"Sublunary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was removed from this sublunary sphere, the Rev. Charles Denham, through the interest of Lord Patronage, whose fag he had been while at Eton, obtained the vacant rectorship. This was considered by the good folks of the district to be a fortunate circumstance, and things went ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... th'immortal ray, Chief cherub, and chief lamp, of that high sacred Seven, Which guard the throne by night, and are its light by day; First of God's darling attributes, Thou daily seest him face to face, Nor does thy essence fix'd depend on giddy circumstance Of time or place, Two foolish guides in every sublunary dance; How shall we find Thee then in dark disputes? How shall we search Thee in a battle gain'd, Or a weak argument by force maintain'd? In dagger contests, and th'artillery of words, (For swords are madmen's tongues, and tongues are ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... men imprisoned?" says William Quirke, senior. "My lad's life might pay for it, and perhaps my own." The most influential people of the district have remonstrated with him, argued, persuaded, all in vain. William Quirke has a wish to remain in this sublunary sphere. His spirit is not anxious to take unto itself the wings of a dove, that it may fly away and be at rest. Like the dying Methodist, whose preacher reminded him of the beauties of Paradise, he likes "about here pretty well." ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... snatch a short sleep, to be prepared, should the gale cease, to escape. It was, of course, arranged that one at a time should keep watch. It appeared to Paul that the gale was abating, but he very soon became unconscious of all sublunary affairs. He must have slept some hours, for he felt greatly refreshed. The gale had ceased. He was surprised that, whosoever was on watch, had not summoned the rest of the party. He was about to call out, when he found his shoulder clutched with a strong gripe, and looking up, ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... case I think there can be no question as to which is the lesser of the two evils between which we have to choose; because if we were foolish enough to choose death it would mean the end of all things sublunary for us; whereas if we choose life, even with the condition attached, there is always a sporting chance of something happening to make matters better for us. For myself, I would rather live, even here, than die the death, whether slow or quick. My advice, ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... Molly's former residence in her master's house might reasonably have made her discontented with the lot of absolute privation to which she was now turned over—but, for the moment, my visit seemed to compensate for all sublunary sorrows, and she and poor old Jacob kept up a duet of rejoicing at my advent, and that I had brought 'de little missis among ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... of advertisements in prose and verse and in every form of which the language is susceptible, to be told that I couldn't write English! It was Jones all over. If there is a party envious of the genius of another party in this sublunary world that party is ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... far-removed landscape a tawny stain grew into being on the lower verge: the eclipse had begun. This marked a preconcerted moment: for the remote celestial phenomenon had been pressed into sublunary service as a lover's signal. Yeobright's mind flew back to earth at the sight; he arose, shook himself and listened. Minute after minute passed by, perhaps ten minutes passed, and the shadow on the moon perceptibly widened. He heard a rustling on his ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... agreed to become a passenger in the Avenger; and, still more strange to say, her father and Ole Thorwald agreed to accompany her; also an ancient piece of animated door-matting called Toozle, and a black woman named Poopy, whose single observation in regard to every event in sublunary history ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... name of irreligion. In opening the columns of the "Free Inquirer" to discussion, in New York, in 1828, she said: "Religion is true—and in that case the conviction of its truth should dictate every human word and govern every sublunary action,—or it is a deception. If it is a deception, it is not useless only, it is mischievous; it is mischievous by its idle terrors; it is mischievous by its false morality; it is mischievous by ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... stage of prosperity, as in a balloon ascent, the fortunate person passes through a zone of clouds, and sublunary matters are thenceforward hidden from his view. He sees nothing but the heavenly bodies, all in admirable order, and positively as good as new. He finds himself surrounded in the most touching manner by the attentions of Providence, and compares himself involuntarily with the lilies and the ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... speculative and theoretical." (Astronomy and judicial astrology). The first teaches us how to know the stars and planets, and to find their places and motions. The second directs us to the knowledge of the influence and operations of the stars and planets upon sublunary bodies, and without this last the former is of little use. Astronomy cannot direct and inform us of the secret influences and operations of the stars and planets, without the assistance of' the most sublime art of astrology. For astronomy is conversant about the subject of this art, and doth ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... alike in the church, the state, and the home. No one need wonder at the disorganization, at the fragmentary condition of everything, when we remember that man, who represents but half a complete being, with but half an idea on every subject, has undertaken the absolute control of all sublunary matters. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... uninhabited and uninhabitable apartments, winding stairs, dark galleries, and long arcades—all combined to present to the mind in strong, though gloomy colours, a correct picture of the transitory nature of sublunary splendour. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... saying, education is a temporary thing, and your lordship's, however lasting and laborious, is at length brought to a period. My lord, if it so pleases the sovereign disposer of all things, I would be very well satisfied to remain in this sublunary state for some years longer, if it were only that I might live to rejoice in the exemplification of my precepts in the conduct of my pupil. But, if this boon be granted to my merits and my prayers, at any rate I shall from this moment retire from the world. ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... to which I owed my reputation was one inspired by that fantastic god to whom Pascal attributes all the discoveries of this sublunary world: it was chance that led me straight to the invention of ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... said her brother, in a mock consoling tone. 'You and I know what is good for us, and despise sublunary vanities.' ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as that of which we ourselves are prone to boast. A sincere, a truly pious member of the Christian church cannot be an intolerant partizan of certain modes of faith. There dwells within his breast a deeper sentiment than that which is inspired by the worldly and sublunary distinctions of sect. And Lord George Murray, seeing his young and blameless rival, the Duke of Perth, brave, honourable, and moderate, had shown greater zeal for true religion had he not availed himself of an unworthy plea to base upon it ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... speaking) has the slightest notion of anything that has happened, that has been said, thought, or done out of his own recollection. It would be in vain to hearken after those 'wit-skirmishes,' those 'brave sublunary things' which were the employment and delight of the Beaumonts and Bens of former times: but we may happily repose on dulness, drift with the tide of nonsense, and gain an agreeable vertigo by lending an ear to endless controversies. The confusion, provided you do not mingle ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... in the rigorous and critical sense either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind; exhibiting the real state of sublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow, mingled with endless variety of proportion and innumerable modes of combination; and expressing the course of the world, in which the loss of one is the gain of another; in which, ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... world one gets rid of the cares of the world. There is, however, the vitality which informs the physical frame; that must be equally an object of incessant care. Then he whose physical frame is perfect and whose vitality remains in its original purity—he is one with God. Man passes through this sublunary life as a sunbeam passes through a crack; here one moment, and gone the next. Neither are there any not equally subject to the ingress and egress of mortality. One modification brings life; then comes another, and there is death. Living creatures cry out; human ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... embrace, like the chorus of an opera comique. Let us stretch our calves, and turn on our toes like ballet-dancers. Let us at last rejoice: the Figaro, without getting the credit of it, has overcome the elements and all sublunary cataclysms. ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... as the strange ship had anchored, Don Gaspar mounted his horse and galloped through the plaza towards the landing-place, at the imminent risk of his own neck, and compromising the sublunary welfare of a swarm of children that were basking in the hot sand in utter defiance of parental authority and of all passengers, bipedal or quadrupedal. Not long after he had gone, Isabella threw her veil over her head, and tripped, with a palpitating heart, towards Dame Juanita's house, which she ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... the sun, moon, and planets influence sublunary events, especially the life and death of human beings, and changes in their colour menace approaching calamities. Alterations in the appearance of the sun announce misfortunes to the State or its head, as revolts, famines, ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... trying a dispensation. Let me entreat you to remember the many instances recorded in scripture, where answer has been given from on high to the prayers of those who can faithfully cling to them." But while the worthy man strove to lead the sufferer beyond this sublunary sphere, his heart bled for the poor children she was leaving. The first blow she received, was the sudden news of her husband's death in the Crimea, which came to her ears so abruptly, that her nerves received a shock, from which she did not rally ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... the young man, not without an idea that the demonstration was unnecessary. For what is decidedly disagreeable is, in a young man's calculation concerning women, not necessary at all,—quite the reverse. Are not women the flowers which decorate sublunary life? It is really irritating to discover them to be pieces of machinery, that for want of proper oiling, creak, stick, threaten convulsions, and are tragic and stir us the wrong way. However, champagne does them good: an admirable wine—a sure ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ascetic practice and maxims for the restraint of the passions, than in any scientific theories. Wisdom they considered as superior to virtue, as being connected with the contemplation of the upper and purer regions, while virtue was conversant only with the sublunary part of the world. Happiness, they thought, consisted in the science of the perfection of the soul; or in the perfect science of numbers; and the main object of all the endeavours of man was to be, to resemble the Deity as far ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... took place, the event happened, at the possibility of which the Town-Clerk had hinted; and Mrs. Gray presented her husband with an infant daughter. But good and evil are strangely mingled in this sublunary world. The fulfilment of his anxious longing for posterity was attended with the loss of his simple and kind-hearted wife; one of the most heavy blows which fate could inflict on poor Gideon, and, his house was made desolate ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... invited him often to the house of Imlac, where they distinguished him by extraordinary respect. He began, gradually, to delight in sublunary pleasures. He came early, and departed late; laboured to recommend himself by assiduity and compliance; excited their curiosity after new arts, that they might still want his assistance; and, when they made any excursion of pleasure, or inquiry, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... character of nurse, Miss Garston, and forgets you are young too. "Depend upon it, they have forgotten the time," I said to him: "when two girls are chattering their secrets to each other, they are not likely to remember anything so sublunary." You should have seen Giles's expression of lordly ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... themselves every hour of the day. For while they speak of the vainness and fickleness of oaths, as an objection against our project, they little consider that this fickleness and vainness is the common practice among all the people of this sublunary world; and that consequently, instead of being an objection against the project, is a concluding argument of the constancy and solidity of their sure gain by it; a never-failing argument, as he tells us, among the brethren of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... conversation which employed the hours between Friday and me was such as made the three years which we lived there together perfectly and completely happy, if any such thing as complete happiness can be formed in a sublunary state. This savage was now a good Christian, a much better than I; though I have reason to hope, and bless God for it, that we were equally penitent, and comforted, restored penitents. We had here the Word of God to read, and no farther off ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... chroniclers to assign a location to these fabulous residences, have led to no result other than most admired disorder and confusion. It is as vain to seek their whereabouts, as it is that of the garden of Eden or the Isle of Avalon. They have not, and never had a place on this sublunary sphere, but belong in that ethereal world which the fancy creates ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... having become unfit and incompetent to reign; it is therefore important that they should conceal these indications so long as they possibly can. Chaka had become greatly apprehensive of the approach of grey hairs; which would at once be the signal for him to prepare to make his exit from this sublunary world, it being always followed by the death of the monarch." The writer to whom we are indebted for this instructive anecdote of the hair oil omits to specify the mode in which a grey-haired and wrinkled Zulu chief used "to make his exit from this ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... when they are not bigger than lobster's claws; and the pair that succeeds these is permanent, and has to last him for life—perhaps for centuries—for no one can tell how long the mighty elephant roams over this sublunary planet. When the tusks get broken—a not uncommon thing—he must remain toothless or "tuskless" for the rest of his life. Although the elephant may consider the loss of his huge tusks a great calamity, were he only a ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... I may laugh at thee, if I will. Not I, Jack: I do not take it to be a laughing subject: and I am heartily concerned at the loss we all have in poor Belton: and when I get a little settled, and have leisure to contemplate the vanity of all sublunary things (a subject that will now-and-then, in my gayest hours, obtrude itself upon me) it is very likely that I may talk seriously with thee upon these topics; and, if thou hast not got too much the start of me in the repentance thou art entering upon, will ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... Englishman;' and Waverley, at the same moment, entreating Mr. Bradwardine to permit him to reply to an affront which seemed levelled at him personally. But the Baron was exalted by wine, wrath, and scorn, above all sublunary considerations. ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... subsequent centuries, and which adopted the adoration of the Virgin by images and pictures; the efficacy of the remains of martyrs and relics; stupendous miracles wrought at the shrines of saints; the perpetual interventions of angels and devils in sublunary affairs; the truth of legends far surpassing in romantic improbability the stories of Greek mythology; the localization of heaven a few miles above the air, and of hell in the bowels of the earth, with its portal in the crater ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... met Miss Anthony. Pure accident, you see. They came to an understanding, across some stile, most likely. Little Fyne held very solemn views as to the destiny of women on this earth, the nature of our sublunary love, the obligations of this transient life and so on. He probably disclosed them to his future wife. Miss Anthony's views of life were very decided too but in a different way. I don't know the story of their wooing. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... to place the passion for spirituous liquors, utterly unknown to animals, side by side with anxiety for the future, equally strange to them, and to look on the one and the other as distinctive attributes of the last sublunary revolution. ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... could not admit that considerations of expediency might justify the law in maintaining sacred any meaner kind, or at least any kind in which the vital element of spiritual harmony was not." Here he is impregnable and above criticism, but his handling of the more sublunary departments of the subject must be unsatisfactory to legislators, who have usually deemed his sublime idealism fitter for the societies of the blest than for the imperfect communities of mankind. When his "doctrine and discipline" shall have been sanctioned by lawgivers, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... if any Colour be to be Ascrib'd to them as they are Lucid, it seems it should be Whiteness: For the Sun at Noon-day, and in Clear weather, and when his Face is less Troubled, and as it were Stained by the Steams of Sublunary Bodies, and when his Beams have much less of the Atmosphere to Traject in their Passage to our Eyes, appears of a Colour more approaching to White, than when nearer the Horizon, the Interposition of certain Sorts of Fumes and Vapours make him oftentimes ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... least some ghostly being or other that calls itself by the name of such a person who was dead above a hundred years ago, and was in his lifetime accounted as a prophet or predicter by the assistance of sublunary spirits; and now, at his appearance, did also give strange predictions respecting famine and plenty, war and bloodshed, and the end of the world. By the information of the person that had communication ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... countenanced by Scripture. There is, perhaps, no part of the sacred volume which at first sight promises so much to lend its sanction to these dark and desponding notions as the book of Ecclesiastes, which so often, and so emphatically, proclaims the vanity of things sublunary. But the design of this whole book, (as it has been justly observed,) is not to put us out of conceit with life, but to cure our vain expectations of a compleat and perfect happiness in this world; to convince us, that there is no such thing to be found in mere external enjoyments;—and to teach ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... whom it is difficult to say which was the more absurd and extravagant. It would appear that the sect was divided into two classes,— the brothers Roseae Crucis, who devoted themselves to the wonders of this sublunary sphere; and the brothers Aureae Crucis, who were wholly occupied in the contemplation of things Divine. Fludd belonged to the first class, and Bohmen to the second. Fludd may be called the father of the English Rosicrucians, and as such merits a conspicuous ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... object of these epistles—and reads the splendid account of her coronation dinner, by Stow—contrasting it with the melancholy circumstances which attended her death—one is at loss to think, or to speak, with sufficient force, of the fickleness of all sublunary grandeur! The reader may, perhaps, wish for this, "coronation dinner?" It is, in part, strictly as follows: "While the queen was in her chamber, every lord and other that ought to do service at the coronation, did prepare ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... peculiar jerk of his right arm habitual to him in preaching. A snell remark of his brother William suggesting some new and comic association with a philosophic term dropped in the course of the discussion, would bring him back with a roar of laughter to the actual world and to more sublunary themes. When the young men rose to leave he always accompanied them to the front door, and bade each of them good-bye with a hearty "[Greek: Panta ta kala soi genoito],"[17] and an invariable injunction to "put your foot on it,"—"it" being the spring catch by which the ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... said that the Duchess also, towards the close of her earthly pilgrimage, felt the influence of divine grace, and turned heavenwards her gaze, wearied with the changefulness of all sublunary things. She had seen successively fall around her all whom she had either loved or hated—Richelieu and Mazarin, Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria, the Queen of England, Henrietta Maria, and her amiable ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... of the Bourse? What are the brokers and jobbers saying and doing now? I ask myself this question for the first time, as in ordinary circumstances, the Bourse is of all sublunary things that which occupies me the least. I am one of those excessively stupid people, who have never yet been able to understand how all those black-coated individuals can occupy three mortal hours of every day, in coming and going beneath ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... others an azurine-purple; others striped with an incarnadine, as over a tissue of vegetable gold. Colours of an oriency, that mock the pencil of the most exquisite artist; and with which their native beauty, perfume, fragrancy, and taste, gratify and entertain more senses at once, than does any sublunary object in all ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... they will make you "happy." Let the varieties of them be continual and innumerable. In all things let perpetual change, if that is a perpetual blessing to you, be your portion instead of mine. Incur the prophet's curse and in all things in this sublunary world "make yourselves like unto a wheel." Mount into your railways; whirl from place to place at the rate of fifty or, if you like, of five hundred miles an hour; you cannot escape from that inexorable, all-encircling ocean moan of ennui. No; if you could ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... I trust, will not wonder at my meditations on these sublunary objects, when they consider that they are the seaman's guide, and from them the greatest sources of ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... abundance in the sun. The spectroscope had reached out millions of miles into space and brought back this new element, and it took the chemist a score of years to discover that he had all along had samples of the same substance unrecognized in his sublunary laboratory. There is hardly a more picturesque fact than that in the entire ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Legation, so as to save you postage; while the Embassy people have been regularly forgetting us whenever there has been an opportunity. By the way, I catch up that word of 'postage' to beg you never to think of it when inclined in charity to write to us. If you knew what a sublunary thing—oh, far below any visible moon!—postage is to us exiles! Too glad we are to get a letter and pay for it. So write to me directly, dear Fanny, when you think enough of us for that, and write at length, and tell us of yourself first, swirling off into Pope's circles—'your country first ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... cosmogony; eidouranion^, orrery; geodesy &c (measurement) 466; star gazing, star gazer^; astronomer; observatory; planetarium. Adj. cosmic, cosmical^; mundane, terrestrial, terrestrious^, terraqueous^, terrene, terreous^, telluric, earthly, geotic^, under the sun; sublunary^, subastral^. solar, heliacal^; lunar; celestial, heavenly, sphery^; starry, stellar; sidereal, sideral^; astral; nebular; uranic. Adv. in all creation, on the face of the globe, here below, under the sun. Phr. die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltergesicht ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... communication with the civilized world, intelligence of a local kind can alone be expected. Could we join in the sentinel's cry of 'All is well,' although not affording great changes, it might yet be satisfactory in our isolated condition. We have as great variety as generally happens in this sublunary world, of which we here form a true epitome, being composed of men of all ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... power which has been willingly consecrated to this service. Of the cause itself, with all its exigencies, we may adopt, in a yet more limited sense, the sentiment of the Christian poet, on the transient nature of all sublunary things, ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... which was appointed only for the blackest guilt? What had I done, or my parents, that a disgrace of mine should involve a whole posterity in infamy? I am almost tempted to believe, that, in some preexistent state, crimes to which this sublunary life of mine hath been as much a stranger as the babe that is newly born into it, have drawn down upon me this vengeance, so disproportionate to my actions on ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... toothache is an intolerable torment; not even a philosopher can endure it patiently; what an overcoming agony then must it be to a grand gourmand! besides the mortification of being deprived of the means of enjoying that consolation which he looks to as the grand solace for all sublunary cares. ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... Mme. de Lorcy come to take it into her head that there was something of the appraiser about Samuel Brohl, and that his eyes took an inventory of her furniture? If he had forgotten himself at Maisons, he never forgot himself at Cormeilles. What cared he for the sordid affairs of the sublunary sphere? He floated in ether; heaven had opened to him its portals; the blessed are too absorbed in their ecstasy to pay heed to details or to take an inventory of paradise. Nevertheless, Samuel's ecstasies did not prevent him from embracing every opportunity to render himself ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... hear the very Gordon that of old Was wont to preach to me, now once more preaching; 75 I know well, that all sublunary things Are still the vassals of vicissitude. The unpropitious gods demand their tribute. This long ago the ancient Pagans knew: And therefore of their own accord they offered 80 To themselves injuries, so to atone The jealousy ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... judgment on Milton is unsatisfactory because he will not deliver himself sufficiently to beauty which he must have recognised, nevertheless says of the Paradise Lost, that "its end is to raise the thoughts above sublunary cares," and this is true. The other great epic poems worthy to be compared with Milton's, the Iliad, Odyssey, AEneid, and Divine Comedy, all agree in representing man as an object of the deepest solicitude to ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... so finely of never, never doubting; of being such an example in the way of believing and trusting—it appears, after all, that you have an imagination apprehensive (or comprehensive) of 'glass bottles' like other sublunary creatures, and worse than some of them. For mark, that I never went any farther than to the stone-wall hypothesis of your forgetting me!—I always stopped there—and never climbed, to the top of it over the broken-bottle fortification, to see which way you meant to ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... an impending impossibility most prejudicial to my purse resources, you will confer on your humble servant a boon which will be always vivid on the tablet of my breast, never to be effaced until the period that I am sojurning on the stage of this sublunary world's theatre." The petition goes on to explain that all the unhappy petitioner's efforts to earn an honest livelihood by the perspiration of his brow have been frustrated owing to the sins committed ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... from the features of the elder lady, as she perceived how thoroughly engrossed, even to the unconsciousness of any passing sound, they were, whom, rising for the purpose, and laying by her work, she now proceeded to recall to sublunary matters. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... there are lounges of Athens; walks of the Peripatetics; peaks of Parnassus; and porches of the Stoics. There is seen the surveyor of all arts and sciences Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is most excellent in doctrine, so far as relates to this passing sublunary world; there Ptolemy measures epicycles and eccentric apogees and the nodes of the planets by figures and numbers; there Paul reveals the mysteries; there his neighbour Dionysius arranges and distinguishes the hierarchies; there the virgin Carmentis reproduces in Latin ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... the Bishop's slip was in fact due to want of scientific teaching at Marlborough? His chances of knowing about Sir Isaac Newton, etc., etc., have been as good as those of many familiar with the accepted version. I would rather suppose that such sublunary problems had not interested him in the least, and that he no more cared how we happen to stick on the earth's surface than St Paul cared how a grain of wheat or any other seed germinates beneath it, when he similarly was betrayed into ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... this earth transcends a breakfast after a twelve-mile walk? Or is there in this sublunary scene a delight superior to the gradual, dying-away, dreamy drowsiness that, at the close of a long summer day's journey up hill and down dale, seals up the glimmering eyes with honey-dew, and stretches ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... themselves only to the senses, and pamper this brittle, worthless mansion of the immortal mind, are calculated to entertain us for any long duration. We need something to awaken our attention, to whet our appetite, and to contrast our joys. Happiness in this sublunary state can scarcely be felt, but by a comparison with misery. It is he only that has escaped from sickness, that is conscious of health; it is he only that has shaken off the chains of misfortune, that truly rejoices. The wisdom of these maxims was felt by Roderic. Full ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... though free-hearted and reckless of expenditure, she had always enough for the present, and "a shot in the locker," to serve while he was tossing upon the main. But alas! she had occasion too soon to deplore the capricious uncertainty of all sublunary enjoyments. ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... had no flour for the day's use, and asked him to order some on his way. Having no money in his possession, he was perplexed how to proceed to raise the required amount; but meeting a person in whose spiritual welfare he was concerned, he forgot all about such sublunary considerations as money and flour, and went heart and soul into the ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... passages in Holy Writ more frequently brought to remembrance by the incidents of everyday life than this—"Ye know not what a day or an hour may bring forth." The uncertainty of sublunary things is proverbial, whether in the city or in the wilderness, whether among the luxuriously nurtured sons and daughters of civilisation, or among the toil-worn wanderers in the midst of savage life. To each and all there ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... sense, the pupil's witty answer might be given by a large majority of sublunary beings. How many people have heard speak of the moon who have never seen it— at least through a glass or a telescope! How many have never examined ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... in great abundance at the bottom of the river. This day I completed my thirty first year, and conceived that I had in all human probability now existed about half the period which I am to remain in this Sublunary world. I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little indeed, to further the hapiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... p. 245): "This is the highest perfection to which any sublunary body can be brought, by which we know that God is one, for God is perfection; to which, whenever any creature arrives in its kind [according to its nature], it rejoiceth in unity, in which there is no division nor alterity, but peace and rest ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... probably under other conditions would have risen to as high an excellence as in fact they each actually achieved; and the main question is not how happy men and women have been in this world, but what they have made of themselves."* The loftier a man's own view of mental conceptions and sublunary things, the more will he admire Carlyle as described by Froude. The same Carlyle who made a ridiculous fuss about trifles confronted the real evils and trials of life with a dignity, courage, and composure which inspire humble reverence rather than vulgar admiration. Froude ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... human mind is less disturbed by the thoughts of ghosts and Satan in corporeal shape than in past centuries, nevertheless man has not been able to rise altogether above the notion that there are such mortal creatures as witches and warlocks, and such immortal visible visitants to our sublunary world as spirits and the devil. Not only is there a general belief in the existence of ghosts, but we have people asserting that they possess the faculty of making spirits of the dead answer them at pleasure. Learned men (men in high position) have written lengthy arguments ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... that "cheats can seldom stand long against laughter." But if a judgment is really to be formed from existing facts, it may be supposed that times are so materially changed since the residence of that able writer in this sublunary sphere, that the reverse of the position may with greater propriety be asserted. For such is the prevailing practice of the present day, that, according to the opinion of thousands, there is nothing to be done without a vast deal more of profession and pretence than actual power, and he ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... will be no security at all," observed the Baron. "Why, it would be the cause of my destruction. Just see how I should be situated. Johanna Klack will shut you up, and you will disappear from this sublunary world for a time, at all events. It is already known that we set out on our travels. I shall be discovered with your portmanteau as well as my own, and accused, notwithstanding my protestations of innocence, of having done away with you, and before Johanna Klack allows you to reappear ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... admire this halo of glory, which still grew wider, and less defined, as he approached the surface, of the cloud. But, to his utter amazement and supreme delight, he found, on reaching the top of Arthur's Seat, that this sublunary rainbow, this terrestrial glory, was spread in its most vivid hues beneath his feet. Still he could not perceive the body of the sun, although the light behind him was dazzling; but the cloud of haze lying dense in that deep ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... he felt him pretty easy, the lieutenant with a powerful chuck drew up the poor devil's head as high as his own (cheek by jowl), and began to trot about with his burden like a jolting cart-horse,—the rebel choking and gulping meanwhile, until he had no further solicitude about sublunary affairs—when the lieutenant, giving him a parting chuck, just to make sure that his neck was broken, threw down his load—the personal assets about which the aide-de-camp made a present of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... 'twixt pride and wit, Rather than yield, both sides the prize will quit: Then whilst his foe each gladiator foils, The atheist looking on enjoys the spoils. Through seas of knowledge we our course advance, Discov'ring still new worlds of ignorance; And these discov'ries make us all confess That sublunary science is but guess; Matters of fact to man are only known, And what seems more is mere opinion; 200 The standers-by see clearly this event; All parties say they're sure, yet all dissent; With their new light our bold inspectors press, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... yet the rank, or the influence, or the prestige, or the general fitness of things. You are above all such sublunary ideas. You would clean Mr. Gresham's shoes for him, if—the service of your country required it." These last words she added in a tone of voice very similar to that which her husband himself ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... consistency; and I know there are multitudes who wouldn't exhibit an honorable or manly trait, of any human description, if they could. That class thrive best, it appears to me—if the accumulation of dollars and dimes be Webster, Walker, or Scriptural interpretation of that sense—in this sublunary world. Meanness and dishonesty win what good nature and honesty lose, hence the more thrift to the former, and the less gain, pecuniarily considered, to the latter. The subject is very prolific, and ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... very Gordon that of old Was wont to preach, now once more preaching; I know well that all sublunary things Are still the vassals of vicissitude. The unpropitious gods demand their tribute; This long ago the ancient Pagans knew: And therefore of their own accord they offer'd To themselves injuries, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... to sublunary matters, Aspar said the cave was well provisioned; they had bread, oil, figs, dried grapes, and wine. They had vessels and vestments for the Holy Sacrifice. Their serious want was a dearth of water ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... uncorrupted and disinterested witness, gentlemen of the jury, if the honorable court pleases. What did that Jule Anderson do, poor thing, but spend some time making a most onseasonable visit to Cynthy Ann last night? And I 'low ef there's a ole gal in this sublunary spear as tells the truth in a bee-line and no nonsense, it's that there same, individooal, identical Cynthy Ann. She's most afeard to drink cold water or breathe fresh air fer fear she'll commit a unpard'nable sin. And that persecuted young pigeon ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... soul; Estranged from whom, the countenance divine Of man, disfigured and dishonour'd, sinks Among inferior things? For to the brutes Perception and the transient boons of sense Hath Fate imparted; but to man alone 50 Of sublunary beings was it given. Each fleeting impulse on the sensual powers At leisure to review; with equal eye To scan the passion of the stricken nerve, Or the vague object striking; to conduct From sense, the portal turbulent and loud, Into the mind's wide palace one by one ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... summer evening, in Shelley's native land, listening to the lovely warble of the nightingale, making earth joyful with its unpremeditated strains, and the woods re-echo with its melody? Or gazed upwards with anxious ken towards the skylark careering in the "blue ether," far above this sublunary sphere of gross, sensual earth, there straining after ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... are, wherein we see the sublimest capacity prostrate at the shrine of an early imbibed superstition. Many of these erring philosophers, therefore, attentive to the accumulation of riches, retire from this sublunary world with an immense immolated treasure, wherewith to begin, as they imagine, their career in ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... daughters, and a son were thine." Old Anius shook his head, begirt around With snowy fillets, as in grief, he said:— "No, mighty hero! not deceiv'd art thou, "Me hast thou seen of five the parent; now "Thou well-nigh childless see'st me: (such to man "The varying change of sublunary things) "For, ah! what can an absent son bestow "To aid me, who, in Andros' isle now dwells, "Where for his sire the realm and state he holds? "Delius on him prophetic art bestow'd; "And Bacchus, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... war and domestic discord. It was frequently beseiged with ardour, and defended with obstinacy, and, of course, its owners played a conspicuous part in story. But their house had its revolutions, like all sublunary things: it became greatly declined from its splendour about the middle of the 17th century; and towards the period of the Revolution, the last proprietor of Ravenswood Castle saw himself compelled to part with the ancient family seat, and to remove himself ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... Bercaldine and to have been able to receive you and Mrs Jack Rogers on your wedding tour; perhaps even now I may be home in time, and, at all events, my dear Jack, I look forward to the pleasure of seeing you and Terence Adair there as one of the greatest in this sublunary world." ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... appear, be found, my lovely Zara!" cried Lady Delacour, opening the library door. "Here she is—what doing I know not—studying Hervey's Meditations on the Tombs, I should guess, by the sanctification of her looks. If you be not totally above all sublunary considerations, admire my lilies of the valley, and let me give you a lecture, not upon heads, or upon hearts, but on what is of much more consequence, upon hoops. Every body wears hoops, but how few—'tis a melancholy consideration—how very few can manage them! There's my friend Lady C——; ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... has any "bowels of compassion" it is fit that they should yearn now. This frothy and frenzied Republic is at that ebb where national "extreme unction" must be administered speedily, else the sufferer will pass away from the theatre of sublunary things without the benefit of clergy. I feel as if I would like to get the whole nation on a toasting-fork before a slow fire, and roast it into a realizing sense of what the devil is doing for it. To see BISMARCK feeding on ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... of the husband of Madame Treuttel was consigned to this, its last earthly resting-place. M. JEAN-GEORGE TREUTTEL, died on the 14th Dec. 1825, not long after the completion of his 82d year: full of years, full of reputation, and credit, and of every sublunary comfort, to soothe those who survived him. I have before me a printed Memoir of his Obsequies—graced by the presence and by the orations of several excellent Ministers of the Lutheran persuasion: by all ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... existence depends on that obedience. But laws, in their more confined sense, and in which it is our present business to consider them, denote the rules, not of action in general, but of human action or conduct: that is, the precepts by which man, the noblest of all sublunary beings, a creature endowed with both reason and freewill, is commanded to make use of those faculties in the general regulation ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... half-past six, and at nine I was still there. Every now and then went forth my curling column; then my eye would catch the glorious "mountain-tops bathed in the golden light of morn;" then I would give a glance at sublunary things awhile, and speculate on the moving animals below; then puff, and gaze, and speculate again; and all that while be the happiest of men, in the absolute absence of any thing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... antiquity. Perhaps we cannot dismiss him better than with the pious ejaculation of C.—when he heard that his old master was on his death-bed—"Poor J.B.!—may all his faults be forgiven; and may he be wafted to bliss by little cherub boys, all head and wings, with no bottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities." ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... assured him of the unalterable affection of the writer, an assurance which caused him to rejoice to such an extent that he became for a time perfectly regardless of all other sublunary things, and even came to look upon the Bell Rock as a species of paradise, watched over by the eye of an angel with golden hair, in which he could indulge his pleasant dreams to ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... Faery Queen fifteen of these adulatory pieces, which in every respect are the meanest of his compositions. At this period all men, as well as writers, looked up to the peers as if they were beings on whose smiles or frowns all sublunary good and evil depended. At a much later period, Elkanah Settle sent copies round to the chief party, for he wrote for both parties, accompanied by addresses to extort pecuniary presents in return. He had latterly one standard Elegy, and one Epithalamium, printed off with blanks, which ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... it is to my mode of dealing that you attribute the delightful simplicity of a transaction involving a little fortune from hand to hand? And where pray, in this terraqueous sublunary sphere—I heard that good phrase from a literary exquisite at Bath, and it seems to me comprehensive—where, then, on this terraqueous sublunary globe of ours, Sir Adrian Landale, could one expect to find another person ready to lend a privateersman, trading under an irresponsible ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... of Giles Scroggins' life, at once and most completely establishes the wholesome moral as to the fearful uncertainty of all sublunary anticipations, and stands forth a beautiful beacon to warn the over-weaning "worldly wisemen" from their often too-fondly-cherished dreams of realising, by their own means and appliances, the darling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... the lowest heaven to hearken to the songs, prayers, and praises that ascend from the synagogues and the houses of learning, and when they are finished, he announces the end to the angels in all the heavens. The ministering angels, those who come in contact with the sublunary world,[68] now repair to their chambers to take their purification bath. They dive into a stream of fire and flame seven times, and three hundred and sixty-five times they examine themselves carefully, to make sure that no taint clings to their bodies.[69] ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... fairy hills thou didst so hospitably smile on me, a poor lonely, insignificant stranger! As I traversed to and fro thy meads, thy little swelling hills and flowery dells, and above all that queen of all rivers, thy own majestic Thames, I forgot all sublunary cares, and thought only of heaven and heavenly things. Happy, thrice happy am I, I again and again exclaimed, that I am no longer in yon gloomy city, but here in ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... starv'd by cold reserve, Or flush'd with fierce dispute, a senseless brawl— Yet being free, I love thee; for the sake Of that one feature can be well content, Disgrac'd as thou hast been, poor as thou art, To seek no sublunary rest beside. But, once enslav'd, farewell! I could endure Chains nowhere patiently; and chains at home, Where I am free by birthright, not at all. Then what were left of roughness in the grain Of British natures, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... desires; or, finally, because one single divinity, supreme over all things, initiates and maintains all the apparently spontaneous movements of inanimate bodies. In the metaphysical stage, phenomena are ascribed not to volitions, either sublunary or celestial, but to realised abstractions—to properties, qualities, propensities, tendencies, forces, regarded as real existences, inherent in but distinct from the concrete bodies in which they reside; ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... give him some answer. She had been so gracious to him that his hopes ran very high. It never occurred to him to fancy that she might be gracious to him because he was heir to the Dukedom of Omnium. She herself was so infinitely superior to all wealth, to all rank, to all sublunary arrangements, conventions, and considerations, that there was no room for confidence of that nature. But he was confident because her smile had been sweet, and her eyes bright,—and because he was conscious, ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope |
