"Matchless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Raphael had to call in a large number of assistants to enable him to cover the walls fast enough to please the Pope, and the quality of the work began to deteriorate. The uneven merit of his frescoes foretold the consequence of overwork despite his matchless facility and power. But in his panel pictures, when he was not hurried, his work continued to improve until he reached his crowning achievement in the Sistine Madonna painted three years before ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... other, having lost his whole army, had fled from the field with scarcely fifty men; that the master of the horse, an authority equal to that of consul, had been routed and put to flight; that the dictator, because he had never engaged in a pitched battle, was esteemed a matchless general; that the Bruttii, the Apulians, part of the Samnites and of the Lucanians had revolted to the Carthaginians. That Capua, which was the capital not only of Campania, but after the ruin of the Roman power ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... recourse to the active interposition of divine beings. The work has been admitted by all modern critics to be the greatest of didactic poems. The most abstruse speculations are clearly explained in majestic verse, while the subject, which in itself is dry and dull, is enlivened by digressions of matchless power and beauty. ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... could have that little head of hers Painted upon a background of pale gold, Such as the Tuscan's early art prefers! No shade encroaching on the matchless mould Of those two lips, which should be opening soft In the pure profile; not as when she laughs, For that spoils all: but rather as if aloft Yon hyacinth, she loves so, leaned its staff's Burthen of honey-colored buds, to kiss And capture 'twixt the lips apart ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... Wordsworth's Grave not only expresses, as no one else has expressed, the quality of Wordsworth's genius, but in single lines assigned to each, the same service is done for Milton, Shakespeare, Shelley, Coleridge, and Byron. This is a matchless illustration of the kind of criticism that is in itself genius; for we may quarrel with Mr. Spingarn as much as we please on his general dogmatic principle of the identity of genius and taste; here we have so admirable an example of what he means by creative criticism, that it is a ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... of matchless impudence, but curse me if this isn't the paragon of the species! Zounds! I'm in a wonderful passion! Daughter, I am resolved to have this affair explained ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... greatest. Now, for the first time, she felt how dear Hilda had been to her. She had been more than a friend—she had been an elder sister. Now, to Zillah's affectionate heart, there came the recollection of all the patient love, the kind forbearance, and the wise counsel of this matchless friend. Since childhood they had been inseparable. Hilda had rivaled even her doting father in perfect submission to all her caprices, and indulgence of all her whims. Zillah had matured so rapidly, and had changed so completely, that she now ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... and LIBEEATOR,—delivered in New York City, March 11, 1863, said among other things, a constellation of linguistic brilliants not surpassed since the impassioned appeals of Cicero swept the Roman Senate to its feet, or Demosthenes fired his listeners with the flame of his matchless eloquence; ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... Beneath the plane-trees which shaded the numerous walks there assembled the master-spirits of the age. This was the favorite resort of poets and philosophers. Here the divine spirit of Plato poured forth its sublimest speculations in streams of matchless eloquence; and here he founded a school which was destined to exert a powerful and perennial influence on human minds and hearts ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... cared for, and the moulting season is at hand. After the cricket has commenced to drone his monotonous refrain beneath your window, you will not, till another season, hear the wood thrush in all his matchless eloquence. The bobolink has become careworn and fretful, and blurts out snatches of his song between his scolding and upbraiding, as you approach the vicinity of his nest, oscillating between anxiety for his brood and solicitude for his musical reputation. Some ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... first great virtue of Turgenef's art is his matchless sense of form, as of a builder, a constructor, an architect. As works of architecture, of design, with porch and balcony, and central body, and roof, all in harmonious proportion, his six novels are unapproachable. There is a perfection of form in ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... until sin is forgiven does He witness to the fact. Not until we are justified from our old sins and born again does He witness that we are children of God; and when He does so witness, these secondary evidences always follow. Charles Wesley expresses this in one of his matchless hymns:— ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... had rallied to the new Empire, had been carefully collated by the untiring brain that now watched over France. The sum of 1,123,000 francs had been expended on the coronation robes of Emperor and Empress, and far more on crowns and tiaras. The result was seen in costumes of matchless splendour; the Emperor wore a French coat of red velvet embroidered in gold, a short cloak adorned with bees and the collar of the Legion of Honour in diamonds; and at the archbishop's palace he assumed the long purple robe of velvet profusely ornamented with ermine, while ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... O'Brien, who was a good chief of police, and a matchless personal aide-de-camp. They would then put on boots and oilskins and go out into the night on one of their frequent Harun-Al-Rashid expeditions. The mayor's wife? Yes, it is true that before leaving for the theatre she had cautioned him not ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... idea you were here! I saw in the papers that you were with the Gillows." The customary embraces followed; then Mrs. Vanderlyn, her eyes pursuing the matchless cloak as it disappeared down a vista of receding mannequins, interrogated sharply: "Are you shopping for Ursula? If you mean to order that cloak for her ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... her great military organization, after arms became a profession and a career. We can but call up scattered pictures to show us rags and fragments of the immense host that patrolled the world with measured tread and matchless precision of serried rank, in tens and scores and hundreds of thousands, for centuries, shoulder to shoulder and flank to flank, learning its own strength by degrees, till it suddenly grasped all power, gave it to one man, and made ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... matchless tales of All-Father Odin, who crosses the Rainbow Bridge to walk among men in Midgard and sacrifices his right eye to drink from the Well of Wisdom; of Thor, whose mighty hammer defends Asgard; of Loki, whose mischievous cunning leads him to treachery against the gods; of giants, dragons, ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... heaven-begot, and born of man, Thou fairest of thy great Creator's works! Thee, goddess, thee the Eternal did ordain, His softer substitute on earth to reign; And, wheresoe'er thy happy footsteps tread, Nature in triumph after thee is led! Angels with pleasure view thy matchless grace, And love their Maker's image in ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... take part. Throughout 1466 the English court was the field for a diplomatic struggle between Charles and Lewis. Warwick pressed Margaret's marriage with one of the French princes. The marriage with Charles was backed by the Woodvilles. Edward bore himself between the two parties with matchless perfidy. Apparently yielding to the counsels of the Earl, he despatched him in 1467 to treat for peace with Lewis at Rouen. Warwick was received with honours which marked the importance of his mission in the French king's eyes. Bishops and clergy went out to ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... sunset glow until they become only huge elm-trees overtopping a dusty lane .... the trolley-bells are softened so that they are but the distant tinkle of the homeward herd on the hills .... and you and I in matchless freedom are once more trudging the Old Dear Road side by side, answering the call of the wondrous Voice of Boyhood ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright
... without becoming fulsome or familiar; he was a man of the world and knew an unlimited number of racy stories, and even if he repeated some of them unduly, they were better than no stories at all. And then, there was his matchless, unfailing patience in playing chess or backgammon or draughts or bezique, whatever he perceived ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... Webster's speech is regarded as the master-piece of modern eloquence—unsurpassed by even the mightiest efforts of either Pitt, Fox or Burke—a matchless intellectual achievement and complete forensic triumph. It was to this great, triumphant effort that Mr. Webster's subsequent fame as a statesman ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... The matchless Marines and the other American troops suffered a loss that staggered America. It was a loss, however, that was well worth while. The heroic young Americans who held the might of Germany helpless and finally rolled them back defeated ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... instances; they are without end. The reader has but to throw his memory back upon the anguish of Jupiter, in the 'Iliad,' for the approaching death of his son Sarpedon, and his vain struggles to deliver himself from this ghastly net; or upon Thetis, fighting against the vision of her matchless Pelides caught in the same vortex; or upon the Muse in Euripides, hovering in the air and wailing over her young Rhesus, her brave, her beautiful one, of whom she trusted that he had been destined to confound the Grecian host. What! a God, and liable to the pollution of ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... fate for the girl who had refused a house in Cavendish square, one of the prettiest victorias in London, and a matchless collection of old ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... an accusing look on the Spectre's face. I don't know what put it into my head, and I had no sooner said it than I was sorry for my levity, but the figure with the sad garments there in the matchless and triumphant spring day affected me with a curious, sharp impatience. Had any one the right to look out so dolefully upon such a day and such a scene of simple happiness as this? So I took my whistle from my ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... riches of matchless Peru, To revel in splendour as emperors do, I'd forfeit the whole with a hearty good will, To dwell in a cottage on ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... cocoanuts and softly luminous as the phosphorescent foam which broke on the beach in the darkness. And there were diamonds that caught gleams of all the others' beauty, and then mocked them with a matchless splendor. ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... to deny to Garrick the merit of being an admirer of Shakspeare? A true lover of his excellences he certainly was not; for would any true lover of them have admitted into his matchless scenes such ribald trash as Tate and Cibber, and the rest ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... fleet-footed hunter, who was only a little less swift than the shining spear that sped from his hand with the sureness of a bolt from the hand of Zeus. And she knew that this must be none other than Adonis, son of the king of Paphos, of whose matchless beauty she had heard not only the dwellers on earth, but the Olympians themselves speak in wonder. While gods and men were ready to pay homage to his marvellous loveliness, to Adonis himself it counted ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... O talk of Burgos; It is my only subject—matchless town, Where all I ask are patriarchal years To feel satiety like ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... secret." You will find people who say the music in the book is poor, which is largely true, and that the versification is weak, which is often, not always, true, and is sometimes to be attributed to faulty translation; but the idea, the spirit, the continuity of the plan, are matchless, and critics who call it trifling or silly are those who have not the seeing eye nor the understanding heart. Froebel's wife said ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... it seems to me that poem is the noblest tribute to woman that human genius has ever brought forth—[laughter]—and I feel that if I were to talk hours I could not do my great theme completer or more graceful justice than I have now done in simply quoting that poet's matchless words. [Renewed laughter.] The phases of the womanly nature are infinite in their variety. Take any type of woman, and you shall find in it something to respect, something to admire, something to love. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the face of nature was wondrously changed. Over the valley that I had seen before so parched had spread the soft verdure of young grass; hedges of quince were all abloom, and at their roots the stitchwort mingled its white starry flowers with the matchless blue of the Germander speedwell, so dear to English eyes. The roadsides were bright with daisies and the gold ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... often repaid my toil, soothing me in sorrow, and exciting my imagination to daring flights, through the immensity of nature and the mind of man. For awhile my labours were not solitary; but that time is gone; and, with the selected and matchless companion of my toils, their dearest reward is ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Warren's corps of Federal infantry, which General Grant had sent to seize this very line on which we had now arrived. They had fought, mostly dismounted, from hill to hill, from fence to fence, from tree to tree; and so obstinate was their resistance, and so skillful the dispositions of the matchless Stuart, that some thirty thousand men had been forced to take about twenty-six hours to get seven or eight miles, by about forty-five hundred cavalry. But, it was incomparable cavalry, and J. E. ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... so matchless to Emerson's individuality was, even more than his rich mental gifts, their singularly harmonious combination. Rarely has a man so accurately known the limits of his genius or so unfailingly kept within ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... modest flower, of matchless worth! Thou sweet, enticing, bonny gem; Blest is the soil that gave thee birth, And bless'd thine honour'd parent stem. But doubly bless'd shall be the youth To whom thy heaving bosom warms; Possess'd of beauty, love, and truth, He 'll clasp an ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... a lovely country maid Rang'd o'er these lands, and thro' these forests stray'd; Modest her pleasures, matchless was her frame, Peerless her face, and Sally was her name. By no frail vows her young desires were bound, No shepherd yet the way to please her found. Thoughtless of love the beauteous nymph appear'd, Nor hop'd its transports, nor its torments fear'd. But careful fed her flocks, and grac'd ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... congratulated;—did an elaborate TE-DEUM, or Ambrosian Song, in Artillery and VOX HUMANA,—which with the adjuncts, say splenetic people, as at Kolin, sensibly assisted Friedrich's affairs. Daun was by no means of braggart turn; but the recognition of his matchless achievement by the gazetteer public, whether in exultation or in lamentation, was loud and universal; and the joy, in Vienna and the cognate quarters, knew no bounds for the time being. Thus, among other tokens, the Holiness of our ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... not the chief Spanish hero of romance. To find the mate of Roland the paladin we must seek the incomparable Cid, the campeador or champion of Spain, the noblest figure in Spanish story or romance. El Mio Cid, "My Cid," as he is called, with his matchless horse Bavieca and his trenchant sword Tisona, towers in Spanish tale far above Christian king and Moslem caliph, as the pink of chivalry, the pearl of knighthood, the noblest and worthiest figure ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... climes where I have late been straying, Though Beauty long hath there been matchless deemed, Not in those visions to the heart displaying Forms which it sighs but to have only dreamed, Hath aught like thee in truth or fancy seemed: Nor, having seen thee, shall I vainly seek To paint those charms which varied as they beamed - To such as see thee not my words were ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... of ancient Greece, whose faithful steps 690 Have led us to these awful solitudes Of Nature and of Science; nurse revered Of generous counsels and heroic deeds; Oh! let some portion of thy matchless praise Dwell in my breast, and teach me to adorn This unattempted theme. Nor be my thoughts Presumptuous counted, if, amid the calm Which Hesper sheds along the vernal heaven, If I, from vulgar Superstition's ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... plantation who heard the barking of the blood hounds and felt the lash of the task master, likewise he realized that such was not his place. He sought his place, and to-day America holds in sacred memory that eloquent and matchless orator Frederick Douglass. ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 3, September, 1898 • Various
... may become when used to read corrupt books or look upon licentious scenes at the theatre, or when used to meet the fascinating gaze of the harlot! What an instrument for depraving the whole man may be found in the matchless powers of the brain, the hand, the ear, the mouth, or the tongue! What potent instruments may these become in accomplishing the ruin of the whole being ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... July, 1911, that we first entered that marvelous canyon of the Urubamba, where the river escapes from the cold regions near Cuzco by tearing its way through gigantic mountains of granite. From Torontoy to Colpani the road runs through a land of matchless charm. It has the majestic grandeur of the Canadian Rockies, as well as the startling beauty of the Nuuanu Pali near Honolulu, and the enchanting vistas of the Koolau Ditch Trail on Maul. In the variety of its charms and the power of its spell, I know of no place in the world which can ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... to the Divisional and Brigade Commanders, to the staffs including my own and to all ranks of the fighting troops, my warmest thanks for their splendid work and my congratulations on their brilliant successes. To the Regimental Officers, N.C.Os. and men, a special word is due for their matchless heroism and fighting spirit, and for their grit and determination so fully in accord with the best traditions of British and Indian Regiments. Whilst regretting deeply the casualties necessarily incurred in the attainment of our object, the series of stinging blows dealt to the ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... are those who never weary Bearing suffering and wrong; Though the way is long and dreary It is vocal with their song, While their spirits in God's furnace, Bending to His gracious will, Are fashioned in a purer mold By His loving, matchless skill. ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... prize too soon, lest your strivings for renown, being aimless, should wax feeble. It is because I love you that I hold your fame far dearer than my love. Go rather forth again, travel through heathen lands, defend the weak against the strong; go, battle for the right, show yourself the matchless knight you are; and God and my love go ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... some time before the conclusion, otherwise there would have been no space for the unfolding of the scheme of Redemption, equally essential from the point of view of orthodoxy and of art. The effect is the same as in the case of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," which, having proceeded with matchless vigour up to the flight of the conspirators after Antony's speech, becomes comparatively tame and languid, and cannot be revived even by such a masterpiece as the contention between Brutus and Cassius. It is to be regretted that Milton's ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... to the menagerie. There was quite a little crowd about Jack's cage, standing at a respectful distance. In his capacity as the real African gorilla, Jack had just avenged himself on a dangerous rival by snatching off his matchless wig. This gentleman had long deceived his friends with his ambrosial locks, but Jack's quick eye had discovered the cheat, and he seized a favorable moment to make a grab for it. To his inexpressible joy, it came off in his ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... care, He rush'd, his blade yet warm with Priam's gore, And dash'd the daughter on the sacred floor; While mildly she her raving mother eyed, Resigned her bosom to the sword, and died. Thus Inez, while her eyes to heaven appeal, Resigns her bosom to the murd'ring steel: That snowy neck, whose matchless form sustain'd The loveliest face, where all the graces reign'd, Whose charms so long the gallant prince enflam'd, That her pale corse was Lisbon's queen proclaim'd, That snowy neck was stain'd with spouting gore, Another sword ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... the Nile, the tombs that stood thick upon the Appian Way, and that rose superb upon the Tiber's shore, the modern use to which the Pantheon is put, the Pantheon at Paris and the Crypt of the Invalides, the Abbey of Westminster, matchless in memorials, the sepulchres within the hills that gird Jerusalem, and the sepulchre in which the Nazarene was gently laid when ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... seems requisite to make a man sure there is. And consequently I leave it to you to judge, how farre those of my Arguments that are built upon Alkahestical Operations are weakned by that Liquors being Matchless; and shall therefore desire you not to think that I propose this Paradox that rejects all Elements, as an Opinion equally probable with the former part of my discourse. For by that, I hope, you are satisfied, that the Arguments wont to be brought by Chymists, to prove That all Bodies consist ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... modern critical editions of Maro. The elegance of this little book in size and shape, the clearness and beauty of the type, and the truly classical taste and finish of the whole design, can never be surpassed in Virgilian bibliography, unless by Didot's matchless little copies. Elzevir Virgils are common enough; but mine is, as I have said, the rare Elzevir, known by the pages introductory to the Eclogues and AEneid being printed in rubric, while the ordinary Elzevirs have them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... delicious fare, and dressed In manner exquisite to please the eye, As well as taste; partridge and pheasant rich, A banquet for a prince. Zohak beheld Delighted the repast, and eagerly Relished its flavor; then in gratitude, And admiration of the matchless art Which thus had ministered to his appetite, He cried:—"For this, whatever thou desirest, And I can give, is thine." Iblis was glad, And, little anxious, had but one request— One unimportant wish—it was to kiss The monarch's naked shoulder—a mere whim. ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... many scores of specimens which were actually priceless, inasmuch as any rumour of a public sale would have excited amateurs to the verge of lunacy, and almost any psychopathic might have established a new record for madness at an auction of this matchless collection. ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... interests that are first consulted when profits from bond issues are considered. He makes the size of the bond fit their ability to buy, and not that of the millionaire syndicate, as is the case in this misgoverned land, where the matchless ignorance and complicity of the law-maker is made to serve the matchless corruption and greed of its ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... hath gained the Capitol—her foot is on the stair; She stands a form of matchless grace, the queen of thousands there. Bring forth the wreath that threw afresh a lustre round his name, Whose genius burned, a ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... knew I was to be your son-in-law, I thought you a matchless woman. Add to the admiration I had for your great qualities the affection which your goodness has inspired, and you will understand that I am both proud and happy to have such a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the night, And shone On her throne In the sky alone, A matchless, wonderful, silvery light, Radiant and lovely, the ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... matchless beauty, Proudly conscious of your fame, Loved by many a luckless youngster Who will ne'er ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... anxiety, the effect of her own words on his mind and countenance; as watching for that relenting spirit, which she hopes to awaken either by reason or persuasion. She begins by an appeal to his mercy, in that matchless piece of eloquence, which, with an irresistible and solemn pathos, falls upon the heart like "gentle dew from heaven:"—but in vain; for that blessed dew drops not more fruitless and unfelt on the parched sand of the desert, than do these heavenly words upon the ear of Shylock. ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... basket. It was a generous tea. A long loaf, butter in a cabbage-leaf, a bottle of milk, a bottle of water, cake, and large, smooth, yellow gooseberries in a box that had once held an extra-sized bottle of somebody's matchless something for the hair and moustache. Mabel cautiously advanced her incredible arms from the rhododendron and leaned on one of her spindly elbows, Gerald cut bread and butter, while Kathleen obligingly ran round, ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... all the burden I should lay on you; and that will be more than my Heavenly Master indulged Himself in. I am just setting out for Norwich with Mr. Wesley, whose renewed strength and immense labours astonish me. What a pattern for preachers! His redeeming the time is, if I mistake not, matchless. ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... carriage, robed in velvet and sable, she is royal; yet not so queenly, not so matchless, as when walking, pitiful, lonely, and strong against misfortune, by the Basin shores, with her child upheld upon her arm, and ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... and, as a result, his collection is to-day one of the grandest and richest and most scientific general collections extant. Great rarities may be said to be conspicuous by their prominence and by their matchless condition. ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... O'Hara, a delicate living Gainsborough in black and white, was probably the handsomest woman in the South. She dressed with that perfection of simplicity which only a few can afford; she wore only a single jewel at a time, but the gem was always matchless. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... we let go these kings again, my lord, To gather greater numbers 'gainst our power, That they may say, it is not chance doth this, But matchless strength ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... demonstrated the more than human wisdom of the framers of the great federal compact which for more than a century, in peace and amid the stress of war, has held States and people in indissoluble bond of union. In no part of their matchless handiwork has it been more clearly manifested than in the creation of a responsible executive. To secure in the largest measure the great ends of government, responsibility must attach to the executive ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... and lovely are the maids, Nursed in Canadian forest shades; The beauties of the older lands Moulded anew by nature's hands, Fired by the free Canadian soul, Join to produce a matchless whole. The roses of Britannia's Isle, In rosy blush and rosy smile; The light of true and tender eyes, As blue and pure as summer skies; Light-footed maids, as matchless fair As grow by Scotia's heath fringed rills— Sweet as the ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... Kullervo's frank confession: "Infamous the tale I bring thee, My confession is dishonor: On the way I met a maiden, Met thy long-lost, wayward daughter, Did not recognize my sister, Fatal was the sin committed! When the taxes had been settled, When the tribute had been gathered, Came a matchless maid to meet me, Whom I witless led to sorrow, This my mother's long-lost daughter. When she saw in me her brother, Quick she bounded from the snow-sledge, Hastened to the roaring waters, To the cataract's commotion, To the fiery stream and whirlpool, Hastened to her full ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... never been surpassed as a piece of funereal music. Some of the old Welsh hymn tunes he regarded as unique in their wistfulness and devout aspiration; and as for Welsh choral singing, he thought it was matchless for richness, ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... the gift I bring? All my penitence I give Thee; Thou art my exalted King, Of Thy matchless love forgive me;— Thou didst give Thyself for me, Now I give ...
— Hymns from the East - Being Centos and Suggestions from the Office Books of the - Holy Eastern Church • John Brownlie
... brought her to Town with him, where he told her he would place her with an ancient Lady, with whom he had contracted a Friendship at his first coming to London; adding, that she was a Lady of incomparable Morals, and of a matchless Life and Conversation. Philadelphia took him in the best Sense, and was very desirous to be planted in the same House with her, hoping she might grow to as great a Perfection in such excellent Qualifications, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... and intricate, and more like riddles than sonnets. They are 'very tolerable and not to be endured.' Shakespear's, which some persons better informed in such matters than I can pretend to be, profess to cry up as 'the divine, the matchless, what you will,'—to say nothing of the want of point or a leading, prominent idea in most of them, are I think overcharged and monotonous, and as to their ultimate drift, as for myself, I can make neither head nor tail of it. Yet ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... rose, and as its beams struggled through the morning mist they glinted on the sharp steel bayonets of the English, where their scarlet ranks were drawn up in battle array, but four hundred yards from the American breastworks. There stood the matchless infantry of the island king, in the pride of their strength and the splendor of their martial glory; and as the haze cleared away they moved forward, in stern silence, broken only by the angry, snarling notes of ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... founded a war fund called the "Chatham Chest"; and, after great pressure, the Queen granted L20,000 and the loan of six battleships to the Syndicate. Happily the commercial people gave freely, as they always do. What trouble these matchless patriots had to overcome! Intrigue, treason, religious fanaticism, begrudging of supplies, the constant shortage of stores and provisions at every critical stage of a crisis, the contradictory instructions from the exasperating ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... wounds, Makeless, matchless, Makers, authors, poets, Mas,ease, discomfort, Mal engine, evil design, Mal-fortune, ill-luck, mishap, Marches, borders, Mass-penny, offering at mass for the dead, Matche old, machicolated, with holes for defence, Maugre, sb., despite, Measle, disease, Medled, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... I heard the people's cries, And saw the Prince wipe tears from Mansoul's eyes; I heard the groans, and saw the joy of many, Tell you of all, I neither will, nor can I; But by what here I say, you well may see That Mansoul's matchless wars no fables be.' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... With marvelous and matchless swiftness and precision they got under arms. There were but fifteen hundred or so in all—six squadrons of French Lancers, the only French troops yet to reach Belgian soil, and a small body of ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... worthily, decided to absent myself from the affairs of my realm and to journey out into the world that I might seek among the princes of the earth one who would be full of the promise of wisdom and of high courage. One fitted to be the consort of the matchless Azalia and in whom I could see my fondest desires bear fruit. Now that none might know me, I permitted my beard to grow to my girdle, and stained it with a white pigment. Then I had only to reverse my name, Onalba, to become Ablano; and in the Holy Brahman none knew the ...
— Bright-Wits, Prince of Mogadore • Burren Laughlin and L. L. Flood
... right angle, or because there is more light mixed with it, it appears at a little distance of a darker blue than the sky itself; and at such a time, being on its surface, and looking with divided vision, so as to see the reflection, I have discerned a matchless and indescribable light blue, such as watered or changeable silks and sword blades suggest, more cerulean than the sky itself, alternating with the original dark green on the opposite sides of the waves, which last appeared but muddy in comparison. It is ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... men, Matchless, as will your glory be hereafter: The game is for a matchless prize, if ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... with an eye of gladness, With a light on his head and a matchless grace, And laughed at the passing shades of sadness That chased the smiles on his mother's face; And life with its lightsome load of youth Swam like a boat on a shining lake— Freighted with hopes enough, in sooth, But he lived to trample on joy and truth, ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... struck, and, in so far as we can tell, will for ages strike, with its greatness multitudes of widely different degrees of cultivation whose intellectual capacity is as far apart as their critical faculty. I mean the matchless Campanile or bell-tower 'towering over the Dome of Brunelleschi' at Florence, formed of coloured marbles—for which Giotto framed the designs, and even executed with his own hands the models for the sculpture. With this lovely ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... and say that the God who was about to take his noble son from him, had sent an angel to be a daughter to him in his stead. And so the weary days wore on—still vibrating between life and death, the strong man, his matchless powers now reduced to the weakness of infancy, lay stretched upon the couch of suffering, whence it appeared too probable he might never be removed, save to the last sad ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... in boards covered with leather, has the original ornaments, of the time of Corvinus, which are now much faded. The fore-edges of the leaves preserve their former gilt-stamped ornaments. Upon the whole—an ALMOST MATCHLESS book! ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... worth hearing;—a greater compliment could not be paid her. She was a most conscientious listener, giving you her mind and heart, as well as her magnetic eyes. Though the latter spoke an eager language of their own, she conversed slowly, with a conciseness and point that, added to a matchless earnestness, which was the predominant trait of her conversation as it was of her character, made her a most delightful companion. Persons were never her theme, unless public characters were under discussion, or friends ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... by Uriel ("O happy Pair"), the chorus enters upon the closing number ("Sing the Lord, ye Voices all"), beginning slowly and majestically, then developing into a masterly fugue ("Jehovah's Praise forever shall endure"), and closing with a Laudamus of matchless beauty, in which the principal voices in solo parts are set off against the choral and orchestral masses with ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... leaders of the movement, and whose knowledge of army officers of high rank was, of course, unequalled. Moreover, the illustrious Field-Marshal had dropped hints which led those concerned to conjecture that in the last resort he might not himself be unwilling to lend his matchless prestige and genius to the loyalist cause in Ireland. The contingency which might bring about such an accession had not, however, yet arisen, and might never arise; in the meantime, Lord Roberts gave a ready ear to Hickman's application, which, after some weeks of delay, he answered in ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... utterly unruffled, pipelike voice filled the three white men with confidence, and it was a new Jack Barry that led the way back to the ship and prepared her for defense against the promised attack. Little received the orders with his own matchless grin of boyish expectation; but Gordon's handsome face took on a look of serious purpose that gave deep thought to the skipper. And another surprise was in store for Barry, for Gordon suddenly gripped his hand, ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... mouths wide open, as if fascinated, upon the preacher who, moving up and down with quick, lithe steps, was telling them a story. A wonderful story, too, it seemed, the wonder of it apparent in the riveted eyes and fixed faces. It was the immortal story, matchless in the language, of Joseph, the Hebrew shepherd boy, who, sold into slavery by his brethren, became prime minister of the mighty empire of Egypt. The voice tone of the minister, now clear and high, now low and ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... been too rash; revive, my love, revive; Thy Phocion calls; the gods will guard Evander, And save him to reward thy matchless virtue. ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy
... at this time that "Paradise Lost," the one matchless epic of English literature, was conceived. Rough jottings were made as to divisions and heads, and a few stanzas were written of the immortal poem that was not to be completed for a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... to our Blessed Lady. The request was too pious to be refused. Garcilasso remounted his steed, closed his helmet, graced by four sable plumes, grasped his buckler of Flemish workmanship and his lance of matchless temper, and defied the haughty Moor in the midst of his career. A combat took place in view of the two armies and of the Castilian court. The Moor was powerful in wielding his weapons and dextrous in managing his steed. He was of larger frame than Garcilasso, ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... is the gain or wisdom of blowing smoke upon a diamond? The sun itself has holes in it too large for half a dozen worlds like ours to fill, but wherein is that great luminary thereby unfitted to be the matchless centre of our system, the glorious source of day, and the sublime symbol ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... grew—till she filled the night, And shone On her throne In the sky alone, A matchless, wonderful silvery light, Radiant and lovely, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... the Angel of Death, who with matchless legerdemain, keeps the mirror of illusion, unsuspected, before the consumptive's eyes; and, seeing, in ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... could bear, that she could not be forever keeping her celebrity sweet, still I could have retorted, But Cervantes, but Cervantes! There was only one Cervantes in the world and there never would be another, and could not she watch over this poor once home of his for his matchless sake? Then if Valladolid had come back at me with the fact that Cervantes had lived pretty well all over Spain, and what had Seville done, Cordova done, Toledo done, Madrid done, for the upkeep of his divers sojourns more than she had done, ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... tamed her spirit, and Swinburne telling of her, years after, speaks of "her matchless loveliness, courage, endurance, humor and sweetness—too dear and sacred to be profaned by any attempt ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... associated always in my mind with Edwin Forrest. Lady Macbeth is to me Adelaide Ristori, the greatest actress I ever saw. If I understood music perfectly, I would much rather hear Seidl's orchestra play "Tristan," or hear Remenyi's matchless rendition of Schubert's "Ave Maria," than to read ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... advanced, we read the 'Epistle to the Hebrews', with very great deliberation, stopping every moment, that my Father might expound it, verse by verse. The extraordinary beauty of the language—for instance, the matchless cadences and images of the first chapter—made a certain impression upon my imagination, and were (I think) my earliest initiation into the magic of literature. I was incapable of defining what I felt, but I certainly had a grip in the throat, which was in its essence a purely aesthetic ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... to us," I added, wishing to give suitable support to my lady's rather brave declaration of our sense of a literary flaw in the matchless psalm, "it seems to us to lose the sweet, simple melody and to close with strange, heavy chords when it changes to a scene of banquet hospitality. Do you mean that it actually keeps the ...
— The Song of our Syrian Guest • William Allen Knight
... Spring-Garden took this name from Foukes de Breant, who married the Countess of Albemarle. It is the scene of the matchless Letter XLVI in Fanny Burney's Evelina, and the subject of ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... That was spoken years afterward, in 1841, when, once again seeing by chance the forest of Fontainebleau, and about the same time casually encountering Madame Sand, he poured forth his "Souvenir," a poem of matchless sweetness and beauty, vibrating with feeling and most musical in expression—an exquisite combination of lyric and elegy. In this he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... matchless summer mornings, for he loved to adopt the hours kept by the birds, Edward set forth alone on a voyage of discovery. The wilds of his native land had a great and enduring fascination for him. He never ceased to enjoy the charm ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... understanding, indeed. There was, I say, something bracing in the very look of this silvery-haired giant as he strode along with a kind of easy sloping movement, like that of a St. Bernard dog (the most deceptive of all movements as regards pace), his beardless face (quite matchless for symmetrical beauty) beaded with the healthy perspiration drops of strong exercise, and glowing and ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... back to your matchless country and tell them there that we have plenty of matches in Germany; that we have kept on good terms with Stockholm, and our matches are made in Sweden. We have all we need to kindle every fire in hell. Now are you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... Dudleigh. "He is one whom I revere more than any other man, and love as a father. Besides, there are other things that bind me to him—his immeasurable wrongs, his matchless patience—wrongs inflicted by one who is my father; and I, as the son, feel it a holy duty, the holiest of all duties, to stand by that bedside and devote myself to him. He is your father, Miss Dalton, but you have never known ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... of his spirit! Could Josephine, the empress of the French, stand in our presence, how the plumes of our vanity would come down and the lightness of our frivolity depart before the charms of her wisdom and virtue! Could the matchless Mrs. Hemans rise before us in her peerless Beauty of soul, how little should we prize the fleeting Beauty of these mortal bodies, and how ashamed should we be of our foolish pride and thoughtlessness! Could we invite before us the departed Channing, Mayo, Weare, and gaze for one little moment ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... Wal. The matchless form of woman! The choice calling Of the aspiring artist, whose ambition Robs Nature to outdo her—the perfections Of her rare various workmanship combines To aggrandise his art at Nature's cost, ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... The heart's warm pulse feels not one throb of strife, And Love is holiest crown of human life. Ere thou didst sleep, beyond the rim of night I heard a voice that sang. The carol light, Scarce earth-born seemed. So sweet the matchless strain, Its cadence weird, lowly to breathe again, Wrapt echo, listening, half forgot; and o'er And o'er, as joyous birds unprisoned soar, The free notes rose. And in the silence wide, Across the seas, across the night, I cried: O sinless soul, whose ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... resoundeth the noble Blanch's name. Nor shall I quickly wither like the rose-bud from the tree, My queen-like graces shining when my beauty's gone from me. But when the sculptur'd marble is raised o'er my head, And the matchless Blanch lies lifeless among the noble dead, This saintly lady Abbess hath made me justly fear, It nothing will avail me ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... rejoicing in her heart that she was held to be an instrument" for the restoration of her own faith. This note of exultation as in martyrdom was maintained with unflinching courage to the last. She wrote to Elizabeth and the Duke of Guise two letters of almost matchless eloquence and pathos, admirable especially for their loyal and grateful remembrance of all her faithful servants. Between the date of these letters and the day of her execution wellnigh three months of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... It was dollars to doughnuts the thing would come right back again, twice as big as ever, and better well enough alone. But Squat, who is also known as Timberline, and is, therefore, a lanky six feet three, is young and sensitive and hopeful, and the veterinary is a matchless optimist; and the thing had been ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... harvest—if it has not been appropriated first by some of the pasha's tax-collectors or by roving parties of Bedouins—robber-tribes from the adjoining Syrian and Arabian deserts, who, mounted on their own matchless horses, are carried across the open border with as much facility as the drifts of desert sand so much dreaded by travellers. The rest of the country is left to nature's own devices and, wherever it is not cut up by mountains or ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... Forgive an old man's candour, my friend—and take good care of our British cousin here. He doesn't know his way around Paris very well. Still, I feel confident he'll come to no harm in your company. Here's a franc for you." With matchless effrontery, he produced a coin from the pocket of his ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... the haloed countenance of saints There hangs the multiple and knotted lash. The Christ of love, benign and beautiful, Looks at the torture-rack, by hate conceived And bigotry sustained. The prison cell, With blood-stained walls, where starving men went mad, Lies under turrets matchless ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the wonderful ruby necklet, an ornament of matchless gems that belonged to King Karmos and is one of the talismans of the Sanoms, has been left. I found it flung aside and discarded. Had the Naya committed the theft she would have secured this first of all, because ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... for these men gave 100 pounds of gold, 100 of silver, 100 webs of Indian silk, 100 scarlet mantles, 100 good horses, and 300 birds, such as falcons, hawks, and sparrow-hawks: last and greatest of all, they gave a cup matchless in beauty and beyond all price. Vulcan had made this cup, and on it he had pictured how Paris, son of Priam, king in Troy, had carried off Helena, and was pursued in wrath by Menelaus, Helena's lord, together with his brother Agamemnon, at the head of a mighty host; and how the Greeks ...
— Fleur and Blanchefleur • Mrs. Leighton
... spread out upon countless tables, we saw pieces of rare porcelain, scent-bottles of foreign make, watches of every size and shape, chains of pearls or of coral, diamond buckles and rings, gold boxes adorned by portraits set in pearls or in emeralds, fans of matchless elegance,—in a word, all the rarest and most costly things that ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... intensified his bravery and strength. The muscles of his hands and limbs became like steel. Indeed, he was already a hardened African traveler. Hunting daily and shooting only with bullets, he became also a matchless shot. ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... golden laurels by their aptitude in drill, their patient performance of the duties of the camp, and by their matchless courage in the deadly field. The young white officers who so cheerfully bore the odium of commanding Colored Troops, and who so heroically faced the dangers of capture and cruel death, had no superiors ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... paint the impulse pure, That thrills and nerves thy brave To deeds of valor, that secure The rights their fathers gave? Oh! grieve not, hearts; her matchless stain, Crowned with the warrior's wreath, From beds of fame their proud refrain ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... Board of War, occupying his time in this post (what must Marco Polo have thought of him!) in painting his marvellous pictures. He became a great favourite of the Khan and was always about the court, and Marco Polo must have known him well and perhaps have watched him at work painting those matchless landscapes, and those pictures of horses and men for which he was famous. Marco loved horses, as, indeed, he loved all kinds of sport (of which he had plenty, for the Khan was a great hunter and hawker), and he has left a word picture of the white brood mares at Shansi, which may be set beside Chao ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... disturbing his enjoyment by fretting anxieties, we build the conclusion, that had his friends furnished him with ampler funds, and had his marriage been well assorted or happy, we—the world of posterity—should have lost the whole benefit and delight which we have since reaped from his matchless faculties. The motives which drove him from Stratford are clear enough; but what motives determined his course to London, and especially to the stage, still remains to be explained. Stratford-upon-Avon, lying in the high road from London ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... was destined to see him sooner or later, though she stayed at home with almost morbid fidelity to a resolution she had made. He rode out the Quemado Road one matchless December day when the very air would have seemed sufficient to produce flowers without calling the ungracious desert into service. Sylvia sat in her boudoir by an open window and watched him approach. She immediately guessed that it was Runyon. The remarkable ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... pleasure. Virgil and Horace he learned to construe accurately; but is said to have taken no deep interest in their poetry. The tenderness and meek beauty of the first, the humour and sagacity and capricious pathos of the last, the matchless elegance of both, would of course escape his inexperienced perception; while the matter of their writings must have appeared frigid and shallow to a mind so susceptible. He loved rather to meditate on the splendour of the Ludwigsburg theatre, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... had passed since that night in the tamarack walk, that night when he had seemed so tender and lover-like, the matchless deceiver! And he had hardly spoken half a dozen words to her. He was back at the footstool of his first sovereign, he was the most devoted of engaged men; Kate was queen of the hour, Rose was nowhere. It ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... noticed that he was looking fixedly at her, and that his eyes did not wander to the face of that other woman, who was so much more beautiful than herself. Perhaps, after all, he would really prefer her to that matchless creature close beside her! Nothing mattered, of course, since Zorzi did not love her, but after all it was flattering to be admired by Jacopo Contarini, who could choose his wife where he pleased, ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... that would express the sense of the evening call of the robin, and died without the sight! But his language never obtrudes itself. It has never stood before the mirror, it does not consciously challenge your admiration, it is not obviously studied, it is never on dress parade. His matchless phrases seem like chance hits, so much so that some critics have wondered how he happened to stumble upon them. His verse is not dressed up, because it has so few of the artificial adjuncts of poetry,—no finery or stuck-on ornament,—nothing obtrusively beautiful or ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... had become a gallery with jewels for pictures. Out of the sombre depths the aged webs of magic glowed with the matchless flush of precious stones. From every side colours we had not dreamed of enriched our eyes. To make the great west rose, the world herself might have been spoiled of her gems. Looking upon this mystery, no man can wonder that the art is lost. Clearly ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... shape of Death relentless on his track, and smelled the hated smell, poised his bulk at heavy cost upon his quivering, mangled arm, there held until the proper instant came, then to his sound arm's matchless native force he added all the weight of desperate hate as down he struck one fearful, crushing blow. The Indian sank without a cry, and then dropped out of sight. Wahb rose, and sought again a quiet nook where he might nurse his ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... on the grass, holding their shaggy horses by a rope, with their broad dark busts exposed to view as they suffered their robes to fall from their shoulders. Others again stood carelessly among the throng, with nothing to conceal the matchless symmetry of their forms; and I do not exaggerate when I say that only on the prairie and in the Vatican have I seen such faultless models of the human figure. See that warrior standing by the tree, towering ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... real difference? It probably lies in some subtle point of proportion in the psychic chemistry of the Boston mind, but the analyst who shall express the formula is not yet born; though there be those who can cast the spectrum of Boston existence and thought upon their printed screens with matchless accuracy. ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... ample folds of which concealed her countenance, and meandered over her whole body's splendidly symmetrical length of limb in such a manner as to aid her rich attire in shaping, rather than hiding, the contours of that matchless form. I was struck by her fine proportions, which gave her, even in her kneeling attitude, a queen-like and majestic air; and I longed to obtain a glimpse of her countenance—the more so as I could perceive by her ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... New Amsterdam began to quake now for the fate of their matchless champion, Antony the Trumpeter, who had acquired prodigious favor in the eyes of the women by means of his whiskers and his trumpet. Him did Peter the Headstrong cause to be brought into his presence, and eyeing ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Though here I call yon conscious clouds to witness, Could I pursue the bias of my soul, All friends, all right of parents, I'd disclaim, And thou, my Whiskerandos, shouldst be father And mother, brother, cousin, uncle, aunt, And friend to me! Whisk. Oh, matchless excellence! and must we part? Well, if—we must—we must—and in that case The less is said the better." Puff. Heyday! here's a cut!—What, are all the mutual protestations out? Tilb. Now, pray, sir, don't interrupt us just here: you ruin ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... position of William had for some time been one of singular difficulty. He had been forced, and chiefly through the treacherous diplomacy of Charles the Second, to consent to the Treaty of Nimeguen which left France matchless in arms and dominant over Europe as she had never been before. Holland indeed was saved from the revenge of Lewis, but fresh spoils had been wrested from Spain, and Franche-Comte which had been restored at the close of the former ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... see in marble. From where I stood I could catch a glimpse of the profile, the nose and firm chin, the exquisite mouth, to kiss which I would gladly have given up any number of fortunes. The cheek had that delicate curve of a rose leaf, and when the warm blood surged into it there was a color as matchless as that of a jack-rose. Ah, but I loved her. ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... that if one pressed the stirrups as the shoulders of the horse swung down and leaned a trifle forward when the shoulders rose again, the motion ceased to be jarring; for she was truly a matchless creature and gaited like one of those fabulous horses of old, sired by the swift western wind. In a little time a certain pride went beating through the veins of the doctor, the air blew more deeply ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... lasting respect do these annals of stone and bronze merit from men of taste! These salons, gardens, statues, works of art, attached irrevocably to the Past, bid us pause and ponder long upon the matchless Story of Versailles." ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... attitude! he stands With open heart and outstretch'd hands: Oh, matchless kindness! and he shows This matchless kindness to ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... think that if mortification of the body, without conversion of the life or heart—if penance and not repentance could save the soul, no wretch who performed a pilgrimage here could with a good grace be damned. Out of hell the place is matchless, and if there be a purgatory in the other world, it may very well be said there is a fair rehearsal of it in the ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... this year which, if it were deleted from his works, would anyway impair his poetic fame. But this long barrenness was atoned for by a burst of inspiration which came on him, in the fall of 1790, and struck off at one heat the matchless Tale of Tam o' Shanter. It was to the meeting already noticed of Burns with Captain Grose, the antiquary, at Friars Carse, that we owe this wonderful poem. The poet and the antiquary suited each other exactly, and ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... highest of their native height at the touch of a thought of Cleopatra. So was it, as we all know, with William Shakespeare: so is it, as we all see, with Victor Hugo. As we feel in the marvellous and matchless verses of Zim-Zizimi all the splendour and fragrance and miracle of her mere bodily presence, so from her first imperial dawn on the stage of Shakespeare to the setting of that eastern star behind a pall of undissolving ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... taste for politics. After serving with honor for some years on the bench he retired into private practice, and thereafter his name became one to conjure with in the law courts. By sheer power of his matchless oratory and unanswerable logic he won case after case for his clients and it is a tribute to his name to record the plain fact that in all his career he never championed a cause of which he need be ashamed. Powerful financial interests had attempted to secure his ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... impertinent or objectionable now than heretofore. After making a profound salutation to Aveline, which he thought was executed in the most courtly style, and with consummate grace, he observed in a loud whisper to his partner, "'Fore heaven! a matchless creature! a divinity! Introduce me in due ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... think of ourselves. Nothing could better prove the mythical character of self-consciousness than this extreme sensitiveness to alien opinions; for if a man really knew himself he would utterly despise the ignorant notions others might form on a subject in which he had such matchless opportunities for observation. Indeed, those opinions would hardly seem to him directed upon the reality at all, and he would laugh at them as he might at the stock fortune-telling ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... elegance in Isabel, A haughtiness in Kate; And Sarah is sedate and neat, And Ellen innocent and sweet Matilda has a sickly sound, Fit for a nurse's trade; Sophie is effeminate, And Esther sage and staid; Elizabeth's a matchless name, Fit for a queen to wear In castle, cottage, hut, or hall— A name beyond compare; And Bess, and Bessie follow well, But Betsy is detestable. Maria is too forward, And Gertrude is too gruff, Yet, coupled with a pretty face, Is pretty ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... of those magnificent entertainments which Englishmen pride themselves on giving to crowned heads, and their good feeling prompts them to offer to exiles. During dessert, a bottle of Constantia was produced, which for age and flavor was supposed to be matchless. It was liquid gold in a crystal flagon—a ray of the sun descending into a goblet; it was nectar which was worthy of Jove, and in which Bacchus would have revelled. The noble head of the house of Russell himself helped his guest to a ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... gratitude the joys they have derived from the effusions of his fruitful intellect; they will call to their recollection the joyous chorus of the prisoners in Fidelio,—the sublime and adoring hymn of the "Alleluia" in The Mount of Olives,—the matchless pomp of the Sinfonia Eroica,—the passionate beauty of the sentiment of Adelaida,—the aerial grace of his quartets and waltzes,—the thrilling and almost awful pathos of the dirge written for six trombones,—but, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... lighter metal, checked in some degree, but could not silence: finally, in the face of a storm of shot and shell, our infantry advanced, and carried these formidable entrenchments: they threw themselves upon their guns, and with matchless gallantry wrested them from the enemy; but when the batteries were partially within our grasp, our soldiery had to face such a fire of musketry from the Sikh infantry, arrayed behind their guns, that, in spite of the most heroic efforts, a portion only of the entrenchment could be carried. Night ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... what you had seemed to me, I little realized that the child of true, fine musical spirits had a nature strung like my Strad—fine, clear, true, matchless, as well as inspiring. I spent a beautiful afternoon with you. I cannot better explain than by saying that to me it was like such a day as I have sometimes had with my violin. I call them my holy-days, and God knows I try to keep them holy,—though after too many of them follow ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... laugh at this remark relieved the tension of the bravos' nerves. AEsop took advantage of the more cheerful atmosphere again to address Lagardere. "Matchless cavalier," he asked, with a wry assumption of politeness, "would you show me that thrust ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. We say Chancellorsville because, although not a victory for us, the campaign inflicted on the enemy losses at least equal to our own; and we say also Gettysburg because that victory was won by the army Hooker had re-organized, and led with such matchless skill from Falmouth to the eve ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... lifting amid its misery a cry of unconquerable confidence in the Just and Holy One, who was ordering alike the embattled armies of earth and the starry hosts of the skies, and through history, as in nature, was sweeping on resistlessly to fulfill the good pleasure of His Will. No wonder the matchless oratorio of the Messiah opens with this aria, abruptly as the original words are spoken in Isaiah. They sound the key-note of the good tidings of great joy which, growing as a hope in men's souls through the centuries, became ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... at Newbridge?" asked Mrs. Jonas, helping herself a second time to Mrs. Eben's matchless black fruit cake, and thereby bestowing a subtle compliment which Mrs. Eben did ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... his character. Witness, ye various regions of the earth! with what surprize, delight, and veneration, ye beheld an unarmed, and unassuming traveller instructing you in the sublime science of mitigating human misery, and giving you a matchless example of tenderness and magnanimity! O, England! thou generous country! ever enamoured of glory, contemplate in this, the most perfect of thy illustrious sons; contemplate those virtues, and that honour, in which thy parental spirit may most happily exult!—What spectacle can ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... next step, we think of a straightened leg set on the ground instead of a curved leg suspended in the air. And if we think of the Myronian Discobolus as letting go his quoit and "recovering," we think of the matchless spiral composition as unwinding and straightening itself into a shape as different as that of a tree is different from that of ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee |
