ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn: The first in loftiness of thought surpassed, The next in majesty—in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go; To make a third she joined ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... character, or to the 'wide, gray, lampless' depths of human destiny. We find the same national characteristic, though on an infinitely lower level, in Franklin's oracular saws. Among the French sages a psychological element is predominant, as well as an occasional transcendent loftiness of feeling, not to be found in Bacon's wisest maxims, and from his point of view in their composition we could not expect to find them there. We seek in vain amid the positivity of Bacon, or the quaint and timorous paradox of Browne, or the acute sobriety of Shaftesbury, for any of that poetic ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... to the shafts of calumny and scorn because of your fidelity to your God; encountering, it may be, the coldness and estrangement of those dear to you, who can not, perhaps, sympathize in the holiness of your walk and the loftiness of your aims, "consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye be weary and faint in your minds!" What is your "contradiction" to His? Soon your cross, whatever it be, will have ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... Tenebrae are of a like inspiration and an equal loftiness with those of Quentin Matsys' great work, the Entombment of Christ. The "Regina Coeli" of the Flemish musician Lasso has the same good faith, the same simple and strange attraction, as certain statues of a reredos, or religious pictures of the elder Breughel. Lastly, the Miserere of ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England, did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd; The next in majesty; in both the last: The force of nature could no further go, To make a third, she join'd the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... with central porch and wings at each end, is built of the beautiful Ham Hill stone which abounds in the district; the colour of this stone greatly enhances the appearance of the house and adds to its venerable aspect. It has little ornamental detail, but what there is is very good, while the loftiness and general proportions of the building—its extent and solidity of masonry, and the taste and care with which every part has been designed and carried out, give it an air of ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... Men living in self-indulgence have shaken off their sloth, and roused the old slumbering fearlessness of their race. Men, living for selfish ends, have been penetrated by the light of a great purpose, and have risen to the loftiness of human duty. Men, who shrank from pain as the sorest evil, have voluntarily accepted pain, and borne it with a fortitude we once believed lost from among mankind; and, over all, the flaming light of a worthy cause ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... capital of a separate kingdom. In our dining room were three beds, or rather we dined in the bed room. I use the former expression out of compliment to the pride of our little host, who replied with some loftiness to one of our companions, who, upon entering the room, and seeing so many accommodations for repose, exclaimed, with the sharpness of appetite, "my good host, we want to eat, and not to sleep;" "gentlemen," said our mortified little maitre d'hotel, "this chamber is the dining ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... closer, however, we shall see that mythical and magic elements were requisite to lend this loftiness to the argument. Had AEneas not been Venus's son, had no prophetic instinct animated him, had no Juno been planning the rise of Carthage, how could the future destinies of this expedition have been imported into it, to lift ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... nights, without drawing rein to rest, but found the wall thereof as it were one block, without breach or way of ingress; and on the third day, he came again in sight of his companions, dazed and amazed at what he had seen of the extent and loftiness of the place, and said, "O Emir, the easiest place of access is this where you have alighted." Then Musa took Talib and Abd al-Samad and ascended the highest hill which overlooked the city. When they reached the top, they beheld beneath them a city, never saw ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... that are foreign to its nature. To cite only one striking example, let me recall that Job Ben Salomon, the African, who in the last century was carried to America and thence to England, and was admired by all who knew him for the loftiness of his character, the energy of his religious fanaticism, and the extent of his intelligence,—this Ben Salomon, who has been cited as a model of that which the negro race could produce, did not belong to that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... of being free from such conventions as the cameo relief, the picturesque costume details, the goldsmith's work characteristic of the Renaissance, now so much in vogue, M. Rodin's things acquire a certain largeness and loftiness as well as simplicity and sincerity of sentiment. The same model posed for the "Saint Jean" that posed for a dozen things turned out of the academic studios, but compared with the result in the latter cases, that in the former is even more remarkable ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... to the palace-gate, which is a great pillared archway, of wonderful loftiness and state, giving admittance into a spacious quadrangle. A stout, elderly, and rather surly footman in livery appeared at the entrance, and took possession of whatever canes, umbrellas, and parasols he could get hold ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... clouds to the stars could not keep it there without artificial aid, the immense value of his influence remained. He is one of the most interesting representatives, not only of his own, but of all similar periods of exaggerated feelings and ideals. Despite his loftiness of thought and speech, and his seraphic raptures, he was not without a full share of sensuous development, and women's eyes, or a girl's rosy lips, would draw him away from the finest view in ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... countenance was full of persuasion, and her voice was soft, and eloquent, and fascinating. Roderic gazed upon her with insatiate curiosity, and drank her accents with a greedy ear. For a moment, charmed with the loftiness of her discourse and the heroism of her soul, he was half persuaded to relent, and abjure his diabolical purpose. It was only by summoning up all the fierceness of his temper, all the impatience of his passions, and all the mistaken haughtiness and inflexibility of his purpose, ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... Burns is of a high order: in brightness of expression and unsolicited ease and natural vehemence of language, he stands in the first rank of poets: in choice of subjects, in happiness of conception, and loftiness of imagination, he recedes into the second. He owes little of his fame to his objects, for, saving the beauty of a few ladies, they were all of an ordinary kind: he sought neither in romance nor in history for themes to the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... sacredness in the occasion. Even those whom Mr. Mill honoured with his friendship, and who must always bear to his memory the affectionate veneration of sons, may yet feel their pain at the thought that they will see him no more, raised into a higher mood as they meditate on the loftiness of his task and the steadfastness and success with which he achieved it. If it is grievous to think that such richness of culture, such full maturity of wisdom, such passion for truth and justice, are now by a single stroke extinguished, at least we may find some ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... Institute one evening, Marion cast about her mental horizon for some scene or association in her life that would suggest the desired name. The first that came to her was the picture of a towering mountain, conspicuous not so much for its actual loftiness as for its deceptive appearance of great height. In all her experiences at home, it had never occurred to Marion to think of this individual portion of prehistoric geologic upheaval as a mass of earth and stones. She thought of it ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... read in such a spirit will tend to resort more and more to large and wise and beautiful books, to press the sweetness out of old familiar thoughts, to look more for warmth and loftiness of feeling than for elaborate and artful expression. They will value more and more books that speak to the soul, rather than books that appeal to the ear and to the mind. They will realize that it is through wisdom and force and nobility ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... seen at the turn of the staircase. The one in advance had a thoughtful, anxious and somewhat crafty expression of face, and in spite of his loftiness of manner, which was evidently the result both of an ambitious spirit and of long continuance in high stations, he seemed not incapable of cringing to a greater than himself. A few steps behind came an officer in a ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... meant to such a man as Randolph. He was a high-bred, high-spirited man of thirty, descended from a long line of proud and chivalrous men; educated, refined, sensitive, generous, and brave. His fine talents, his dash, his polished manner, his industry, his integrity, his loftiness of character, had lifted him upon the shoulders of popularity and prosperity; so that, in the city of his home, there was not another man of his age, a member of his profession, the law, who was so well known, so well liked, or wielded ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... men were not fitted for the work. It needed a beefy person with fat legs and a large amount of inexplicable dignity, a regular God-knows-why loftiness. Truth, in those days, real talent was usually engaged in some form of rascality, barring the making of books and sermons. When one remembers the impenetrable dulness of the great mass of the people, the frivolity of the gentry, the arrogance and wickedness of the court, ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... Maxime du Camp and Monsieur Laurent Pichat, his two leaders, had none of those smoking-cafe vulgarities which have procured so many subscribers to the "Siecle" newspaper. Both poets, Laurent Pichat with remarkable loftiness, Maxime du Camp with bizarre energy, intent upon an ideal which democracy has a right to pursue, since it has not yet found it, men of the world, capable of discussing in full dress the most perplexed questions of Socialism, they accept none of those party-chains which so often bow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... no such thing as circumstance," said Mrs. Bogardus with loftiness. Her face was calm and sweet in its exaltation. "I cannot say things as you can, but this is what I mean. I was the wife of his body—sworn flesh of his flesh. In the flesh that made us one I denied him, and caused ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... wooden bowl filled with these and duly watered will give a winter-garden to the smallest lodging. Sun and light are, as Mr. Toots says, of "no consequence" to the moss family. But if one be above such trifles as mosses, and with Young American loftiness aspire to full-grown trees, there is still plenty to do in the most ordinary woodlands. After a chapter of Mr. Ruskin upon Claude and Poussin and Turner, there is nothing like going to the original documents. In default of the National Gallery from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... The loftiness of his daughter's spirit was not unknown to the Prince; but still he did not credit her with a resolve quite as firmly fixed as her words implied, to carry their purport into effect. So, parting from her without the least intention of using harshness towards her in her own person, he determined ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... incomparable definiteness and sharpness (see Lev. 19: 2, 12, 13, 34-37). Truthfulness is here presented as derived directly from the principle of holiness, and to be practiced without regard to resulting benefit or injury to foe or to friend, to foreigner or to countryman. In this moral loftiness these Mosaic teachings as to truthfulness pervade the whole Bible. In the Talmud they receive a profounder comprehension and a further development. Truthfulness toward men is represented as a duty toward God; and, ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... ship's spars. It seems impossible but that those gilt trucks which one had to tilt one's head back to see, now falling into the lower plane of vision, must perforce hit the very edge of the horizon. Such an experience gives you a better impression of the loftiness of your spars than any amount of running aloft could do. And yet in my time the royal yards of an average profitable ship were a good way up ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... great players; but as Sir George Grove aptly says, in speaking of Beethoven's tours de force in performance, his transposing and playing at sight, etc., 'It was no quality of this kind that got him the name, but the loftiness and elevation of his style, and his great power of expression in slow movements, which, when exercised on his noble music, fixed his hearers, and made them insensible to any fault of ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... from the west one was impressed by the unusual height of some of its buildings, most of which were two-storied and had domed roofs, the domes being of much larger proportions than usual. A quadrangular tower of considerable loftiness stood prominent above the height of all the other buildings. For a Persian village Iskil had quite a clean, fresh appearance, even from a short distance. On getting near we entered the main road—one ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... it has imposed itself to an overwhelming extent on the Parish Churches and Cathedrals of the country, and to it he added a Dome. There is one feature that these two apparent opposites have in common. Gothic Churches vary greatly, but many of them are notable for their appearance of loftiness. The clustered columns seem to lead the eye upwards to the roof, as if men naturally went about the world cramped and confined, and were now bidden turn their gaze to the heights. A dome has a somewhat similar effect: it carries on the gaze and it ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... imposing air, from their great size and loftiness: the wheels are six feet in diameter; but every part of the ornament is of the meanest and most paltry description, save only the covering of striped and spangled broad-cloth, the splendid and gorgeous effect of which makes up in a great ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... laid aside an affectation, which I knew was little likely to attract a taste so refined and unadulterated as her's. I discovered in her a mind which, while it charmed me by its tenderness and freshness, elevated me by its loftiness of thought. She was, at heart, perhaps, as ambitious as myself; but while my aspirations were concealed by affectation, her's were softened by her timidity, and purified by her religion. There were moments when I opened ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... history, which is noted for its excellent literary style, he wrote Primera parte de los anales de Aragon (Zaragoza, 1630) the continuation of the Anales of Zurita. He was also a poet, whose poems are remarkable for their purity of style and loftiness of sentiment; they are published, with those of his elder brother, under the title Rimas de Lupercio i del doctor Bartolome Leonardo de Argensola (Zaragoza, 1634). One of the chief poems is an ode in honor of the church ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... the lowest, ostentation pervades,—the very backbone and marrow of society,—he felt that to fall far short of his rivals in display was to give them an advantage which he could not compensate either by the power of his connections or the surpassing loftiness of his character and genius. Playing for a great game, and with his eyes open to all the consequences, he cared not for involving his private fortunes in a lottery in which a great prize might be drawn. ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... again disciplined, valiant and reliable. While the masterly ability and soldierly vigor and decision of General Johnson must excite the profoundest admiration, those who remember him may be pardoned for dwelling quite as much upon the grandeur, the loftiness, the heroism of his character. In this we may look in vain for his peer, except to the great Virginian, his immortal comrade, the man whom every former Southern soldier must feel it is his religious duty to venerate. Through all that period of sickening doubt, ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... of Auckland. The southern island, which is the larger, also has its natural attractions, but they are of a different kind; chief of all is the grand range of mountains called, not inappropriately, the "Southern Alps," vying with its European representative in the loftiness of its peaks and the splendour of its snowfields and glaciers, but formed of more ancient and solid rocks than those of ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... in us which our Lord touches upon here is, that in such a case, if our whole inward nature is influenced by the continual operation upon it of the words of the Lord, then our desires will be granted. Do not so vulgarise and lower the nobleness and the loftiness of this great promise as to suppose that it only means—If you remember His words you will get anything you like. It means something a great deal better than that. It means that if Christ's words are the substratum, so to speak, of your wishes, then your wishes will ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... still surveying the beautiful, calm features of the charming egotist whose nature seemed such a curious mixture of loftiness and littleness.. "She may have ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... said his father. "When she is once your wife trust me to lower her loftiness, and make her as meek and humble as you could wish. Let us go in now. How wildly this storm is driving! I hope it may clear before the hour for the marriage arrives." Thus speaking, the father and son entered the hall ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... same time expressing his disapproval of a too pronounced and narrow-minded imitation of old Gothic life and thought. Erik Gustaf Geijer, the great historian and poet, also a native of Vrmland and in power of mind and loftiness of ideals almost the peer of Tegnr, published in Iduna, the organ of the Gothic Union, a few poems that faithfully reproduce the old Northern spirit and in strength and simplicity stand almost unsurpassed. ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... love's obedience, said, with accent meek,— "Monsignor, I know well that were it known To all the world how high my love had flown, There would be few who would not deem me mad, Or say my mind the falsest image had Of my condition and your loftiness. But Heaven has seen that for no moment's space Have I forgotten you to be the king, Or me myself to be a lowly thing— A little lark, enamoured of the sky, That soared to sing, to break its breast, and die. But, as you better know than I, the heart In choosing chooseth ...
— How Lisa Loved the King • George Eliot
... centuries has given the nave piers mere small, plain bands as capitals, and for churchly decoration has allowed only a moulding of acanthus leaves placed high and unnoticed at the vaulting's base. There is no pleasing detail and no charming fancy; but a fine, exquisite loftiness, a faultless balance of proportion, are in this severe interior, and its solemn and majestic beauty is not surpassed ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... through, even if it had never come to me through any other way. Let me stay." She said the last words, in spite of all her pride, appealingly. But still, there was a note of high pride in all this—in all she said and did, in her attitude and movement, in the tones of her voice, in the loftiness of her carriage and the steadfast look of her open, starlit eyes. Altogether, there was something so rarely lofty in herself and all that clad her that, face to face with it and with her, my feeble attempt at moral precaution seemed puny, ridiculous, and out of place. Without a word in the doing, ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... harmony with this effect is the absence of all comic relief—although Shakespeare was to prove later that this has a useful place in tragedy. A smile, a jest would be sacrilege in the prevailing gloom. Two effects alone are aimed at; an impression of loftiness in the theme, and a profound melancholy. Not warm gushing tears. Those are the outcome of a personal sorrow, small and ignoble beside an abstract grief at 'the falls of princes', 'the tumbling down of crowns', 'the ruin of proud realms'. What does the reader or spectator know of Ferrex that he ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... that there exists a Spanish play of the same name, of which the author is unknown; Molire seems to have partly followed an Italian comedy, written by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini, under the name of Le Gelosie fortunata del principe Rodrigo; the style, loftiness and delicacy of expression are peculiar to the ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... magnificence: Its extent might, I suppose, easily be found by following the walls among the grass and weeds, and its height is known by some parts yet standing. The arch of one of the gates is entire, and of another only so far dilapidated as to diversify the appearance. A square apartment of great loftiness is yet standing; its use I could not conjecture, as its elevation was very disproportionate to its area. Two corner towers, particularly attracted our attention. Mr. Boswell, whose inquisitiveness is seconded by great activity, scrambled in at a high window, but found the ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... yesterday. Mackenzie's cold and flinty face is quivering like a leaf, Whilst with quick and throbbing finger he turns o'er and o'er his brief; And the misnamed judges vainly try their rankling thoughts to hide Beneath an outward painted mask of loftiness and pride. Even she, the sweet heroic one! aye watchful at his side, Whose courage ne'er hath blanch'd as yet, though sorely, sharply tried— Even she is crush'd beneath the weight of this last and deadly blow, And sinks upon her brother's neck, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Height. — N. height, altitude, elevation; eminence, pitch; loftiness &c. adj.; sublimity. tallness &c. adj.; stature, procerity[obs3]; prominence &c. 250. colossus &c. (size) 192; giant, grenadier, giraffe, camelopard. mount, mountain; hill alto, butte [U.S.], monticle[obs3], fell, knap[obs3]; cape; headland, foreland[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... palace on the face of the earth. But what made the thing worse, was, that the old tradition said that these rooms were to be kept entirely for the use of the owner of the castle. And, indeed, whenever they entered them, such was the effect of their loftiness and grandeur upon their minds, that they always thought of the old story, and could not help believing it. Nor would the brother permit them to forget it now; but, appearing suddenly amongst them, when they had no expectation of being ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... few teachers, but few years, and but little study, to make a farmer or a mechanic: the generative effort and—if I may venture to use such language—the period of social gestation are proportional to the loftiness of the capacity. But while the physician, the poet, the artist, and the savant produce but little, and that slowly, the productions of the farmer are much less uncertain, and do not require so long a time. Whatever be then the capacity of a man,—when this capacity is once created,—it ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... who knew him best, loved him most, and that many who were constrained to differ from him, in his management of public affairs, did full justice to the purity and generosity of his motives, to the nobility, loftiness, and ultimate success of his aims, and to the disinterestedness and value of his varied and manifold labours for the country, and for the ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... to do with our castle," said the lady wonderingly. "Look- -the keep is no higher than your roof-tree. My lord chose not the site for its loftiness ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... the disheartenment of realizing the extent of an evil; the recognized impossibility of surmounting his weakness; and the aspect of difficulties so great that genius itself would dread them. The king's depression was in proportion to the courage and the loftiness of ideas to which he had risen during the last few months. In addition to this, an attack of nervous melancholy, caused by his malady, had seized him as he left the protracted council which had taken place in his private cabinet. Marie saw that he was in one of those crises when the least ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... thrown by the motherless woman into the goblet of blood, that it might swill what it had thirsted for; and Holofernes, beheaded; and his Assyrians flying at his death; and Troy, all become cinders and hollow places. Oh! what a fall from pride was there! Now, maintain the loftiness of your looks, ye sons of Eve, and walk with proud steps, bending not your eyes on the dust ye were, lest ye perceive the evil of ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... familiar with native American myths, this one bears undeniable marks of its aboriginal origin. Its frequent puerilities and inanities, its generally low and coarse range of thought and expression, its occasional loftiness of both, its strange metaphors and the prominence of strictly heathen names and potencies, bring it into unmistakable relationship to ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... all know what you mean," Lady Louisa interposed, with a certain loftiness and, it must be owned, asperity. "I have never pretended there was not something one had to get accustomed to. But really you forget all about it almost immediately—every one does—one can see that—don't they, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... nor win friends. He was large visioned and adept at mapping out broad policies, but he lacked the elements of leadership requisite to carry his plans into effect. He scorned the everyday arts of politics, and by the very loftiness of his ideals he alienated support. In short, as one writer has remarked, he was "a weigher of scruples and values in a time of transition, a representative of old-school politics on the threshold of triumphant democracy. The people did not understand him, ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... and as cold as ice; repellent, howsoever it may excite the sentiment of awe-struck distance. But we need that the righteousness shall be loving, and that the love shall be righteous, in order that the one may be apprehended in its tenderest tenderness and the other may be adored in its loftiest loftiness. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Stiva when he was in love with you. I remember the time when he came to me and cried, talking of you, and all the poetry and loftiness of his feeling for you, and I know that the longer he has lived with you the loftier you have been in his eyes. You know we have sometimes laughed at him for putting in at every word: 'Dolly's a marvelous woman.' You have always ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... It condemns us for not doing right, even when we have no power to do anything but what is wrong. It shows us a great ideal of goodness to which we ought to aspire, and discourages us by the very loftiness of the standard. It tells us in the same breath that we are sinners, and that we ought to be angels. It seems at the same time to elevate and degrade us. It elevates us by giving a great object to life, and ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... terms; the splendid use of mean associations by Shakespeare; Milton's wise avoidance of mean associations, and of realism; nature of his similes and figures; his use of proper names; his epic catalogues; his personifications; loftiness of his perfected style; the popularity of Paradise Last; imitations, adaptations, and echoes of Milton's style during the 18th century; his enormous influence; the origin of "poetic diction"; Milton's phraseology stolen by Pope, Thomson, and Gray; ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... wonderful abilities are recognized by us all. His father, Hamilcar, had the very highest hopes of him, Hasdrubal has written again and again saying that in his young kinsman he recognized his superior, and that in loftiness of aim, in unselfish patriotism, in clearness of judgment, in the marvellous ascendency he has gained over the troops, in his talent in administration, and in the greatness of his military conceptions, he saw in him a genius of the highest order. If it ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... large, well-conditioned wolf, whose habits and tastes had been so far civilized as to admit of his tolerating the companionship of man and subsisting on a mixed diet; but at the second glance, noting his color, and the shape of his head, with a certain loftiness of mien and suppleness of backbone—neither of which is ever to be found in the wolf—you would have pronounced him a little lion, shorn of his brindled mane. On further acquaintance, however—I cannot say intimate acquaintance, his excellency being of far too reserved ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... and loftiness of sentiment were but the reaction after more carnal delights, when the soul experiences a vague yearning for the ideal. At such times too, the young man's aspirations towards the art he so much loved were apt to revive. The desire to give ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... full of that undefined discomfort experienced by generous young spirits when their elders, more worldly-wise (or foolish), fail even to comprehend the purity or loftiness of motive which they themselves thoroughly believe. Yet, though she had infinitely more faith in Humfrey's affection than she had in that of Babington, she had not by any means the same dread of being used to bait the hook for him, partly because she knew his integrity too well ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at their conduct, when they explained that the discontent they had shown was entirely due to a feeling that the ritual which had been used that day was one entirely inadequate to the occasion. It was so wanting in dignity and loftiness of conception, they said, that though some ease might be brought to the spirits suffering in the Land of Shadows from the service which had been performed, it would utterly fail in the most important particular of all—namely, their deliverance from Hades, and ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... her no peace till her desk was opened, and a manuscript drawn forth, that they might hear the two new pages of her morning's work. It was a Fouque-like tale, relieving and giving expression to the yearnings for holiness and loftiness that had grown up within Isabel Conway in the cramped round of her existence. The story went back to the troubadour days of Provence, where a knight, the heir of a line of shattered fortunes, was betrothed to the heiress of the oppressors, that thus ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a rich wife, whose wealth was the first step in the ladder of his marvellous fortunes, Wallenstein had amassed immense domains by the purchase of confiscated estates, a traffic redeemed from meanness only by the vastness of the scale on which he practised it, and the loftiness of the aim which he had in view. Then he took to raising and commanding mercenary troops, improving on his predecessors in that trade by doubling the size of his army, on the theory, coolly avowed by him, that a large army would subsist by its command of the country, where a small ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... him again, and to the appeal she made was joined that of Madonna Lucrezia. He grew serious and put up his hand in a gesture of rare loftiness. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... though apparently fervent and prayerful, is impure and therefore insincere, what must be the 8:12 comment upon him? If he reached the loftiness of his prayer, there would be no occasion for comment. If we feel the aspiration, hu- 8:15 mility, gratitude, and love which our words express,- this God accepts; and it is wise not to try to deceive ourselves or others, for "there is nothing covered that 8:18 shall not be revealed." ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... A numerous group of young women, dressed almost entirely in white, with white caps and veils, were singing a sort of evening hymn— which I understood to be called the Chaplet of the Virgin. Their voices, unaccompanied by instrumental music, sounded sweetly from the loftiness of the roof; and every singer seemed to be touched with the deepest sense of devotion. They sang in an attitude with the body leaning forward, and the head gently inclined. The silence of the place—its distance from the metropolis—the grey ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Lost." The romance, the gorgeous fancy, the daring imagination which he shared with the Elizabethan poets, the large but ordered beauty which he had drunk in from the literature of Greece and Rome, the sublimity of conception, the loftiness of phrase which he owed to the Bible, blended in this story "of man's first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste brought death into the world and all our woe." It is only when we ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... Aemilia had explained to him all that she knew of her religion, but while admitting the beauty of its teaching, and the loftiness of its morals, he had not yet been able to bring himself to believe the great facts upon which ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... silver, as the sunshine played on the unshadowed reaches of water, with its thousands of graceful palms adding not a little to the charm of the scene, with the great wall of the Uruguru and Uswapanga mountains dimly blue, but sublime in their loftiness and immensity—forming a fit background to such an ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... most complicated nature. Their Gods were infinitely varied in their kind; and the modes of their worship not less endlessly diversified. All these particulars still contributed to the abstraction of their studies, and the loftiness of their pretensions to knowledge. They perpetually conversed with the invisible world, and laid claim to the faculty of revealing things hidden, of foretelling future events, and displaying wonders that exceeded human ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... government, that Walpole thought fit to punish him by procuring his dismissal from the army. Some years later he had occasion vigorously to denounce the system of cashiering officers for political differences, but with characteristic loftiness of spirit he disdained to make any reference to his own case. The loss of his commission was soon made up to him. The heir to the throne, as was usually the case in the house of Hanover, if not in reigning families generally, was the patron ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... enthusiastically as if the appointed "Saviour of Paris" were indeed actually passing. More than once I saw the illustrious poet stand up, uncover, and wave his hat in response to the acclamations, and I then particularly noticed the loftiness of his forehead, and the splendid crop of white hair with which it was crowned. Hugo, at that time sixty-eight years old, still looked vigorous, but it was beyond the power of any such man as himself to save the city ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... talking about, who is a cross between a rich farmer and a poor gentleman, would go into the lodging-house business." I couldn't help agreeing with Jone, and I didn't like it a bit. The gentleman hadn't said anything or done anything that was out of the way, but there was a benignant loftiness about him which grated on the inmost fibres ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... sentiments of heroism that spring up naturally in periods like those of the Teutonic migrations. In this sense the historic Gunther and Attila are necessary to the Niblung story. The wars and fightings of generation on generation went to create the heroism, the loftiness of spirit, expressed in the Teutonic epic verse. The plots of the stories may be commonplace, the common property of all popular tales. The temper is such as is not found everywhere, but only in historical periods of great energy. The names of Ermanaric and Attila correspond ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... such as would give the beholder the idea of the owner, when more matured, of being a "fine woman." Her movements were effected with a native grace, at once denoting the lady; and her elasticity of tread, and firmness of step, were only equalled by her loftiness of carriage. Her face was of the oval form, with a wide marble forehead (which, but for her winning modesty and gentle manner, would have been considered as bearing the stamp of coldness and hauteur); eyebrows ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... effort." He controls a highly trained bureaucracy not unlike that of British India to-day, and his system of government is wonderfully effective so long as it is informed by his untiring energy and singular loftiness of purpose. ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... scheme to his mother, she heard it with mingled admiration of his disinterestedness, and regret at its occasion: yet the loftiness of her own mind, her high personal value for Cecilia, her anxiety to see her son finally settled while she lived, lest his disappointment should keep him single from a lasting disgust, joined to a dejection of spirits from an apprehension that her ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... Nevertheless, although he occupied himself with such a variety of things, he never ceased drawing and working in relief, pursuits which suited his fancy more than any other. Ser Piero, having observed this, and having considered the loftiness of his intellect, one day took some of his drawings and carried them to Andrea del Verrocchio, who was much his friend, and besought him straitly to tell him whether Leonardo, by devoting himself to drawing, would make any proficience. Andrea was astonished to see the extraordinary beginnings ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... states, to which the gradation of rank in the problems corresponds; and the highest problems repel ruthlessly every one who ventures too near them, without being predestined for their solution by the loftiness and power of his spirituality. Of what use is it for nimble, everyday intellects, or clumsy, honest mechanics and empiricists to press, in their plebeian ambition, close to such problems, and as it were into this ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Germans, who have either felt or affected great indignation at the want of reverence for their great poet shown by the authors of "Faust" and "Mignon," ought to admire Meyerbeer in a special degree for the moral loftiness of his determination and the dignified beauty of its expression. Composers like Kreutzer, Reissiger, Pierson, Lassen, and Prince Radziwill have written incidental music for Goethe's tragedy without reflecting that possibly they were profaning the sanctuary; but Meyerbeer, ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... after that experience in Honora's room; nor did the noble solitude of the place permit the thought of an excursion into the realms of any sort of dalliance. Moreover, though Karl's words might have led her to think of him as ready to play with a sentimental situation, the essential loftiness of his gaze forbade her ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... Florence for a foreign prince, which familiarized it with foreign intervention, came all the disasters which followed. But who does not admire the people which was wrought up by its venerated preacher to a mood of such sustained loftiness that for the first time in Italy it set the example of sparing a conquered foe while the whole history of its past taught nothing but vengeance and extermination? The glow which melted patriotism into one with moral regeneration may seem, when looked at from a distance, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... there. They will be 'my high places,' that I never could have got at by my own scrambling, but to which Thou hast lifted me up, and which, by Thy grace, have become my natural abode. I am at home there, and walk at liberty in the loftiness, and fear no fall amongst ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of which God is the architect; to the songs of seraphim, and the flight of cherubim, exploring on tireless pinion the wonders of infinity; to peace of conscience and rapture dwelling in pure heart and to blest companionship loving and beloved; to majesty of person and loftiness of intellect; to appear as children and as nobles in the audience-chamber of God; to an immorality of bliss. No! the religion of Jesus is not a threat, though it has too often been thus represented by its mistaken ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... hills of Dunbar, he hailed the sun-burst with the cry of David: 'Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered. Like as the smoke vanisheth so shalt thou drive them away!' Even to common minds this familiarity with grand poetic imagery in prophet and apocalypse, gave a loftiness and ardor of expression that with all its tendency to exaggeration and bombast we may prefer to the ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... rather comical sense of duty) he made me look him over to see if he were worthy of the occasion. He certainly was in splendid looks, his rich, profuse beard and hair were well arranged, and his fine bronzed face had not lost its grave expression when at rest, but had acquired a certain loftiness of countenance, which gave him more than ever the air, I was going to say, of a demigod; but he had now an expression no heathen Greek could give; it was more like that of the heads by Michael Angelo, where Christian yearning is added to ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the De Oratore, De Legibus, &c., of Cicero, are often so elegantly turned, and introduced so artfully, that they read very much like the high bred compliments ascribed to Louis XIV., in his intercourse with eminent public officers. These have generally a regal air of loftiness about them, and prove the possibility of genius attaching even to the art of paying compliments. But else, in reviewing the spirit of traffic, which appears in the reciprocal flatteries passing between Crassus, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... simple pleasure of talking fluently, it seemed, while his reclining body jerked backwards and forwards in a rocking-chair of the sort exported from the United States. The ceiling of the largest drawing-room of the Casa Gould extended its white level far above his head. The loftiness dwarfed the mixture of heavy, straight-backed Spanish chairs of brown wood with leathern seats, and European furniture, low, and cushioned all over, like squat little monsters gorged to bursting with steel springs and horsehair. There were knick-knacks on little tables, mirrors let into ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... the woman that is of chief interest. Adam is plainly bored. What if the woman has broken into the sanctuary of knowledge, she will only be the bigger fool, he seems to say. As for the professor in the red robes, his easy, patronizing manner is indicative enough of his mental top-loftiness toward the woman question. You can almost hear him say as he strokes his beard: ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... relate the personal experiences of two youths, one twenty, the other twenty-one, whose baptism of fire came in the battle of the Marne. They grew old fast under the ordeal of battle and of responsibility for the lives of their men; their letters home show a loftiness of spirit, a sense of self-forgetfulness, of devotion to the cause, that is sublime, poignant—and typical. In every rank of society the same immense devotion, the same utter renouncement of selfish thought ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... attribution of Goody Two-Shoes to him may be correct. Charles Welsh, who edited the best recent edition for schools, says it "will always deserve a place among the classics of childhood for its literary merit, the purity and loftiness of its tone, and its sound sense, while the whimsical, confidential, affectionate style which the author employs, makes it attractive even to children who have long since passed the spelling-book stage." The version that follows has been shortened by the omission of passages that have less ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... not yet formed into an isolating chain that refinement of mind and loftiness of character which your want of self-control may convert into misfortunes instead of blessings. Whenever, even now, a sense of total want of sympathy forces itself upon you, you console yourself with such thoughts as these: "Sheep herd together, ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... welfare; and this solicitude is not only pardonable, but may justly be demanded from those who choose us for their companions. This state of things was more slow to arrive at on this occasion than on most others, on account of the gravity and loftiness ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... At first it seemed that his reign could be extended only over gory corpses and smouldering ruins. Undismayed by the magnitude of the disaster, he consecrated all the activity of his genius and the loftiness of his spirit to the regeneration ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... fire. Duillius next and Catulus were seen, Whose daring navies plough'd the billowy green That laves Pelorus and the Sardian shore, And dyed the rolling waves with Punic gore. Great Appius next advanced in sterner mood, Who with patrician loftiness withstood The clamours of the crowd. But, close behind, Of gentler manners and more equal mind, Came one, perhaps the first in martial might, Yet his dim glory cast a waning light; But neither Bacchus, nor Alcmena's son Such trophies ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... all times ready to give assistance to his friends, and others, in revising their works, and in writing for them, or greatly improving their Dedications. In that courtly species of composition no man excelled Dr. Johnson. Though the loftiness of his mind prevented him from ever dedicating in his own person, he wrote a very great number of Dedications for others. Some of these, the persons who were favoured with them are unwilling should be mentioned, from a too anxious apprehension, as I think, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... and loftiness of the place wrought upon her by and by with a strange effect. Wandering along among pillars and galleries and arcades, where saints and apostles and martyrs looked down upon her as out of past ages, she seemed to be surrounded by a "great cloud of witnesses." They looked down upon ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... don't suppose you will know these people, anyway," she added with an unconscious touch of loftiness in her voice. "The name is Ashton—Mrs. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... higher than Christianity, as presented in the life and teachings of its Founder." And again he says, "How much soever spiritual culture may advance, the natural sciences broaden and deepen, and the human mind enlarge, the world will never get beyond the loftiness and moral culture of Christianity as it shines and glistens in the Gospels."—Farhenlehre, ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... the more it will amaze. For it is not possible for imagination and mathematics together, to do anything nobler or stronger than that procession of window, with material of glass and stone—nor anything which shall look loftier, with so temperate and prudent measure of actual loftiness. ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... fresh reminder of something he had been conscious of from the first—the strangest thing in his friend's large little composition, a temper, a sensibility, even a private ideal, which made him as privately disown the stuff his people were made of. Morgan had in secret a small loftiness which made him acute about betrayed meanness; as well as a critical sense for the manners immediately surrounding him that was quite without precedent in a juvenile nature, especially when one noted that it had not made this nature "old-fashioned," as the word is of children—quaint ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... to her throne. The legions which Caesar had sent for into Syria had not yet arrived, and his situation in Alexandria was still very defenseless and very precarious. He did not, however, on this account, abate in the least degree the loftiness and self confidence of the position which he had assumed, but he commenced immediately the work of securing Cleopatra's restoration. This quiet assumption of the right and power to arbitrate and decide such a question as that of the claim to the ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... narrowin' the Lord down to ministers,' said Mrs. Fleming, with a certain loftiness. 'We all know He can do without ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in the Hebrew annals, Moses, David, and Solomon, were three of their most distinguished poets. The hymns of David excel no less in sublimity and tenderness of expression than in loftiness and purity of religious sentiment. In comparison with them the sacred poetry of all other nations sinks into mediocrity. They have embodied so exquisitely the universal language of religious emotion, that (a few fierce ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various
... the basest servitude to the basest and vilest of the human race,—in servitude to those who in no respect were superior in dignity or could aspire to a better place than that of hangmen to the tyrants to whose sceptred pride they had opposed an elevation of soul that surmounted and overpowered the loftiness of Castile, the haughtiness of Austria, and the overbearing ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the world and spurious men of piety only seek for the appearance of virtue, and I believe that in matters of morality, Seneca was a hypocrite and Epicurus was a saint. I know of nothing in the world so beautiful as nobility of heart and loftiness of mind: from these proceeds that perfect integrity which I set above all other qualities, and which seems to me, at my present stage of life, to be of more price than a royal crown. But I am not sure whether, ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... which these ideas ranged was limited, Nesselrode not having a particle of influence; his Ministers and Ambassadors were clerks; and while his ease and affability to foreigners (to him—Esterhazy—in particular) were excessively striking, he treated his Russians with a loftiness that could not be conceived, and one and all trembled in his presence with the crouching humility of slaves. When he was at Prague he on a sudden set off and travelled with amazing rapidity to Vienna, without giving any notice ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... yeoman, it irked me much that any one should take advantage of me; yet everybody did so as soon as ever it was known that my wits were gone moon-raking. For that was the way they looked at it, not being able to comprehend the greatness and the loftiness. Neither do I blame them much; for the wisest thing is to laugh at people when we cannot understand them. I, for my part, took no notice; but in my heart despised them as beings of a lesser nature, who never had seen Lorna. Yet I ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... capacities widen, more abstract and sublime. On one great point the mind of Epicurus was at peace. He neither sought nor expected, here or hereafter, any personal profit from his relation to the gods. And it is assuredly a fact, that loftiness and serenity of thought may be promoted by conceptions which involve no idea of profit of this kind. 'Did I not believe,' said a great man. [Footnote: Carlyle.] to me once, 'that an Intelligence is at the heart of things, my life ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... dynasty. Choo, the conqueror, and a man whose ability and nobleness of mind had been remarkably displayed, was everywhere looked upon as the Heaven-chosen successor to the throne, the boy who had begun his career as a penniless orphan having risen through pure power of intellect and loftiness of soul to the highest position in the realm. He was crowned emperor under the title of Hongwou, and instituted the Ming dynasty, which held the throne of China until three centuries afterwards, when another ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... to literature were few, and, in comparison with his extraordinary learning, comparatively unimportant. He wrote upon Cardinal Wolsey (1877) and German Schools of History (1886). He was extremely modest, and the loftiness of his ideals of accuracy and completeness of treatment led him to shrink from tasks which men of far slighter equipment might have carried out with success. His learning and his position as a universally ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... exercise the functions of the Christian ministry. Hence he sought and received ordination according to the usages of the Congregational churches, and in that relation stood in his lot. With what earnestness and pureness of motive, with what loftiness of purpose and fidelity in his high calling, and acceptance to those who heard him, I need not try to express. But I may say that it was not for want of solicitation that he did not exchange his professorship for places of considerable public importance in the other calling. ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... Falkland departed. Through the interview he, no doubt, conducted himself in a way that did him peculiar credit. Yet the warmth of his temper could not be entirely suppressed: and even when he was most exemplary, there was an apparent loftiness in his manner that was calculated to irritate; and the very grandeur with which he suppressed his passions, operated indirectly as a taunt to his opponent. The interview was prompted by the noblest sentiments; ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... beauty and fascination, far beyond the loveliness of line and tint. Her forehead was broad and intellectual, the hair jet-black, the complexion pale, the large, black eyes ardent and full of fire. Her carriage was singularly majestic and easy, and a conscious nobility gave her bearing a loftiness which impressed all beholders. ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... truly free, not in the degree only in which he governs himself, but in the degree that he governs himself according to the central truth and right of things, or according to the loftiness of the standard by which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... reproduced. He had the same heavy, hanging lip, with a vast mouth, and monstrously protruding lower jaw. His complexion was fair, his hair light and thin, his beard yellow, short, and pointed. He had the aspect of a Fleming, but the loftiness of a Spaniard. His demeanor in public was still, silent, almost sepulchral. He looked habitually on the ground when he conversed, was chary of speech, embarrassed, and even suffering in manner. This was ascribed partly to a natural haughtiness which he had occasionally endeavored ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
