"Monumental" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looks as if she were prepared to bury them, and not indisposed to enjoy the ceremony. Even Kitty Collins has caught the contagious gloom, as I perceive when she brings in the coffee-urn—a solemn and sculpturesque urn at any time, but monumental now—and sets it down in front of Miss Abigail. Miss Abigail gazes at the urn as if it held the ashes of her ancestors, instead of a generous quantity of fine old Java coffee. The meal ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... front of him. He turned in his disconcerting, monumental way and looked at his questioner, who had imitated with a perfect ingenuousness his own brief pause before the word mother. Colville smiled ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... ranks to these monumental cathedrals is made the greater by reason of the fact that to-day it is with but one people that we have to reckon, so far as their temperament and environment is concerned. Since feudal times the movement has ever been toward one nation, ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... VII., VIII., and IX., Professor Maspero concludes his monumental work on the history of the ancient East. The overthrow of the Persian empire by the Greek soldiers of Alexander marks the beginning of a new era. Europe at last enters upon the stage of history, and becomes the heir of the culture and civilisation of the Orient. The culture which had grown up ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... earth. And if he had no affections, but lived a stoic existence, exempt from every sympathy, in impassive solitude, he could not be happy, he would not be man: he must be an intellectual marble of thought or a monumental mystery of woe. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... a triumphant bellow was roared from the engine-room companionway. Whereupon the companionway disgorged the monumental figure of Bobbie MacLaurin, grinning like a schoolboy at his first party. He seized Miss Vost by both hands, swinging ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... light diurnal page, Inscribed on high in monumental gold, That strain might kindle each succeeding age, Which ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... time, in Rouen, he had a cold feeling of death; not afraid of any other man, but of her. She seemed to leave him. She followed after something that was not him. She did not want him. The old streets, the cathedral, the age and the monumental peace of the town took her away from him. She turned to it as if to something she had forgotten, and wanted. This was now the reality; this great stone cathedral slumbering there in its mass, which knew no transience nor heard any denial. It was majestic ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... which the chief beauty was in the magnificent sweep of the monumental stairway, with its elaborate wrought-iron balustrade, struck him as a forbidding entry to a home. A man-servant came at last to deliver him from the soft, wondering eyes of the young officer, and lead him into ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... name associated with the period is that of the brothers Jan and Hubert Van Eyck, and the work which naturally comes to the mind, when thinking of them, is the monumental altarpiece which they painted for Jos. Vyt, lord of Pamele, to be placed in his chapel in the Cathedral of St. John in Ghent. This work, generally known as the "Mystic Lamb," is composed of ten smaller pictures, but the partitions separating the various divisions of the wings and the wings ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... decades since as not to be the stuff of mere pathos yet, and I am not able to blink the fact that my beloved Basques fought on the wrong side, when they need not have fought at all. Why they were Carlists they could perhaps no more say than I could. The monumental historic fact is that the Basques have been where they are immeasurably beyond the memories of other men; what the scope of their own memories is one could perhaps confidently say only in Basque if one could say anything. Of course, in the nature of things, the Phoenicians must have been there ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... ninety years ago. The British uniform of the period, with its immense epaulettes, queer cocked-hat, breeches, gaiters, ponderous cartridge-box, buckled shoes, and what not, would look strange and barbarous now. Ideas have changed; invention has followed invention. Soldiers were monumental objects then. A divinity still hedged kings here and there; and war ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... tried to cheer him up. I pointed out King's Cross to him; he wouldn't even bark at it. I called his attention to the poster outside the Euston Theatre of The Two Biffs; for all the regard he showed he might never even have heard of them. The monumental masonry by Portland Road ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... favourite architect of Cosimo de' Medici; Benedetto da Majano; Giuliano and Antonio di San Gallo; and Il Cronaca. Cosimo de' Medici, having said that "envy is a plant no man should water," denied himself the monumental house designed by Brunelleschi, and chose instead the modest plan of Michellozzo. Brunelleschi had meant to build the Casa Medici along one side of the Piazza di S. Lorenzo; but when Cosimo refused his project, he broke up the model he had made, to the great loss of ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... he was dreamy and sombre in repose. To escape this gloom he had recourse to the electricity of art, and saw visions of those gigantic monumental works of which he undertook many, and completed some. He realized that such works are part of the life of peoples; they are history written in capitals, landmarks of the ages, left standing long after generations are swept away. He knew that Rome lives in her ruins, that Greece speaks by her statues, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... needn't cross that bridge until we come to it," I announced as I sat watching Dinky-Dunk pack the bowl of his pipe and strike a match. It seemed a trivial enough movement. Yet it was monumental in its homeliness. It was poignant with a power to transport me back to earlier and happier days, to the days when one never thought of feathering the nest of existence with the illusions of old age. A vague loneliness ate at my heart, the ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... doubtless in rare instances) at a very early date. The signet cylinder of the monarch who founded the most ancient of the buildings at Mugheir, Warka, Senkareh, and Niffer, and who thus stands at the head of the monumental kings, was in the possession of Sir R. Porter; and though it is now lost, an engraving made from it is preserved in his "Travels." [PLATE XIV., Fig. 2.] The signet cylinder of this monarch's son has been recently recovered, and is now in the British ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience, "in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egoism. The Gods believed in—whether by crude savages or by men disciplined intellectually—agree with each other in recognizing a personal call." How could it be otherwise? The solitariness of each human soul ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... Vasari particularly extols the sculptor's treatment of the figures of women and children. It does not appear that Desiderio ever worked elsewhere than at Florence; and it is there that those who are interested in the Italian sculpture of the Renaissance must seek his few surviving decorative and monumental works, though a number of his delicately carved marble busts of women and children are to be found in the museums and private collections of Germany and France. The most prominent of his works are the tomb of the secretary of state, Marsuppini, in Santa Croce, and the great marble tabernacle of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... persons with which he cannot be expected to be familiar, especially as the latter are frequently veiled by initials. There is no doubt that judicious omissions might have made these pages more readable and more amusing. But then such a book as this is not meant to amuse. It is almost of a monumental character, and his deep respect for that character has induced the translator to produce its every feature,—a remark which applies to manner no less than to matter. In consequence, not a line has been omitted, and the manners and mannerisms of the writers have been preserved as far as the ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... were inside, Claude shivered slightly while crossing the gigantic vestibule, which was as cold as a cellar, with a damp pavement which resounded beneath one's feet, like the flagstones of a church. He glanced right and left at the two monumental stairways, and asked contemptuously: 'I say, are we going through ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... sea-breeze has brought us to Bordeaux. The enormous city heaps its monumental houses along the river like bastions; the red sky is embattled by their coping. They on one hand, the bridge on the other, protect, with a double line, the port where the vessels are crowded together like a flock of gulls; those graceful ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... and here, thou hast a part, Illustrious Lady, In every honest Anglo-Saxon heart, Albeit untrained to notes of loyalty: As lovers of our old ancestral race,— In reverence for the goodness and the grace Which lends thy fifty years of Royalty A monumental glory on the Historic page, Emblazoning them forever ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... entertainment given at Vauxhall in July, 1813, to celebrate the victories of the Marquis of Wellington, the fire-works, prepared under the direction of General Congreve, were the theme of universal admiration. The General himself was present, and being in a circle where the conversation turned on monumental inscriptions, he observed that nothing could be finer than the short epitaph on Purcel, ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... substance,—the substance being admitted from the shadow, as a matter of faith. It is the economy of Providence to provide such lights: like rising and setting stars, they follow each other through successive ages: and thus the monumental form of Genius stands for ever relieved ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... feeling connected with it. But there are other reasons. No man can pretend that the wild, barbarous, and capricious superstitions of Africa, or of savage tribes elsewhere, affect him in the way that he is affected by the ancient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate religions of Indostan, &c. The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions, histories, modes of faith, &c., is so impressive, that to me the vast age of the race ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... from the sight; but still stared at them externally from the prison windows of my affectation. Once I remember to have observed two working- women with a baby halting by a grave; there was something monumental in the grouping, one upright carrying the child, the other with bowed face crouching by her side. A wreath of immortelles under a glass dome had thus attracted them; and, drawing near, I overheard their judgment on that ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... some particular kinds of wood. Neither vestments nor perfumes are heaped upon the pile: [147] the arms of the deceased, and sometimes his horse, [148] are given to the flames. The tomb is a mound of turf. They contemn the elaborate and costly honours of monumental structures, as mere burthens to the dead. They soon dismiss tears and lamentations; slowly, sorrow and regret. They think it the women's part to bewail their friends, ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... conviction that any moral beliefs concurred in by the community generally may be brought to bear upon the whole conduct and lives of its individual members, with an energy and potency truly alarming to think of. The book stands a monumental warning to thinkers on society and politics, of what happens when once men lose sight, in their speculations, of the value of Liberty and ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... men, very different from those who now inhabit the banks of the Orinoco and the Rupunuri. The more a country is destitute of remembrances of generations that are extinct, the more important it becomes to follow the least traces of what appears to be monumental. The eastern plains of North America display only those extraordinary circumvallations that remind us of the fortified camps (the pretended cities of vast extent) of the ancient and modern nomad tribes ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... scheme was overweighted by the incorporation with it of the plan for a London monument, and both collapsed ignominiously. In 1835 a strong committee was formed at Stratford to commemorate the poet's connection with the town. It was called "the Monumental Committee," and had for its object, firstly, the repair of Shakespeare's tomb in the Parish Church; and secondly, the preservation and restoration of all the Shakespearean buildings in the town. Subscriptions were limited to L1, and all the members of the royal ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... kind of combination. This employment reminded him of those happy days when he handled great sacks of wheat and bundles of hides on the ranch. Whenever his son noticed that he was looking thoughtfully at a monumental sideboard or heavy piece, he prudently ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... large, impressive; the greatness of his aim gives him a certain claim on respectful consideration. That his talent achieved itself, or ever could have achieved itself, he himself would have been the last to affirm. But he is a monumental failure, more interesting than many ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... dreadful! How reverend is the face of this tall pile, Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads, To bear aloft its arched and ponderous roof, By its own weight made steadfast and immovable, Looking tranquillity! It strikes an awe And terror on my aching sight; the tombs And monumental caves of death look cold, And shoot a chillness to my trembling heart. Give use thy hand, and let me hear thy voice; Nay, quickly speak to me, and let me hear Thy voice—my own affrights me with ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... granite cippus, or monumental pillar, of immemorial antiquity; and to this pillar a remarkable legend is attached. The pillar measures six feet by six, i. e. thirty-six square feet, on the flat tablet of its horizontal surface; and in height several riyanas, (which arc Ceylonese cubits ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... book which he is generally pronounced capable of writing, and put his best self imperturbably on record for the advantage of society; because I should then have steady ground for bearing with his diurnal incalculableness, and could fix my gratitude as by a strong staple to that unvarying monumental service. Unhappily, Touchwood's great powers have been only so far manifested as to be believed in, not demonstrated. Everybody rates them highly, and thinks that whatever he chose to do would be done in a first-rate manner. Is it his love of disappointing complacent expectancy which ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the German stage. After the lapse of a century, and notwithstanding the fact that he seems to speak to us from the clouds, he holds his own. Why is this? It is partly because of a quality of his art that has been called his "monumental fresco-painting"; that is, his strong and luminous portraiture of the great historic forces that have shaped the destiny of nations. These forces are matters of the spirit, of the inner life; and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... the epic story of this great life but the truth about the birth of our nation. Marshall later spent fifteen years revising the first edition, verifying to the last detail every chapter, page and paragraph of his monumental work. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... the heaviest achieved by the Middle Ages. From the donjon extended three great vaulted halls. Massive buildings continued. There was a Gothic chapel, a Tribunal Hall, the Hall of the Nine Peers (whose statues remained), the Hall of the Nine Countesses (whose medallion-portraits were carved on the monumental chimney). There was a Romanesque chapel (relic from Charlemagne, like the original donjon), the separate Fortified Chateau of the Chatelain (the Sire's First Officer), and so on, and ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... a day has Yorick's ghost the consolation to hear his monumental inscription read over with such a variety of plaintive tones, as denote a general pity and esteem for him;—a foot-way crossing the church-yard close by the side of his grave,—not a passenger goes by without stopping to cast a look upon it,—and sighing ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... books represented nearly all that he could carry away from his old rooms, but they were a solid addendum to the garnishing of home. For a moment he thought of selling a few score of volumes. Would he ever really want those monumental tomes—the six folios of Muratori, for instance, which he liked to possess, but had never used? Thereby hung the great, the unanswerable question: How was he going to spend his life as a married man? Was it ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... line of reflection, I will mention a case of monumental tree-planting in New England, not very widely known there. A small town, in the heart of Massachusetts, was stirred to the liveliest emotion, with all the rest in her borders, by the Declaration of Independence ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... Basins had acquired the monumental honor of possessing an ice-cream freezer, esteemed by others with a no less sacred jealousy than by herself; but she had hitherto refused all intimations tending toward social interchange and ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Hanover, that a king ought to be congratulated rather on having two such subjects as Newton in the one country and Leibnitz in the other. We fear, however, that this story must go with the fortune-teller and the raven; one cannot think of dull prosaic {270} George uttering such a monumental sort of sentiment. He cared nothing for literature or science or art. He seems to have had no genuine friendships. He hated his son, and he used to speak of his daughter-in-law, Caroline, as "that she-devil the princess." [Sidenote: ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... touchingly sweet. Or perhaps he may see a group of washerwomen relieved, on a spit of shingle, against the blue sea, or a meeting of flower- gatherers in the tempered daylight of an olive-garden; and something significant or monumental in the grouping, something in the harmony of faint colour that is always characteristic of the dress of these southern women, will come borne to him unexpectedly, and awake in him that satisfaction with which we tell ourselves that we are the ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... end of the path and stood before a square opening, on the other side of which the two massive gopuras of the temple rose in their monumental splendor two hundred feet above them. They were still alone. None of the sightseers seemed to have found the sacred spot, and for a moment she stood still, awed in spite ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... certain incarnation of the national conscience, of the national dignity. The dignity is absent here, and I am told that the conscience is an abyss. "L'etat c'est moi" even—I like that better than the spittoons. These implements are architectural, monumental; they are the only monuments. En somme, the country is interesting, now that we too have the Republic; it is the biggest illustration, the biggest warning. It is the last word of democracy, and that word is—flatness. It is very ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... the door behind her gently, then stood planted like some massive caryatid supporting the frame. Something monumental in the effect of her presence made the question just flung at her seem petty, impudent, and Mrs. Sherman hastened to add more considerately, "But I sent Radcliffe with my ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... the gust hath blown his fill, Ending on the russling Leaves, With minute drops from off the Eaves. And when the Sun begins to fling His flaring beams, me Goddes bring To arched walks of twilight groves, And shadows brown that Sylvan loves, Of Pine, or monumental Oake, Where the rude Ax with heaved stroke, Was never heard the Nymphs to daunt, Or fright them from their hallow'd haunt. There in close covert by som Brook, Where no profaner eye may look, Hide me from Day's garish ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... I am eloping, break the news gently and blame it on me. I feel as if I could stand for any monumental conspiracy that was ever conspired. I am that experienced in intrigue. Perhaps I'll apply for a government position in the diplomatic corps. I believe I could carry it off beautifully, brass buttons, plumes and all. There's Dolly. Just look at ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... the Avenue Velasquez and entered the gilded and monumental gate that serves as a sign and an entrance to that exquisite jewel of a park, displaying in the heart of Paris its verdant and artificial beauty, surrounded by a ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... resting-place of some of the earliest settlers of Mecklenburg county, repose the mortal remains of the Rev. John Thompson, one of the first Presbyterian missionaries in this section of the State, and who died in September, 1753. No monumental slab or head-stone is placed at his grave. Tradition says he built a cabin (or study-house) in the northwestern angle of the graveyard, and was buried beneath its floor, being the first subject of interment. John Baker, who lived in the ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... and the materials for writing, first came into the land, about the year 1000. There is no proof that the earlier or Runic alphabet, which existed in heathen times, was ever used for any other purposes than those of simple monumental inscriptions, or of short legends on weapons or sacrificial vessels, or horns and drinking cups. But with the Roman alphabet came not only a readier means of expressing thought, but also a class of men who were wont thus to express ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... gray; on each side of the river a verdant line of meadow led the eye gradually toward the clump of ancient and lofty ash-trees, behind which rose the. Buxieres domicile. This magnificent grove of trees, and a monumental fence of cast-iron, were the only excuse for giving the title of chateau to a very commonplace structure, of which the main body presented bare, whitewashed walls, flanked by two small towers on turrets shaped ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... who perished in the pit accident at Hartley a few years ago. They were grouped in families of two, three, four, or five, and these family groups were arranged in extended rows; but all were nameless. Near them slept the dust of the hereditary owners of the soil under monumental marble, loaded with statuary and inscriptions. Subjects of Christ's kingdom, "it shall not be so among you." Nor is the law which obtains in the heavenly the direct reverse of that which obtains in the earthly kingdom; it is not the poor, but the "poor ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... through her shady parks or lean over her monumental quays, drinking in the beauty of the first spring days, intoxicated by the perfume of the flowers that the night showers have kissed into bloom; or linger of an evening over my coffee, with the brilliant life of the ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... young girl to regret in such a life as she has left? It's the most arid and joyless existence under the sun. She has never known anything like society. In the country with us, the social side must always have been somewhat paralyzed, but there are monumental evidences of pleasures in other days that are quite extinct now. You see big dusty ball-rooms in the old taverns: ball-rooms that have had no dancing in them for half a century, and where they give you a bed sometimes. ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... to him was the glimpse he got into the labyrinthine plot built around the stock, the finance, the gold that was constructing the road. He was an engineer, with a deductive habit of mind, but he would never be able to trace the intricacy of this monumental aggregation of deals. Yet he was hugely, interested. Much of the scorn and disgust he had felt out on the line for the mercenaries connected with the work he forgot ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... Johnson undervalued sculpture,—partly because of an inadequate sense of the beautiful, and partly from ignorance of its greatest trophies, he expressed unqualified assent to its awe-inspiring influence in "the monumental caves of death," as described by Congreve. Sir Joshua truly declares that "all arts address themselves to the sensibility and imagination"; and no one thus alive to the appeal of sculpture will marvel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... now no more; in other words is gone ... as VIRGIL remarks ... famous antiquarian ... scrupulous and methodical, and, as we remarked in our last issue, reminiscent of the palmy days of the best German monumental scholarship ... our slight differences never affected the esteem in which we held him as a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... exaggeration that the Provencal lyric poetry and the North-French and Celtic cycles of romance led up to the new European style of painting which did not come to perfection until two centuries later. (Nothing positive can be said about the influence of France on Italian art; the monumental character and the art of Cimabue, Giotto and the Sienese does not, however, suggest that they were much influenced by the art of miniature painting, but rather hints that they drew inspiration from ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... was all paved with the lava; scattered blocks encumbered it in places; everywhere tall cocoa-palms jutted from the fissures and drew shadows on the floor; a loud continuous sound of the near sea burthened the ear. These rude monumental ruins, and the thought of that life and faith of which they stood memorial, threw me in a muse. There are times and places where the past becomes more vivid than the present, and the memory dominates the ear and eye. I have found it so in the presence ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is a statue of Jeanne, the work of a native artist, in which she appears kneeling in her peasant's dress, one hand pressed upon her heart and the other lifted towards Heaven. And in a little clump of fir-trees near her house stands a sort of monumental fountain, surmounted by a bust of the Pucelle. The house itself remained in the possession of the last descendant of the family, a soldier of the Empire named Gerardin, down to the time of the Restoration. Some Englishman, it is said, then offered him ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... this ridiculous hypothesis with the remark that the gossip which attributes to the Danes our lofty monumental pyramids and cairns, our Druid altars, our dry stone caisils or keeps, and our raths or fortified enclosures for the homes or cattle of our chiefs, is equally and utterly unfounded; and is partly to be accounted for from the name of power and terror which these ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... time of Gerbert until after the appearance of Leonardo's monumental work may be called the period of the abacists. Even for many years after the appearance early in the twelfth century of the books explaining the Hindu art of reckoning, there was strife between the abacists, the advocates of the abacus, and the algorists, those who favored the new numerals. ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... you the last drop of pity and awe. His skill in avoiding 'the inevitable word' is simply miraculous. He is the despair of the translator. Far be it from me to belittle the devoted labours of Mr. and Mrs. Pegaway, whose monumental translation of the Master's complete works is now drawing to its splendid close. Their promised biography of the murdered grandmother is awaited eagerly by all who take—and which of us does not take?—a breathless interest in Kolniyatschiana. But Mr. and Mrs. Pegaway ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... was first written and inscribed in the former edition, the brave and benign "Christian knight," the Coeur- de-Lion of our own times, has also been gathered to the tears of his country, and his monumental statue, as if standing on the victorious mount of St. Jean d'Acre, is now preparing to be set up, with its appropriate sacred trophies, in the great Naval Hall at Greenwich. It is understood that his mortal remains ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... sayin', "this monumental work covers all the great crises of history, from the tragedy on Calvary to the signing of the peace treaty at Versailles. Each epoch is handled by an acknowledged master of that period, as you may see by this ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... of his monumental inscription is singular. On the north side are, or were, these words and figures—"In uno, 2^o 3^a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... peculiar to the refinement of our manners, or to modern Europe; it is not the charity of Christianity alone which has hallowed this sensibility, and confessed this equality of affection, which the domestic may participate: monumental inscriptions, raised by grateful masters to the merits of their slaves, have been preserved in the great ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... the custom of using heads as symbols, almost, if not quite, as often as in the Mexican codices. Not only so, but in the former, even in the purely conventional characters, we see evidences of a desire to turn every one possible into the figure of a head, a fact still more apparent in the monumental inscriptions. ...
— Notes on Certain Maya and Mexican Manuscripts • Cyrus Thomas
... most trustworthy of the records of the peoples of antiquity. They date from 1,000 to 2,200 years B.C., and their authenticity may often be proved by reference to Greek authors. After long and careful research and comparison with the text of the Puranas, and various monumental inscriptions, Colonel Tod came to the conclusion that in the Oodeypore archives (now hidden from public inspection), not to mention other sources, may be found a clue to the history of India in particular, and to universal ancient history in general. Colonel Tod advises the earnest ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... the character of the great historian. In the light of his consecration to a worthy purpose his life is not without its heroism. To write The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a monumental achievement. To bend every energy to the fulfilling of a high resolve is heroic. From 1764 to 1787 his one aim in life was to write a scholarly history that should cover the vast field that he had chosen. He may lack that spiritual insight which enables one to estimate world ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... presence and execution of SS. Peter and Paul in Rome are facts established beyond a shadow of doubt by purely monumental evidence. There was a time when persons belonging to different creeds made it almost a case of conscience to affirm or deny a priori those facts, according to their acceptance or rejection of the tradition of any particular church. This state of feeling ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... The monumental stone, designed to commemorate some feat of an ancient King of Man, which had been long forgotten, was erected on the side of a narrow lonely valley, or rather glen, secluded from observation by the steepness of its banks, upon a projection of which stood the tall, shapeless, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... In the monumental piece of work which issued in 1897 from the Cape Observatory, under the direction of Dr. Gill, the final results from the observations of Iris, Victoria, and Sappho have been obtained. From this it appears that the angle which the earth's equatorial radius ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... Touched and disturbed by a memory long since forgotten, he was further embarrassed, as the cortege dispersed in the Mission graveyard, by the apparition of the tall figure of Mr. James Bowers from behind a monumental column. The editor ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... bulwark which was to guard their temples and their homes, using as materials the walls of the houses which had been sacked and burnt by the Persians, with whatever remained of public buildings, sacred or profane, and sparing not even the monumental pillars of graves in the urgency of ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... In the monumental work of Ploss and Bartels (II., 514), the opinion is advanced that the custom of slaughtering widows on the death of their husbands is the result of the grossly materialistic view the races in question hold in regard to a future world. It is supposed that a warrior ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... heart for having followed the rule of the hospital so scrupulously. He was an antediluvian, he was a case of arrested mental development, he was an ichthyosaurus, he was a new kind of idiot, he was a monumental fool, he was the mammoth ass reported to have been seen by a mediaeval traveller in the desert, that was forty cubits high, and whose braying was like the blast of ten thousand trumpets. The Superintendent wished he had time to select more choice epithets ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... Greeks as your teachers. Your teachers they were, but that poem could only have been written by a Roman! The strength, the tenderness, the noble and monumental resolution and resignation—these are the gifts of the lords of human things, the masters of ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... the Commonwealth, while the interior of the sacred fabric underwent every sort of desecration and mutilation,—while stones were torn from the pavement, and monumental brasses from tombs,—while carved stalls were burnt, and statues plucked from their niches,—a similar fate attended the portico. Shops were built beneath it, and the sculptures ornamenting its majestic balustrade were ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... their faith, but also brought magnificent offerings, as Peter's pence, and presented addresses with millions of signatures. One day fifteen hundred Italians were received at an audience of the Holy Father, and made the offering of a monumental album, together with one hundred purses filled with gold, as the homage of one hundred Italian cities. Cardinal Manning laid at the feet of Pius IX. L30,000—a generous testimony of English piety. The Cardinal Archbishop of Mechlin brought to the centenary celebration L16,000, ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... wall some six feet through and about ten feet high. This barricade was about twenty feet from the building. Guards were stationed at the passageways through it as well as at the stairs and Committee by the members of the Monumental Fire Engine Company No. 6, stationed on the west side of Brenham Place, opposite the "Plaza." Our small field pieces and arms were kept on the ground floor, and the cells, executive chamber and other departments were ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley
... was a vast chamber occupied by Bonnoeil and leading to the great hall, astoundingly high and solemn in spite of its dilapidation, with a brick floor, a ceiling with great beams, and immense windows looking over the terrace towards the Seine. By a double door with monumental ironwork, set in a wall as thick as a bastille, Mme. de Combray's apartments were reached, the first room wainscoted, then a boudoir, next a small room hidden by a staircase, and communicating with a lot of other small, low rooms. A long passage, lighted by three windows opening on ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... school of experts and scientists who helped to make the season of 1912-13 memorable in the annals of the greatest of all arts. For a solitary illustration we may take Mr. Boom, who, at the annual meeting of the American Zooelogical Association, danced his monumental two-volume work entitled, "The Variations of the Alimentary Canal in the Frogs and Toads." This dance was subsequently repeated before several ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... races, except Herr Bastian's very meagre tract, 'Ueber psychische Beobachtungen bei Naturvoelkern.'[7] We possess, none the less, a mass of scattered information on this topic, the savage side of psychical phenomena, in works of travel, and in Mr. Tylor's monumental 'Primitive Culture.' Mr. Tylor, however, as we shall see, regards it as a matter of indifference, or, at least, as a matter beyond the scope of his essay, to decide whether the parallel supernormal phenomena ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... Bible' a hindrance to organization? Of course it is. What of it? The belief in the old theories about women, which had their basis in doctrines taught from King James' version of the Bible, was a much more monumental hindrance to the work of the pioneers, in not only the woman suffrage movement but in all movements for the advancement ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... surprise us by what he does under such circumstances, but it will be but little and feeble in comparison with what he might do. The community must see its way to paying some to eschew plumbing and stick to design, if they mean to have any design. This has been done, indeed, in the matter of monumental-glass, and to a certain extent in wall-decoration by means of painting; but it must be done in what is more vital yet—in architectural sculpture of all sorts and all grades; of vegetable, animal and human subjects; in low relief, in high relief and in the ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... Seattle's great fire of June 6, 1889. The ashes were scarcely cold when her enthusiastic citizens began to build anew, better, stronger, and more beautiful than before. A city of brick, stone, and iron has arisen, monumental evidence of the energy, pluck, and perseverance of the people, and of their fervent faith in the future of Seattle. Then Port Townsend, with its beautiful harbor and gently sloping bluffs, "the city of destiny," beyond all doubt, of any of the towns on the Sound. Favored by nature ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... secretly crossed his two forefingers, and exhibited them to me, as our token that Mrs. Joe was in a cross temper. This was so much her normal state, that Joe and I would often, for weeks together, be, as to our fingers, like monumental ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... be shown in a few words to be without foundation. For no economist would admit national economy to be legitimate which proposed to itself only the building of a pyramid of gold. He would declare the gold to be wasted, were it to remain in the monumental form, and would say it ought to be employed. But to what end? Either it must be used only to gain more gold, and build a larger pyramid, or for some purpose other than the gaining of gold. And this ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... monumental volume, which no American who cares for the memory of the public men of his country can afford to be without."—New York ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... of Gay's eulogy, but one or two points may be noted. In the first place, Gay's remarks are not extravagant when compared with other contemporary testimony. Many of these tributes were brought together by Aitken in his monumental biography of Steele, and since 1889 other contemporary sources have been published which give corroborating support. Hearne first mentions the Spectator on April 22, 1711, in a comment on No. 43, and even this crusty Tory and Jacobite notes ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... construction of the tombs, so numerous in the vicinity of all the large cities. These necropoles, excavated in the rocks or hillsides, or built within the pyramids, consist of rows of chambers with halls supported by columns, which, with the walls, are often covered with paintings, historical or monumental, representing scenes from domestic or civil life. The great pyramids were probably built for the sepulchres of kings and their families, and the smaller ones for persons ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... monumental slab of Dr. Hall is a shield of arms: "Sable, three talbots' heads erased or" for Hall, impaling Shakespeare or on a bend "sable, a spear of the first, the point steeled." "Here lyeth ye Body of John Hall, gent: Hee marr: Susanna ye daughter and coheire of Will: Shakespeare, gent., ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... monumental stones for the dead are several with caps figured on them. The like are to be seen at Nimes, Avignon, and elsewhere. These are freedmen's caps. When a noble Roman died he left in his will that so many of his slaves were to be ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... as might have been expected, the result was a curious composition; a religious olla-podrida in which the profound wisdom of Zoroaster and the childish superstition of western barbarians, grand morality and monumental absurdity elbow each other like specters in a delirium—in which is heard both "the still small voice" of Omnipotent God and the megalophanous ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... a Chief Judge in India, and lived to write what the Times described as "three monumental volumes on the Land Systems of British India." The second boy, Warington, of whom we shall have more to say in the next chapter, went into the Navy, but left that gallant Service to practise at the Bar, and now is as breezy a Q.C. as ever brought the smack of salt-water into the Admiralty ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... washes his hands: while in the Crown of Thorns and Descent into Hades we have peculiarly fine and suitable black and white patterns, and in the Peter and John at the Beautiful Gate[80] and the Ecce Homo figures of monumental dignity in tiny gems of glowing engraver's work. The repose and serenity of the lovely little St. Antony;[81] the subsidence of commotion in the noonday victory of the little St. George on foot, B. 53—perhaps the most perfect diamond in the whole brilliant chain ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... the mind of John Aldous now. The attempt upon Joanne left him but one course to pursue: he must take her with him, in spite of the monumental objections which he had seen a few hours before. He realized what a fight this would mean for him, and with what cleverness and resource he must play his part. Joanne had not given herself to him as she had once given herself to Mortimer FitzHugh. In the "coyote," ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... dealing with Turkish officials. During the interval, however, archaeologists and philologists were kept fully engaged studying the large amount of material which had been accumulated. Sir Henry Rawlinson began the issue of his monumental work The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia on ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... York, and when a girl has no mother to palpitate for her she must needs be on the alert for herself. Lily, therefore, had not only contrived to put herself in the young man's way, but had made the acquaintance of Mrs. Gryce, a monumental woman with the voice of a pulpit orator and a mind preoccupied with the iniquities of her servants, who came sometimes to sit with Mrs. Peniston and learn from that lady how she managed to prevent ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... and greatness: the noble royal palace, degraded, alas, into barracks for the Austrian soldiery; the grand, impressive cathedral, in which the tombs of the kings present an epitome of Polish history; the town-hall, a building of the 14th century; the turreted St. Florian's gate; and the monumental hillock, erected on the mountain Bronislawa in memory of Kosciuszko by the hands of his grateful countrymen, of which a Frenchman said:—"Void une eloquence touts nouvelle: un peuple qui ne peut s'exprimer par la parole ou par ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... judgment such, They'll scorn their sires, and wish themselves born Dutch; Each haughty poet will infer with ease, How much his wit must under-write to please. As some strong churl would, brandishing, advance The monumental sword that conquered France; So you, by judging this, your judgment teach, Thus far you like, that is, thus far you reach. Since then the vote of full two thousand years Has crowned this plot, and all the dead are theirs, Think it a debt you pay, not alms ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... between the flowerbeds they walked to the boxwood hedge which bordered the park on the southern side. They passed before the orange-grove, the monumental door of which was surmounted by the Lorraine cross of Mareuilles, and then passed under the linden-trees which formed an alley on the lawn. Statues of nymphs shivered in the damp shade studded with pale lights. A pigeon, ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... would be narrow-minded to disparage it because it did not stand on the ethical level of Polygnotus's work. But painters did not always keep within the limits of what is innocent. No longer restrained by the conditions of monumental and religious art, they began to pander not merely to what is frivolous, but to what is vile in human nature. The great Parrhasius is reported by Pliny to have painted licentious little pictures, "refreshing himself" (says the writer) by this means after ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... of "The Monumental Brasses of England," Editor and Part Author of "Arms and Armour in Antiquity and ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... passed beyond the bounds of sanity.[75] In its extreme forms, however, this romantic love was a rare, localized, and short-lived manifestation. The dominant attitude of the chivalrous age towards women, as Leon Gautier has shown in his monumental work on chivalry, was one of indifference, or even contempt. The knight's thoughts were more of war than of women, and he cherished his horse more ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... end of lofty standards with a glow blinding and frigid like captive ghosts of some evil moons. Scattered all over the dark polish of the roadstead, the ships at anchor floated in perfect stillness under the feeble gleam of their riding-lights, looming up, opaque and bulky, like strange and monumental structures abandoned by men ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... dilates like Satan into Teneriffe or Atlas when he sees before him an antagonist worthy of his powers, is probably the one man in Europe that has adequately conceived the situation, the stern self-dependency, and the monumental misery of Count Julian. That sublimity of penitential grief, which cannot accept consolation from man, cannot bear external reproach, cannot condescend to notice insult, cannot so much as SEE the curiosity of bystanders; that awful ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... a mighty hunter before the face of the Lord in the land of Masonry, and through the whole country of Hiram; great also is Diana of the Palladians. After their monumental revelations and confessions, those of all other seceders and penitents who have come out of the mystery of iniquity, "are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine." My readers in the two previous chapters ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... just what natural accessories lend themselves most harmoniously to this or that particular type. If the architecture be quaint and picturesque it must not have prosaic surroundings. If, on the other hand, it be formal or monumental, the character and scale of the accessories should be accordingly serious and dignified. The rendering ought also to vary with the subject,—a free picturesque manner for the one, a more studied and responsible handling for the other. Technique is the language of art, and a stiff pompous ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... de la Mer Morte; Stanley's Palestine and Syria; Schaff's Through Bible Lands; and other travellers hereafter quoted. For good photogravures, showing the character of the whole region, see the atlas forming part of De Luynes's monumental Voyage d'Exploration. For geographical summaries, see Reclus, La Terre, Paris, 1870, pp. 832-834; Ritter, Erdkunde, volumes devoted to Palestine and especially as supplemented in Gage's translation with additions; Reclus, Nouvelle Geographie Universelle, vol. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... which war leaves always in its track,—an humble cemetery, marked by many small white stones, showing the last resting-places of men unknown to fame, but to whom life was undoubtedly as sweet as it is to those whose graves the world honors with monumental shafts. ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... badly spelt, and with many abbreviations, it was an enigma to her scholarship, and L'Isle had to decipher it for her: "Andreo Savaro was murdered here. Pray for his soul." "It is only one of those monumental crosses," said he, "of which you see so many along the ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... reason that this historic architectural form, the blank exterior of the walled city, has found its finest use in the far-western city of St. Francis. Quite apart from their frequent occurrence in the mission architecture of old Alta California, these simple wall spaces well befit the monumental structure that honors an achievement so important to all Spanish ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... withdrew altogether. Others persisted, however, and new schools have been founded by these and similar organizations, by private philanthropy, and also by negro churches. As a result there are independent schools, state schools, and Federal schools. The recent monumental report of the Bureau of Education reports 653 schools for negroes other than regular public schools[1]. Of these 28 are under public control, 507 are denominational schools (of which 354 are under white boards and 153 under negro boards), and 118 are classed as independent. ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... difficult to do justice to such an exploit within the scope of a single article. The privations suffered by the troops, their uncomplaining endurance, the fight with cholera, the appalling atrocities perpetrated by the Bulgarians upon those who fell within their power, furnish matter for a monumental volume. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... literally buried in the wooded combe. Slabs of gray wall and purple roof, sunk in the black-green like graves in grass. A white house here and there faced him with the stare of monumental marble. In the middle a church with a stunted spire squatted like a mortuary chapel. They had run up a gaudy red-brick villa or two outside, but on the whole Little Sutton was all right, too. He had always thought it very like a cemetery—a place where people lay buried till the ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... shady, and which as being in the centre of a city was large and luxurious. From one end of the house there projected a covered terrace, or loggia, in which there were chairs and tables, sculptured ornaments, busts, and old monumental relics let into the wall in profusion. It was half chamber and half garden,—such an adjunct to a house as in our climate would give only an idea of cold, rheumatism, and a false romance, but under an Italian sky, is a luxury daily to be enjoyed during most ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... this elevated region. Fields of tea alternate with tombs: old granite statues which represent Buddha in his lotus, or else old monumental stones on which gleam remains of inscriptions in golden letters. Rocks, brushwood, uncultivated spaces, surround us ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... monumental in black frock coat, gray trousers, and the lately polished shoes that were like shining relief maps of a hill country. He carried a lustrous silk hat, which he now paused to make more lustrous, his fingers clutching a sleeve of his coat and ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson |
