"Aspiring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the impassioned. A dreamer—a muse—filled with ambitious thoughts—proud, vain, aspiring after the vague, the unfathomable! What was her joy, now that she could speak her whole soul, with all its passionate fullness, to understanding ears! Stevens and herself had already spoken together. Her ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... and aspiring mind Can leave the weakness of thy sex behind; Above its follies, and its fears can rise, Quit the low earth, and gain the distant skies: Whom strength of soul and innocence have taught To think of death, nor shudder at the thought; Say! whence the dread, that can alike engage ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... occasions. This nobleman, who had so zealously co-operated with his party in conferring the title of king on Alfonso, had intended to reserve the authority to himself. He probably found more difficulty in controlling the operations of the jealous and aspiring aristocracy, with whom he was associated, than he had imagined; and he was willing to aid the opposite party in maintaining a sufficient degree of strength to form a counterpoise to that of the confederates, and thus, while he made his own services the more ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... and on whom he often casts a lingering glance of admiration. So there you are. We must either rise to a higher consciousness on the ruins of a lower one, of no-consciousness, rather, or go on seeming and simulating, aspiring, perspiring, and suffering, until our turn comes. Death denies no one. Meanwhile, Khalid's rhapsodies on his way back to the city, we shall ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... (overthrow of Charles X.) he said, "Why was I not there to take my chance? He evinced great affection and gratitude to his grandfather, who, while he scrupulously observed all his obligations towards Louis Philippe, could not help feeling a secret pride in the aspiring genius of Napoleon's son. He was well educated, and day and night pored over the history of his father's glorious career. He delighted in military exercises, and not only shone at the head of his regiment, but had ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... of my sad story of wrong and oppression, and bidding them do their damnedest in their turn. They wrote to Box and Co.: "Our customer, your customer, we may say THE customer, Second-Lieutenant, Brevet-Lieutenant, Temporary Captain, Acting Major, Local Colonel, Aspiring General (entered in your books as plain Mister) Henry Neplusultra, informs us that, though he has banked with you since the first sovereign he earned at his baptism, he has been so frowned at and scorned as to have been rendered ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... there was one man lying on a pallet in the outer chamber who would hardly scruple to undertake anything whatever to please him. This was Sir James Tyrell, who is described by More as an ambitious, aspiring man, jealous of the ascendency of Sir Richard Ratcliffe and Sir William Catesby. Richard at once acted upon the hint, and calling Tyrell before him communicated his mind to him and gave him a commission for the execution of his murderous purpose. Tyrell went to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... O, for a muse of fire, &c.] This goes, says Warburton, upon the notion of the Peripatetic system, which imagines several heavens one above another, the last and highest of which was one of fire. It alludes, likewise, to the aspiring nature of fire, which, by its levity, at the separation of the chaos, took the highest seat ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... Lyall. "Thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself and none of these things trouble her—neither sounds nor sights nor pain nor any pleasure—when she has as little as possible to do with the body and has no bodily sense or feeling, but is aspiring ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... of Miss Larcom's youth up to the age of twenty-nine, which includes her experiences as a Lowell mill-hand. It is not only a record of the efforts of an aspiring young woman, but a picture of (p. 203) one phase ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... is carried on in subdued tones; even the laughter is softened, and when the reader takes his seat, there falls upon the little company a hush so deep as to render distinctly audible the frou-frou of silken folds, and the tinkle of jet fringes, stirred by the swelling of ardent and aspiring bosoms. ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... all, so it is especially demanded of those who have had need of comfort and have found it in others: among whom, if any had ever need thereof or found it precious or delectable, I may be numbered; seeing that from my early youth even to the present I was beyond measure aflame with a most aspiring and noble love (1) more perhaps than, were I to enlarge upon it, would seem to accord with my lowly condition. Whereby, among people of discernment to whose knowledge it had come, I had much praise and high esteem, but nevertheless ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... cultivation in the East, jurisprudence never dethroned the pursuits which there competed with it. Its language was Latin, an exotic dialect in the Eastern half of the Empire. It is only of the West that we can lay down that law was not only the mental food of the ambitious and aspiring, but the sole aliment of all intellectual activity. Greek philosophy had never been more than a transient fashionable taste with the educated class of Rome itself, and when the new Eastern capital had been created, and the Empire ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... felling of a great tree has something of the sublime in it. When the axe first falls on the trunk of a stately oak, laden with the green wealth of a century, or a pine whose aspiring peak might look down on a moderate church steeple, the contrast between the puny instrument and the gigantic result to be accomplished approaches the ridiculous. But as "the eagle towering in his pride of place was, by a mousing owl, hawked at and killed," ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... breeds corruption inevitably. Venal men aspiring to place, avow themselves the friends of the Secretary, and if through such avowals they secure appointments, the offices will be used ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... eastern evergreen trees is the hemlock, which forms a most vivid contrast to the groups of birch, and when they are massed in the background the birch stand out in fine relief. Then how different from the vigorous aspiring pines they are. Poor soil seems to be no drawback to the pines, for they appear to possess a native vitality found in no other tree, and push upward sturdily toward the light; their "spiry summits pointing always heavenward." The slender, graceful branches of the hemlock trees are hung with ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... there anything absurd in his aspiring in those her circumstances to win her. He was a man of good breeding, and more than agreeable manners—with a large topographical experience, and a social experience far from restricted, for, as I have already mentioned, he had travelled much, and in ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... girlish body of the child-soldier there lived a courage as daring as Danton's, a patriotism as pure as Vergniaud's, a soul as aspiring as Napoleon's. Untaught, untutored, uninspired by poet's words or patriot's bidding, spontaneous as the rising and the blossoming of some wind-sown, sun-fed flower, there was, in this child of the battle, the spirit of genius, the desire ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... the only son of my mother and father, and I was exceedingly aspiring, and my daring was very great. I thought there was no enterprise in the world too mighty for me, and after I had achieved all the adventures that were in my own country, I equipped myself, and ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... articled to a proctor in Doctors' Commons, and then becomes a reporter, and then a successful author; and how he marries his first wife, the childish Dora, who dies; and how, meanwhile, Uriah is effecting the general ruin, and aspiring to the hand of Agnes, till his villanies are detected and his machinations defeated by Micawber—how all this comes about, would be a long story to tell. But, as is usual with Dickens, there are subsidiary rills of ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... in America will depend, not so much on her material wealth, or her armed force, as on what the attitude towards life and the ideals of her citizens are going to be. Americans have a certain eagerness for knowledge; they have also, for all their absorption in success, the aspiring eye. They do want the good thing. They don't always know it when they see it, but they want it. These qualities, in combination with material strength, give America her chance. Yet, if she does not set her face against "Gadarening," we ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... very small—not more than a mile broad, by about three miles long; but it was covered from summit to shore with the richest tropical verdure, and the trees and underwood were so thick that the cliffs could only be seen in places where gaps in the foliage occurred, or where an aspiring peak of rock shot up above the trees. In order to reach the ridge on which they stood, the castaways had passed beneath the shade of mangrove, banana, cocoa-nut, and a variety of other trees and plants. The ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... in his inner chamber, part library and part laboratory,—for he was, as the world knew, far and wide, a learned man in chemistry, and a teacher on whose lips and hands a crowd of aspiring ears and eyes hung daily,—who that had seen him there, upon a winter night, alone, surrounded by his drugs and instruments and books; the shadow of his shaded lamp a monstrous beetle on the wall, motionless among a crowd of spectral shapes raised there by the flickering ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... be noticed:—the influence which the results in Canada and Jamaica have exerted upon the prospects of the free colored man in the United States. We mean, of course, his prospects for securing the civil and social equality to which he has been aspiring. His own want of progress has been the main cause of checking the extension of emancipation. This is now admitted even by Rev. H. W. Beecher, himself. Then, again, the fact that much less advancement has been made by the negroes in the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... truly loving letter, such as greets one from time to time, remember that, though he never hears a word from it, it may prove one of the best rewards of an anxious and laborious past, and the stimulus of a still aspiring future. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... lived in the same herd, and each aspiring to be the leader and master, they finally engaged in a fierce battle. An old Frog, who sat on the bank of a stream near by, began to groan and to quake with fear. A thoughtless young Frog said to ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... intercourse with it, and impart an influence in its hour of deepest need. According to the utmost of our conceptions, it is the highest of his works,—for he has endowed it with the power of rising to the contemplation of himself, and with the capacity of aspiring to the imitation of his own moral perfections. We cannot, for a moment, doubt, that his eye must reach its inmost movements, and that all its emotions, and desires, and volitions, are exposed to his view. We must ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... pencil that stands for man. Above is the spiritual plan all finished. Every invention, every song and poem and heroism to be, is there. One by one for ages, the aspiring intelligence of man has touched and taken down the parts of this spiritual plan, forced the parts into matter, making his dream come true. Thus have come into the world our treasures. We preserve them—every gift from a spiritual source. Often we preserve them (until they ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... torture, and the sword as a flame in the battle, that had pointed the purposes and ministered the strength of life, brightened the last glances and shaped the last syllables of death; charities, that had bound together the brotherhoods of the mountain and the desert, and had woven chains of pitying or aspiring communion between this world and the unfathomable beneath and above; and, more than these, the spirits of all the innumerable, undoubting, dead, beckoning to the one way by which they had been content to follow the things that belonged unto their peace;—these ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the hushed burial of its after calm. Nor has this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head, and then gone round again, without a lesson to me. Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring, rainbowed jet! —that one strivest, this one jettest all in vain! In vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening sun, that only calls forth life, but gives it not again. Yet dost thou, darker half, rock me with ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... COOK, a dinner that's bespoke, Aspiring to prepare, with prescient zeal Should know the tastes and humours of the guests; For if he drudges through the common work, Thoughtless of manner, careless what the place And seasons claim, and what the favouring hour Auspicious ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... westbound overland that night. The other was first to get something to eat. Even youth will hesitate at an all-night ride, on an empty stomach, outside a train that is tearing the atmosphere through the snow-sheds, tunnels, and eternal snows of heaven-aspiring mountains. ...
— The Road • Jack London
... home garden for oneself would be too expensive and troublesome to be thought of. On the other hand, a few are tempted to mimic them on a petty scale, and so spoil their little grass-plots and amuse, without entertaining, their not more tasteful but only less aspiring neighbors. In Northampton, in our Carnegie prize contest—so called for a very sufficient and pleasant reason—our counsel is to avoid all mimicry in gardening as we would avoid it in speech or in gait. ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... work has been very easy. In fact I have some feeling of regret that I have not been placed in a position that would enable me to earn my wages. The case was too good,—so that a poor aspiring lawyer has not been able to add to his reputation. But as far as you are concerned, my dear, everything has gone as you should wish. You are now a very wealthy heiress, and the great duty devolves upon you ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... represented Mr. Hemlock, the small critic of a small newspaper, who was principally remarkable for never letting his whiskers alone for five minutes together. The other portrayed Mr. Bullivant, the aspiring fair-haired sculptor, who wrote poetry, and studied dignity in his attitudes so unremittingly, that he could not even stop to look in at a shop-window, without standing before it as if he was his ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... in a hushed voice, and shook his head as if to show the hopelessness of aspiring to such aristocracy. Surely Kirk knew of the Ferminas? Arcadio Fermina was the owner of the pearl- fishery concession and a person of the highest social distinction. He was white, all white, there was no doubt on that score. Undoubtedly Chiquita would prove ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... erected at the sole expense of the Catholics who, abreast of the times, met at every turn the requirements of an aspiring class of colored boys ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... venerable Malesherbes, "l'amour et les delices de la Nation." (The idol and delight of the nation (so-called by his historian, Gaillard).) There Jean Silvain Bailly, the accomplished scholar,—the aspiring politician. It was one of those petits soupers for which the capital of all social pleasures was so renowned. The conversation, as might be expected, was literary and intellectual, enlivened by graceful pleasantry. Many of the ladies of that ancient and proud noblesse—for the ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of a common-school system. Popular education was ingrafted upon the policy of both states at about the same period, and in both it has had the same result, making of the farming-class a body of energetic, thrifty, intelligent, and aspiring people. Scotland and New England alike owe some of their best as well as their least attractive traits to bitter climate and a parsimonious soil; and the rural population of either is pushed into emigration by the scanty ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... ego of 1892, perhaps, and that of 1914. How boyish that other ego was; how it jumped to conclusions; how ignorant it was and how self-confident! And yet, how fresh it was; how quickly responsive to new impressions; how unspoiled; how aspiring! If you want to know the changes that have transformed the mind that was into the very different one that now is, read your own ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... Plaza, scarce recognizable in its later frontages of brick and stone, he found the old wooden building still intact, with its villa-like galleries and verandas incongruously and ostentatiously overlooked by two new and aspiring erections on either side. For an instant he tried to recall the glamour of old days. He remembered when his boyish eyes regarded it as the crowning work of opulence and distinction; he remembered a ball given there on some public occasion, ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... journey? One favorable word written to me in the Letter on that occasion [word favorable to France, ostensible to M. Amelot and the most Christian Majesty], one word would suffice to procure me the happiness I have, for six years, been aspiring to, of living beside you." Oh, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... American whose title to citizenship is without a blemish or flaw, he will resist without compromise every law upon the statute-books which is aimed at his degradation as a human being and humiliation as a citizen. He will be no less ambitious and aspiring than his fellow-countrymen; he will assert himself, not as a Negro, but as a man; he will beat no retreat in the face of his enemies and opposers; his gifted sons and daughters, children of genius who may be born to him, will make their contribution ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the most devoted self-sacrificing study of its author, but it is the most complete, the most perfect, and, to me, the most satisfactory exposition of English Grammar that has come to my notice. It appears to me that every youth aspiring to become master of the English language, from the rudimental principles to the full, round, beautiful, faultless, perfect period, will make this volume his ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... so high as it did with the excellent Miss Jenkins in Cranford, is a never failing delight. So far from being a dead book, is there a young man or a young woman setting out in the world of to-day, aspiring to an all-round literary cultivation, who is not required to know it? It has been republished continually. What novelist of our time would not give much to have so splendid a public recognition as was provided when Lord Beaconsfield, ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... voter could ask, or which the secretary could refuse. Pensively the visitor reflected for a few minutes, and, suddenly raising his eye doubtfully, he said, "Why then, Mr Secretary, have you ever an old black coat that you could give me?" Oh, aspiring genius of ambition! from that topmast round of thy aerial ladder that a man should descend thus awfully!—from the office of vice-president for the U.S. that he should drop, within three minutes, to "an old black coat!" The secretary was aghast: ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... what you say convinces me how much I was mistaken. Tell me, I beseech you, where was your discretion, when you imagined to yourself so great an absurdity as you have just now proposed to me? Could you conceive a thought only of aspiring in marriage to a princess, the daughter of so great and powerful a king as I am? You ought to have considered better beforehand the great distance between us, and not run the risk of losing in a moment the esteem I always ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... earldom of Norfolk. The rising was quickly suppressed, Roger thrown into prison, and Ralf driven over sea. The intrigues of the baronage soon found another leader in William's half-brother, the Bishop of Bayeux. Under pretence of aspiring by arms to the papacy Bishop Odo collected money and men, but the treasure was at once seized by the royal officers and the bishop arrested in the midst of the court. Even at the King's bidding no officer would venture to seize on a prelate ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... directed against his own conduct. Like Orlando, he will chide no breather in the world but himself, against whom he knows most faults. He had the defects incidental to a sensitive organization, an irritable temperament and an aspiring mind. He was apt to suspect hostility where none existed, and to resent indignities that were never intended. He confesses on one occasion at least to an unworthy elation at the inferiority of a rival. Above all, he was unable to curb the outbreaks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Nearly all his spare time was given up to the public service. Every afternoon you would be sure to find him in his flannels running along the bank beside some boat, or standing to be bowled at by aspiring young cricketers in the meadow, or superintending a swimming ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... entirely perish. Whence came that most preposterous idea? Surely not from the only source where we might expect to learn about souls—not from the Bible, for there we distinctly read of 'the spirit of the sons of man,' and immediately afterwards of 'the spirit of the beasts,' one aspiring, the other not so. And a necessary consequence of the spirit is a life after the death of the body. Let any one wait in a frequented thoroughfare for one short hour, and watch the sufferings of the poor brutes that pass by. Then, unless he denies the Divine Providence, he ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... better taste than the people of most of our northern States, who have such a propensity for setting the church on the summit of some high hill where not a tree or shrub adorns the grounds, and the aspiring steeple seems, like Babel, to be striving vainly to reach ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... and Euphrates' flood— Her active commerce, whose expanded range Monopolized the trade of all the East— Her stately capital, whose towers and domes Vied with proud Rome in architectural grace— Her own aspiring aims and high renown— All breathed around the Asiatic queen An atmosphere of greatness, and betrayed Her bold ambition, and her rivalry With the imperial mistress ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... expression of their own opinions beyond the usual tone of private conversation, whether they go no further than attempts at oral proselytism, or whether they commit themselves to the press, do not reflect that they have ceased to stand upon the ground on which their process is defensible. Aspiring to lead others, they have never given themselves the fair chance of being first led by other others into something better than they can start for themselves; and that they should first do this is what both those classes of others ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... the architect that the resultant creation is independent of all of them in its daring, yet restrained, originality. In the magnificent square tower at the center of its northern end, all the beauty and spiritual import of the Court culminate. Its aspiring length of line, unbroken from base to summit, faces poise and uplift, the broad, plain surfaces give nobility and strength and the exquisite richness and delicacy of the ornament give lightness and grace, while the sculpture blends and crowns ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... about classical metres and English rimes; the shepherd poet, Colin Clout, delicately fashioning his innocent pastorals, his love complaints, or his dexterous panegyrics or satires; the courtier, aspiring to shine in the train of Leicester before the eyes of the great queen,—found himself transplanted into a wild and turbulent savagery, where the elements of civil society hardly existed, and which had the fatal power of drawing into its own evil and lawless ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... broken pane, a weak spot in the roof, a leaky horse trough, and a score of little things were repaired. Account books of a crude type were established, and soon a big leak in the treasury was discovered and stopped; and many little leaks and unpaid bills were unearthed. An aspiring barkeeper of puzzling methods was, much to his indignation, hedged about by daily accountings and, last of all, a thick and double door of demarcation was made between the bar-room and the house. One was to be a man's department, a purely business matter; the other a place apart—another ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... that—These examinations and the excellent qualifications of those admitted to the service through them have had a marked incidental effect upon the persons previously in the service, and particularly upon those aspiring to promotion. There has been on the part of these latter an increased interest in the work and a desire to extend acquaintance with it beyond the particular desk occupied, and thus the morale of the entire force ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Rutherford B. Hayes • Rutherford B. Hayes
... respectable young men as propose to obtain rank in the national marine, and who can be in some degree responsible for the good conduct of the individuals who accompany them, each individual qualified for, and aspiring to, the rank of lieutenant being accompanied by sixty young seamen, the second lieutenants to be each accompanied by thirty. For this ship five of the first class and eight of the second are required." The proclamation which ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... called with a pre-emptory demand that she return home with him. The reason assigned by her mother for this unexpected and arbitrary request was, "Daughter can get along without school as well as her mother." It seems scarcely necessary to state that this promising and aspiring young lady was ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... Roumanian ancestry, an extraction indisputably Japanese, find no more favor in his eyes than an assumed stammer, a sham deafness, or a convalescent pallor put on for the occasion. East and west are alike in his sight. The retired registrar, the pensioned usher aspiring late in life to some petty magistrature, are powerless to touch his heart. For him in vain does the youthful volunteer allow his uniform to peep out beneath his student's gown: he will not profit ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... a foolish faith in being equipped for something. One thing, my eyes have been opened anyway, and I no longer judge so harshly the shiftless and unambitious among my people. I hardly see how a people, who have so much to contend with and so little to hope for, can go on striving and aspiring. But the very fact that they do, breeds in me a respect for them. I now see why so many promising young men, class orators, valedictorians and the like fall by the wayside and are never heard from after commencement day. I now see why the sleeping and dining-car companies are ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... distance in planting them. What is more beautiful than the quincunx, which, whatever way you look, retains the same direct position? Planting them out so will also be of service to the growth of the trees, by equally attracting the juices of the earth. I should lop off the aspiring tops of my olive; it will spread more beautifully into a round form, and will produce fruit on more branches. A horse with slender flanks is considered handsomer than one not framed in that manner, and the same quality also shows that he excels in swiftness. An athlete whose arms from exercise show ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... speculations about the universe and human destiny gave an impression of mournfulness to his lines, but this rather deepened the pathos of his work. In the same breath he sang of love and the grave, and the love was the more eager for its brevity. He had the poetic temperament—sensitive, ardent, aspiring. He possessed the poetic aspect—the broad white brow, the large blue eyes. Some compared him to Byron, but the resemblance was external merely. In ideas, purpose, feeling, he was entirely unlike the Englishman; in the energy and fire ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... that of the demagogue. Camil'lus, accordingly, being made one of the military tribunes, appointed Man'lius a day to answer for his life. 24. The place in which he was tried was near the Capitol, whither, when he was accused of sedition, and of aspiring to sovereignty, he turned his eyes, and pointing to that edifice, put them in mind of what he had there done for his country. 25. The multitude, whose compassion or whose justice seldom springs from ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... the fruits of its victories. If, then, Louis XVI., a king too recently dispossessed of sovereign power—a king in whose eyes all restitution of power to the people was tantamount to a forfeiture—a king ill satisfied with what little of government remained in his hands, aspiring to reconquer the part he had lost—torn in one direction by a usurping assembly, and in another by a restless queen or humble nobility, and a clergy which made Heaven to intervene in his cause, by implacable emigrants, by his brothers running all over Europe to drum up enemies to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... "Clarion" and other reprints, adorned as to their covers with bald or bearded apostles of humanity. Selecting a bald one, he began at once to read, occasionally exclaiming, "That's got them," "That's knocked Genesis," with similar ejaculations of an aspiring mind. She glanced at the pile. Reran, minus the style. Darwin, minus the modesty. A comic edition of the book of Job, by "Excelsior," Pittsburgh, Pa. "The Beginning of Life," with diagrams. "Angel or Ape?" by Mrs. Julia P. Chunk. She was amused, and wondered ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... the newcomers from Japan. Their competition was more serious. Aggressive and enterprising, filled with a due sense of the greatness of Japan, aspiring to not merely menial but controlling posts, they took firmer root in the country than did the migratory Chinaman. At the same time Japan's rising power, her obvious sensitiveness, and her alliance with Great Britain made it {254} expedient to treat her subjects ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... Isabel II. was the presence of the primo sargentos. These petty officers, having risen from the ranks, and invested with an authority for which they were often quite unsuited, were always ready, for a consideration, to aid the cause of some aspiring politician, now on one side, now on another. They are ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... whenever his memory presents any past occurrence, where he behaved with stupidity of ill-manners? No time can efface the cruel ideas of a man's own foolish conduct, or of affronts, which cowardice or impudence has brought upon him. They still haunt his solitary hours, damp his most aspiring thoughts, and show him, even to himself, in the most contemptible and most odious ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... adorn'd the Strand, But now have found My way to pound, In Baron Newton's land; Where my aspiring head aloft is rear'd, T' observe the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... of the great waters, and almost deafened by its thundering, warning voice, Sachems, Chiefs and Warriors were quietly and orderly assembled. Directly in front were placed the securely bound prisoners, surrounded by aspiring young braves, too willing to show their skill in throwing arrows and tomahawks as near as possible to the captives' heads, delighting the dusky children, who with the women formed ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... only slavery, but the shackles and the knout. He will not endure it much longer, and when his patience reaches its utmost limit— when he tires of filling his belly with the East wind supplied him in such plentitude by aspiring politicians and "able editors," look ye to ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... you know how I abhor doing that. I refused him as long as I possibly could, but he would take no denial. You have no idea how he pressed me. I begged him to excuse me, and get some other partner—but no, not he; after aspiring to my hand, there was nobody else in the room he could bear to think of; and it was not that he wanted merely to dance, he wanted to be with me. Oh! Such nonsense! I told him he had taken a very unlikely ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... First Aspiring Political Economist (picking his way cautiously). What the Bimetallists maintain is this: that by fixing an artificial ratio between the relative values of gold and silver, you somehow (a little ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... always admired and flattered, and, since she left the Convent, worshipped as the idol of the gay gallants of the city, and the despair and envy of her own sex. She was a born sovereign of men, and she felt it. It was her divine right to be preferred. She trod the earth with dainty feet, and a step aspiring as that of the fair Louise de La Valliere when she danced in the royal ballet in the forest of Fontainebleau and stole a king's heart by the flashes of her pretty feet. Angelique had been indulged by her father in every caprice, and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... spread abroad that some modern Guy Fawkes had succeeded where his predecessor had {269} completely failed. But it was soon made clear and certain that the whole calamity, if indeed it can be called much of a calamity, had been the result of a mere accident. A careless workman, aspiring to nothing more than a quick release from his labor, and not destined to the fame of the aspiring youth who fired the Ephesian dome, had brought about the ruin which bequeathed to England and to the world the vast and noble structure ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the Project, as finally edited by the aspiring deputy for Laon, a freemason as I have told you, are to be printed by another freemason, the worthy hatter, M. Bugnicourt, at Chauny, who is the chief personage of the Defense Nationale, and all the voters are to see how Brother Doumer devotes himself to the interests of the working ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... our leave of Pascal. His was a suffering as well as an aspiring spirit. He suffered because he aspired. But, at least, he did not suffer long. He aspired himself quickly away. Toward the last he wrought at a problem in his first favorite study, that of mathematics, and left behind him, as a memorial of his later life, a remarkable ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... Greeks, Lacedaemonians or Arcadians, could act, with bravery and in concert; but the Athenian Xenophon was among the few who could think, speak, and act, with equal efficiency. It was this threefold accomplishment which an aspiring youth was compelled to set before himself as an aim, in the democracy of Athens; and which the Sophists[50] as well as the democratical institutions—both of them so hardly depreciated by most critics—helped ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... Gibbon, in a letter to Lord Sheffield, "four days at the castle of Copet with Necker; and could have wished to have shown him as a warning to any aspiring youth possessed with the demon of ambition. With all the means of private happiness in his power, he is the most miserable of human beings; the past, the present, and the future, are equally odious to him. When I suggested some domestic amusement of books, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... of articles called 'Learning to Write,' designed to be helpful to a great many beginners.... I shall instance Hawthorne as a model and speak of his 'Note Book' as something which every young author aspiring to write should study.... My materials for the 'Planchette' article are really very extraordinary,... but I don't want to write it now when I am driving so hard upon my book.... It costs some patience to ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... of ladies. She was a charming princess, but at times her face bore an expression of deep melancholy; and all knew that she had never ceased to mourn the fate of the man she would have chosen, Baron Trench, who had been thrown into prison by her angry father, for his insolence in aspiring to his ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... memoirs, letters, or state papers. To represent Napoleon as obsessed with magnificent ideas of universal dominion, scanning, like Milton's Satan from the mountain height, the immensity of many realms, and aspiring to rule them all—to do this is to present an enthralling picture, inflaming the imagination of the reader; and, perhaps, of the writer too. But we must beware of drawing an inference and painting it to look like a fact; ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... wisdom. What is it to be the greatest unless to be the most happy? For to be the most happy is what the powerful seek through power and the rich through riches. It was further said that heaven does not consist in a desire to be least for the purpose of being greatest, for that would be aspiring and longing to be the greatest; but it consists in desiring from the heart the good of others more than one's own, and in serving others with a view to their happiness, not with recompense as an end, but ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Use of Artillery to the Rebel Angels. But as such a pernicious Invention may be well supposed to have proceeded from such Authors, so it entered very properly into the Thoughts of that Being, who is all along describ'd as aspiring to the Majesty of his Maker. Such Engines were the only Instruments he could have made use of to imitate those Thunders, that in all Poetry, both sacred and profane, are represented as the Arms of the Almighty. The tearing up the Hills, was not altogether so daring ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... His firmness stand, The ground of my immortal hope; Or nobly rise, at his command, To Pisgah's heaven-aspiring top. ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... effect, the city of Tolosa being abandoned by its garrison and Burgera surrendered, though it was strongly garrisoned. Here Charles V.—as Don Carlos was styled by his party—made a triumphal entry. He was then at the summit of his fortunes and full of aspiring hopes. Eybar was next surrendered, the garrison of Durango fled, and ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... it is because you do not want to see it. I should think that even you would admit that it is enough to drive me crazy to see any woman waiting and longing for the day which would give her that which I prize more than anything else in the world. And to think what you are aspiring to! None of the old left-overs that other people have offered to you, but my Bernard, the very prince of men! I do not wonder you were so quick to promise ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... rather than change. Certain small towns, like Springfield, were to become cities, and certain others, like New Salem, were to disappear. Railroads were not yet, though many were planning, and manufactures were chiefly of the domestic sort. But in the matter of the opportunities it presented to aspiring youth the country was already Western, and no longer wild Western. Hunting shirts and moccasins were disappearing. Knives in one's belt had gone out of fashion. The merely adventurous were passing beyond the Mississippi, and the field was open to the ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... as possible; make them grand and gorgeous as the steps to an Oriental palace,—so broad and easy of ascent that the upward and onward way will be as tempting as were the Alps to Mr. Longfellow's aspiring youth. But keep them away from the front door,—out of the principal hall, which should be open, airy, and free, suggesting something besides an everlasting getting up stairs. If the staircase hall cannot be arranged at right angles to the main hall, an arch or ornamental screen ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... the knight, whom her young mistress had perhaps already met, awakened in the maid, who was not averse to the business of matchmaking, so dear to her sex, very aspiring plans which aimed at nothing less than a union between Eva and Heinz Schorlin. But Biberli had scarcely perceived the purport of Katterle's words when he anxiously interrupted her and, declaring that he had already lingered too long, cut short the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... containing a week's store of biscuit, his only property, tramped down from his native highlands to seek his fortune in the capital Zeno, as we have seen, though perhaps better born than either Diocletian or Justinian, was only a little Isaurian chieftain. Thus the possibilities open to aspiring ambition were great in the Empire of the Caesars. As any male citizen of the United States, born between the St. Lawrence and the Rio Grande, may one day be installed in the White House as President, so any "Roman" and orthodox inhabitant of the Empire, whether noble, citizen, or peasant, ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... parts which it ultimately reached. Pylons, courts, corridors supported by columns, pillared apartments, meet us here in their earliest germ; while there are also indications of constructive weakness, which show that the builders were aspiring to go beyond previous models. The temple is cruciform in shape, but the two arms of the cross are unequal. In front, two pylons of moderate dimensions, not exceeding twenty-four feet in height, and built with the usual sloping sides and strongly projecting cornice, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... too extensive, not to be aware of the perilous nature of the course upon which James had adventured, in endeavouring to bring about, if not the absolute re-establishment of the Catholic religion, at least such a quasi-establishment of it as the people deemed, and probably with reason, was, with so aspiring a body of ecclesiastics, in effect the same thing. When he saw the headstrong monarch break through all bounds, and openly trample on the liberties, while he shocked the religious feelings, of his people, he wrote to him to point out, in firm but respectful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... given, or those greatly disproportionate to property. In this case, selfishness, instead of being disturbed, may be rather cajoled into a species of benevolence; though a species as sickly and unsubstantial as the vine that grows amid the damps of a vault, never aspiring to heaven as the place of its nativity. But when the sums are so large as to demand personal sacrifice, the self-appropriating principle feels it keenly. The uninterrupted repetition of such gifts is a continued draught on its life-blood. Its remains even in the Christian's breast are ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... throbbing blood into its flaccid veins, until it became doubtful whether the Papacy had been absorbed into the Jesuits, or whether the Jesuits had remodeled the Papacy for contemporary uses. But this tendency in the aspiring order to identify itself with Rome, this ambition to command the prestige of Rome as leverage for carrying out its own designs, stirred the resentment of haughty and intransigeant Pontiffs. The Jesuits were not beloved by Paul IV., Pius ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... no be had for naething, I 'll no be had for naething, I tell ye, lads, that 's ae thing, So ye needna follow me. Oh, the change is most surprising, Last year I was plain Betty Brown, Now to me they 're a' aspiring,— The fair Elizabeth ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... sure and rapid worker. Mary posed for him every morning, and at the end of a week the picture had advanced to a thing of wonderful promise and beauty. Mary would stand before it almost awed. Was this she, she pondered, this aspiring woman of flame? It troubled her a little that his ideal of her should rise to such splendor; this apotheosis left no place for the pitying tenderness of love, only for its glory. The color of this picture was like the sound of silver trumpets; the heart-throb of the strings was missing. ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... been an old hatred and contention betwixt Edinburgh and Leith; Edinburgh seeking continually to possess that liberty which by donation of kings they have long enjoyed, and Leith, by the contrary, aspiring to a liberty and freedom in prejudice of Edinburgh.'—Declaration of the Lords of the Congregation in 1559. ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... was three years in working it through. To be sure, such heraldic gentry was of little worth in itself, and the Poet knew this well enough; but then it assured a certain very desirable social standing, and therefore, as an aspiring member of society, he ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... hare with an ox; nor has he an evil genius opposed to him, who does not catch deer with fishing nets, but merely is the dupe of his own stupidity and folly in attempting impossibilities. Self-love is mainly to blame, making people fond of being first and aspiring in all matters, and insatiably desirous to engage in everything. For people not only wish at one and the same time to be rich, and learned, and strong, and boon-companions, and agreeable, and friends of kings, and governors ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... in living. So I gathered my strength to do my best. But there was a lack of definiteness in my purpose. There was no goal at which I aimed. In my younger days I had had instilled into me the necessity of aspiring to a particular height, to something concrete, to become a leader at the bar, in politics or commerce, a Webster, a Clay, or a Girard. But now I cared little if I never owned the paper for which I worked. The task at hand alone ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... cavity of these rocks, and then at the hazard of my life to guard their entrance against every living thing. Besides, Lady," continued he, drawing a deep sigh, "beauteous and all perfect as your form is, and though my wishes are not guiltless of aspiring, know, my soul is dedicated to another; and although—" A sudden noise prevented Theodore from proceeding. They soon ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... in tending to prevent marriage is the influence of certain professional schools, some of which have come to require a college degree for entrance. In such a case the aspiring physician, for example, can hardly hope to obtain a license to practice until he has reached the age of 27 since 4 years are required in Medical College and 1 year in a hospital. His marriage must in ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... by reference to the numerous public men who may be aspiring to fulfil the duties of several important posts. You will at once recognize the great difficulty there would be in fixing upon the individual statesman under whose guardianship the empire could best repose. And supposing ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... home where Love had folded her wings, and Peace sought a perpetual abiding-place. The evening of a mild summer day came slowly on, with its soft, cool airs, that just dimpled the shining river, fluttered the elm and maple leaves, and gently swayed the aspiring heads of the old poplars, which, though failing at the root, still lifted, like virtuous manhood, their greenest ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... to bring me favour and fame. I listened to my own words and was shivered into silence. I was talking about "dark Plutonian shadows"; I was begging "Egypt" to let her arms enfold me—I was, indeed, in the very thick of the forbidden poem. I could hear my thin, aspiring voice reaching out ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... classes, with composition of original verse or translation from foreign literature and with letter writing, answers to unnumbered requests for autographs and calls from distinguished persons or from obscure but aspiring writers. Only a man of rare patience and kindness would have given such a great portion of his time as Longfellow gave during these and all the subsequent years of his life to answering the many inexcusable and often ridiculous requests for explanation of the motives ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... As he turned and staggered into a clinch, the welts of oozing blood, from his contacts with the ropes, showed in red bars across his back. But what the audience did not notice was that his chest was not heaving and that his eyes were coldly burning as ever. Too many aspiring champions, in the cruel welter of the training camps, had practiced this man-eating attack on him. He had learned to live through for a compensation of from half a dollar a go up to fifteen dollars a week—a hard school, and he was ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... place; and that moment would be most painful. If they continued to respect our opinion, so far must they have mistrusted themselves: fatal mistrust at such a crisis! Their passion of just vengeance, their indignation, their aspiring hopes, everything that elevated and cheared, must have departed from them. But this bad influence, the excess of the outrage would mitigate or prevent; and we may be assured that they rather recoiled ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... that. I want you to take care of me. You could do better, I know, if love wasn't the count; but when it comes to loving you, I'm the edition deloox! I know you've an aspiring nature, but so have I; and I believe with you to love and you loving me, and counselling and guiding me, I could climb high. O Josephine! it isn't this poor Tarbox I'm asking you to give yourself to; it's the Tarbox that is to be; it's the coming ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... backwards caused her heart to throb. The courtyard was a little dingier and the walls more stained, otherwise it hadn't changed much. But she herself felt terribly changed and worn. To begin with, she was no longer below, her face raised to heaven, feeling content and courageous and aspiring to a handsome lodging. She was right up under the roof, among the most wretched, in the dirtiest hole, the part that never received a ray of sunshine. And that explained her tears; she could scarcely feel enchanted with ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... action. He realized that in Bles and Zora he was dealing with a younger class of educated black folk, who were learning to fight with new weapons. They were, he was sure, as dissolute and weak as their parents, but they were shrewder and more aspiring. They must be crushed, and crushed quickly. To this end he had recourse to two sources of help—Johnson and the whites ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... is one point in our cathedral which, to me, keeps up the illusion still. As I enter the choir, and look upward toward the left, I cannot help seeing, in the tabernacle work of the stalls, the slender and aspiring forms of the "rastrajo;" the delicate second growth which, as it were, rushes upward from the earth wherever the forest is cleared; and above it, in the tall lines of the north-west pier of the tower—even though defaced, along the inner ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... name is Caius Mucius; an enemy, I wished to slay an enemy, nor have I less of resolution to suffer death than I had to inflict it. Both to act and to suffer with fortitude is a Roman's part. Nor have I alone harboured such feelings towards you; there is after me a long train of persons aspiring to the same honour. Therefore, if you choose it, prepare yourself for this peril, to contend for your life every hour; to have the sword and the enemy in the very entrance of your pavilion; this is the ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... has exercised powerful influence over the stream of thought during the present generation. The lectures on Logic and Metaphysics delivered by him at Edinburgh, for twenty years, determined the view taken of those subjects by a large number of aspiring young students, and determined that view for many of them permanently and irrevocably.[1] Several eminent teachers and writers of the present day are proud of considering themselves his disciples, enunciate his doctrines in ...
— Review of the Work of Mr John Stuart Mill Entitled, 'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy.' • George Grote
... justified the apprehensions of the sensitive, but sagacious Ames. Hamilton's prosperity bred its natural consequences, and he became the target at which many aspiring men directed their attacks,—Thomas Jefferson standing at their head. The cause of this, which has been sought in the French Revolution, in opposition to the supposed centralizing tendencies of the Hamiltonian policy, and so forth, really lies on the surface. It grew out of men's ambition, and their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... study a striking contrast, by way of observing the first signs of vocation in two totally different novelists. In the beginning of Facino Cane, Balzac tells us an incident of the time when, as an aspiring writer, he lived in his attic in the Rue Lesdiguieres. One evening, on coming out of the theatre, he amused himself with following a working-man and his wife from the Boulevard du Pontaux-Choux to the ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... color of my head which Phil says looks like the explosion of a tomato. Then my freckles are almost gone, and that is a great help; if you examine me carefully in this strong light you can only count seven, and two of those are getting faint-hearted. Nothing can be done with my aspiring nose. I 've tried in vain to push it down, and now I ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... more than a mere wandering inclination, I had for leaving father's house and my native country, where I might be well introduced, and had a prospect of raising my fortune by application and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure. He told me it was men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... singularly direct and forceful individual was Matthew. It was his creed to take what he could get away with, provided that in the taking he broke no moral, legal or ethical code; and if any thought of the apparent incongruity of a sailor's aspiring to the hand of a millionaire shipowner's daughter had occurred to him—which, by the way, it had not—he would doubtless have analyzed ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... been sauntering between flowerless beds with his companion, stood stock still. The Chief Whip of a political party is a devil of a fellow. To the aspiring young politician he is much more a devil of a fellow than the Prime Minister or any Secretary of State. If a Chief Whip breathes the suggestion that a man might possibly stand for election as a Member of ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Italy. Painters incapable of fathoming his intention, unsympathetic to his rare type of intellect, and gifted with less than a tithe of his native force, set themselves to reproduce whatever may be justly censured in his works. To heighten and enlarge their style was reckoned a chief duty of aspiring craftsmen, and it was thought that recipes for attaining to this final perfection of the modern arts might be extracted without trouble from Michelangelo's masterpieces. Unluckily, in proportion as his fame increased, his peculiarities became with the ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... good lawyer, and powerful debater. He saw military service, almost as a matter of course; but he was not particularly distinguished as a general, nor did he select the military profession. He was eloquent, aspiring, and able, as a young patrician; but, like Cicero, it would seem that he sought the civil service, and made choice of the law, by which to rise in wealth and power. He was a politician from the first; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... of a summer evening a long procession of people passed through the avenues of blossoming peach and cherry trees in Mandakan, singing a high chant or song. It was sacred, yet it was not solemn; peaceful, yet not sombre; rather gentle, aspiring, and clear. The people were not of the city alone, but they had been gathered from all parts of the land—many thousands, who were now come ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... daughter, which for the present, gave much content, and with the generall applause, yet it proved a most infortunate match to him and his Posterity, and all Christendome, for all his Alliance with so many great Princes, which put on him aspiring thoughts, and was so ambitious as not to content himselfe with his hereditary patrimony of one of the greatest Princes in Germany; but must aspire to a Kingdome, beleeving that his great allyance would carry him through any enterprise, or bring him off with honour, ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... were marching on Jerusalem. In his extremity this monarch of a petty state turned toward the mighty ruler of Assyria, the greatest military power in the world, and asked his help against the combination. Isaiah, statesman as well as prophet, saw that this was a wrong move. Assyria was aspiring to universal dominion, and to form an alliance with the military master of that mighty state would be to supply him with an excuse for further interference. The policy of Ahaz was therefore as suicidal as that of John Balliol when he called ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... satisfied this eager, aspiring boy; he must compose operas. He was now twenty, and went to Wuerzburg, where his brother Albert was engaged at the Wuerzburg Theater as actor, singer and stage manager. Albert secured for him a post as chorus master, with a salary of ten ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... Warburton. But it will be more convenient for me and for you too if you can arrange to cry in your own time and not in mine." And he continued to address her, in his own mind: "Don't think I haven't noticed your aspiring nose and your ruthless little lips and your gift for conspiracy and your wonderful weakness for tears! And don't confuse me with Mr. Carrel Quire, because we're two quite different people! You've got to be useful to me." And in a more ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... over Clarence; his spirit was too aspiring to be bound by rules of constant neatness, and he grew jealous of Pete's increasing ability. So he proposed a partnership on new terms; namely, that the cash on hand should be devoted to the purchase of some new fonts, and that afterwards ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... debris of every sort and kind. The stove stands in the middle. As we sit there, the sensations in our legs remind us that fleas like warmth too, and that the gravelly bottom of the chimney-place is a favourite assembly-room of theirs. But they are of aspiring nature, and this fact was known to the Fiend. Under his advice, each man plants a stick upright in the gravel before him. Then we make a pool and await the result. The fleas soon come out, and begin to crawl up the sticks; and, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... this subject, I turned my thoughts into a new channel, and endeavoured to conjecture what Oxford was, and what kind of people were its inhabitants. I had heard it described, and remembered the leading features; its expansive streets, aspiring turrets, noble buildings, and delightful walks. The picture rose to magnificence; but the wisdom learning and virtue of its sages, and their pupils, were still more sublime. High minded and noble youths, thirsting after knowledge, assembled under the auspices of philosophers whose science ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... another aspiring charioteer, mounting the box, and inducing an old grey horse to indulge in some imperfect reminiscences of a canter. 'Look at him, sir!—temper of a lamb and haction of ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... mountain peaks were veiled in clouds, those devious labyrinthine valleys were the abode of darkness. The awful majesty of nature's works, the Titanic wonder-shapes which God hath wrought, are calculated to burden the imagination and subdue the aspiring soul of man by their vastness. Those mountain heights, seen from which the files of travelers passing through the profound defiles, look like insects; the relentless sway of nature's great forces—the storm roaring through the gorges, the flood plunging ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... all founded in hard military experience; they did not find expression because some Admiral got it in his head one day to set an unattainable goal for his men, or because some General wished to turn a pious face toward the public, professing that his men were aspiring to greater virtue than ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... the aspiring city had become puffed up in the very ground on which it stood, the ground had so risen about Bleeding Heart Yard that you got into it down a flight of steps which formed no part of the original approach, and got out of it by a low gateway into a maze of shabby streets, which went about ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Guido Posthumus Silvester in Pesaro during her time, for he was then a student in Padua. Lucretia must have regretted the absence from her court of this soulful and aspiring poet, and her charming personality might have served him for an inspiration for verses quite different from those which he later ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... last letter I have been a traveller. A strong desire seized me of visiting remote regions. My first impulse was to go and see Paris. It was a trivial objection to my aspiring mind, that I did not understand a word of the language, since I certainly intend some time in my life to see Paris, and equally certainly intend never to learn the language; therefore that could be no objection. However, I am very glad I did not go, because you had left Paris (I see) before ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... which do not exist here, or elude the perception of our present senses. Add to all this our deliverance from those physical evils and defects which are now the causes of so much pain, and clog so terribly the aspiring soul. For how affected are we by the slightest disorganisation of our bodily frame! A disturbance in some of the finer parts of its machinery, which no science can discover or rectify; a delicate fibre shadowed by a cloud passing over the sun; or a nerve chilled ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... in this region—destined too certainly, I fear, finally to swallow up intellect and the life of life in the heart, unless God of His mercy fetches me away by some sudden death—that death, considered as an entrance to this ghostly world, is but a postern-gate by comparison with the heaven-aspiring vestibule through which this world of the Infinite ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... incarnation which has within itself the seed of permanence and of universality. The petty, grotesque, and local "descents" of India will satisfy no one in these days of growing breadth and union, when the people are aspiring after an ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... whose mind the whole representation takes its form and color, is admirably delineated throughout. Weak, dreamy, amiable, apprehensive, aspiring, inefficient, the subject and the victim of "Great Expectations," his individuality is, as it were, diffused through the whole narrative. Joe is a noble character, with a heart too great for his powers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... the people by law. Here every man should be his own controller and law-giver. But this much is certain: no man can achieve success who is not strict with himself in this matter; nor is it a bad thing for an aspiring man of business ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... uncontrollable desire to return to Eleanor and a cold rage against her. Women, he told himself, always stepped between men and their work. Women drew men away from great labours and made creatures of comfort of them. They took an aspiring angel and made a domestic animal of him. He was prepared to endure hunger and thirst for righteousness' sake, but Eleanor demanded that first of all he should provide comfort and security for her and her child. She would gladly turn a creative artist into a small tradesman for the ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... in 1907 near the beginning of the period under consideration. Through his efforts and reputation as a writer the claims of the University and the College of Arts and Sciences were brought to the attention of aspiring youth throughout the country.[527] Upon the resignation of Dr. Thirkield to become Bishop of the Methodist Church in 1912, the Reverend Doctor Stephen M. Newman was chosen as the head of the university. He has served in ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... down and takes pen in hand. However, this is not wholly uncomplimentary, since it proves at least two things: that the author is being read, and that he is making an impression. Said old Doctor Johnson to the aspiring poet, "Sir, I'll praise your book, but damn me if I'll ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... drink in the words of kindness and power that flow from your lips, to be ever near you, to tend, solace, and console you. I should be content to enjoy the privilege of seeing that you were happy, without even aspiring to the higher glory of creating happiness for you. That is my nature—capable of a wider range, and a loftier flight, but happiest in its devotion. In any capacity I will serve you—and feel that the servitude ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... including church entertainments and philanthropic dances and bazaars. He shall pave the way to a larger view of wealth, influence, and reform; endue man with a keener sense of his own responsibilities, make him a creature of larger desires and of more aspiring wants. ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... that he was chef de cuisine to the Duke of ——, and that Monsieur, pointing to the youth opposite, was an aspirant, who had been placed under his auspices. The young man bowed assent, and appeared most sensibly to feel the vast magnitude of the honours to which he was aspiring; but the whole was announced with such an air of solemnity and consequence, that a minister of state with his secretary would never have attempted to assume. An Englishman under the same circumstances would have merely said, "I am head cook to ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... they are otherwise than childlike—a serious soul lights them—a young soul yet, but it will mature, if the body lives; and neither father nor mother has a spirit to compare with it. Partaking of the essence of each, it will one day be better than either—stronger, much purer, more aspiring. Rose is a still, and sometimes a stubborn girl now; her mother wants to make of her such a woman as she is herself—a woman of dark and dreary duties; and Rose has a mind full-set, thick-sown with the germs of ideas ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... musky rose. With plump, soft flesh, of metal pure and fine, Resembling shields, both pure and crystalline. Hence rise those two ambitious hills that look Into th' middle, sweet, sight-stealing crook, Which for the better beautifying shrouds Its humble self 'twixt two aspiring clouds ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... by reason of its aspiring and tapering growth, (unless it be topped to enlarge the branches, and make them spread low) the least offensive to corn and pasture-grounds; to both which, and the cattel, they afford a benign shade, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... good, as well as long; but time is also fleeting, and, not being millionnaires, with the luxury of a run across the Atlantic at command, let us make what we can out of what we have. It is very probable that architecture, too, is a sore subject to aspiring Young America, who turns discontentedly from the stucco and pine-plank tracery of the new cathedral of St. Aerian. But let Young America go out to the meadows, and discover for himself a group of young elms. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various |
