"Pinnacle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was resigned to the King's agents, and a great cloud hung over the little town. In a short time the gorgeous shrines and altars were plundered and desecrated; the buildings were sold; and before the eyes of the astonished inhabitants tower and pinnacle, church and chapter-house, gatehouse and cloister, fell a prey to the hand ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... cross, and the angel perceiving me gazing upon it asked me "if I knew that part." I did not know what to answer. "That is the Church of England," said he. These words made me observe it with more attention than before, and on looking up I could perceive queen Anne, on the pinnacle of the building, with a sword in each hand. With the one in her left, which is called Justice, she preserves her subjects from the men of the city of Perdition; and with the other in her right, which is the sword of the Spirit, or the word ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... arrows, winds rocked us like seas, And close all around crashed the pinnacle-trees; Red bolts flashed so near, the glare blinded our eyes, But onward, still on, for in front shone the prize. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... neck, and there to hang for the space of three hours until he be dead; and thereafter to be cut down by the hangman, his head, hands, and legs to be cut off, and distributed as follows—viz., His head to be affixed on an iron pin, and set on the pinnacle of the west gavel of the new prison of Edinburgh; one hand to be set on the port of Perth, the other on the port of Stirling; one leg and foot on the port of Aberdeen, the other on the port of Glasgow. If at his death penitent, and relaxed from excommunication, then the trunk of his body to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... which of the two Napoleon hated most—Wellington, who finally overthrew him at Waterloo, or Sidney Smith, who, to use Napoleon's own words, made him "miss his destiny," and exchange the empire of the East for a lonely pinnacle of ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... "backed" the regulating captain's warrants, consistently winked at his glaring infractions of law and order, and with the most commendable loyalty imaginable did all in their power to forward His Majesty's service. Even the military, if rightly approached on their pinnacle of lofty superiority, now and then condescended to lend the gangsman a hand. Did not Sloper, Major-General and Commandant at Lewes, throw a whole company into the ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... silence of the thought Upon its bleak and visionary sides, The history of many a winter storm Or obscure record of the path of fire. There the sun himself At the calm close of Summer's longest day Rests his substantial orb; between those heights, And on the top of either pinnacle, More keenly than elsewhere in night's blue vault Sparkle the stars, as of their station proud: Thoughts are not busier in the mind of man Than the mute agents stirring there,—alone Here do I ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... complimentary about the garden party, the freshness and unique manner in which it was arranged, and the pretty serving. She heard it again at the Dyckmans', and is now far up the pinnacle of self-complacency. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... preserved to the end of his career the statesman's tact of discriminating between the possible and the impossible, and has not broken down in the task which for greatly gifted natures is the most difficult of all— the task of recognizing, when on the pinnacle of success, its natural limits. What was possible he performed, and never left the possible good undone for the sake of the impossible better, never disdained at least to mitigate by palliatives evils that were incurable. But where he recognized that fate had ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... a familiar landmark. A quarter of a mile away, a conical butte rose to a height of a hundred feet above the level of the broken plain, and the Texan walked over and laboriously climbed its steep side. He sank down upon the topmost pinnacle and studied the country minutely. "Just below the edge of the bad lands," he muttered. "The Little Rockies loom up plain, an' the Bear Paws an' Judiths look kind of dim. I'm way off my range down here. This part of the country don't look like ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... detail escaped, her vigilant eye, not an item was forgotten of all the millions of little necessities that the world expected and she must have forthcoming. Nothing that could make the wedding unique, artistic, perfect, was too hard or too costly to be carried out. This was her pinnacle of opportunity to shine, and Mrs. Endicott intended to make the most of it. Not that she had not shone throughout her worldly career, but she knew that with the marriage of her daughter her life would reach its zenith point and must henceforth begin to decline. This event must ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... or pinnacle, my leddy, for nane will ye see: their time's lang ower. But jist taik the sea face o' the scaur (cliff) i' yer ee, an' traivel alang 't oontil ye come till a bit 'at luiks like mason wark. It scarce rises ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... the Saturday noon crowd and yet the same type. Free women, happy women, regular women. Women who can recall a judge or so and still be graceful and dainty. It is very significant that a San Francisco woman stands at the very pinnacle of the city, graceful and alert on that tall ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... to leave this grand pinnacle, we must not tarry longer upon Greylock. Let us now take a trip down the Housatonic valley, close beside the Taconic range. This forms an almost continuous ridge across the State, and its summit is nearly upon the line between our ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... not obvious, but may have been intended to comprae this mountain with the lofty sharp pinnacle on which the hermitage is built near St Jago ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... towns of its size, none of which, in this instance, are any way remarkable. But the place is picturesque and interesting; one would not like to have missed it. The church of Santiago has a tall, graceful, and slender spire, sure to attract an observant eye, recalling the pinnacle of St. Peter and St. Paul in the capital of Russia. We have said Silao is of little commercial importance, but there are six or eight flour-mills, which seem to be the nucleus about which the principal business interests centre. The ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... go any further, Mr. Harlan Thornton. My affection for an old man who has set his heart on your success has brought me into this affair, and I assure you I don't enjoy the situation. You are not asked to betray any one, or desert any high moral pinnacle, or do anything else that the moralists say all these fine things about without knowing what they mean half the time. You are reminded of this: that there's only one General Waymouth. There's a sudden big call for him because factions have got into a row with each other. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... I append, for I have been examining the mechanism of the gate since I came in, and have made a discovery which dislodges my savant from his pinnacle; namely, that the only fastening on the gate is a huge wooden latch, which not one of us had sense enough to lift; but then who thinks of taking a fort by assault and battery on the latch? Halicarnassus hit upon it by mere accident, and I therefore ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... discipline of an immense society, the boys, the beggars, the chimney-sweeps, the hilarious and the sorrowful, the fine ladies and noble lords, were all duly appreciated by him. If he had been taken up to the pinnacle of a mountain, instead of entertaining one of Wordsworth's sublime contemplations, he would have been very likely to flap his arms and crow like chanticleer. Indeed, in middle age he was accustomed to boast that he had never seen a mountain. Born in London, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... defenceless Christians; both exchanged unbounded empire for absolute seclusion. But Diocletian was born in the lowest abyss of human degradation—the slave and the son of a slave. For such a man, after having reached the highest pinnacle of human greatness, voluntarily to descend from power, seems an act of far greater magnanimity than the retreat of Charles. Born in the purple, having exercised unlimited authority from his boyhood, and having worn from his cradle ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... no opinion. I explained nothing. I let him continue to believe what he believes; because it is the only way to keep you on the pinnacle where he has placed you. Let any other reason for your conduct than an almost infantine ignorance of men and things be suggested and accepted, and down you will come, my poor Jane, and great will ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... of good manners, morals, methods, and [5] means. It points to the scientific spiritual molecule, pearl, and pinnacle, that everybody needs. May the Christlikeness it reflects rest on the dear readers, and throw the light of penetration on the page; even as the dawn, kindling its glories in the east, lightens earth's ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... hill with its dark ascending firs, to its crown of silvery birches, above which, as often as the slowly circling road brought him to the other side, he saw rise like a helmet the gray mass of the fortress. Turret and tower, pinnacle and battlement, appeared and disappeared as he climbed. Not until at last he stood almost on the top, and from an open space beheld nearly the whole front, could he tell what it was like. It was a grand pile, but looked a gloomy one to ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... characters here given, it is probable that these gypseous beds have undergone some metamorphic action. The strata are much hidden by detritus, but they appeared in most parts to be highly inclined; and in an adjoining lofty pinnacle they could be distinctly seen bending up, and becoming vertical, conformably with the underlying porphyritic conglomerate. In very many parts of the great mountain-face [F], composed of thin gypseous beds, there ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... is a power for good or evil; it may be likened to a magazine, holding within its throbbing sides an explosive deposit of untold energy and puissance, capable of all things within the range of the human. While it may lift man to the very pinnacle of goodness, it may also sink him to the lowest level of infamy. Only, in one case, it is spiritualized love, in the other, it is carnal; in one case it obeys the spirit, in the other, the flesh; in one case its true name is charity, in the other, ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... Quai des Marbriers, and afterwards its continuation, the Quai Vert. Pacing these silent promenades, which are bordered by humble cottages, you have opposite, across the water, as also from the adjacent Quai du Rosaire, grand groupings of pinnacle, tower, and gable, more delightful even, in perfection of combination and in mellow charm of colour, than those "domes and towers" of Oxford whose presence Wordsworth confessed, in a very indifferent sonnet, to overpower ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... have been impossible to trace the original course of the streets, but that some gable, pinnacle, or portion of walls, of churches, halls, or mansions, indicated where they had stood. The narrower thoroughfares were completely blocked by rubbish; massive iron chains, then used to prevent traffic at night in the streets, were melted, as were likewise iron gates of prisons, and the ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... on Fate than they who have gone before, and what has come to others in like conditions must come to thee. God himself can not stay it; it is so written in the stars. Power to lead men! Pray that thy prayer shall ne'er be granted—'t is to be carried to the topmost pinnacle of Fame's temple tower, and there cast headlong upon the stones ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and placing me on the top of it, cast thy eyes eastward, said he, and tell me what thou seest. I see, said I, a huge valley, and a prodigious tide of ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... devil!" she said, "and maman has put my name on the register of the monument; so the great archangel St. Michel will deliver me from all evil. What canst thou do? Canst thou turn children into cats? or canst thou walk across the sea without being drowned? or canst thou stand on the highest pinnacle of the church, where the golden image of St. Michel used to be, and cast thyself down without killing thyself? I will go back with thee to thy house and see what thou ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... of this concerted departure only seemed strange afterwards when O'Malley looked back upon it, for at the time it seemed as inevitable as being obliged to swim once the dive is taken. He stood upon a pinnacle whence lesser details were invisible; he knew a kind of exaltation—of loftier vision. Small facts that ordinarily might fill the day with trouble sank below the horizon then. He did not even notice that they went without food, horse, or blankets. It was reckless, unrestrained, ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... momentously! As long as I've known the man (and we played truant together fifty years ago—hookey, we called it then) he's had his heart set on going forth from Radville, "for to admire and for to see, for to view this wide world o'er"; always he has presented himself to me as one poised on the pinnacle of purpose, ready the next instant to dive and strike out into the teeming unknown beyond the barrier hills. But this promise he has never fulfilled. He still maintains that he will surely go—next week—after the hayin's over—as ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... a ride! Falling water was everywhere. We rode above the clouds, under the clouds, and through the clouds! and every now and then a shaft of sunshine penetrated like a search-light to the depths yawning beneath us, or flashed upon some pinnacle of the crater-rim thousands of feet above. At every turn of the trail a waterfall or a dozen waterfalls, leaping hundreds of feet through the air, burst upon our vision. At our first night's camp, in the ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... a description of Eveline's feelings at this hour would be a vain task. In a moment, she was brought down from the pinnacle of hope to the depths of despair; for she saw in all this that had passed the hand of Duffel, her avowed enemy; and, indeed, as the reader has doubtless already concluded, she was in the hands of none others than Bill and Dick, who were bearing ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... having left mediaeval chasubles to grind at war, and though he no longer taught Hogarth, a relation persisted between them; and always not far from O'Hara was to be found Harris, living now on the pinnacle of dandy bliss, twisting ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... combination of events placing in my hands, precisely at the moment of their greatest value, clear opportunities that none but a hopeless blunderer could have disregarded. What men call Chance operated in my favour as though with superb calculation, lifting me to this miniature pinnacle I could never have reached by my ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... pinnacle of success. The army is his own; the keys of numerous towns are brought to him. Moscow alone appears to offer resistance. He is mild and amiable, testifies a noble emotion at the intelligence of the death of Boris, pardons a detected conspiracy against ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... pinnacle or tree or tower, While earth endures, Will fall on my mound and within the hour Steal on to yours; One robin never haunt ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... my sister Sorais would levy war upon me. So be it. She shall not prevail against me. I, too, have my friends and my retainers. There are many, I say, who will shout "Nyleptha!" when my pennon runs up on peak and pinnacle, and the light of my beacon fires leaps tonight from crag to crag, bearing the message of my war. I will break her strength and scatter her armies. Eternal night shall be the portion of Sorais of the Night. Give me that parchment and the ink. So. Now summon the officer in the ante-room. ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... the whole width of the great table. On its top the frosting was piled high, in fantastic shapes. There seemed to be little hills and valleys; and from among these peeped—and did they only seem to move?—a number of tiny figures in green and gold. One sat astride of a snowy pinnacle, another lay stretched at full length in a hollow, his pretty face only peering out; some were chasing each other among the elfin hills, others were standing at ease, their hands on their hearts, their forms bent gracefully as if in salutation. ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... divided into the neck and body. The neck consists of a hard fleshy substance, much like cartilage, and at the end of it there is a membrane placed transversely, which is called the hymen. Near the neck there is a prominent pinnacle, which is called the door of the womb, because it preserves the matrix from cold and dust. The Greeks called it clitoris, and the Latins praeputium muliebre, because the Roman women abused these parts to satisfy their mutual unlawful lusts, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... marble, did I say? nay, rather a golden city, paved with emerald. For truly, every pinnacle and turret glanced or glowed, overlaid with gold, or bossed with jasper. Beneath, the unsullied sea drew in deep breathing, to and fro, its eddies of green wave. Deep-hearted, majestic, terrible as the sea,—the men of Venice moved in sway of power and war; pure as her pillars of alabaster, ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... by ideal figures, and notably by the memorial to Robert Gould Shaw, a work distinctively American and without a counterpart in the annals of art. It is the spiritual quality of Saint Gaudens's work which sets it apart upon a lofty pinnacle—the largeness of the man behind it, the artist mind and ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... of Atalanta, as some whirlwind falling on the gates, calls out for fire and a spade, as though he would dig up the city. But Periclymenus the son of the God of the Ocean stopped him in his raging, hurling at his head a stone, a wagon-load, a pinnacle[40] rent from the battlement; and dashed in pieces his head with its auburn hair, and crushed the suture of the bones, and besmeared with blood his lately blooming cheeks; nor shall he carry back his living form to his mother, glorious ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... tall masts, completely encircled by the flames, fell hissing into the water. The other, after standing awhile in solitary grandeur, formed a fiery pinnacle ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston
... large nor is the chapel, but, nevertheless, my soul expanded as in a basilica, soared up as under some vast dome, and touched the pinnacle of high Heaven where blazes the Sign of Signs in the azure of Paradise, in ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... standing at a window, looking out at the aged row of cedars, now laden with snow, and thinking of Horace and Soracte. Suddenly, beneath a jutting pinnacle of white boughs which left under themselves one little spot of green, I saw a cardinal hop out and sit full-breasted towards me. The idea flashed through my mind that this might be that shyest, most beautiful fellow whom ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... was to circle round the loftiest summits of the snow-clad voiceless Andes, while down in the valleys beneath dark clouds rolled fiercely on, and lightnings played across the darkness; nor to perch cool and safe on peak or pinnacle, while below on earth's dull level the hurricane Pampero was levelling house and hut and tree; or the burning breath of the Zonda was sweeping over the land, scorching every flower and leaf, drinking every drop of dew, draining even the blood of moving beings till eyes ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... boys accepted gladly, and during the trip there were many long discussions between the three as to the future of the Circus Boys. They had worked hard during the season and had won new laurels on the tanbark. But they had not yet reached the pinnacle of their success in the canvas-covered arena, though each had saved, as the result of his season's work, nearly twelve ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... time when Percival was nineteen years of age that he stood upon a pinnacle of rock and looked down into a certain valley. And it was very early in the spring-time, so that the valley appeared, as it were, to be carpeted all with clear, thin green. There was a shining stream of water that ran down through the ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... woke again. The Professor's notes were still under my eyes, and I read the words, "Lose yourself and live as if you were one of the others. Exalted on this pinnacle you are prepared for any existence; you have learnt your path through eternity, and the world and its vicissitudes may sweep by you like winds past ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... contrary winds until it seemed as though the spirit of the new ocean had arisen in wrath, forbidding his further progress. He was even driven south of the strait to Cape Horn, where he landed and looked from the southernmost pinnacle of the cape to the mysterious southern sea, declaring triumphantly that he had been farther south than any man in the world and had placed his foot on the extreme of the new continent. Then all at once the weather changed and Drake ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... people were at Pleasure Bay, wandering about under the trees in front of the hotel. Down between them and the bank was a lot of men piling up a heap of round stones and crossing sticks of wood over them till a high sort of a cross-beam pinnacle was built, to which one of the men set fire. Mercy, how it blazed up and flashed through the cracks in the wood! They seemed to enjoy the blaze, and worked like beavers around it—though I don't know how a beaver works, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... had turned the bend of the wooded gorge, and, looking up the river, saw what resembled a dyke of basalt stretching sheer across the stream, with a ruined castle on a bare and apparently inaccessible pinnacle, another ruin on the opposite end of the ridge, and, between the two, a little church on the brink of a precipice. Houses were clustered at the foot of the rocks by the ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... she missed him, she gave such a chilly, formal reply that despair fell upon him. On learning his good fortune she almost clapped her hands. Was the joy all for the boys? Then on hearing his destination, she said, "So far away!" in a tone of despair that lifted him on to a pinnacle of hope, but the next minute she tumbled him down again by observing, like one entirely ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... generally adopted, and delighted in, throughout the north; and then, with the gradual exaggeration with which every pleasant idea is pursued by the human mind, it is raised into all manner of peaks, and points, and ridges; and pinnacle after pinnacle is added on its flanks, and the walls increased in height, in proportion, until we get indeed a very sublime mass, but one which has no more principle of religious aspiration in it than a child's tower of ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... and once again its sobering sensation struck me, and I found myself staring up at its top, a full 800 feet high, the bottom being an ornate and elaborate temple. The middle, which supplied most of its height, was a long, round tower, and at top there was a spherical pinnacle which had what looked to be a ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... in the warm sunlight come swiftly into view. Some of the spires are of such great height in proportion to their diameter as to appear needle-like. Among those reaching so far heavenward are the slender spire of the Cathedral of Peter and Paul, nearly four hundred feet in height, and the lofty pinnacle of the Admiralty Building. Notwithstanding its giddy towers and looming palaces rising above the level of the capital, the want of a little diversity in the grade of the low-lying city is keenly felt. Like Berlin ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... of Hellas. Akbar started as his grandfather had started, and Baber's faith was not less sincere.[10] But the contact with other races and other creeds diverted or heightened this first purpose of the Mongol, and at the pinnacle of earthly power, Akbar met and yielded to the temptation, which dazzled for a moment even the steady gaze of Napoleon. Apprehending the unity beneath the diversity of the religions of his various subjects, Hindoo, Persian, ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... there, in happy early days, on those lowly benches in front of the altar, have I whiled away the tedium of a sermon considering how best I might thread my way up amidst those wooden towers, and climb safely to the topmost pinnacle! ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... increased in volume and in sound, but it was soon far beneath us, pursuing its headlong course till it reached level ground, where it flowed in the midst of a beautiful but confined prairie. There was something sylvan and savage in the mountains on the farther side, clad from foot to pinnacle with trees, so closely growing that the eye was unable to obtain a glimpse of the hill sides, which were uneven with ravines and gulleys, the haunts of the wolf, the wild boar, and the corso, or mountain-stag; the latter of which, as I was informed by a peasant who was driving a car of oxen, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... first rankling sting of humiliation and despair, he could almost have struck a murderous blow at the man whom fortune had set on such a pinnacle of pride and insolence, as it seemed to his galled fancy. He was not in the mood to be either just or generous, and he saw in Ralph Gowan nothing but a man who had both the power and will to rival him, and rob him of peace and hope forever. If Dolly had been with him, in all ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... between the mountains, was pointed out to us. The principal one is the Arros River, which from the west embraces most of the mesas, and then, turning south, receives its tributaries, the Tutuhuaca and the Mulatos, the latter just behind a pinnacle. West of the Arros River stretches out the immense Mesa de los Apaches, once a stronghold of these marauders, reaching as far as the Rio Bonito. The plateau is also called "The Devil's Spine Mesa," ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... was thus being raised to the pinnacle of honor, his former comrade Bazaine was imprisoned in another part of the palace at Versailles, awaiting trial on the charge of treason for the surrender of Metz. In the trial, in which the whole world took a deep interest, the ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... reproduction. The result was the more or less original elevation that we now see. It consists of a three-light lancet window at the east end of the choir, with a small circular window, with seven cusps, in the gable above, surmounted by a cross, and a stair-turret, terminating in an octagonal pinnacle at ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... successive attempt. Every one must know the feeling of triumph and pride which a grand view from a height communicates to the mind. In these little frequented countries there is also joined to it some vanity, that you perhaps are the first man who ever stood on this pinnacle or ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... of the ballet since the time of Louis XIV has been the contribution of individual artists, who by giving expression to their own original ideas have thus advanced the art to the pinnacle attained by the modern ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... shown by the Mahomedans as the tomb, and sometimes as the house, of Adam; but such a structure there certainly was, perhaps an ancient Kist-vaen, or the like. John Marignolli, who was there about 1349, has an interesting passage on the subject: "That exceeding high mountain hath a pinnacle of surpassing height, which on account of the clouds can rarely be seen. [The summit is lost in the clouds. (Ibn Khordadhbeh, p. 43.)—H.C.] But God, pitying our tears, lighted it up one morning just before the sun rose, so that we beheld it glowing with ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... last puff was fading away he glided down from pinnacle to narrow shelf, from shelf to cliff, and made his way toward the rocks below to tell the news to ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... turned into a broad and beautiful avenue of poplars, down which we saw, at a distance, the triumphal arch terminating the Simplon road, which we had followed from Sesto Calende. Beyond it rose the slight and airy pinnacle of the Duomo. We passed by the exquisite structure, gave up our passports at the gates, traversed the broad Piazza d'Armi, and found ourselves at liberty to choose one of the dozen streets that led into ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... they progressed, fearful every moment lest the support break beneath them and hurl them down along the sloping side of the pinnacle ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... as they wandered beside a neat little oval pool, the foreground of a thatched and whitewashed inn, with a grassy approach and a pictorial sign—from these humble wayside animals to the crests of high woods which let a gable or a pinnacle peep here and there and looked even at a distance like trees of good company, conscious of an individual profile. I admired the hedge-rows, I plucked the faint- hued heather, and I was for ever stopping to say how charming I thought ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... demand, some speculation to be incurred requiring great means and courage as well, and Roger Scatcherd had been found to be the man for the time. He was then elevated for the moment to the dizzy pinnacle of a newspaper hero, and became one of those "whom the king delighteth to honour." He went up one day to kiss Her Majesty's hand, and come down to his new grand house at Boxall Hill, Sir ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... burst of popular indignation which he knew must follow. Any wrong done to one who stands on the pinnacle of the people's favour is resented by each individual as a personal injury; and among a primitive set of country-folk, who recognize the wild passion in love, as it exists untamed by the trammels of reason and self-restraint, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Steele, Tickell, Philips, Smith, and a crowd of lesser lights, raised my lord each one on a higher pinnacle; and in return the powerful minister was not forgetful of the douceur which well-tuned verses were accustomed to receive. He himself had tried to be a poet, and in 1703 wrote verses for the toasting-cups of the Kit-kat. His lines to a Dowager Countess of ——, are good enough to make us surprised ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... Moloch horridus. Thermometer 18 degrees. The Finke. Johnstone's range. A night alarm. Beautiful trees. Wild ducks. A tributary. High dark hill. Country rises in altitude. Very high sandhills. Quicksands. New ranges. A brush ford. New pigeon. Pointed hill. A clay pan. Christopher's Pinnacle. Chandler's Range. Another new range. Sounds of running water. First natives seen. Name of the river. A Central Australian warrior. Natives burning the country. Name a new creek. Ascend a mountain. Vivid green. Discover a ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... asked, for I felt that I should like to climb to the topmost pinnacle of the highest peak in all the world and shout the good news to the ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... lain, unmolested and conscious of a certain relief in the exceeding calm; the grey pinnacle of the cathedral, and a few branches of an elm-tree alone meeting her eye through the open window, and the sole sound the cawing of the rooks, whose sailing flight amused and attracted her glance from time to time with dreamy interest. Grace had gone into court ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of force which an admirable poem by Emerson expresses, can be found here; and perhaps some stress and strain may be felt in Browning's effort to maintain his position. It is no "vale of years" of which Rabbi Ben Ezra tells; old age is viewed as an apex, a pinnacle, from which in thin translucent air all the efforts and all the errors of the past can be reviewed; the gifts of youth, the gifts of the flesh are not depreciated; but the highest attainment is that of knowledge won by experience—knowledge which can divide good ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... a sharp pinnacle of rock above the little railway station of Vollmerz, may still be found the scanty ruins of an old castle which played a brave part in German history before it was destroyed in the Thirty ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... humble place of mere accessories to the Enchanted Garden, jealously guarded against Asticot by great high gilded railings and by blue-coated, silver-buttoned functionaries at the gates. Within rose two Wonder Houses gorgeous with dome and pinnacle, bewildering with gold and snow, displaying before the aching sight the long cool stretch of verandahs, and offering the baffling glimpse of vast interiors whence floated the dim sound of music and laughter; and bright, happy beings, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... wealth, free political organization, immense geographic area, and unprecedented "business" and products—even the most active intellect and "culture"—will not place this Commonwealth of ours on the topmost range of history and humanity—or any eminence of "democratic art"—to say nothing of its pinnacle. Only the production (and on the most copious scale) of loftiest moral, spiritual and heroic personal illustrations—a great native Literature headed with a Poetry stronger and sweeter than any yet. If there can be any such thing as a kosmic modern and original song, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... some hold upon him during his infancy, youth, or early manhood. He now inquires whether Christ is really his destined foe and reluctantly admits he has failed in all his endeavors to tempt him. But one last test still remains to be tried, for Satan suddenly conveys Christ to the topmost pinnacle of the Temple of Jerusalem, bidding him demonstrate his divinity by fearlessly casting himself down, since God has "given his ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... glorious with the sun's returning march, And woods were brightened, and soft gales Went forth to kiss the sun-clad vales. The clouds were far beneath me; bathed in light, They gathered mid-way round the wooded height, And, in their fading glory, shone Like hosts in battle overthrown. As many a pinnacle, with shifting glance. Through the gray mist thrust up its shattered lance, And rocking on the cliff was left The dark pine blasted, bare, and cleft. The veil of cloud was lifted, and below Glowed the rich valley, and the river's flow Was darkened by the forest's shade, Or glistened in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... fairer still by night: Each rock reflects a softer light, When the whole mount from foot to crest In robes of lambent flame is dressed; When from a million herbs a blaze Of their own luminous glory plays, And clothed in fire each deep ravine, Each pinnacle and crag is seen. Some parts the look of mansions wear, And others are as gardens fair, While others seem a massive block Of solid undivided rock. Behold those pleasant beds o'erlaid With lotus leaves, for lovers made, Where mountain birch and costus throw Cool shadows on the pair below. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... begun by Sir Charles Russell, who led off with a sneer about my being the most popular man in the county, and, when I adhered to other statements, he added, 'Well, a very popular man. I will not put you on too high a pinnacle.' (Laughter.) Then for an hour and a half he plied me with the best balanced statistical questions I ever heard put in a hostile spirit, and without a note I could answer every one. After considerable hesitation I admitted on consideration that ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... was surrounded by every appropriate circumstance. To be a Majesty, to be a cousin of Sovereigns, to marry a Bourbon for diplomatic ends, to correspond with the Queen of England, to be very stiff and very punctual, to found a dynasty, to bore ambassadresses into fits, to live, on the highest pinnacle, an exemplary life devoted to the public service—such were his objects, and such, in fact, were his achievements. The "Marquis Peu-a-peu," as George IV called him, had what he wanted. But this would never have been the case if it had not happened that ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... usually translated—took precedence of all other officials. A subject could rise no higher without ceasing to yield allegiance. As Mototsune was the first kwampaku, he has been called the most ambitious and the least scrupulous of the Fujiwara. But Mototsune merely stood at the pinnacle of an edifice, to the building of which many had contributed, and among those builders not a few fully deserved all they achieved. The names of such members of the Fujiwara family as Mimori, Otsugu, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... life, indeed, with a kind of large detachment, as though from the height of some soaring pinnacle one might watch, with only half-awakened interest, the doings of the dwellers on the plain; and Owen, who liked to be in the midst of things, to add his quota to the world's doings, found in this attitude of mind ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... New York capitalist, belonged to that older school of American financiers who, having built up large fortunes by taking advantage of the speculative opportunities of their day, look somewhat doubtfully from the pinnacle of a successful old age upon the same adventurous spirit when shown by the active younger generation. George Cartwright was ready to take a chance, certainly. He had taken chances all his life. But George Cartwright distrusted mightily what he called the ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... in Russia, and a foreign religion introduced.' So wrote Catherine II., 'the greatest of the queens, and of the ——,' the friend of Voltaire, the greatest lady-freethinker of her age. But she wrote still farther:—'Secondly, the honour of Russia as a state, which has been brought to the highest pinnacle of her victorious arms with the loss of so much blood, is actually trodden under foot through the newly-concluded peace with her bitterest enemy.' And who is this bitterest enemy of the orthodox Russia? The King of Prussia, Frederick II.! Yes, the King of Prussia was once declared to be ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... at those days when the doctrine of evolution had reached its pinnacle, one sees how the human mind, by its habit of continual crystallisations, had destroyed all the meaning of the process. Witness, for example, that sterile phenomenon, the pagoda of 'caste'! Like this Chinese building, so was Society then formed. Men were living there in layers, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... which appeared to separate high, bright peaks from shadowed vales, by incredible distances. As far as the eye could travel with utmost straining, away to the dark, imposing background of the Djurdjura range, billowed ridges and ravines, ravines and ridges, each pointing pinnacle or razor-shelf adorned with its coral-red hamlet, like a group of poisonous fungi, or the barnacles on a ship's steep side. Such an extraordinary landscape Stephen had never imagined, or seen except on a Japanese ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... in a pot-house on Ault Bea. Next day, the sea was unapproachable; but the next they had a pleasant passage to Poolewe, hugging the cliffs, the falling swell bursting close by them in the gullies, and the black scarts that sat like ornaments on the top of every stack and pinnacle, looking down into the PURGLE as she passed. The climate of Scotland had not done with them yet: for three days they lay storm-stayed in Poolewe, and when they put to sea on the morning of the fourth, the sailors prayed them for God's sake not to attempt the ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the disgust of the dozen and a half of the distinguished fashionable world who were passing up the stairs behind. The doctor was somewhat repressed in his mode of address by the communication which had so lately been made to him. Miss Dunstable was now standing on the very top of the pinnacle of wealth, and seemed to him to be not only so much above his reach, but also so far removed from his track in life, that he could not in any way put himself on a level with her. He could neither aspire so high nor descend so low; and thinking of this he spoke to Miss Dunstable ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... streets with the little green lawns showing the care of the individual owner. Then came the apartment houses and the small stores; these rose in gentle slopes, higher and higher, merging at last with the mighty central pinnacle of beauty. The city was designed as a whole, not in a multitude of individually beautiful, but inharmonious units, like some wild mixture of melodies, each in itself beautiful, ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... experience, to find some glimmer of the thoughts, emotions, and meanings behind. And in the long run such a habit of inquiry must bear fruit in understanding and sympathy. Joseph Conrad (who seems, by the way, to be more read by newspaper men than any other writer) put very nobly the pinnacle of all scribblers' dreams when he said that human affairs deserve the tribute of "a sigh which is not a sob, a smile which is ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... adorned it with her smiling grace. I shall do what fate and my people have a right to expect of me, but I do not say that it must be done immediately. I have time enough to wait; for as yet I do not stand on the pinnacle to which I am aspiring. My plans are not yet accomplished. I hope that I shall not die at so early an age as my father. I need ten years more to carry out my purposes. A sovereign ought not to set too narrow limits to his wishes; but mine—they are boundless. ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... were the habit of his life, which was ever profuse, or that neglect of his private interests which almost inevitably accompanies the absorbing duties of public life, his affairs were always somewhat confused, and Lady Montfort, who wished to place him on a pinnacle, had resolved that he should marry an heiress. After long observation and careful inquiry and prolonged reflection, the lady she had fixed upon was Miss Neuchatel; and she it was who had made Lord Roehampton cross the room and ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... Christmas Margamores, (* Big Markets) and fully sustained the anticipations which were formed of him by his relations. For a year or two afterwards no quarrel was fought without him; and his prowess rose until he had gained the very pinnacle of that ambition which he had determined to reach. About this time I was separated from him, having found it necessity, in order to accomplish my objects in life, to reside with a relation in another part ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... Hotels: Ambassadeurs; Europe; Nord. To visit Le Puy, the best plan is to begin with the Cathedral. From the high side of the Place de Breuil, at the N.W. corner, ascend by the streets St. Gilles, Chenebouterie, and Raphal, to the Place des Tables, with a stone pinnacle fountain in the centre. From this ascend by the R. des Tables to the flight of 40 steps, leading up to the tetrastyle portico in front of the church. Forty-one more steps lead up through this portico to the portal ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... With the people filing off at the door he held, who he knew would carry what had passed to the whole town, to be given to the four winds, he could not have looked a Bully more shorn and forlorn, if he had had his ears cropped. Even that unlucky female, Mrs. Sparsit, fallen from her pinnacle of exultation into the Slough of Despond, was not in so bad a plight as that remarkable man and self-made Humbug, Josiah Bounderby ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... of works completed in 1866, as given by Dean Goodwin above, did not include several important and costly gifts. The chief of these were: the carved panels above the stalls, supplied by individual donors; a pinnacle at the south-east corner of the choir (Mr. Beresford Hope); the reredos (Mr. J. Dunn Gardner); the font (Canon Selwyn); the gates of aisles of presbytery (Mr. Lowndes and Dean Peacock); the brass eagle ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... strata; that, from one end of France to the other, a sullen hostility prevails against the new institutions; for now the political and social constitution is joined to the ecclesiastical constitution like an edifice to its spire, and, through this sharp pinnacle, seeks the storm even within the darkening clouds of heaven. The evil all springs out of this unskillful, gratuitous, compulsory fusion, and, consequently, from ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and they then trace out how, urged on by his necessities and aided by his senses, he successively discovered the natural productions necessary for his subsistence and the arts which ministered to his wants, until step by step he mounted to the pinnacle of civilization. But these are merely reveries of the closet, dreams of the inexperienced, and have no real foundation in as far at least as Australia is concerned. That the first natives who were placed on that continent ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... of Fifty-Six seemed to enter into and fill my whole life. I lived but from Saturday to Saturday. The appearance of false shirt-fronts would cast me to the lowest depths of despair; their absence raised me to a pinnacle of hope. It was not till winter softened into spring that Fifty-Six nerved himself to learn his fate. One Saturday he sent me a new white waistcoat, a garment which had hitherto been shunned by his modest nature, to prepare for his use. I bestowed upon it all the resources of my ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... attempt to lay the palace low. Again she was frustrated. The building had soared, by this time, to an ambitious height, and its splendour had reached the limits of the materials at command. The final pinnacle which was required to cope the structure had been mislaid. Hadria was searching for it, when Martha, seizing her chance, struck the palace a blow in its very heart, and in an instant, the ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... glen their level way; Each purple peak, each flinty spire, Was bathed in floods of living fire. But not a setting beam could glow Within the dark ravines below, Where twined the path, in shadow hid, Bound many a rocky pyramid, Shooting abruptly from the dell Its thunder-splintered pinnacle; Bound many an insulated mass, The native bulwarks of the pass, Huge as the tower which builders vain Presumptuous piled on Shinar's plain. The rocky summits, split and rent, Formed turret, dome, or battlement. Or seemed fantastically set With cupola or minaret, Wild crests ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... enters more deeply into that life, the self-forgetfulness comes to him again and as a diviner thing. By and by, as the man walks up the mountain, he seems to pass out of the cloud which hangs about the lower slopes of the mountain, until at last he stands upon the pinnacle at the top, and there is in the perfect light. Is it not exactly like the mountain at whose foot there seems to be the open sunshine where men see everything, and on whose summit there is the sunshine, but on whose sides, and half way up, there ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... certainty that the long wished-for object was absolutely before us. It is impossible to describe the feelings of interest experienced by the sight of these gigantic remains. The eastern transept still rises above the woods, a point, pinnacle, and round tower. Descending the hill towards Hindon we lost sight of the Abbey. A most singular specimen of country life was presented by an old shepherd, of whom we inquired the way. "How far is it to Hindon?" "About four miles." "Is ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... in a letter. And though, wherever you are, as I have told you before, you are in the same boat, yet I congratulate you on your absence, as well because you don't see what we see, as because your reputation is placed on a lofty and conspicuous pinnacle in the sight of multitudes both of citizens and allies; and it is conveyed to us by neither obscure nor uncertain talk, but by the loud and unanimous voice of all. There is one thing of which I cannot feel certain—whether to congratulate you, or to be alarmed for you on account of the surprising ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... broken just often enough by oases of pine wood; and the plains on which we looked down were blistered with conical hills, crowned by ancient castles which would have rejoiced the hearts of mediaeval painters, as they did mine. Severac-le-Chateau, perched on its naked pinnacle of rock, was best of all, as we saw it from our bird's-eye view, and then again, almost startlingly impressive when we had somehow whirled down below it, to pass under its old huddled town, before we flew up once more to higher and ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... of his meditations. He himself had opened out wide horizons of public life before an ambitious poet, with a vacillating will, it is true, but not without aspirations; and the journalists had already shown the neophyte, from a pinnacle of the temple, all the kingdoms of the world of letters and ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... thrust, which had to find its expression and its stay in the buttress. But even the buttress, although it bears witness to the outward and horizontal force of weight, was nevertheless so fashioned with its gable and pinnacle, or its own arched form, as to aid the upward movement. The thinness of walls and partitions, and the piercing of these with arches and windows, by lightening the force of weight, also contributed to increase the vertical movement. At sight of a true Gothic cathedral, we feel ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... must have felt at the pinnacle of grandeur where fortune had placed him was not, however, entirely unmixed with uneasiness and vexation. Except at Berlin, in all the other great Courts the Emperor of the French was still Monsieur Bonaparte; and your country, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... our story. The triumph was complete. The timid and obscure girl found herself on the highest pinnacle of fame. Great men, on whom she had gazed at a distance with humble reverence, addressed her with admiration, tempered by the tenderness due to her sex and age. Burke, Windham, Gibbon, Reynolds, Sheridan, were among ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... look of the old guardsman, as he stood perched upon the high pinnacle of rock, was again too much for the muleteers; and one and all of them gave utterance to fresh peals of laughter. His young masters were too much concerned about their faithful Pouchskin to give way to mirth; but on ascertaining that he had ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... activity having been again stimulated by learning that his essay had gained the premium at Dijon, and by the fact of its great vogue as a published pamphlet, another performance fairly raised Rousseau to the pinnacle of fashion; and this was an opera which he composed, "Le Devin du Village" (The Village Sorcerer), which was performed at Fontainebleau before the Court, and received with unexampled enthusiasm. His profession, so far as he had any, was that of a copyist of music, and his musical taste and facile ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... my form of prayer. Oh! it was just then that I had reached the passive state of prayer: I did nothing, Another did everything in my prayer. From that time, having put me down in the gutter, the novice-master raised me up to the pinnacle, whereas I should have been in neither place." On another occasion he told how the change of prayer had happened: "I was on my knees one day after Communion, making a regular thanksgiving, when suddenly God stopped me, and I was told not to pray that way any more. Question: ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... night presently." She made no sound. Round them all was peace and declining sunshine. Near by, the topmost pinnacle of Malata, resembling the top of a buried tower, rose a rock, weather-worn, grey, weary of watching the monotonous centuries of the Pacific. Renouard leaned his shoulders against it. Felicia Moorsom faced him suddenly, her splendid black eyes full on his ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... have a berg as high out of water as it is deep below the surface, for if we imagine a large, solid lump, of any regular shape, which has a very small, sharp, high pinnacle in the centre, the height above water can easily be equal to the depth below. An authentic case on record is that of a berg grounded in the Strait of Belle Isle, in sixteen fathoms of water, that had a thin spire about one hundred feet ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... trial I had ever felt. Our affection was unbounded, and such only as noble hearts can feel. She being gone, the whole world became a desert. There is not a man on earth, whose life affords more various turns of fate than mine. Swiftly raised to the highest pinnacle of hope, as suddenly was I cast headlong down, and so remarkable were these revolutions that he who has read my history will at last find it difficult to say whether he envies or pities me most. And yet these were, in reality, but preparatory ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... them the ray of hope, in the midst of their suffering, that will give them courage to live, and live as healthy human beings, I shall feel amply rewarded for the hard work that had necessarily to be done before the present pinnacle in the art ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... from the crest that divides at Devil's Gap, rises abruptly in a three-faced peak, the pinnacle of which lies to the south. Several hundred feet above the base lie the group of gold-mines behind the mountain, and a short railroad spur blasted across the southern face runs to them from Glen Tarn. Below, the mountain wall breaks in long ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... too weak; mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagined pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick eagle looking ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... himself behind it, robed in the black gown he had used in the dissecting-room, and crowned by a conical head-piece about two feet high, manufactured by Edward and himself, and which they had completed by placing on the pinnacle thereof a human skull. The effect of this picturesque costume was heightened by two large red circles around the doctor's eyes—whether obtained from the juice of the pokeberry or the inkstand on Edward's desk ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... People will not let Mr. Hawthorne alone, as they have Mr. Crittendon, because they feel as if they had a right to him, and he cannot well forego their claim. "The Scarlet Letter" seems to have placed him on a pinnacle of fame and love here. . . . It will give you pleasure, I think, to hear that Mr. Cecil read a volume of "The Scarlet Letter" the other day which was one of the thirty-fifth thousand of one publisher. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... peril, pitfalls to be leaped, some days or weeks of dire uncertainty, men to be won, and factions placated, any or all of these might have appeased the jealous gods. But this instant success would shock Olympus. It cried for contrast by its very flight to the pinnacle. ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... curious sense of loss that made her wish he had not cut himself off from her so completely. When on their last afternoon together he had pleaded so earnestly for her love Grace had been proudly triumphant in the successful accomplishment of what she believed to be her life work. From the lofty pinnacle of achievement she had looked down on Tom pityingly, but with no adequate realization of what she ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... shadows begin to fall, every turret and pinnacle stands out in bold relief. The bands of yellow and red shade into purple, and everything, save the long winding trail, begins to have a weird ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... buried. But I want you to realize that during those few minutes I was not John Trenholme, an artist struggling for foothold on the steep crags of the painter's rock of endeavor, but a master of the craft gazing from some high pinnacle at a territory he had won. If you know anything of painting, Miss Manning, you will go with me so far as to admit that my indiscretion was impersonal. I, a poet who expressed his emotions in terms of color, was alone with Aphrodite and a ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... rooms are finished to the top or not,—and provided with an abundant outlet at the top. This may also be as simple as the dorsal breathing-holes of a tobacco barn, gorgeously imposing as an Oriental pinnacle, or it may be a part of the chimney; only let it be at the very summit, ample, and so arranged that an adverse wind shall not prevent the egress of the rising currents of air. Mind this, too; it is by no means the same thing ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... It, combined with the sneer upon his mouth, told mankind that there was nothing in space which could appall him. Maggie marvelled at him and surrounded him with greatness. She vaguely tried to calculate the altitude of the pinnacle from which he must have ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... dare to patronize me with his foresight and protection—me, who had taught him all he knew, and who was about to offer him a place on my giddy pinnacle of immortal fame! I was intensely angry, but succeeded in controlling myself, for I felt that an untimely explosion of violence might ruin all. I passed my hand over my eyes, as if to blur the glitter that had alarmed ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... was horrified like heaven itself at the fall of its highest angel. Lady Dudley abandoned her place in the British empyrean, gave up her wealth, and endeavored to eclipse by her sacrifices her whose virtue had been the cause of this great disaster. She took delight, like the devil on the pinnacle of the temple, in showing me all the riches of her ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... away; overhead the stars shone out of an ebony sky very bright as on some clear winter night of frost, and of all that gigantic amphitheater of mountains which circled behind them from right to left there was hardly a hint. Perhaps here some extra cube of darkness showed where a pinnacle soared, or there a vague whiteness glimmered where a high glacier hung against the cliff, but for the rest the darkness hid the mountains. A cold wind blew out of the ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... Cecil's allegiance had experienced a certain shock. Some sort of pedestal had hitherto been needful to her existence; she was learning that Dunstone was an unrecognized elevation in this new country, and she had seen a woman attain to a pinnacle that almost dazzled her, by sheer resource and ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the country spreading out before them in gentle undulations. The Ajax would climb a low hill to pass the pinnacle and go bowling down into some miniature valley, over foot-bridges and through grove after grove of pretty trees. It seemed that old Mother Nature had spread on the scenic touches with a master hand in this ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... after leaving Norton Sound. Stuart's Island. Cape Stephens. Point Shallow-Water. Shoals on the American Coast. Clerke's Island. Gore's Island. Pinnacle Island. Arrival at Oonalashka. Intercourse with the Natives and Russian Traders. Charts of the Russian Discoveries, communicated by Mr Ismyloff. Their Errors pointed out. Situation of the Islands visited by the Russians. Account of their Settlement at Oonalashka. Of the Natives ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... thousand incoherent journeys take, Whilst all th'advantage by it got, Was but to light earth's inconsiderable spot. The herd beneath, who see the weathercock of state Hung loosely on the church's pinnacle, Believe it firm, because perhaps the day is mild and still; But when they find it turn with the first blast of fate, By gazing upward giddy grow, And think the church itself does so; Thus fools, for being strong and num'rous known, Suppose the truth, like all the world, their own; ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... who are well inside the ring. But let us go back to Lexington. What a pinnacle the man reached, and what a drop he had! It has always seemed to me an extraordinary instance of the human leaven running through us all. What was the real cause of his collapse?" he asked, suddenly. "Was it drugs or drink? I have often wished ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... caught my glance. Mordecai—who, while he was thus speaking in paroxysms of alternate indignation and sorrow, had never for a moment ceased to turn over his books and boxes—had accidentally shaken a pile of tin cases from its pinnacle, and the whole rolled down at my feet. On one of them I saw, with no very strong surprise, the words—"Mortgage—Mortimer Castle." The eyes of both glanced in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... piano becomes hysterically sad. This literature of woe, as Whitman calls it, this Maladie de Rene, as we like to call it in Europe, is in many ways a most humiliating and sickly phenomenon. Young gentlemen with three or four hundred a year of private means look down from a pinnacle of doleful experience on all the grown and hearty men who have dared to say a good word for life since the beginning of the world. There is no prophet but the melancholy Jacques, and the blue devils dance on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her fondly, he despatched her to her mother, while he wrapped up his pistols and concealing them in the folds of his coat, hurried from the house with the anxious haste of one who is going to seek his prey. He felt somewhat like that broad-winged eagle which broods on the projecting pinnacle of yonder rocky peak in waiting for the sea-hawk who is stooping far below him, watching when the sun's rays shall glisten from the uprising fins of his favorite fish. But it was not a selfish desire to secure the prey which the terror ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... caravel in which "he followed the course west and northwest to latitude 47 north, there finding a broad inlet between 47 and 48, he entered, sailing therein more than twenty days . . . and found very much broader sea than was at the said entrance . . . a great island with a high pinnacle. . . . Being come into the North Sea . . . he returned to Acapulco." According to the story the old pilot tried to find his way to England in the hope of the Queen recouping him for goods taken by Cavendish, and furnishing him with a ship to essay the Northeast Passage again. The ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... all events, and we accordingly pulled across the water, landing at a part of the beach that looked eminently promising. The first thing was to determine the direction of a line running due south from the topmost pinnacle of the obelisk rock, and after a few trials with the compass, I got this. My next act was to erect a line perpendicular to this along the sandy margin of the basin, which I accomplished with the aid of my sextant, ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... upon its slopes is no earthly light, but rather, as it were, a promise and a beacon—a glow reflected whence we know not, and lying on this alien earth as the sun's light lies on the dead bosom of the moon. Some declare, again, that they have climbed its topmost pinnacle and tasted of the fresh breath of heaven which sweeps around its heights—ay, and heard the quiring of immortal harps and the swan-like sigh of angels' wings; and then behold! a mist has fallen upon them, and they have wandered in it, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... was at its highest pinnacle of glory, Rich, the manager of Covent Garden, engaged Barry and Mrs. Cibber, performers of very great talents, and high reputation, and entered the lists with Garrick in the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Barry performed the young Montague, and Mrs. Cibber the delicate and elegant ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... climbing wilderness of hills. Scattered amid the upward-sweeping stretches of maple and oak, groves of spruce and pine had the effect of passing rain-clouds. In the clear air, against the clear sky, every tree-top on the indented ridges stood out like a little pinnacle, till with a long, downward curve, both gracious and grandiose, the mountainside fell to the edge of a gem-like, broken-shored lake. It was a world extraordinarily green and clean. Its cleanness was even more amazing ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... who seems to have resided chiefly in Jerusalem, finished his career by martyrdom. Having proclaimed Jesus to be the true Messiah on a great public occasion, his fellow-citizens were so indignant that they threw him from a pinnacle of the temple. As he was still alive when he reached the ground, he was forthwith assailed with a shower of stones, and beaten to pieces with the club of ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Kitty. She did not give up everything she had learned, but she became aware that she had deceived herself in supposing she could be what she wanted to be. Her eyes were, it seemed, opened; she felt all the difficulty of maintaining herself without hypocrisy and self-conceit on the pinnacle to which she had wished to mount. Moreover, she became aware of all the dreariness of the world of sorrow, of sick and dying people, in which she had been living. The efforts she had made to like it ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... and so it will have to be modified by adding that the mere fact of a place having a fine position is not quite sufficient, because the place must be of such a character that it is capable of having resources and strength added to it; a sharp pinnacle rock in the middle of the Mediterranean, for instance, might have a fine strategic position, and yet be unavailable as a naval base. Even here, however, we must pause to note that energy and will could do much toward making even a pinnacle rock a naval base; for ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... never been a mother, yet I think your sympathetic nature causes you to understand much which you have not experienced, and knowing as you do the great pride I feel in my son's career, and the ambition I have for him to rise to the very highest pinnacle of success and usefulness, I am sure you will comprehend my anxiety when I see him exhibiting an undue interest in a girl who is in every way his inferior, and wholly unsuited to fill the ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Trust Company, the monotony and drudgery of their former life settled down on them with an even greater insistence. The dusty ROOMS FOR RENT sign was tucked into the front window with its usual regularity, for do what she could, Mrs. Clark could not attain that pinnacle of the landlady's aspirations, a houseful of permanent roomers. The young men were inconstant, the middle-aged liable to matrimony, the old to death, and all to penury or change of occupation and residence. So the old fight went on as before during all the twenty-three years of the widow ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... ghostly radiance of starlight and painted walls. Tharon, riding ahead, went unerringly forward as if she traveled the open ways of the Valley floor. She turned from the main canyon toward the left and passed the mouth of Old Pete's snow-bed. Between this and that standing spire and pinnacle she went, with a strong certainty that presently stirred Billy ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... Immediately Fulbert, believing that her husband, who aided in the flight, designed to be rid of her, coinceived a dire revenge. He and some others broke into Abelard's chamber by night, and perpetrated on him the most brutal mutilation. Thus cast down from his pinnacle of greatness into an abyss of shame and misery, there was left to the brilliant master only the life of a monk. The priesthood and ecclesiastical office were canonically closed to him. Heloise, not yet twenty, consummated her work of self-sacrifice at the call of his jealous ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... whisperings of Nature—the goddess, as she has been called, of a hundred voices—until here and there he can pick out a few simple notes to which his own powers can resound. If, then, at a moment when he finds himself placed on a pinnacle from which he is called upon to take a perspective survey of the range of science, and to tell us what he can see from his vantage ground; if at such a moment after straining his gaze to the very verge of the horizon, and after describing the most distant of well-defined ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... a forest spread With silken trees upon thy head; And when I see that other dress Of flowers set in comeliness; When I behold another grace In the ascent of curious lace, Which, like a pinnacle, doth shew The top, and the top-gallant too; Then, when I see thy tresses bound Into an oval, square, or round, And knit in knots far more than I. Can tell by tongue, or True-love tie; Next, when those lawny films I see Play with a ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... Flora cautiously from her sonorous nap, Flame beguiled her with half a doughnut to her appointed chair, boosted her still cautiously to her pinnacle of books, and with various swift adjustments of fasteners, knotting of tie-strings,—an extra breathing hole jabbed through the beak, slipped the canary's beautiful blond countenance over ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... at the great height of the structure he was mounting. Immediately in front of him swayed the naked shoulders of the three captive Atlanteans; he could see rose petals from their crowns fluttering in the strong warm breeze sweeping that man-made pinnacle for the worship of ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... neglect, too, that it was in their glorification of the rationality of the cosmos that they had their greatest effect. Through milleniums of civilization, man's understanding of celestial phenomena had been the very pinnacle of his intellect, and then as now popular exhibition of this sort was just as necessary, as striking, and as impressive. One does not have to go far to see how the paraphernalia of these early great astronomical clocks had great influence on philosophers ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price |
