"Sublunary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... the missionary would walk about his blackened domain, pondering the uncertainty of all sublunary things, about which he had so often preached, his wife scrutinizing his disconsolate face the while, and he repeating, with an emphasis that showed he was saying it for his own ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... 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 was, "Hee! hee!" ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... was of importance both in times of foreign 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 ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... 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, to my female offspring, gave "A boon beyond all credit, and their hopes. "For ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... prosecution of such a design, and in the spirit of that divine benevolence in which it sprung, he could endure to fix on the melancholy and odious character of the scene, the contemplation which was vainly attempted to be diverted to any other of its aspects. What, indeed, could sublunary pomps and glories be to him in any case; but emphatically what, when his object was to redeem the ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... not gone to Elysium, most noble Colonel,[117] but am still here in this sublunary world, serving my God by propagating His image, and honouring my king ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Bourbons rule in other lands, And (if man's sin forbids not) other Annes; While the still busy world is treading o'er The paths they trod five thousand years before, Thoughtless as those who now life's mazes run, Of earth dissolv'd, or an extinguish'd sun; (Ye sublunary worlds, awake, awake! Ye rulers of the nation, hear, and shake!) Thick clouds of darkness shall arise on day; In sudden night all earth's dominions lay; Impetuous winds the scatter'd forests rend; Eternal mountains, like their cedars, bend: The ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... the breath of a public meeting, but in the next 'the breath thus vainly spent' would blow his lordship up in a very different fashion, and those whose cheers had wafted my lord to that elevated position, would fain keep him there, so that sublunary affairs as far as regarded railways, would be out of his reach. Then he would find another gentleman on the directory, one day the idol and leading speaker of every meeting, called on the next a 'strife-engendering-judge,' and his place ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... Coming down 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 at that season, but they relied ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... done, she had said to herself, it should be begun at once. While she stood out of observation Giles seemed to recognize her meaning; with a sudden start he worked on, climbing higher, and cutting himself off more and more from all intercourse with the sublunary world. At last he had worked himself so high up the elm, and the mist had so thickened, that he could only just be discerned as a dark-gray spot on the light-gray sky: he would have been altogether out of notice but for the stroke of his ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... circumstance that had taken place in the family of the principal banker of the town, Khushhal Chand. Sewa Ram Seth, the old man, had lately died, leaving two sons. Ram Kishan, the eldest, and Khushhal Chand, the second. The eldest gave up all the management of the sublunary concerns of the family, and devoted his mind entirely to religious duties. They had a very fine family temple of their own, in which they placed an image of their god Vishnu, cut out of the choicest stone of the Nerbudda, and consecrated after the most approved ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of Quackery. Dr. Johnson observes, 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 who is ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... United States, or of the amount of intellectual 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
... perilous excursion, than from Truth, That nearest inmate of the human 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 The frequent, pressing, ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... Plato, "because where there is no ideal, there can be no image. There are doubtless men in other parts of the universe better than we are, because they stand on a higher plane of existence, and approach nearer to the idea of man. The celestial lion is intellectual, but the sublunary irrational; for the former is nearer the idea of a lion. The lower planes of existence receive the influences of the higher, according to the purity and stillness of the will. If this be restless and turbid, the ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... I, Charlotte,' 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
... Alas! our thunder soon goes out; And only makes you more devout. Then is not female clatter worse, That drives you not to pray, but curse? We hardly thunder thrice a-year; The bolt discharged, the sky grows clear; But every sublunary dowdy, The more she scolds, the more she's cloudy. [How useful were a woman's thunder, If she, like us, would burst asunder! Yet, though her stays hath often cursed her, And, whisp'ring, wish'd the devil burst her: For hourly thund'ring in his ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... to neglect all sublunary things; and, to judge from certain appearances, since you seem fond of holy similitudes, one would say, that, like St. Serapion the Sindonite, he had but one shirt. Yet what cares he? he lives in that poetic dream-land of his thoughts, and clothes ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... because it is now part of an infinite and immortal entity? Yes, it is possible to imagine it rejoicing that its "chagrins of egotism," as an individual drop, are now over; in fact, this is precisely the sort of thing that some poets love to imagine; but has it any real relevance to our sublunary lot? Can it minister any substantial comfort or fortification to the normal man in the moment of peril or agony? I ask; I do not answer. Can Mr. Wells put in the witness-box any flight-lieutenant who will swear that in his ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... 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 rightly felt ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... manufacture was very prosperous, so that my father was quite at ease about us. After his death we made a home for Edward in London, and looked after him when he used to be smitten with some new idea and forgot all sublunary matters. When he married we went to live at Richmond, and had his dear little wife very much with us, for she was a delicate tender creature, half killed by London. In process of time he fell in with a man named ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "How transient are all sublunary things! Within a few years I shall be dead—and how happy will it then be, if I have resisted every temptation to the alluring pleasures of this life!" The happiness of a peaceful death occupied her contemplation for near ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... insensible of pain, with a countenance of venerable resignation, and eyes directed to Him for whose cause he suffered, he continued, like St. Stephen, to say, "Lord Jesus receive my spirit!" till the fury of the flames terminated his powers of utterance and existence. He closed a life of high sublunary elevation, of constant uneasiness, and of glorious martyrdom, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... pillage (it is difficult to determine how long it lasted) had, like all other sublunary effects, a cause, not so difficult to discover. In the marechal's army was a regiment, composed almost entirely of Italians and commanded by a certain Colonel Eugene, a man of remarkable bravery, a second Murat, who, having entered the military service too late, obtained neither a Grand Duchy ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... a holiday more than these two enjoyed that concert. Dyed gloves and all other sublunary trials were forgotten: Marjory did not touch her face once; and when the happy evening was over, the gloves were put away with a loving pat on their backs, and John had risen ten degrees in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... 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, Like Cham, to show ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... uncle's voice, loud and angry, calling for Thomas. Both Thomas and Bridget were unfortunately out, being, at this moment, forgetful of all sublunary cares, and seated in happiness under a beech-tree in the park. Janet flew to the little gate, and there found Sir Louis insisting that he would be taken at once to his own mansion at Boxall Hill, and positively swearing ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... Thy tyrannies which can hold in thrall the free and the bond, the simple swain and the polished coxcomb, the lover in the heyday of reckless passion and the husband of maturer years. But indeed, sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and imperfect are all our sublunary joys. Maledicity! he exclaimed in anguish. Would to God that foresight had but remembered me to take my cloak along! I could weep to think of it. Then, though it had poured seven showers, we were neither of us a penny the worse. But beshrew me, he cried, clapping ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Aristotle refuted metempsychosis, or that he proved the eternity of the human kind; and after all, it is quite untrue that an actual infinity is impossible. Yet this proof passed as irresistible amongst Aristotelians, and induced in them the belief that there was a certain sublunary intelligence and that our active intellect was produced by participation in it. But others who adhered less to Aristotle went so far as to advocate a universal soul forming the ocean of all individual ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... penetrate the future, and which was based upon the supposed influence of the heavenly bodies upon human and terrestrial affairs. It was natural to imagine that the overruling power which governed and directed the course of sublunary events resided in the heavens, and that its decrees might be understood by watching the movements of the heavenly bodies under its control. It was, therefore, believed that by observing the configuration of the planets and the positions ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... she with herself, "that thus oppresses me; for though I reverenced my grandfather, yet the loss of his society has scarcely been felt by me. It cannot be fear—the fear of death; for my soul is not so abject as to confine its desires to this sublunary scene. What, then, is this mysterious dread that has taken possession of me? Why do I suffer my mind to suggest to me images of horror, instead of visions of bliss? Why can I not, as formerly, picture to ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... and an 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
... sickness, exchanging the light wines of France, Italy and Germany, for the black and loathsome potions of the Apothecaries' hall, writhed by darting stitches and burning with fiery fever, that he felt the full force of that sublunary equipoise that seems evermore to hang suspended over the attainment of long-sought and uncommon felicity, just as it is ripening to burst ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... had crisp, curling black hair, worn tolerably short. His eyes were rather dull and vacant, not because he was either slow or stupid, but because he felt or affected to feel, a sublime indifference to all things sublunary. You would have taken him for a man who had run the gauntlet of all human experiences—a man to whom nothing presented itself in the light of a novelty, and who disdained to appear much interested in anything you might say or do. ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... but with him it was something almost tangible, real, and akin to actual life. A late author, the lamented Vaughan, thus fancies him: "Behold him early in his study, with bolted door. The boy must see to the shop to-day, no sublunary care of awl or leather, customers and groschen, must check the rushing flood of thought. The sunshine streams in emblem, to his high-raised phantasy, of a more glorious light. As he writes, the thin cheeks ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Christians, who damn 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 Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... 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 ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... pass for very fine fellows on shore are looked upon as arrant pretenders afloat. Jack was making his way towards the shop of Mr Woodward the bookseller, when two seamen in a happy state of indifferentism to all sublunary affairs came rolling out of the street which debouches on the Common Hard ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... careful what observations they make. To what a state of things are we coming, when at night all the sublunary world is nodding, and the Stars above are winking. If there's duplicity in a Satellite of Jupiter, how about Jupiter itself? Can we henceforth put any trust in the Planets? Are they in league with deceitful soothsayers, astrologers, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... seconded within By traitor appetite, and armed with darts Tempered in hell, invades the throbbing breast, To combat may be glorious, and success Perhaps may crown us, but to fly is safe. Had I the choice of sublunary good, What could I wish that I possess not here? Health, leisure; means to improve it, friendship, peace, No loose or wanton though a wandering muse, And constant occupation without care. Thus blest, I draw a picture of that bliss; Hopeless, indeed, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... were, to say the least, irregular; for Shelley took no thought of sublunary matters, and Harriet was an indifferent housekeeper. Dinner seems to have come to them less by forethought than by the operation of divine chance; and when there was no meat provided for the entertainment of casual guests, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... which we could see 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 ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... a certain 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, ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Clairvaux in 1135, where he found the community all living in Christian amity, and again retired to a cottage in the neighbourhood for rest and reflection. "Bernard was in the heavens," says Arnold of Bonnevaux; "but they compelled him to come down and listen to their sublunary business." The buildings were too small for their constantly growing numbers, and a convenient site had been found in an open plain farther down the valley. Bishops, barons and merchants came to the help of the good work; and the new abbey ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... quiet of her bereaved life by showers of anonymous notes, in which he threatened to quit this sublunary scene if she despised him. In the list of advertisements, among fresh caviare, shell-fish, and servants wanting places, there appeared, to the astonishment of the public, numerous poetical effusions, where Adele, the ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... electrical illumination of rarefied matter, performed on a huge scale for our benefit. The sun, stars, and nebulae form so many celestial laboratories, where the nature and mutual relations of the chemical "elements" may be tried by more stringent tests than sublunary conditions afford. The laws of terrestrial magnetism can be completely investigated only with the aid of a concurrent study of the face of the sun. The solar spectrum will perhaps one day, by its recurrent modifications, tell us something of impending droughts, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... politely and took the empty chair; but it was evident that his attention could not concentrate itself upon sublunary matters till the shirt-front had been critically inspected and appreciatively praised by his host. Indeed, it was quite clear that Essington had not exaggerated his regard for himself. This admiration was perhaps the most pleasing feature to be noted on a ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... (H. A., 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 ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... this; which opinion is not extraordinary, when we consider how many cases there 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 the ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... 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 ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... worlds together, is perfect, and incapable of being in any particular changed without being made worse and less perfect? Taking both worlds together—For certainly were our views limited to the present sublunary state, we may well affirm that no solution whatever could even be imagined of the difficulty—if we are never again to live; if those we here loved are forever lost to us; if our faculties can receive no further expansion; if our mental powers are only trained and improved ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... signify that it was a matter with which I was not personally concerned. "I had taken it for granted that my old friend would like to see his daughter settled, and Little Christchurch put into his daughter's hands before he should bid adieu to his own sublunary affairs," I remarked, when I found ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... Praeger declared that it was good enough for him, and he didn't wish to spoil his troupe! His wife now held the purse-strings, as Roesie was too engrossed with her art and Hugh too absorbed in his love to notice such mere sublunary matters. The girl had promised nothing positive for the future. She kept him on the brittle edge of nervous expectation. The opposition of the dancer had been successfully met by threats of dismissal; Hugh continued to lose flesh and gain in ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... hushed, the street is holy ground; Hark! The sweet bells renew their welcome sound As one by one awakes each silent tongue, It tells the turret whence its voice is flung. The Chapel, last of sublunary things That stirs our echoes with the name of Kings, Whose bell, just glistening from the font and forge, Rolled its proud requiem for the second George, Solemn and swelling, as of old it rang, Flings to the wind ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and gone. Lady Verner had seen the fallacy of sublunary hopes and projects. Lady Mary Elmsley was rejected—Lionel had married in direct defiance of everybody's advice—and Lucy was open to offers. Open to offers, as Lady Verner supposed; but she was destined ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... pass the door. Once, I remember, when hope was nigh gone, he stepped to the bedside, looked a while in his son's face, and turned away with a singular gesture of the head and hand thrown up, that remains upon my mind as something tragic; such grief and such a scorn of sublunary things were there expressed. But the most of the time Mrs. Henry and I had the room to ourselves, taking turns by night, and bearing each other company by day, for it was dreary watching. Mr. Henry, his shaven ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... finally, the host of inferior deities interposed between the material sensible world and God seemed to Plato as needful in order to explain the apparent defects and disorders of sublunary affairs. Plato was jealous of the Divine honor. "All good must be ascribed to God, and nothing but good. We must find evil, disorder, suffering, in some other cause."[199] He therefore commits to the junior deities the task of creating animals, and of forming "the mortal part of man," because ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... 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 is, or may be, sunshine to-day and cloud to-morrow; gladness ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... an absurd theatrical story which was once told to me by a dear and valued friend, who has now passed from this sublunary stage, and which is not without its moral as applied to myself, in my present presidential position. In a certain theatrical company was included a man, who on occasions of emergency was capable of taking part ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... and the other love. In the first, he is radiantly civil and rather silent, sits on a high, courtly hilltop, and from that vantage-ground drops you his remarks like favours. He seems not to share in our sublunary contentions; he wears no sign of interest; when on a sudden there falls in a crystal of wit, so polished that the dull do not perceive it, but so right that the sensitive are silenced. True talk should have more body and blood, should be louder, vainer and ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... politics for the first, I hope for the last, time in my sublunary career. It is a painful, thankless trade; but one thing that came up I could not pass in silence. Much drafting, addressing, deputationising has eaten up all my time, and again (to my contrition) I leave you Wreckerless. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one great annual event in Chinese social and political life. An Imperial birthday, even an Imperial marriage, pales before the important hour at which all sublunary affairs are supposed to start afresh, every account balanced and every debt paid. About ten days previously the administration of public business is nominally suspended; offices are closed, official seals carefully wrapped up and ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... hear any thing of the Countess(1161) except just now, that she is grown tired of sublunary affairs, and willing to come to a composition with her lord: I believe that the price will be two thousand a-year. The other day, his and her lawyers were talking over the affair before her and several other people: her counsel, in the heat of the dispute, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Betty were happily engaged in pleasant converse with each other, Mr. Dale's condition was by no means so favorable. At first when he entered his study he saw nothing unusual. His mind was far too loftily poised to notice such sublunary matters as white curtains and druggets not in tatters; but when he seated himself at his desk, and stretched out his hand mechanically to find his battered old edition of Plato, it was not in its accustomed ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... our success, and feel very anxious to carry it further. A fortnight's complete abstraction from all sublunary cares has done me much good, and I am now ready to put on my spectacles and look about me.... Hoppner is here, and has been at Death's door. The third day after his arrival, he had an apoplectic fit, from which blisters, etc., have miraculously recovered him.... This morning I received a letter ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... masters in the persons of Jacob Boehmen and Robert Fludd—pretended philosophers, of 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 Boehmen to the second. Fludd may be called the father of the English Rosicrucians, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... 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 ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... When beyond this sublunary sphere, and the vail is removed which now hides from our view the realities of the unseen world, with what different emotions may we suppose parents will look upon their mission on earth. It will indeed seem wonderful that they should have been thus intrusted with the care and guardianship ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... 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
... 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 as my present purpose ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... of all affairs sublunary, he relates that accident at length effected what labour could not do. In 1746 Father Sebastian de Yegros, after a search of forty days, came on the Indians — as it were, directed by Providence, or, as we now say, accident. He built a town for them, and, as Dobrizhoffer ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... communism and sex license in the 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 its hypocrisy; by its fanaticism; by its dogmatism; by its threats; by its hopes; by its promises; and ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... with the inevitable Spanish moss, and gave a most funereal aspect to the surroundings. The mournful hootings of the owls added to the doleful and weird character of the place. I was, however, too sleepy to waste much sentiment upon the gloomy walls of my apartment, and was soon lost to all sublunary things. These dark pockets of the swamps, these earthly Hades, are famous resting-places for those who know the untenable nature of ghosts, and who have become the possessors of healthy nerves by avoiding the poisonous influences of coal-gas in furnace-heated houses, the vitiated air of crowded ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... perfect rest from perplexing doubts and fear, from all sense of God's displeasure, from all the temptations of Satan, the world, and the flesh. And it is an eternal rest. This is the crown of our crown. Mortality is the disgrace of all sublunary delights. But, O blessed eternity, where our lives are perplexed by no such thoughts, nor our joys interrupted by any such fears! Our first paradise in Eden had a way out, but none in again; but this ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... more sublunary than the course of the planets. But I have it. His device will serve the purpose. Do you remember Eugene confounding him with Friar Bacon because he was said to light a candle without flint or steel? It was true. When he ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... hour—of all the hours, nearest akin to midnight, for each has its own calmness and repose. Soon, however, the world begins to turn again upon its axis, and it seems the busiest epoch of the day, when an accident impedes the march of sublunary things. The draw being lifted to permit the passage of a schooner laden with wood from the Eastern forests, she sticks immovably right athwart the bridge. Meanwhile, on both sides of the chasm a throng of impatient travellers fret and fume. Here are two sailors in a gig with ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... afterwards resumed.—No one here (generally 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
... mentioned, beamed 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
... originally referred to, was the Sun: As he was the chief Deity, he must necessarily have been esteemed the supervisor and arbitrator of all sublunary things: ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... the happiness of rejoining his family under their paternal roof, yet, like all sublunary blessings, it was but of short duration. His favourite daughter Maria, who along with her sister had joined the convent of St Matthew in the neighbourhood of Arcetri, had looked forward to the arrival of her father with the most affectionate ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... sacred that he 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" ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... an awkward interview," he reflected, "if Mrs. Glendower could have taken herself opportunely out of the world. If we may trust the usual form of mortuary resolutions, Divine Providence is habitually pleased with the removal of mortals from this sublunary sphere; and in this case ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... took my post at my window by 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
... 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 useful or agreeable ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... this conversation 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 even by the event which had promised ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... liked his work at the Farm. The novelty of it proved attractive to him. On May 3 he wrote a letter to his sister Louisa, which reflects the practical nature of his new surroundings; and it must be confessed that this is a refreshing change from the sublunary considerations at his Boston boarding-house. He has already "learned to plant potatoes, to milk cows, and to cut straw and hay for the cattle, and does various other mighty works." He has gained strength wonderfully, and ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... 'waded through the Clouds' on the night before Dunbar Battle. She makes so good a Figure in the Scene that I wish the Almanack to authorize her Presence. Carlyle is, I believe, generally accurate in these as in sublunary matters, but I had just found him writing of Orion looking down on Paris on August 9, when Orion is hardly up ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... charged with poultry-stealing; and he had been remanded for further examination. Meanwhile, he was placed in the strong-room, under lock-and-key,—Roger Manby, as usual, standing sentinel in the passage. Now Roger's red face betokened a lively appreciation of the sublunary and substantial attractions of beef and beer; and it seems probable that the servants' dinner, going on below-stairs, was too great a temptation for even that inflexible constable to resist. Howbeit, when the prisoner should have been produced before the waiting bench, he was nowhere to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... times which inculcated more forcibly than those in which we live, the wisdom of seeking a happiness beyond the reach of human vicissitudes. What striking lessons have we had of the precarious tenure of all sublunary possessions! Wealth, and power, and prosperity, how peculiarly transitory and uncertain! But Religion dispenses her choicest cordials in the seasons of exigence, in poverty, in exile, in sickness, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... policeman put them right for Portland Place. Half past one! And it would be dawn soon after three! They walked soberly again now into the outer circle of Regent's Park; talked soberly, too, discussing sublunary matters, and every now and then, their arms, round each other, gave little convulsive squeezes. The rain had stopped and the moon shone clear; by its light the trees and flowers were clothed in colors whose blood had spilled away; the town's murmur was dying, the house lights ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... branch of philosophy being confided to one of the keepers, who was very attentive to me, in deference to the interest in myself expressed by his idolized mistress, but otherwise regarded me probably as an object of mysterious curiosity rather than of sublunary hope. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... had passed the span of life usually allotted to those animals, and beyond which their further existence is equally a nuisance to themselves and to every one else. As to the best way of "terminating its sublunary existence," Mr. Dodgson consulted two surgeons, one of whom was Sir James Paget. I do not know what method was finally adopted, but I am sure it was one that gave no pain to pussy's nerves, and as little as ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... warm coverlets, and a soft feather-bed, sent up from the Abbey. But the good knight probably thought that the grace and effect of his exit would be diminished, if he were recalled from his heroics to discuss such sublunary and domestic topics, and therefore hastened away without waiting ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... the common and universal first-created mover, from whence all moveable things have their distinct and particular motions; and also from the moon, as from the wife of the sun, and the common mother of all sublunary things. ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... 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 nautical information ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... said the king, in a rude, harsh voice, and thrusting the queen's arm in his own, "to cast gloom upon this fete; it is good and necessary in the midst of tumultuous earthly pleasures to be reminded of the fleeting vanity of all sublunary things; and to still the voluptuous music with prayer, I am come to administer this medicine to your vain and sin-sick soul. Come with me, you there!" said the king, turning his head backward to the courtiers, who were gathered ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... 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
... the greatest sublunary happiness is not untinged with misfortune. I have no right however to exclaim. The misfortune to which I am subject, however nearly it may affect me, makes no alteration in the substance of my destiny. I still trust that ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... in regard to sublunary matters than the way in which unexpected events arise out of what ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... always to choose the lesser of the two. In this 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 ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... 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
... yesterday, and heard with some surprise that George had gone up in an air balloon, and ascended two miles and a half above this sublunary earth. I should like to have an account of his sensations, but his letters said nothing serious about them. Honest George, I certainly did not suspect him of being so flighty! I visited the new plantations on the river-side with Mrs. Scott; I wish her lord and master had some ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... of the dinner and wine, as often as they choose to consult their own felicity by frequenting his house at the hour of noon, and they, in gratitude, make the chevalier a present of a Jacobus. Then you must know, that, besides Comus and Bacchus, that princess of sublunary affairs, the Diva Fortuna, is frequently worshipped at Beaujeu's, and he, as officiating high-priest, hath, as in reason he should, a considerable advantage from a share of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... opportunely for the person concerned, he is not apt to be critical about the how or why, his own immediate personal convenience seeming a sufficient reason for the strangest oddities and revolutions in our sublunary things; and so Denis, without a moment's hesitation, stepped within and partly closed the door behind him to conceal his place of refuge. Nothing was further from his thoughts than to close it altogether; but for some inexplicable reason—perhaps by a spring or a weight—the ponderous mass of ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... 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 the ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... as Aristotle thought, pure contemplation be alone proper to the gods in their perfection and blessedness, for the sublunary world this is less worthy than that balance and unity of faculty which distinguished ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... advantageous consequences— even the shadowy gift of posthumous fame—above everything; and he is conscious of an inward call to constitute himself, by his conduct in this world—without regard to mere sublunary interests—the citizen of a better. This mighty, irresistible proof—accompanied by an ever-increasing knowledge of the conformability to a purpose in everything we see around us, by the conviction of the boundless immensity of creation, by the consciousness of a certain illimitableness ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... general,[103] since it includes without being included and moves without stirring from the spot; creating also its own duration, and thereby duration in general, since its movement is the measure of all motion.[104] Then, by degrees, we shall see the perfection decrease, more and more, down to our sublunary world, in which the cycle of birth, growth and decay imitates and mars the original circle for the last time. So understood, the causal relation between God and the world is seen as an attraction when regarded from below, as an impulsion or a contact when regarded ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... bread-earning was the least important part of the affair. No doubt, he always meant to do his duty, but the ecstasy of invention and the thirst for discovery carried him out of himself and made him often oblivious of sublunary things. While in Boston he still kept up his experiments and perfected his duplex telegraph, but it was not brought into successful operation ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... conclude with, in those unparalleled upper rooms; Grand-Aunt Meiningen and many other stars and rainbows witnessing; even the Margravine of Schwedt, in her high colors, was compelled to be there. Such variegated splendor, such a dancing of the Constellations; sublunary Berlin, and all the world, on tiptoe round it! Slow Torchdance, winding it up, melted into the shades of midnight, for this time; and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 beings feel sorrow. The bow-case ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... as a medium of exchange for the other productions of nature, or of art! If all the diamonds and other precious stones which have been collected from the decomposed rocks (for hard as they once were, like all sublunary matter, they too yield to time) why, if all were remaining on the earth, the frolic gambols of the May-day sweep would shake about those gems, which now are to be found in profusion only where rank and beauty pay homage to the thrones of kings. Arts and manufactures consume a large ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... 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 ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... objected to the agonies and dissolution of the Creator of the world, or to the garment of imputed righteousness prepared to envelope the souls of the elect. Like the religious bigot, she was sufficiently disposed to avenge a hostility against her opinions with the weapons of sublunary warfare. ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... rehearsals, business interviews, dinner, and the play would occupy him until nearly midnight. His delight was to accompany some friend home, and then walk the friend, arm-in-arm, backwards and forwards in front of his, the friend's, door, discoursing of things sublunary and otherwise until two in the morning. Then he would enter his own house and sit down, pipe in mouth, to the hard labour of literature until six or seven in the morning. What kind of slumber could a man, leading such a life as this, be expected to enjoy? On the whole, it ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... ranged the celestial choir in rows like the fiddlers of a sublunary orchestra, and accommodated the congregation of the righteous with long benches, like those of a Methodist meeting-house! However, the king was so well pleased with the work, that he rewarded Cambiaso ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... Lowell, who founded the Lowell Institute in Boston. Professor Percival Lowell is a man of broad and varied culture, a great traveller, who has familiarized himself with most things worth seeing in this sublunary sphere, and has only failed to explore Mars from reasons quite beyond his own control. At his own expense he has founded here an Observatory, with a telescope of great power, by means of which he is making astronomical ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... 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 them, according to their duty: as the Duke of Suffolk, High-Steward ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... verge is won. The hoary peaks, with forests crown'd, Spread their vast solitudes around, And intervening rocks and rills The eye with very transport fills. The bosom wells with joy serene While viewing all the lovely scene, The spirit soars on airy wings Above all sublunary things. I peer into the depths profound Of the cerulean around, And ether's far-off heights I scan, As if, to feeble finite man, The power of vision here were given To view the battlements of heaven. But, though I ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... have respectively the same power over sublunary bodies—for instance, to thicken air, inflame it, produce in it clouds and storms; to make phantoms appear in it; to spoil or preserve fruits and crops; to cause animals to perish, produce maladies, excite tempests and shipwrecks at sea; or even to fascinate the eyes ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... unopened; I knew I ought to look at the news, but I was too busy just then trying to find an adjective for the Moon—the magical, unheard of, moony epithet, which, could I only find or invent it, what then would matter the sublunary quakes and conflicts ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... The haunch, cooked to their hands, was straightway removed to a convenient place, where all, drawing their knives, fell foul with an energy of appetite and satisfaction that left them oblivious of most sublunary affairs. The soldier forgot his sorrows, and Nathan forgot little Peter,—though little Peter, by suddenly creeping out of the bushes on the hill, and crawling humbly to the table, and his master's side, made it apparent he had not forgot ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... a construction, that they will not bear carriage with me. Yours is one of the few that I could wish of a more robust constitution. It is indeed very probable that when I leave this city, we part never more to meet in this sublunary sphere; but I have a strong fancy that in some future eccentric planet, the comet of happier systems than any with which astronomy is yet acquainted, you and I, among the harum scarum sons of imagination and whim, with a hearty shake of a hand, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... rule we feel 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
... 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 ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... proceeded to Malines, 14 miles distant, formerly one of the greatest cities of Belgium, but now like too many other once celebrated places in that country, affording a melancholy contrast to its former splendour, and proving that in the vicissitude of all sublunary affairs, cities, as well as their inhabitants, ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... to act rightly 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
... authority of this republic abroad, and by their extensive commerce enrich its subjects at home, and at the same time show us here what a reserve they have made for the benefit of posterity, whenever, through the vicissitudes to which all sublunary things are liable, their present sources of ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... in their affairs, was carried into the hospital, and, after three months of terrible pain, which she bore like a martyr, went to join in heavenly places the "poor mother" and the father who had been in some elusive fashion connected with sublunary drains. ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... 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 the gods or God. Milton's conception of God is higher than Homer's, Virgil's, ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... topics, which the natural desire of endless life, and sublunary happiness, could easily furnish me with. When I had ended, and the sum of my discourse had been interpreted, as before, to the rest of the company, there was a good deal of talk among them in the language of the country, not without some ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... horse to a sublunary rack—not a thing of fairy land and moonshine as he thought—and slowly took his way, across the flower-enamelled lawn, towards the old smiling mansion. Eager, longing, dreaming, Jacques held out his arms and ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... 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 daughter the Duchess d'Orleans, Chateauneuf, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Mouldering walls and decayed furniture, broken casements, falling roofs, and long ranges of 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
... great lesson to woman: Ever remember thy creative power as the mother of the humanity of the future. The sun in thy mansion exerts its highest power. Awake, therefore, O soul, and eclipse not its brightness with thy dreams of sublunary power. ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... 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 ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, and clear the world at once from folly, ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... characteristic of the man. His "natural port," as Johnson well said, "is gigantic loftiness," and his end to "raise the thoughts above sublunary cares or pleasures." So it may well be that this disadvantage of his subject did not weigh with him as much as it would have done with most poets. But he was not altogether blind to it, and the amazing skill he shows in partly getting over it is the other half of the answer ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... the earth. The short description I shall give of providence is this: That it is that operation of the power, of the wisdom, and goodness of God, by which be influences, governs, and directs, not only the means, but the events of all things, which concern us in this sublunary world; the sovereignty of which we ought always to reverence, obey its motions, observe its dictates, and listen to its voice. The prudent man forseeth the evil, and hideth himself; that is, as I take it, there is a secret providence ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... base, sublunary lovers' hearts Fed on loose profane desires, May for an eye Or face comply: But those remov'd, they will as soon depart, And show their art, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... 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 Elysium, ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... error with error traversed by truth in this sublunary sphere! Piggie was wrong in admitting that. Konky was right, for, as every one knows, or ought to know, it was not a whale at all that swallowed Jonah, but a "great fish" which ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 projects of their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... 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 mount ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... hopelessly mere history or confession may fail to constitute a work of art, a work of art that has an historical warrant, either literal or symbolical, gains the support of that vivid interest we have in facts. And many tragedies and farces, that to a mind without experience of this sublunary world might seem monstrous and disgusting fictions, may come to be forgiven and even perhaps preferred over all else, when they are found to be a ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... increased, they 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 ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... affecting passages of Holy Writ which speak to us of the ephemeral nature of all earthly pleasures and of the mournful insignificance of human life, even in its most palmy state, when its views and actions, its hopes and desires, are confined to this sublunary sphere: "Whence then cometh any wisdom, and where is the place of understanding?" "Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might; let not the rich man glory ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Cloche felee" of Baudelaire, for instance, is curiously Germanic and heavy, for all the subtlety and filigree of the voice and the accompanying piano and viola. It is a fairly flat waltz movement that in "A Pagan Poem" is chosen to represent the sublunary aspect of Virgil's genius. And "Hora mystica" and "Music for Four Stringed Instruments," which have a certain stylistic unity, nevertheless reveal the composer hampered by the Gregorian and scholastic idiom which ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... now. He can hardly sink lower in your opinion: he may rise. Very seldom is it that high expectations are so much as tolerably answered. How indeed can they, when a fine and extensive imagination carries its expectation infinitely beyond reality, in the highest of our sublunary enjoyments? A woman adorned with such an imagination sees no defect in a favoured object, (the less, if she be not conscious of any wilful fault in herself,) till it is too late to rectify the mistakes occasioned by ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... 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
... 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 |
