Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Pinnacle   Listen
verb
Pinnacle  v. t.  (past & past part. pinnacled; pres. part. pinnacling)  To build or furnish with a pinnacle or pinnacles.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Pinnacle" Quotes from Famous Books



... such a narrow sphere, and innumerable speculations of the greatness he would have achieved in political life, and how the irresistible force of his genius and his eloquence must have raised him to the pinnacle of Parliamentary fame and political power. Perhaps he would have partaken in this delusion, and have bitterly lamented the success which had deprived him of a more brilliant fortune and a loftier fame; for it may reasonably be doubted whether all his laborious investigations ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... of some place of safety, rapidly, and all eye; till at length I espied a small tuft of grass on the pinnacle of the highest of the small rocks that were scattered about my prison; for such now ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... K. H. Weise, in "Die Komodien des Plautus, kritisch nach Inhalt und Form beleuchtet, zur Bestimmung des Echten und Unechten in den einzelnen Dichtungen" (Quedlinburg, 1866), follows hard on Becker's heels and places Plautus on a pinnacle of poetic achievement in which we scarcely recognize our apotheosized laugh-maker. Every passage in the plays that is not artistically immaculate, that does not conform to the uttermost canons of dramatic art, is unequivocally ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... pinnacle of an iceberg piercing a polar winter sky: a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances, close serried, along the horizon. Throwing these into distance, rose, in the foreground, a head,—a colossal head, inclined towards the ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... her. She has witnessed political and social revolutions. Famines and pestilence have shorn her of her splendour. But the Brahmans have stood by her through all the vicissitudes of fortune. It is they who raised her to the highest pinnacle of glory, and it is they whose ministrations still keep up the ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... the defile hid it from view, so great was its height that it overtopped the tallest of them. This made it clear to us how it came to be possible that the ray of light passing through the loop could fall upon the highest snows of that towering pinnacle which we had climbed upon the further side of ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... true that most of the generals of distinction in the more recent wars were men destitute of military education,—men who rose from the ranks to the pinnacle of military glory, through the combined influence of ignorance of military science and contempt for military instruction? Let us glance at the lives of the most distinguished of the generals of the French ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... procession goes out of the city to the side of the river called Nigondin or Toombuddra, which runs past the walls of the city, to a certain spot where this ceremony is usually performed, where there is prepared a large square pit full of dried wood, having a little pinnacle or scaffold close to one side four or five steps up. On her arrival, a great banquet is prepared, where the victim eats with as much apparent joy as if it were her wedding-day; and at the end of the feast there is dancing and singing so long as she thinks fit. At length she gives ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... recognized as one of the greatest students of the modern world, a fact which has made his case one of unparalleled notoriety. I was his roommate during the several years we spent in law school, and, although he shot to the pinnacle of his branch of jurisprudence while I was left to more prosaic routine, we never lost the contact which has now become so valuable. Our correspondence was frequent and regular since we were graduated, and I can say with justifiable pride that Carse respected my friendship ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce

... the guards from the pinnacle came down and reported that the soldiers had ceased fighting the populace and, joining cause with them, were attempting to scale the pyramid by cutting steps in the icy surface. So again I went above ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... it was, had no mystery for Goodwin. He was the most successful of the small advance-guard of speculative Americans that had invaded Anchuria, and he had not reached that enviable pinnacle without having well exercised the arts of foresight and deduction. He had taken up political intrigue as a matter of business. He was acute enough to wield a certain influence among the leading schemers, and he was prosperous ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... nothing so intense as Dante. Consider, for example, to begin with the outermost development of his intensity, consider how he paints. He has a great power of vision; seizes the very type of a thing; presents that and nothing more. You remember that first view he gets of the Hall of Dite: red pinnacle, red-hot cone of iron glowing through the dim immensity of gloom;—so vivid, so distinct, visible at once and for ever! It is as an emblem of the whole genius of Dante. There is a brevity, an abrupt precision in him: Tacitus is not briefer, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... He considered the stability of his days—a lifetime followed upon high principles and founded on religious convictions that had comforted his sorrows and countenanced his joys. It seemed a trial undeserved, that in his old age he should be thrust upon a pinnacle of publicity, forced into the public eye, robbed of dignity, denied the privacy he esteemed as the most precious privilege that wealth could command. Stability was destroyed; to count upon the morrow seemed impossible. His thought, strung to a new morbidity, unknown till now, ran on ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... woman at last and at least was happy, perched now on a pinnacle of fame, and in the Patriotic Daughters of America as represented by their Vice-President and Accredited Representative in the Philippines, virtue and rectitude reigned triumphant. Zenobia Perkins was in her glory. Of all ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King

... entering just as she has reached the very highest pinnacle of her wrongs, meets with ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... two clean rooms. I might use other epithets, but none other means so much in the East. After a very satisfying supper, the good monk—he was so good to us, we tried to think he was as clean within as the rooms of his monastery—took us out to the pinnacle of the mountain and enjoyed our enthusiasm over the magnificent view that was spread out before us. Almost the whole of Palestine was within sight beneath us. We looked southward, across the plain we had struggled over so laboriously, to the mountains behind Jerusalem. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... the great hulk of the black bear lying motionless at the foot of the beech, and saw his child lying unharmed in the snow, his eye, that had been so keen at the moment of peril, grew dim and his senses swam, like one upon a high pinnacle, about to fall. ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes

... towards a tall ragged pinnacle of granite, which rose up some ten or fifteen feet by itself, when all at once a great black bird hopped into sight, looking gigantic against the sky, gazed down in a one-sided way, and began to utter a series of ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... sought after not for itself, but for the sake of vanity. Envy often avails itself of it as a fit instrument subservient to its own purposes. Soon, in fact, the works of Osmyn only were spoken of, and after languishing a long time unnoticed, he saw himself at once raised to the pinnacle, without having passed the steps which lead from misery to fortune, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various

... that day. Sir Harry had at that time learned a good deal of his cousin George's mode of life in London, and had already decided that this young man was not one whom it would be well to set upon the pinnacle. ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... than other banks do. However, I'll see my principal about it. But, George, I can't possibly get up to the Castle at eleven. I have got a churchwardens' meeting at a quarter to, about that west pinnacle, you know. It is in a most dangerous condition, and by-the-way, before you go I should like to have your opinion, as a practical man, as to the best way to deal with it. To rebuild it would cost a hundred ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... on his way Careless through what toils it lay, Down deep in the tangled dell— Or o'er the steep rock's pinnacle. Staunch the steed, and bold the knight That ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various

... Fauntleroy was always left to speak to his mother in the porch alone, or perhaps to go home with her. And yet, every day, fruit and flowers were sent to Court Lodge from the hot-houses at the Castle. But the one virtuous action of the Earl's which had set him upon the pinnacle of perfection in Cedric's eyes, was what he had done soon after that first Sunday when Mrs. Errol had walked home from church unattended. About a week later, when Cedric was going one day to visit his ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... arises, what part the United States has to act in these scenes; for it must seem reasonable and probable that a nation which has arisen so suddenly as ours, made such unparalleled progress, and attained to such a pinnacle of greatness and power, must be a subject of divine prophecy, or at least of ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith

... dominion. Yet he feared them. A whiff of peril, pitfalls to be leaped, some days or weeks of dire uncertainty, men to be won, and factions placated, any or all of these might have appeased the jealous gods. But this instant success would shock Olympus. It cried for contrast by its very flight to the pinnacle. ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... done away; the voice of reason will be unheard; the passions only will bear sway; famine, distress, havoc, and dismay will spread around; hatred, violence, war, and bloodshed will be the infallible consequence, and from the pinnacle of happiness, peace, refinement, and social advantage, we shall be hurled once more into a profounder abyss of misery, want, and barbarism than ever, by the sole operation of the principle of population!"—Such ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... a buttelike pinnacle. The lights of the ship were close over us. And there were moving lights up there, tiny moving spots on the adjacent rocks. The brigands had come out, prowling about to investigate ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... result of standards instilled into his sensitive consciousness by the women who had been his companions through life,—his mother, his aunt, his sister. Whichever the case there was no question that the old man's bearing toward her placed her on a pinnacle where gossip was silenced, and transformed her humble ministrations from those of a hireling into acts ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... down. I lay and watched the King's favorite as he descended. The torches held slantingly above cast a fiery light over his stately figure and the face which had raised him from the low estate of a doubtful birth and a most lean purse to a pinnacle too near the sun for men to gaze at with undazzled eyes. In his rich dress and the splendor of his beauty, with the red glow enveloping him, he lit the darkness like ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... forced to regard it in sections. Far to the north east lies Virginia, from which the long waving line of the Blue Ridge comes, and passes directly under the Black, making a point of junction, near which it towers into the steep Pinnacle and stately Graybeard—so called from the white beard which it wears when a frozen cloud has iced its rhododendrons. From our greater eminence we overlook the Blue Ridge entirely, and see the country below spreading into azure distance, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... being raised, and in the first encounter after the death of their redoubtable chief the Carlists met with defeat. The decline in the fortunes of Don Carlos had begun. One man had lifted them from the lowest ebb almost to the pinnacle of success. With the fall of Zumalacarregui Carlism received a death-blow in Spain, for there is little hope that one of this dynasty of claimants will ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... tentative of Baumgarten in the eighteenth century. He praised Kant as having been the first to include Aesthetic among the philosophical disciplines. He admitted that with Hegel it had attained to the highest pinnacle, being connected with religion and with philosophy, and almost ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... Even granting that we regard pleasure and relief from pain as of no importance in our own case, yet if we apply the same measure to others we are bereft of all motives to benevolence; and virtue, instead of being set on a loftier pinnacle, is left without ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... one thinks of an ignoble origin as in any manner derogatory to the eminence; on the contrary, it is considered rather as matter to be proud of; the idea that out of ignominy, surrounded by conditions devoid of all decency, justice, and piety, an individual can elevate himself up to the highest pinnacle of human power and glory, has always, and will always be regarded as an example to be followed, and the badge of success stretched to cover the means of its attainment. This is the universal custom where success has been attained, ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... race that started from that skull-less vertebrae, and came up and up and up, and finally produced Shakespeare, who found the human intellect wallowing in a hut, and touched it with a wand of his genius, and it became a palace—dome and pinnacle. I would rather belong to a race that commenced then, and produced Shakespeare, with the eternal hope of an infinite future for the children of progress leading from the far horizon, beckoning men forward—forward and onward forever. I had rather belong to this race, and commence ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... climbed and climbed, and left the god behind. We saw the earth spread vaster than the sea, With infinite surge of mountains surfed with snow, And a silence that was louder than the deep; But on the utmost pinnacle Life again Hid me, and I heard the ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... the sea, and not one single point above that level; for where on the whole face of the globe can we find a single chain of mountains, even a few hundred miles in length, with their many summits rising within a few feet of a given level, and not one pinnacle above it? If then the foundations, whence the atoll-building corals sprang, were not formed of sediment, and if they were not lifted up to the required level, they must of necessity have subsided ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... and lose his peculiar power. And yet she shrank unaccountably from his reentering the old life, with the bitter feeling in his heart he now had. It meant their living in New York, for one thing, and a growing repugnance to that huge, squirming, prodigal hive had come over her. Once the pinnacle of her ambitions, now it seemed sordid, hectic, unreal. Yet she was too wise to offer her objections, to argue the matter, any more than to open the personal wound of his trial and conviction. Influence, at least with a man of John Lane's fibre, must be a subtle, slow process, depending ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... doing up there?" he shouted, for Sile had clambered away up among the rocks of the lodge and stood upon a sort of pinnacle, spy-glass in hand. ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard

... studded the steep mountain slope, and many people were discerned walking and riding along the narrow, ledge-like streets which wound toward the summit, far up in the clouds. Clearly and distinctly could be seen the grim monastery, perched at the very pinnacle of the mountain, several miles away. Up there it looked bleak and cold and uninviting, in great contrast to the loveliness and warmth of the valley. Down below the grass was moist and soft, trees ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... growing steeper and steeper; we entered the crater at last, walled with snows of which portions might be of untold ages, for it is never, I believe, wholly empty; we climbed, in such a gale of wind that the guides would not follow us, the steeple-like central pinnacle, two hundred feet high; and there we reached, never to be forgotten, a small central crater at the very summit, where steam poured up between the stones,—and, oh, from what central earthy depths of wonder that steam came to us! There has been no eruption from any portion of Pico ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... and the active mind is the growing mind; the growing mind moves the man, and the man that moves helps to move the world. He moves step by step from the common level of events to things of greater height. He rises from pinnacle to pinnacle, never ceasing, never tiring, never stopping, ever growing, ever moving, ever rising till he finds the fountain head of all truth and all virtue. We are now face to face with a new order of things. Under this new regime we witness the foreshadowing of a higher sense of civilization, ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... background of the sky. The arms, the limbs, the oval outlines of the steed, even the very trappings, could be seen distinctly; and for the short period in which they were poised and motionless, the spectator might have fancied an equestrian statue of bronze, its pedestal the pinnacle of the cliff! ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... during the previous century, in the course of which its creed and liturgy were formed. The evidence of these transactions lies wide; much of it is still in the British Museum; and it may be possible to produce something sufficient to sustain Falkland on the pinnacle on which Mr. Arnold and the Dean of Westminster have placed him. But we cannot help surmising that he has in some measure undergone the process which, in an age prolific in historic fancies as well as pre-eminent in historic research, has ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... of one of the towers. While there, we looked down into the street beneath, and saw a photographist preparing to take a view of the castle, and calling out to some little girl in some niche or on some pinnacle of the walls to stand still that he might catch her figure and face. I think it added to the impressiveness of the old castle, to see the streets and the kitchen-gardens and the homely dwellings that had grown up within the precincts of this feudal fortress, and the people of to-day following ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... me is of the abundance of my sins and my tyranny, for, indeed, I have slain much people unrighteously and this is the requital of my deeds and that which I have wrought whilome of oppression." As he was thus pondering in himself, there came a bird and lighted down on the pinnacle of the prison, whereupon, of his passing eagerness in the chase, he took a stone and threw it at the bird. Now the king's son was playing in the exercise-ground with the ball and the bat,[FN208] ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... happy and time sped swiftly by. He was so absorbed in his delight, that he heard, as one who hears not, a wagon go rattling along the road, and the shouting, whistling and singing of boys. It was past noon before he recalled the object with which he had left home that morning. He sat upon the very pinnacle of achievement—that is to say, he sat upon the very highest point in the orchard, his head up, his spirits up, with such a decidedly upward tendency that it was hard for him to make up his mind to descend to the plane of common ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various

... wild fancies and dark hosts of imagery, thicker and quainter than ever filled the depth of midsummer dream; those vaulted gates, trellised with close leaves; those window labyrinths of twisted tracery and starry light; those misty masses of multitudinous pinnacle and diademed tower; the only witnesses, perhaps, that remain to us of the faith and fear of nations. All else for which the builders sacrificed has passed away. * * * But of them and their life and their toil upon earth, one reward, ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... sister Sorais would levy war upon me. So be it. She shall not prevail against me. I, too, have my friends and my retainers. There are many, I say, who will shout "Nyleptha!" when my pennon runs up on peak and pinnacle, and the light of my beacon fires leaps tonight from crag to crag, bearing the message of my war. I will break her strength and scatter her armies. Eternal night shall be the portion of Sorais of the Night. Give me that parchment and the ink. So. Now summon the officer ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... an evil liver, a modern man of wrath in the first act, dominated by a particular vice, was drawn, by an outside personal influence, from the mire in which he was wallowing, to purity, to real elevation. But his author, having led him up to the pinnacle, had no intention of leaving him there, blessed by the proclaimed admiration of the gods in the gallery. In the succeeding acts he introduced a second personal influence, exerted this time on the side of evil, and permitted it to act upon his central figure successfully. The ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... mentioned her husband, it was supposed that she was a widow, and, in consequence of her well-regulated establishment, she received much attention from several Irish and foreign bachelors. In short, my mother obtained almost the pinnacle of her ambition when she was once fairly settled at Cheltenham. I ought to observe that when she arrived there she had taken the precaution of prefixing a name to her own to which by baptismal rite she certainly was not entitled, and ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... Box-office door, I've stood and eyed the builders. They had a plan to render less their labors; Workmen in olden times would mount a ladder With hodded heads, but these stretched forth a pole From the wall's pinnacle, they placed a pulley Athwart the pole, a rope athwart the pulley; To this a basket dangled; mortar and bricks Thus freighted, swung securely to the top, And in the empty basket workmen twain ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... philosophic composure suitable to a survivor of Pelasgic and Etruscan revolutions. These grey ramparts are in great part still visible, and form the chief attraction of Cortona. It is perched on the very pinnacle of a mountain, and I wound and doubled interminably over the face of the great hill, while the jumbled roofs and towers of the arrogant little city still seemed nearer to the sky than to the railway-station. "Rather rough," Murray pronounces the local inn; and rough indeed it was; there ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... the devil (represented as an old man) tempts Christ to turn stones into bread. Above on left the two are seen on the high mountain: on right they stand on the pinnacle of the temple. ...
— A Short Account of King's College Chapel • Walter Poole Littlechild

... with no decline of luster the dignity of his father Akouta, completed the discomfiture of the Kins, and contributed to the revival of Chinese power under the last emperor of the Sung dynasty. The reign of Oukimai marks the pinnacle of Kin power, which under his cousin and successor Hola began steadily ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... termination of the Council there was nothing left for Pius but to die. He stood upon a pinnacle which might well have made him nervous—lest haply the Solonian maxim, 'Call no man fortunate until his death,' should be verified in his person. During the two years of peace and retirement which he had still ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... about a half-hand short right now," the old man chuckled, "but after a few hikes up to Pinnacle Point, you should fit that little hoss jist like ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... of life; only a few supreme natures stand unshaken under such a trial, and though his love of Amy was still passionate, he knew that her place was among a certain class of women, and not on the isolated pinnacle where he had at first visioned her. It was entirely natural that she shrank at the test of squalid suffering. A little money, and he could have rested secure in her love, for then he would have been able to keep ever before her the best qualities of his heart and brain. Upon him, too, penury had ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... sheep has one mental trait that its host of ardent admirers little suspect. It does not like pinnacle rocks, nor narrow ledges across perpendicular cliffs, nor dangerous climbing. It does not "leap from crag to crag," either up, down or across. Go where you will in sheep hunting, nine times out of ten you will find your game on perfectly safe ground, from which there is very little danger ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... Tyndall's conclusions: to determine, examine, trace, calculate these social forces which exercise such a powerful influence on our characters, our lives, our customs, which produce the greatness of the State, or drag it down with irresistible strength from its pinnacle of glory to an abyss of degradation; to estimate such forces is the great and noble object of our lectures and researches in this University. Prosecute, most noble professors, your studies in this direction with all the energy of your enlightened intellects, and there ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson

... big precedent, but although no peculiar shame attaches to the bare pinnacle of the summit, she—despite the difference in size and age—was expected to show up more fully furnished, and in keeping with the rule of humanity and ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... cried De Bracy to the soldiers around him; "do ye call yourselves cross-bowmen and let these two dogs keep their station under the walls of the castle? Heave over the coping stones from the battlement, an better may not be. Get pick-ax and levers and down with that huge pinnacle!" pointing to a heavy piece of stone-carved work that projected from ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... being that of utility instead of that of pride.[40] Consequently the building must not be Gothic or Elizabethan: it may be as commonplace as the proprietor likes, provided its proportions be good; but nothing can ever excuse one acute angle, or one decorated pinnacle,—both being direct interruption of the repose with which the eye is indulged by the undulations of the surrounding scenery. Tower and fortress outlines are indeed agreeable, for their fine grouping and roundness; but we do not allude to them, because nothing ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin

... beginning of wisdom for Evan: though the end was a long way off. Just as he had fallen from the position of pro-accountant to junior, and from $400 to $200, in one minute, would he tumble off many another pinnacle, on his way ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... repeated Dobson; "will nothing convince you? It is true we made a poor job of the farming, owing to our ignorance, but since we took to merchandise have we not made a good thing of it—ain't it improving every day, and won't we rise to the very pinnacle of prosperity when this ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... since the time of Louis XIV has been the contribution of individual artists, who by giving expression to their own original ideas have thus advanced the art to the pinnacle attained by the ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... manage my bird with as much ease as a pigeon poises himself on his wings, or an Indian steers his canoe. See! we are approaching the crown of the pinnacle." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... maturity, not as a church, indeed, but rather as a beautiful petrifaction, a growth of prolific, exuberant nature. Why should not the yeasty brain of man, fermenting, froth over in such crestwork of Gothic pinnacle, spire, and column? ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... brow with gentle breezes stirred up to life by fairy fans. His last thoughts had been of his vast wealth, his uninterrupted prosperity, and his great power. He was king of kings, and the whole world trembled at his feet. He had attained to the highest pinnacle of glory. Earth had yielded to him its most costly treasures, and had nothing more that she could give. Men had profusely showered upon him their highest flatteries, and ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... that a broken neck was not the result. But to his own mind these airy flights were always sublime, and especially so when he struck the quotation, which usually closed each missionary speech, that placed the herald of the Gospel on the highest pinnacle of time, and made him "look back over the vista of receding ages" and "forward over the hill-tops of coming time," and "lift up his voice until it should echo from mountain top to mountain top, from valley to valley, from river to river, from ocean to ocean, from isle ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller

... This cannot be interpreted for a Possession: For Christ, and the Holy Ghost, are but one and the same substance; which is no possession of one substance, or body, by another. And whereas in the verses following, he is said "to have been taken up by the Devill into the Holy City, and set upon a pinnacle of the Temple," shall we conclude thence that hee was possessed of the Devill, or carryed thither by violence? And again, "carryed thence by the Devill into an exceeding high mountain, who shewed him them thence all the Kingdomes of the world:" herein, wee are not to beleeve he was either possessed, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... hung bright and motionless, low in the western sky, gleaming with deep bloody radiance. Directly beneath it, bathed in the white light of the moon, was a bare, rocky peak that seemed the highest point of the island. And upon that highest pinnacle, that chanced to be just below the ruddy star, was an ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... me still clinging like a fly to the face of the cliff my fate was certain. I was almost exhausted, and my heart sank as I searched in vain for a way up. The distance was not great now, a bare fifty feet separating me from the topmost pinnacle, but though I walked along the bottom of this barrier for some distance it still presented ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell

... vogue before her translation of his temporarily famous novel was finished. However, the languid prosecution of the work had invested Mrs. Gaspilton with a certain literary dignity, even in Kensingate circles, and would place her on a pinnacle in St. Chuddocks, where hardly any one read French, and assuredly no one had heard ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... dotted the bay. The wood was piled near the kitchen doors, and the Methodist minister, with a sigh of relief, came down from the mental pinnacle upon which he had endeavored during the summer to attract strangers, and preached sermons from his heart to the hearts of the Quintonites. A donation party was in the air, too, and the needy pastor grew eloquent ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... Fairlie," as Irving calls her, and the Sophie Sparkle of the "Salmagundi." Irving's susceptibility to the charms and graces of women—a susceptibility which continued always fresh—was tempered and ennobled by the most chivalrous admiration for the sex as a whole. He placed them on an almost romantic pinnacle, and his actions always conformed to his romantic ideal, although in his writings he sometimes adopts the conventional satire which was more common fifty years ago than now. In a letter to Miss Fairlie, written ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... fearful every moment lest the support break beneath them and hurl them down along the sloping side of the pinnacle ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... was the signal for the two bears to discover him and rush on with a terrific roar. Blunderbore instantly fetched them each a sounding whack on their skulls, leaped over both their backs, and bounded up the side of the iceberg, where he took refuge, and turned at bay on a little ice pinnacle ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... punish. Mysteries are unfolded, secrets reveal themselves, hidden things are proclaimed, and courts and juries, awed and abashed, yet elevated and inspired, accept and act upon his conclusions as infallible. For one hour he touches the pinnacle of ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... prepared for the introduction by changing my clothes in a grove of plantains for my dressing room, and altering my costume to a tweed suit, something similar to that worn by Speke, I climbed up a high and almost perpendicular rock that formed a natural pinnacle on the face of the cliff, and, waving my cap to the crowd on the opposite side, I looked almost as imposing as Nelson in ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... factor of Greek philosophy was the insistence on intelligence and knowledge, and by these means it reached its pinnacle of reasoning. The blight that exterminated all scientific progress, with the fall of the Roman Empire, carried with it the neglect of the Greek thinkers. Similar to the retrogression of scientific thought, traced ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... of all this, he was sensible of little confidence; though this were truly Number 9, his freedom still lay on the knees of the gods, his very life, belike, was poised, tottering, on a pinnacle of chance. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... he climbed after him, till they stood together, right on the conical pinnacle, with only just room for them to remain erect, the great boiling crater below on one side, the glorious view of the fairy-like isle, with its ring of foam around, and the vivid blue lagoon, circling the emerald green of the coast. There it all was ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... his followers to battle by all that has power of persuasion upon the human heart, concluded his persuasion by an appeal to these irresistible feelings: "Think of your forefathers and of your posterity." The Romans themselves, at the pinnacle of civilization, were actuated by the same impressions, and celebrated, in anniversary festivals, every great event which had signalized the annals of their forefathers. To multiply instances where it were impossible to adduce an exception would be to waste your time and abuse your patience; ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... by a sufficient amount to complete the structure, from the treasury of St. Croix county. It was perched on the top of one of the high bluffs in that town, and much private and judicial blasphemy has been expended by exhausted litigants and judges in climbing to its lofty pinnacle. I held a term in it ten years after ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... conquering light as it swept down among the shadows, and set the captive crags and forests free. We watched the tinted pictures grow and brighten upon the water till every little detail of forest, precipice, and pinnacle was wrought in and finished, and the miracle of the ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... was carrying the papers back to Bartlett & Bangs's, and Mr. Randolph's new secretary was sawing wood in Madam Bartlett's cellar. It was a humble beginning, but he whistled jubilantly as he worked. Already he saw himself climbing, by brilliant and spectacular deeds, to a dazzling pinnacle of security ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... minions? It is E. whose life is once more in your hands—it is E. whom you are to save from being plucked of her borrowed plumes, discovered, branded, and trodden down, first by him, perhaps, who has raised her to this dizzy pinnacle!—The enclosure will reach you twice a-year—do not refuse it—it is out of my own allowance, and may be twice as much when you want it. With you it may do good—with ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... pinnacle their names shall shine, Unending ages greet the group divine, Whose holy hands our banners first unfurl'd, And conquer'd freedom for ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... went, the country spreading out before them in gentle undulations. The Ajax would climb a low hill to pass the pinnacle and go bowling down into some miniature valley, over foot-bridges and through grove after grove of pretty trees. It seemed that old Mother Nature had spread on the scenic touches with a master hand ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond

... completely. When on their last afternoon together he had pleaded so earnestly for her love Grace had been proudly triumphant in the successful accomplishment of what she believed to be her life work. From the lofty pinnacle of achievement she had looked down on Tom pityingly, but with no adequate realization of what she had caused him ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower

... properly demand, some speculation to be incurred requiring great means and courage as well, and Roger Scatcherd had been found to be the man for the time. He was then elevated for the moment to the dizzy pinnacle of a newspaper hero, and became one of those "whom the king delighteth to honour." He went up one day to kiss Her Majesty's hand, and come down to his new grand house at Boxall Hill, ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... plants to animals; from animals to man; from man to angels; from these to archangels, upward and still upward, to the Being who, bathed in the full blaze of divine effulgence, tops the pyramid, and stands on the highest pinnacle of Creation. That Being is God manifest in the flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ—the redemption which He wrought for us, through blood and suffering and death, being the work which reveals God most fully to our eyes, and forming a looking-glass, so to speak, to reflect the whole measure of ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie

... which we looked down were blistered with conical hills, crowned by ancient castles which would have rejoiced the hearts of mediaeval painters, as they did mine. Severac-le-Chateau, perched on its naked pinnacle of rock, was best of all, as we saw it from our bird's-eye view, and then again, almost startlingly impressive when we had somehow whirled down below it, to pass under its old huddled town, before we flew up once more to higher and ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... better, because he would have been no colder at heart, and more exact in time, and would have sung clean; whereas this gentleman set his windpipe trembling, all through the business, as if palsy were passion. By what system of leverage such a man came to be hoisted on to such a pinnacle of song as "Faust" puzzled our English friends in front as much as it did the Anglo-Danish artist at the wing; for English girls know ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... sat down in a corner of the Orangerie garden, locking her hands together, in a miserable pity for Arthur. She knew well what a shining pinnacle of success and fame Welby occupied in the eyes of the world; she knew how envious were the lesser men—such a man as John Fenwick, for instance—of a reputation and a success they thought overdone ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... lovely harbor on the west side of Prince's Island. That island, in about 1 30' north latitude, covered with all the luxuriance of tropical growth and verdure, and broken into every conceivable shape of pinnacle, castellated rock and chasm, and frowning precipice, streaked with silvery threads of leaping streams in their dash to the sea, is indeed one of the most enchanting spots the eye ever rested on. The chief inhabitant of the lovely isle was Madame Ferrara, a woman of ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various

... 1493, printed in several languages, had been read in the courts of Europe with wonder and amazement. "What delicious food for an ingenious mind!" wrote Peter Martyr. In England, it was termed "a thing more divine than human." No other man ever rose to such a pinnacle of fame so suddenly; and no other man from such a height ever dropped out of sight so quickly. His three later voyages were miserable failures; a pitiful record of misfortunes, blunders, cruelties, moral delinquencies, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... thought the ice was breaking up. We all went out and saw the ice coming in from the Straits, and piling up in great masses. Already the sled was crowded high up in the air, and one of the stoves occupied a lofty position poised on the pinnacle of a hummock Toolooah at once got upon a loose cake of ice, and pulled himself out to the edge of the floe and brought the sled and stove down to where, when the ice came in closer, they could be pulled ashore, and were thus rescued ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder

... head. Just before him Tom lay motionless upon the sward; but the murderer minded him not a whit, cleansing his blood-stained knife the while upon a wisp of grass. Everything else was unchanged, the sun still shining mercilessly on the steaming marsh and the tall pinnacle of the mountain, and I could scarce persuade myself that murder had been actually done and a human life cruelly cut short a moment since before ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Liberty that faces free France rise the white cliffs of Manhattan, tier on tier, with a curving pinnacle, towers square and twin, a giant inkwell daintily stoppered, an ancient pyramid enthroned; beneath, low ramparts wide and mighty; while above, faint-limned against the turbulent sky, looms the vast grace of that Cathedral of the Purchased and ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... material from which that great and stately superstructure was to be finally edified. But the architect who placed each block in its proper niche, who planned and designed the whole elevation, who planted the building firmly on the rock and poised the coping-stone on the topmost pinnacle, was the author of the 'System of Synthetic Philosophy,' and none other. It is a strange proof of how little people know about their own ideas, that among the thousands who talk glibly every day of evolution, not ten ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... an ecstasy. Something drew me forth with a sense of inexpressible yearning towards the being of this strange old man in the window seat, and for a moment I knew what it was to taste a mighty and wonderful sensation, and to touch the highest pinnacle of joy I have ever known. It lasted for less than a second, and was gone; but in that brief instant of time the same terrible lucidity came to me that had already shown me how the past and future exist in the present, and I realised and understood that pleasure and pain are one and the same force, ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... tracts of land or cites in the District of Alaska a tract described as follows: "Scotch Cap beginning at a point at low water mark, said point being three miles easterly of point at low water mark opposite Scotch Cap Pinnacle six (6) due north one mile, thence north seventy-one (71) degrees east true four (4) miles, thence south thirty-eight (38) degrees true to low water mark; thence follow the windings of the low water mark ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley

... of the thirteenth century we are confronted by the anomaly of a church grossly corrupt but widely obeyed. She is nearing the pinnacle of her power and the zenith of her glory, although the parochial clergy have sunk into vice and incapacity, and the monks, as a class, are lazy, ignorant and notoriously corrupt. Two things, especially, command the attention,—first, the immorality ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... being dwells upon those dreary crags, but at one point, as I looked up at them, I saw—poised statue-like above a mighty pinnacle of rock—a solitary eagle. Pausing, with outstretched wings above its nest, it seemed to look disdainfully upon us human pygmies crawling far below. Living at such a height, in voluntary isolation, that king of birds ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... advantages, whether it were the habit of his life, which was ever profuse, or that neglect of his private interests which almost inevitably accompanies the absorbing duties of public life, his affairs were always somewhat confused, and Lady Montfort, who wished to place him on a pinnacle, had resolved that he should marry an heiress. After long observation and careful inquiry and prolonged reflection, the lady she had fixed upon was Miss Neuchatel; and she it was who had made Lord Roehampton cross the room and address ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... moment-, in the first rankling sting of humiliation and despair, he could almost have struck a murderous blow at the man whom fortune had set on such a pinnacle of pride and insolence, as it seemed to his galled fancy. He was not in the mood to be either just or generous, and he saw in Ralph Gowan nothing but a man who had both the power and will to rival him, and rob him of peace and hope forever. If Dolly ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... swords, Great streams of light go upward. Then the lords Of havoc and unrest prepare their storms, And o'er the silent city, vulture forms— Eris and Enyo, Alke, Ioke, The biter, the sharp-bitten, the mad, the fey— Hover and light on pinnacle and tower: The gray Erinnyes, watchful for the hour When Haro be the wail. And down the sky Like a white squall flung Ate with a cry That sounded like the wind in a ship's shrouds, As shrill and wild at once. The driving clouds Surging together, blotted out the sea, The beached ships, ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... appearance. A third letter had been published, and a fourth was preparing. I was in high favour. Men of all ranks visited the earl; and dukes, lords, and barons became as familiar to me as gowns and caps had formerly been in the streets of Oxford. I stood on the very pinnacle of fortune; and, proud of my skill, like a rope-dancer that casts away his balancing pole, I took pleasure in standing on tiptoe. Noticed by the leading men, caressed and courted by their dependants, politics encouraging me on this hand, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... our Savior to the pinnacle of the Temple, and show him all the kingdoms of the world?" ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... the king on his throne. We hear of the choice spirits who have been the world's idols, how they came up through terrible trials alone and almost unaided, setting aside obstacles that would have crushed others, and fighting their way to the very pinnacle of fame. Aye! but great as they were, they needed and received encouragement. In some part of their poor home they saw the smile that spoke the hearty appreciation of the genius, though, perhaps, ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins

... room flew open at once. Disturbed both with the noise and the light, he observed, by moonshine, Calpurnia in a deep sleep, uttering broken words and inarticulate groans. She dreamed that she was weeping over him, as she held him, murdered, in her arms. Others say she dreamed that the pinnacle was fallen, which, as Livy tells us, the senate had ordered to be erected upon Caesar's house by way of ornament and distinction; and that it was the fall of it which she lamented and wept for. Be that as it may, the next ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... this dignity and happiness, but he kept not his station, for the great dragon falling down from that pinnacle of honour he had in heaven, drew down with him the third part of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth, and thus man, who was in honour, is now associated with, and made like to, beasts or devils. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... still by night: Each rock reflects a softer light, When the whole mount from foot to crest In robes of lambent flame is dressed; When from a million herbs a blaze Of their own luminous glory plays, And clothed in fire each deep ravine, Each pinnacle and crag is seen. Some parts the look of mansions wear, And others are as gardens fair, While others seem a massive block Of solid undivided rock. Behold those pleasant beds o'erlaid With lotus leaves, for lovers made, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... necessity peculiar to each system. There was never the slightest tendency to shirk the duties of this life, but to rise above them through right performance and right understanding. It is only when a man rises to the highest pinnacle of moral glory that he is fit for aspiring to that realization of selfhood in comparison with which all worldly things or even the joys of Heaven would not only shrink into insignificance, but appear in their true ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... are the other two, are the only extant specimen of a trilogy. The Agamemnon is the longest, and by some considered the grandest, play left us by AEschylus. "In the Agamemnon," says VON SCHLEGEL, "it was the intention of AEschylus to exhibit to us a sudden fall from the highest pinnacle of prosperity and renown into the abyss of ruin. The prince, the hero, the general of the combined forces of the Greeks, in the very moment of success and the glorious achievement of the destruction of Troy, the fame of which is to be re-echoed from the mouths of the greatest poets of all ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... tunes had he rehearsed the events in the tannery house—for they were the events of his life now. The triumphs over his opponents and enemies fell away, and the pride of power. Such had not been his achievements. She had loved him, and no man had reached a higher pinnacle ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... and buried. But I want you to realize that during those few minutes I was not John Trenholme, an artist struggling for foothold on the steep crags of the painter's rock of endeavor, but a master of the craft gazing from some high pinnacle at a territory he had won. If you know anything of painting, Miss Manning, you will go with me so far as to admit that my indiscretion was impersonal. I, a poet who expressed his emotions in terms of color, was alone ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... that I didn't know just what it was I wanted to do, except ride over to that little pinnacle just out from King's Highway, and watch for Beryl King; that, of course, was out of the question, ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower

... pinnacle of power was fast and smooth. Within half an hour new shackles were on Jason's wrists and he was chained to the wall in a dark room filled with other slaves. His leg-irons had been left on as an additional reminder of his new status. He rattled the chains and ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... improbable in the idea that witches had the power, in virtue of their compact with the Devil, of riding aloft through the air, because it is recorded, in the history of our Lord's temptation, that Satan transported him in a similar manner to the pinnacle of the temple, and to the summit of an exceedingly high mountain. And Cotton Mather declares, that, to his apprehension, the disclosures of the wonderful operations of the Devil, upon and through his subjects, that were made in the course of the witchcraft ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... fibre. We become mentally clever by playing at the game of life. We match our courage against its adversities and acquire fearlessness. We try our optimism against its disappointments and learn cheerfulness. We pit our patience against its failures and gain persistence. We are torn from the pinnacle of ambition by opponents and learn toleration of others. We fall from the heights of vanity and pride, and learn to be modest and humble. We encounter pain and sorrow and learn sympathy with suffering. It is only by such experiences that we ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers

... Then Mazanoff rose from his seat, drew his sword, and saluted. As he passed round the end of the table the guards closed up round the prisoners, who were staring about them in stupefied bewilderment at the incredible horror of the fate which in a moment had hurled them from the highest pinnacle of earthly power and splendour down to the degradation and misery of the most wretched of their own Siberian convicts. No time was given for protest or appeal, for Mazanoff instantly gave the word "Forward!" and, surrounded by a hedge of bayonets, the doomed men were marched rapidly ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... rock out of the side of steep mountains, gradually ascending to a great height, then descending to what seemed a bottomless canyon. We finally arrived at Guy Hill, the most dangerous part of the route. It took us one entire day to reach its pinnacle, where we camped for the night. The road at the top was cut through solid rock at a height of twenty feet, seven feet in width and led to a steep precipice. It then made a sharp turn to the right and, in a serpent ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young

... Again and again I read with eager interest the long and sensational account of our adventure. My exploit was related in a very graphic manner, and for a long time afterward I was considerable of a hero. The reporter who had thus set me up, as I then thought, on the highest pinnacle of fame, was John Hutchinson, and I felt very grateful to him. He ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... Luzon and Samar, and passed for a day through a region of isles. The sea was glassy save when a school of porpoises tore it apart in their pursuit of the flying fish. On its deep sapphire the islands seemed to float, sometimes a mere pinnacle of rock, sometimes a cone-shaped peak timbered down to the beach where the surf fell over. Toward evening, when the breeze freshened slightly, we seemed almost to brush the sides of some of these islets, ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... from being hid beneath the bushel of silence,—do bear witness by this letter that, through the commendable merits of our aforesaid brother and his study, he has attained such proficiency that the fragrant fame of his name—which the praise of his excellent action has exalted to the pinnacle of glory with us—could not be concealed: but from the height of its exalted pedestal it has furnished a living example to all scholars for emulation, and a great light to all people for profitable instruction. And so, while adorning our University with his presence and outshining ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton

... had to be borne in mind that if they escaped death at the hands of the law it was hardly likely that during the whole course of their after-lives they could hope to escape committing sin of some sort or another. At the moment they had reached a pinnacle of nobility which they could never pass and it was a thing to be desired for them that they should die now, when they would live to all posterity as heroes. The happiest fate for the Ronin was a righteous death, and as their admiring sympathiser the abbot expressed his unwillingness to do ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... the most remarkable trees they met with was the bunya-bunya, a species of pine. It towered like a pinnacle above all the other trees, reaching a height of upwards ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston

... in it a deeper significance, that here the Queen of the Adriatic was indeed resuscitated and the Venetian Republic born to a sublimer destiny. Surely the same indomitable spirit, the same high courage, that had reared that wondrous city out of the sea, was here before me, piling story upon story, pinnacle beyond pinnacle, till our old-world hearts sickened and our unaccustomed brains grew dizzy at ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... In town it was rare even to see a girl on horseback; a hunt was a thing which you read about, but never expected to behold with your own eyes. The knowledge that her new friends actually participated in this lordly sport raised them to a pinnacle of importance. She munched strawberries in thoughtful silence for several moments before recovering enough spirit to enter another plea in ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... bulging ridge like a bastion upon the right side of the terrible khor up which the camels were winding. At one point it rose into a small pinnacle. On this pinnacle stood a solitary, motionless figure clad entirely in black, save for a brilliant dash of scarlet upon his head. There could not surely be two such short, sturdy figures or such large, colourless faces in the Libyan ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle

... in the British Isles, has been lavished upon his scientific importance is being followed abroad by what may be an unnecessary amount of detraction. This is always the worst of setting up a man on too high a pinnacle; some one has to undertake the ungrateful task of pulling him down again. Justus von Liebig addressed himself to this task with some vigour in his Reden und Abhandlung (Leipzig, 1874), where he quotes from Bacon a number of suggestions ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... of the piazza, honest Balt would sit smoking his evening pipe at the other, watching the achievements of a little wooden warrior, who, armed with a sword in each hand, was most valiantly fighting the wind on the pinnacle of the barn. In the meantime, Ichabod would carry on his suit with the daughter by the side of the spring under the great elm, or sauntering along in the twilight, that hour so favourable ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... volcanic agency. The smoking cone of Ternate slopes in sweeping contours to the blue strait unbroken by bay or creek, and smaller satellites flank the central height, grooved by wooded gorges. The serrated ridge of Tidore, the opposite island, culminates in the red pinnacle formed by a fresh pyramid of lava above the ruined wall of a broken crater, the gap creating a sheltered inlet, where a fishing boat with yellow sails skims like a huge butterfly across the shimmering purple of the flowing tide. The fretted turquoise of the further range rises on the ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... to the cathedral. It is seated on the very top pinnacle of the rock of Verdun, suggesting the French cities of Provence. Its two towers, severe and lacking ornamentation, are the landmarks of the countryside for miles around. When I came back to America I read the story of an American correspondent ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds

... the latch," I append, for I have been examining the mechanism of the gate since I came in, and have made a discovery which dislodges my savant from his pinnacle; namely, that the only fastening on the gate is a huge wooden latch, which not one of us had sense enough to lift; but then who thinks of taking a fort by assault and battery on the latch? Halicarnassus ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... a man not deficient in literature, nor destitute of fancy; but he seems to have thought it the pinnacle of excellence to be a merry fellow; and, therefore, laid out his powers upon small jests or gross buffoonery; so that his performances have little intrinsick value, and were read only while they were recommended by the novelty of the event that occasioned them. These ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... soul had seen when he had sat under the old circuit rider and heard pictured the glories of the blessed when mortals should mingle with the shining hosts on high: and above even St. Hilda, on the very pinnacle of his new-born and ever-growing ambitions, Marjorie sat enthroned and alone. Light was all he remembered of her—the light of her eyes and of her hair—yes, and that one touch of her hand. His heart turned to water at the thought of seeing her again and his legs were trembling ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... wisdom of Providence, this was just what he needed to urge him on to higher and nobler ends. He never knew peace, and the rest for which he sighed slipped him at the very last. "I'm tired, so tired," he sighed again and again in those later years, when he had reached the highest pinnacle. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... is, as far as this inspiring language is concerned. A station dinner is the very pinnacle of a priest's happiness. There is the fun and frolic; then does the lemon-juice of mirth and humor come out of their reverences, like secret writing, as soon as they get properly warm. The song and the joke, the laugh and the leer, the shaking of hands, the making of matches, and the projection ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... perhaps, too selfish. And the stern hand of fate has scourged us to an elevation where we can see the great everlasting things that matter for a nation; the great peaks of honour we had forgotten—duty and patriotism clad in glittering white: the great pinnacle of sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven. We shall descend into the valleys again, but as long as the men and women of this generation last they will carry in their hearts the image of these ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... has never attained popularity in the North, Elvira (Plate XVI), after its introduction into Missouri about forty years ago, reached the pinnacle of popularity as a wine-grape in the South. The qualities which commended it were: great productiveness; earliness, ripening in the North with Concord; exceedingly good health, being almost free from fungal diseases; great vigor, as shown by a strong, stocky growth and ample foliage; ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... the life of our typical example, this quality was stamped upon every utterance and every act. It reached its climax, no doubt, in his bearding Herod and Herodias. But moral characteristics do not reach a climax unless there has been much underground building to bear the lofty pinnacle; and no man, when great occasions come to him, develops a courage and an unwavering confidence which are strange to his habitual life. There must be the underground building; and there must have been ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... in his court, which he made the most brilliant of modern times; so lauded by the great geniuses who surrounded his throne, all of whom looked up to him as a central sun of power and glory,—is not to be flippantly judged, or ruthlessly hurled from that proud pinnacle on which he was seated, amid the acclamations of two generations. His successes dazzled the world; his misfortunes excited its pity, except among those who were sufferers by his needless wars or his cruel ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... over, Madame found herself back again in her dear Paris, raised to a higher pinnacle of Queendom than ever, basking in the splendours of the husband whose glories she so gladly shared, though she held his love in such light esteem. But for him, at least, there was no time for dallying. Within a few months ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... malady with the public malady, to the early manifestation of his complete madness in the midst of the incomplete or tardy madness of the rest, he alone steadfast, remorseless, triumphant, perched aloft at the first bound on the sharp pinnacle which his rivals dared not ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... alone in the darkness of night to the village. Long time I wandered back and forth about the lake, long my gaze strayed to the lighted window where I had just been. Finally, the last light in the castle was extinguished. The moon mounted higher and higher, and every pinnacle and projection and decoration on the lofty walls grew visible in the fairy-like illumination. Here was I all alone in the silent night. It seemed to me my brain had refused its office, for no thought came to an end and I only ...
— Memories • Max Muller

... leisure to politics and scientific research. Sir Humphry Davy, who was his pupil, and whose merit he was the first to bring to light, declared that 'he had talents which would have exalted him to the pinnacle of philosophical eminence, if they had been applied with discretion.' The words are curiously suggestive of the history of his son; and indeed the poet affords a striking instance of the hereditary transmission of mental qualities. Not only did Beddoes inherit his father's talents and ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... temple, and in the first tiers of the tower, are wonderfully realistic representations of a sensual and ferocious deity. But, as you stand in the court, and look up the sides of the tower to the gilded pinnacle on its dome, you discover that all the upper rows of gods and demons are of stucco. Money evidently gave out, as the structure rose, and plaster took the place ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong

... of sixteen falls in love with one of her schoolfellows there are no limits to her devotion. Bessie Wendover's adoration of Miss Palliser was boundless. Ida's seniority of three years, her beauty, her talent, placed her, as it were, upon a pinnacle in the eyes of the younger girl. Her poverty, her inferior position in the school, only made her more interesting to the warm-hearted Bessie, who passionately resented any slight offered to her friend. It was in vain that Miss Rylance took Bessie to task, and demonstrated ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... passion, wayward and impetuous in its very nature—agitating and disquieting in its effects, rendering its votary the slave of circumstances—a mere shuttlecock alternating between the extremes of hope and fear, joy and sorrow, confidence and mistrust—a thing which a smile can exalt to the highest pinnacle of delight, or a frown strike down to the depths of despair. But in the consciousness that we are beloved, there is none of this questionable excitement; on the contrary, we experience a sensation of deep calm ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... wilderness of hills. Scattered amid the upward-sweeping stretches of maple and oak, groves of spruce and pine had the effect of passing rain-clouds. In the clear air, against the clear sky, every tree-top on the indented ridges stood out like a little pinnacle, till with a long, downward curve, both gracious and grandiose, the mountainside fell to the edge of a gem-like, broken-shored lake. It was a world extraordinarily green and clean. Its cleanness was even more amazing than its greenness. ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King

... are, no doubt, who were also possest of this double gift. The French, for instance, might well urge the claim of Bossuet to be raised to the same pinnacle; but the English and the Germans have not yielded to the spell of his majestic periods. Perhaps we here in the United States should not be extravagant if we set up also a claim for Daniel Webster; but, however firm ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... in the city of Hereford, which, in 1901, contained 4,565 inhabited houses. Here, no fewer than 218 chimneys had to be repaired or rebuilt. The Cathedral was slightly injured. The finial of a pinnacle of the Lady Chapel was thrown down, a fragment of a stone fell from one of the arches in the south transept, and the three pinnacles of the western front were fractured. Several churches suffered to a similar extent, while, at the Midland Railway Station, all the seven chimney-stacks were shattered. ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison

... it burst upon him, an apocalypse of giant glories, an empire of absolute being, independent and careless of human presence, affirming itself eternally to its own immeasurable solitudes. "I have reached the top and pinnacle of life," cried the poet; "this is the world wherein all things are made!" And now, indeed, save for the fairy bird, he trod his path alone. Now and then great clouds of mist swept down from the heights, or rose from the icy gorges, and wrapped him in ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... both boys accepted gladly, and during the trip there were many long discussions between the three as to the future of the Circus Boys. They had worked hard during the season and had won new laurels on the tanbark. But they had not yet reached the pinnacle of their success in the canvas-covered arena, though each had saved, as the result of his season's ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington



Words linked to "Pinnacle" :   summit, level, raise, architecture, peak, spire, lift, get up, top, bring up, elevate, tip, steeple, acme, crest, stage, meridian, superlative, crown, point, elevation, degree, tiptop, height



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com