"Sublime" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vilest kind, and impiety, were her diversions, varied, as has been seen, by occasional religious fits. Her indecency in everything, language, acts, behaviour, passed all bounds; and yet her pride was so sublime that she could not endure that people should dare to speak of her amid her depravity, so universal and so public; she had the hardihood to declare that nobody had the right to speak of persons of her rank, or ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... plan and style of architecture gives the city of Ilife a pleasantly dignified character. If, however, I am to summarize all the life and activities of this city of palms and divinities, I cannot, indeed, speak of anything great and sublime, because that lies buried too deep beneath the soil and debris of centuries, yet I can say that it has ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... the phrase goes, not to make much fuss about anything. Thus, whatever is high, great and deep, is treated as a matter of course, a commonplace, naturally at everybody's beck and call; something that can be readily acquired, and, if need be, imitated. Again, that which is sublime, god-like, demonic, must not be dwelt upon, simply because it is impossible or difficult to copy. Pseudo-culture accordingly talks of "excrescencies," "exaggerations," and the like—and sets up a novel system of aesthetics, which professes to rest upon Goethe— since he, ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... man, he was also more than man. The most critical research, the most careful examination of his life, his motives, his teachings, only compel the testimony that he was "without spot or blemish." The great have studied his sayings and his life, and have bowed in admiration before the sublime teachings of the Son of Man. The simple and unlettered have listened to his words of truth and been comforted. Faith has been awakened, hope inspired, love quickened, and man redeemed by the power ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... have busied themselves with befouling the high marble pyramid in which is cemented for ever the seed of all fantastic and comic inventions, besides magnificent instruction in all things. Although rare are the pilgrims who have the breath to follow thy bark in its sublime peregrination through the ocean of ideas, methods, varieties, religions, wisdom, and human trickeries, at least their worship is unalloyed, pure, and unadulterated, and thine omnipotence, omniscience, and omni-language are by them ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... prosperous As those that have been stars for us! Our course by Milton's light was sped, And Shakespeare shining overhead: Chatting on deck was Dryden too, The Bacon of the rhyming crew; None ever crost our mystic sea More richly stored with thought than he; Tho' never tender nor sublime, He wrestles with and conquers Time. To learn my lore on Chaucer's knee, I left much prouder company; Thee gentle Spenser fondly led, But me he ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... good chap, you know," said Vernon innocently. And once more Lady St. Craye bowed before the sublime apparition of the ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... these books Mr. Baum lived with his characters. They have every element of the drama of life as it begins within the lives of children. The two stories are a mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous; the foibles and fancies of childhood, ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... Doodle came to town, And routed king and tory, Three words sublime were writ by time To live in song and story; "George Washington"—immortal name There's few or none can match it; His father's favorite cherry tree, And ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... leading them into the thickets of Neb'k trees, suddenly wheeled round and killed six of them. The humbled Government force retired, and the dead were buried, by having a mound of earth piled over them. Of course, such an incident was never reported to the Sublime Invincible Porte at Constantinople; but it was a curious coincidence, that this very morning, amid our circle before the tents, after breakfast and close to that mound, we had Gublan, 'Abdu'l 'Azeez, and the Turkish Aga of the present time, all peaceably ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... take a ride out into the Desert. Oh, Mate, in spots these glittering golden sands are sublime. My heart was so light and the air so rare, it was like flying through sunlit space on a ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... insects that spring out of it as I press the grass, a hundredth part of them would suffice. The American crab tree is a snowy mount in spring; the flakes. of bloom, when they fall, cover the grass with a film—a bushel of bloom, which the wind takes and scatters afar. The extravagance is sublime. The two little cherry trees are as wasteful; they throw away handfuls of flower; but in the meadows the careless, spendthrift ways of grass and flower and all things are not to be expressed. Seeds by the hundred million float with absolute indifference on the air. The oak has a hundred thousand ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... received the same impulse. In celebrating the praises of God, the people could not confine themselves to mere translations of ancient anthems. The souls of Luther and of several of his contemporaries, elevated by their faith to thoughts the most sublime, excited to enthusiasm by the struggles and dangers by which the church at its birth was unceasingly threatened, inspired by the poetic genius of the Old Testament and by the faith of the New, ere long gave vent to their feelings ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... in the most brilliant society of Paris. Thanks to the sublime privileges of genius. You may appear in all the salons of the Faubourg St. Germain, and be cordially received. You have the exquisite enjoyment of the company of the two or three celebrated women of our age, where so many good things are said, where the happy speeches ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... her own house for a few days, as a refuge from the sordid atmosphere of debt and ruin, and beyond the reach of vulgar creditors, one of whom, by the way, she knew to be her own excellent husband. The Princess was probably not aware of that fact, for she had always lived in sublime ignorance of everything connected with money, even since her husband's death; and when good Pompeo Sassi tried to explain things, telling her that she was quite ruined, she never listened to what he said. If the family ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... delivers the emotions of the heart, in words suggested by the heart; for he knows no other. And hence it is, that while we admire the judgment and invention of Virgil, and of other later poets, these terms appear misapplied to Homer. Though intelligent, as well as sublime, in his conceptions, we cannot anticipate the lights of his understanding, nor the movements of his heart; he appears to speak from inspiration, not from invention; and to be guided in the choice of his thoughts and expressions by a ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... happiness. Her girlish love for St. Genis had opened her eyes to the possibilities of happiness; she knew that Life could hold out a veritable cornucopia of delight and joy in a union which was hallowed by Love, and her ready sacrifice was therefore all the greater, all the more sublime, because it was not offered ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... as fifty or a hundred feet, and then, still struggling to escape the surface, struggled involuntarily to the surface. Each failure thus to escape fetched wild laughter from the men. But why did they laugh? The thing was sublime, horrible, but it was not humorous. I leave it to you. What is there laughable in the sight of a pain-distraught fish rolling helplessly on the surface of the sea and exposing to the ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... digressing or anticipating too far, that throughout the ancient world, the Solar and Chthonic cycles of myths have been the most universal and important, the very centre and groundwork of many of the ancient mythic religions, and used as vehicles for more or less sublime religious conceptions, according to the higher or lower spiritual level of ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... snow-child. I suppose I'll get frightfully snubbed some day and come back glad enough to trot along with the rest—but oh! it must be sublime to have the chance a boy has. He can have everything—even the try if he is rich—and then he knows what he's worth. Why, Nancy, I am going to say something awful now—so hold close. I want to know what my dancing is worth, and my singing, and my making ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... parade! How the bugles played and played! And how the glossy horses tossed their flossy manes, and neighed, As the rattle and the rhyme of the tenor-drummer's time Filled all the hungry hearts of us with melody sublime! ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... to the far-off Lake of Saint John the rock-bound Saguenay rolls through a mystic country, sublime in natural beauty, and alive with traditions, legends and folk-lore tales. Ghosts of the past people its shores, phantom canoes float down the river of mystery; and disembodied spirits troop back to earth at the dreamer's ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... scene could neither be strictly termed sublime nor beautiful, and scarcely even picturesque or striking. But its extreme solitude pressed on the heart; the traveller felt that uncertainty whither he was going, or in what so wild a path was to terminate, which, at times, strikes ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... anything with form, save those two terrific things. It was like a vision, and it held me spell-bound, as I stood shivering on the rocks with the white mist round my knees until into my wool-gathering mind came the memory of those anything but sublime men of mine; and I turned and scuttled off along the rocks like an agitated ant left ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... she answered, her faith in him touching the sublime. "We must! The life of the whole world's ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... interesting to observe the use to which he afterwards converted these hasty memorandums in his sublime drama of Manfred:— ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... flashing star that guided the Confederate armies to glorious success. His faith in the God of armies was so blended with the conviction that he was a chosen instrument in the Omnipotent hand to repel invasion and secure an honorable peace for his beloved State, that his sublime confidence infused ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... which it is almost impossible to speak without enthusiasm. Not one of its twenty-six pages fails to delight us. Foremost in merit, and most aptly suited to Mr. Campbell's particular type of genius, are the three inspiring essays, "The Impost of the Future", "The Sublime Ideal", and "Whom God Hath Put Asunder". Therein appears to great advantage the keen reasoning and sound materialistic philosophy of the author. "The Sublime Ideal" is especially absorbing, tracing as it does the expansion of the human mind from a state of the narrowest and most violent ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... General's thoughtfulness, without a suspicion that her present companion had suggested it, taking the rest that came to her and enjoying it as simply as a child would do, yet radiant at moments in the presage of national success, or pale with a glow of sublime faith at the efficacy of the sacrifice that was being offered up for her country. She seemed in harmony with the nature about her and the earnestness, perhaps tragedy, of her surroundings. Katie could not have been at home here; it was not because she had been ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... Catholicism seems to me to be essentially right. A great deal of it I look upon as symbolism. I am a Catholic, but my Catholicism is my own: I am a Newmanite. If there be no future life and all is mistake, then Catholicism is a sublime mistake; if there be a future life, then we're on ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... Brewster to laugh as he had not done since he heard his Polly was determined to go to school. "What do you think of such sublime fools, Maw?" chuckled he, handing the telegram across the table as ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... a strong light will gradually lose sight of all surrounding objects. And for all that, he was, by nature, a generous man; in his unscientific moments, when his mind was, as it were, off duty, he was capable of very unselfish deeds, and even of sublime self-sacrifice. It was only a few weeks since he had given his plaid to a shivering old woman in the Scottish stage-coach, and caught a severe cold in consequence; but he had bestowed his charity in a reserved, matter-of-fact way which made the act appear ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... exposed in some of the London print-shops, is not perhaps aware that there is preserved in the church of St. Peter's at Rome a much more precious and genuine portrait than the one to which he alludes—a likeness described by its possessors as "far more sublime and venerable than any other, since it was neither painted by the hands of men nor angels, but by the divinity himself who makes both men and angels." It is not delineated upon wood or canvass, ivory, glass, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various
... his past, but was not so much a contradiction of himself as people who knew him imperfectly might suppose. He was taken to be ambitious, calculating, shrewd; when all the while he knew himself to be—as most Englishmen are at heart—quixotic, romantic, and even a little mad, when madness can be sublime. ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... some of them may seem to be incorporated in this narrative, under the guise of mere romance, the reader need not on this account think himself misled, or treat them with sublime contempt. If it should ever be his fate or fortune to make a tour through the East Indian Archipelago, he will ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... however, when the irreverent attendant punched his Sublime Majesty in the head and chest, and elicited an impatient, ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... volcanic energy of Italy seems to have begun first in this district, and when exhausted there, to have passed gradually to the south, where Vesuvius, Etna, and Stromboli witness to the great furnace that is still burning fiercely under the beautiful land. No spectacle could have been more sublime than that which the Roman Campagna presented at this period, when no less than ten volcanoes were in full or intermittent action, and poured their clouds of smoke and flame into the lurid sky all around the horizon. Up to the foot ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... be led according to the content of the ideas suggested to it, as well to sublime and noble deeds as, on the other hand, to expressions of the lower and barbaric instincts. That is the art of manipulating ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... had befallen her, to think in terms of beauty; to feel the miracle of her state and the age-old throbs that make maternity sublime. The sense of her aversion debased while it immersed her. She reasoned how valiantly whole eternities of women had gone down to meet motherhood and how proudly those eternities of women had worn the moment. Her mother. Mrs. Kemble. The concept ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... honors of the dead, to be sure, are not sufficiently sublime to escort a character like you to the republic of dust and ashes; for however men may differ in their ideas of grandeur or of government here, the grave is nevertheless a perfect republic. Death is not the monarch of the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... souls upon God, and souls thus expanded and thus glorified; to have our affections multiplied and magnified a thousandfold, and then girded up and strengthened by immortality to bear the beauty of God to be unveiled before us; and even so strengthened, to be rapt by it into a sublime amazement which has no similitude on earth; to be carried away by the inebriating torrents of love, and yet be firm in the most steadfast adoration; to have passionate desire, yet without tumult or disturbance; to have the most bewildering intensity along with an unearthly calmness; ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... to sculpture what Aeschylus was to tragic poetry,—the representative of the sublime and grand. He was born four hundred and eighty-four years before Christ, and was the pupil of Ageladas. He stands at the head of the ancient sculptors, not from what we know of him, for his masterpieces have perished, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... this sublime and ridiculous superstition, that the pleasure of the pair is somehow blessed to others, and everybody is made happier in their happiness, would serve at least to keep love generous and great-hearted. Nor is it quite a ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... devotee class, is worth listening to. She has toiled through the entire ceremonies of the Holy Week. She has knelt close to the Pope, and declares his mode of giving the Benediction the most sublime thing on earth. The good lady has spared neither time nor money in order to carry home a choice collection of relics. Among other objects of adoration she has a bone of St. Perpetua, and a real bit of the real Cross. Not satisfied with these, she ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... understanding all things according to the interpretation and disposal of the Superiors of the Society of Jesus. Therefore I entreat thee to receive me as the perpetual servant of this mission, and to render me worthy of so sublime a ministry. Amen. This twentieth day of June, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... who could influence the entire housekeeping of half a world, and give the kingdom of fashion a list to starboard; who could paint beautiful pictures; compose music; speak four languages; write sublime verse; address a public assemblage effectively; produce plays; resurrect the lost art of making books, books such as were made only in the olden time as a loving, religious service; who lived a clean, wholesome, manly life—beloved by those who knew ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the idle parts like leaves shall, in this hot summer, spring and grow forth afresh, out of this new and young temper of the body: and all the whole face and shew shall be young again and flourishing," pp. 119, 120. With such a farrago of sublime nonsense were our worthy forefathers called upon to be enlightened and amused! But I lose sight of Ashmole's book-purchases. That he gave away, as well as received, curious volumes, is authenticated by his gift of "five ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the well-earned enjoyment of Truth. It is by virtue of this sacrifice that the divinely-emancipated soul comes to dwell among men, clothed with a body of flesh, content to dwell among the lowliest and least, and to be esteemed the servant of all mankind. That sublime humility which is manifested by the world's saviors is the seal of Godhead, and he who has annihilated the personality, and has become a living, visible manifestation of the impersonal, eternal, boundless Spirit of Love, is alone singled out as worthy to ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... simplicity, had raised himself to a purer belief than that of the sensuous Roman or the superstitious Gaul. He believed in a single, supreme, almighty God, All-Vater or All-father. This Divinity was too sublime to be incarnated or imaged, too infinite to be enclosed in temples built with hands. Such is the Roman's testimony to the lofty conception of the German. Certain forests were consecrated to the unseen ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... treating of lofty and illustrious Subjects; such as the Foundation, Rise, and Revolution of Kingdoms, Commotions of State, Battles, Triumphs, solemn Embassies, and various other important Actions of Princes and Heroes, are exalted above the Sphere of Wit and Humour. The Strength and Dignity of the sublime Stile is debas'd and adulterated by the foreign and improper Mixture of light Sentiments, and pretty Fancies. These Sallies and Sports of the Imagination, will no more advance the Beauty of such superior Productions, than the ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... nations to whom it was presented, that divine authority, that avowedly supernatural character, which has clothed Christianity, until our time, as the only religion capable of elevating the human race to a state of sublime enthusiasm, suppressing its savage instincts, and bringing it nearer to the grand and simple nature which God has bestowed, they say, upon that feeble ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... own opinions, and averse to those of others: but all these obstacles ought not to prevent our undertaking such a good work: if we do not succeed, we shall at least enjoy the satisfaction of having entertained very sublime ideas. For my part, as I have done it already, so I shall still continue to recommend to the High Chancellor your piety, your learning, your good intentions, and your zeal, to which I ardently wish success; and the accounts of your progress from time to ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... to society more than those hours which were not devoted to study. These were indeed but few: and such were the uniformity and retiredness of his life, that "He was for a long time the only musical man in Europe who was ignorant of the celebrity of Joseph Haydn." And has not one, the most sublime of ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... costs her dear. Ye magian queens of Persia; bewitching Circe; sublime Sibyl! Into what have ye grown, and how cruel the change that has come upon you! She who from her throne in the East taught men the virtues of plants and the courses of the stars; who, on her Delphic tripod beamed over with the god of light, as she gave forth ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... beaten down. Returning on his steps, Leuthold, whose quiet, unflinching audacity of success was contagious, assisted each one to stand for a few moments where he had stood. The fog, the effect of which they had so much feared, now lent something to the beauty of the view from this sublime foothold. Masses of vapor rolled up from the Roththal on the southwest, but, instead of advancing to envelop them, paused at a little distance arrested by some current from the plain. The temperature being below freezing point, the drops of moisture in this wall of vapor were ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... had been repeated to her, and that a universal anathema was thundered at the rustic boor, at the barbarian impudent enough to dare to be witty by Monsieur Mery's side, and to affect to be insensible to the sublime beauties of "Cleopatre." However, all was not yet lost; I had unconsciously another way of conquering Madame de Girardin's favor. Her countenance became wreathed in smiles, she advanced towards me, and said, in a honeyed tone,—"Well, Count, give me some tidings ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... desperate; glaring, flagrant, stark staring; thorough-paced, thoroughgoing; roaring, thumping; extraordinary.; important &c. 642; unsurpassed &c. (supreme) 33; complete &c. 52. august, grand, dignified, sublime, majestic &c. (repute) 873. vast, immense, enormous, extreme; inordinate, excessive, extravagant, exorbitant, outrageous, preposterous, unconscionable, swinging, monstrous, overgrown; towering, stupendous, prodigious, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... carried to the church of Bethlehem on his approaching dissolution, where he receives the last sacrament of the Roman Church, the Viaticum, in the midst of his disciples, while a monk writes down his pious exhortations. Soon after the completion of this sublime picture, the two brothers commenced the celebrated Farnese Gallery in conjunction; but the jealous feelings which existed between them caused continual dissentions, and the turbulent disposition of Annibale compelled ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... your bough to some nice 'feller,' And if you would make my life sublime Put me in some cool rathskeller And we'll forget the jug ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... -what I have done, suffered, am doing, and shall do. Let me know as much of you, in quantity, not in quality. Introductions to, and conclusions of, letters are as much out of fashion, as to at, etc. on letters. This sublime age reduces every thing to its quintessence: all periphrases and expletives are so much in disuse, that I suppose soon the only way of making love will be to say "Lie down." Luckily, the lawyers will not part with any synonymous words, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... of peace and contentment will come to all your country when the world is settled down to law and order once more," said Eveley, with the sublime faith of the young and the unsuffering. "It just takes time. And God was good enough to carry you away before the end of the conflict. Just wait. When our country is thoroughly Americanized, and returns to joyful work and love and life again, the contagion will spread to your people, ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... silent walks we tread; These are the lasting mansions of the dead:— "The dead!" Methinks a thousand tongues reply: "These are the tombs of such as cannot die! "Crowned with eternal fame, they sit sublime "And laugh at all the little strife ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... of a southern night, with its sense of rich, luscious, breathing intensity, lay over that romantic spot in Southern Rhodesia where the grey walls of the Zimbabwe ruins, with a sublime, imperturbable indifference, continue to baffle the ingenuity and ravish the curiosity of all who would read their story. Scientists, archaeologists, tourists come and go, but the stern old walls, guarded by the sentinel hills, give back ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... wander evermore. Of all the genius-gifted thou hast reigned King of our hearts; and, till upon the shore Of the Eternal dies the voice of Time, Thy name shall mightiest stand—pure, brilliant, and sublime. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the whole town. And, in fact, a mortified and humble exterior leads the people to piety and contempt of the world, it excites to compunction for sin, and raises the heart and desires to heavenly objects. It is a mute exhortation, which has often more effect than the most eloquent and sublime sermons. ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... hand with marked graciousness, flashing a defiant glance at Paul, who, in sublime unconsciousness, followed Kresney out into the verandah, and remained standing on the steps till he had ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... instructions. Her religion was, in reality, little allied to any system of forms; and, as she has often told me, was founded rather in taste, than in the niceties of polemical discussion. Her mind constitutionally attached itself to the sublime and the amiable. She found an inexpressible delight in the beauties of nature, and in the splendid reveries of the imagination. But nature itself, she thought, would be no better than a vast blank, if the mind of the observer did not supply it with an animating soul. When she walked amidst ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... that sublime and subtil Mechanick too, DesChartes, though he seem to mince it must hold infinitude of worlds, or which is as harsh one infinite one. For what is his mundus indefinite extensus, but extensus infinite? Else it sounds onely infinitus quoad nos but ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... and Strauss in his attempts to make music say something. Was not the classic Richard Wagner a warning to all who endeavored to wring from music a message it possessed not? When Wagner saw that Beethoven—Ah, the sublime Beethoven!—could not do without the aid of the human voice in his Ninth Symphony, he fashioned his music drama accordingly. With the co-operation of pantomime, costume, color, lights, scenery, he invented a new art—patched and ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... beyond the river, beyond the sunset, toward an unseen bourne of peace and happiness, and her lovely face had in it a look of utter hopelessness and of sublime self-abnegation. The air was still. It was late autumn, and all around her the russet leaves of beech and chestnut fell with a melancholy hush-sh-sh about ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... with many of the guests of the house, were out on one of the grand piazzas overlooking the rapids. They remained out enjoying the sublime and almost terrific scene until the sun set ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... replied Sam. 'And you know,' resumed Mr. John Smauker, with an air of sublime protection—'you know, as you're a stranger, perhaps, they'll be rather hard upon you ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... drawn up an epitome of history for her own use; the Greek historians, poets, and philosophers were familiar to her; she invited Longinus, one of the most elegant writers of antiquity, to her splendid court, and appointed him her secretary and minister. For her he composed his famous "Treatise on the Sublime," a work which is not only admirable for its intrinsic excellence, but most valuable as having preserved to our times many beautiful fragments of ancient poets whose works are now lost, particularly ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... almost cried out with glee. It was really too good to be true! Carpenter, in the course of his talks with strikers, had learned where their soup-kitchen was located, the relief-headquarters where their families were being fed; and he now had the sublime audacity to take the picture ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... that she had so wrecked it. She was not hard of heart; and sometimes she thought of Daniel Granger with a remorseful pang, that cams upon her sharply in the midst of her maternal joys; thought of all that he had done for love of her—the sublime patience wherewith he had endured her coldness, the generous eagerness he had shown in the indulgence of her caprices; in a word, the wealth of wasted love he had ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... and me! He faces the world unflinchingly, And smites, as long as the wrong resists, With a knuckled faith and force like fists: He lives the life he is preaching of, And loves where most is the need of love; His voice is clear to the deaf man's ears, And his face sublime through the blind man's tears; The light shines out where the clouds were dim, And the widow's prayer goes up for him; The latch is clicked at the hovel door And the sick man sees the sun once more, ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... anything," answered Vane gravely, "our dead over the water—they have learned the sublime lesson of pulling together. It seems a pity, Mr. Ramage, that a few of 'em can't come back again and preach the ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... as half his verses show him, Anacreon's morals are a still worse sample, Catullus scarcely has a decent poem, I don't think Sappho's Ode a good example, Although Longinus[41] tells us there is no hymn Where the Sublime soars forth on wings more ample; But Virgil's songs are pure, except that horrid one Beginning ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... at cautioning people, he is always grateful to any artist who heeds him and listens to caution. He then assures his protege that things are to be made more easy for him; that, as a kindred spirit, he will no longer be expected to make sublime masterpieces, but that his work must be one of two kinds—either the imitation of reality to the point of simian mimicry, in idylls or gentle and humorous satires, or the free copying of the best-known ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... virtue. The [That] man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.' Had our Tour produced nothing else but this sublime passage, the world must have acknowledged that it was not made in vain. Sir Joseph Banks, the present respectable President of the Royal Society, told me, he was so much struck on reading it, that he clasped his hands together, and remained for some time in an attitude of silent admiration. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... haze, a pallor as of impalpable frost, which made the heavens seem more white than blue, and gave a hoariness and cloud-like remoteness to the arches spanning the water, and the vast buildings on either side, ending with the sublime dome of the city cathedral; and when out of the pale motionless haze, singly, in twos and threes, in dozens and scores, floated the mysterious white bird-figures, first seen like vague shadows in the sky, then quickly taking shape and whiteness, and floating serenely past, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... most beautiful and sublime truths from Emerson's essays. (How did they ever have commencements before Emerson?) But that is not knowing them. You cannot know them until you have lived them. It is a grand thing to say, "Beyond the Alps lieth Italy," but you can never really say that until you know it by struggling ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... certain workmanship is carried on, the touch and step and speech of those who had come ordering, consulting, coaxing, beseeching, to her apartments, had filled them with infinitesimal particles of a sublime efflorescence, by which the air itself in which they floated became—not the air of shop or business or down-town street—but the air of drawing-room, and bon-ton, and Beacon ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... glided hissing away."[1] Something, I suppose, not unlike this appalling picture of Dante's occurs in the world whenever a man's soul becomes saturated with hatred. It will be remembered, for instance, that even Shelley's all-forgiving and sublime Prometheus was forced by the torture of the furies to cry out ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... who tries, can, to a certain extent," said Aunt Judy. "It only wants the right feeling; some of the good God-like feeling which originated the creation of a beautiful world, and caused the contemplation of it to produce the sublime complacency which is described, 'And God looked upon everything that He had made, and behold ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... digesta per agmina stabant Quaeque fuis, Equitum turmae, Peditumque Cohortes, Obvia torquentes Danais vestigia Troes Ibant, sublato Campum clamore replentes: Non secus ac cuneata Gruum sublime volantum Agmina, dum fugiunt Imbres, ac frigora Brumae, Per Coelum matutino clangore feruntur, Oceanumque petunt, mortem exitiumque cruentum Irrita ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... It was simply impossible for her to describe the dinner in detail, but how Fico swallowed the spaghetti without losing it down his shirt front was a mystery. How the man got so much on his fork and swallowed it down by the yard nobody knew, it was simply a sublime feat! But the toasts they drank (with the last of the professor's claret), the songs they sang, the art they discussed! Every word was ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... skies and extend themselves laterally with majestic breadth. It gradually gains strength and becomes so firmly rooted in its place that it bids defiance to the repeated tempests vainly striving to overthrow it, and stands for centuries, sublime in its unconquerable might and proud endurance. Our noble Union, fiercely assailed in its early maturity, before its strength has been fully developed, now bends before the hurricane of civil war, swaying to and fro with fearful and threatening movements at every paroxysm of the tremendous blast. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... he had come fashionably dressed, with plenty of money, and preaching doctrines palatable to the higher orders, I might have had the honor of receiving from you a card of invitation, on the back of which would be written, 'To meet our Saviour.' But if he came uttering his sublime precepts, and denouncing the pharisees, and associating with publicans and the lower orders, as he did, you would have treated him as the Jews did, and cried out, 'Take him to Newgate ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... he had been for years anatomising the heart of man, and peeping into every cranny of it.' GOLDSMITH. 'It is easier to write that book, than to read it[269].' JOHNSON. 'We have an example of true criticism in Burke's Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful; and, if I recollect, there is also Du Bos[270]; and Bouhours[271], who shews all beauty to depend on truth. There is no great merit in telling how many plays have ghosts in them, and how this Ghost is better than that. You must shew how terrour ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... at the seventh book of the AENEID, and quite amazed at its merits (also very often floored by its difficulties). The Circe passage at the beginning, and the sublime business of Amata with the simile of the boy's top - O Lord, what a happy thought! - have specially delighted me. - I am, dear ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exhausted. His forelegs were braced, so that he leaned slightly back. Then Lucy saw a rope. It was fast to the saddle and stretched down into the cactus. There was no other horse in sight, nor any living thing. The immense monument dominated the scene. It seemed stupendous to Lucy, sublime, almost frightful. ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... obtained some conception of the sublime scale on which the stellar universe is constructed. Yet even these plates cannot represent all the stars that the heavens contain. We have every reason for knowing that with larger telescopes, with more sensitive plates, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... could see the front of her dress—she wore a very floppy scarlet teagown—rising and falling rapidly in the intensity of her passion. I understood more or less what she felt. If God is at all what we think He is, sublime, then there is something a little grotesque about requiring a cushioned pew, a good system of heating and a nice fat footstool as aids to communion with Him. Yet I am not convinced that man is incapable of the highest emotion when his body is at ease. Some ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... him, when the darkness that sin hath spread over its face is removed. The soul is an intelligent power, and it can be made to know and understand depths and heights and lengths and breadths, in those high, sublime, and spiritual mysteries that only God can reveal and teach; yea, it is capable of diving unutterably into them. And herein is God, the God of glory, much delighted—that he hath made for himself a creature that is capable ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... ceded a portion of Bessarabia, accepting a frontier which excluded it from the Danube. The free navigation of this river, henceforth to be effectively maintained by an international Commission, was declared part of the public law of Europe. The Powers declared the Sublime Porte admitted to participate in the advantages of the public law and concert of Europe, each engaging to respect the independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire, and all guaranteeing in common the strict observance of this engagement, and promising to consider any act tending to its ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... passed PEACEFULLY. The first of August, 1834, is universally regarded in Antigua, as having presented a most imposing and sublime moral spectacle. It is almost impossible to be in the company of a missionary, a planter, or an emancipated negro, for ten minutes, without hearing some allusion to that occasion. Even at the time of our visit to Antigua, after the lapse of nearly three ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... life at the present day—Trade, Politics, Letters, Science, or Religion—seem to feel, and to labor to express, the identity of their law. They are rays of one sun; they translate each into a new language the sense of the other. They are sublime when seen as emanations of a Necessity contradistinguished from the vulgar Fate by being instant and alive, and dissolving man, as well as his works, in its flowing beneficence. This influence is conspicuously visible in the principles ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... behind,—and under me the waves." In Faust, the wings of the mind follow the setting sun; in Webster, they follow the rising sun; but the thought of each circumnavigates the globe, in joyous companionship with the same centre of life, light, and heat,—though the suggestion which prompts the sublime idea is widely different. The sentiment of Webster, calmly meditating on the heights of Quebec, contrasts strangely with the fiery feeling of Faust, raging against the limitations of his mortal existence. A humorist, Charles Dickens, who never read ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... a speculative man, "whose seedfield," in the sublime words of the Poet, "is Time," no conquest is important but that of new ideas, then might the arrival of Professor Teufelsdrockh's Book be marked with chalk in the Editor's calendar. It is indeed an "extensive Volume," of boundless, almost formless ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... she whispered, "to destroy for the sake of the future? Don't do it. Theory sometimes sounds so sublime, but the present is actually here. Be content to work piecemeal, to creep upwards inch by inch. Life is something, you know. Life is something for all of us. No man has the right to destroy it for others. He has not even the right to ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ranged Powers Disband; and, wandering, each his several way Pursues, as inclination or sad choice Leads him perplexed, where he may likeliest find Truce to his restless thoughts, and entertain The irksome hours, till his great Chief return. Part on the plain, or in the air sublime, Upon the wing or in swift race contend, As at th' Olympian games or Pythian fields; Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal With rapid wheels, or fronted brigades form: As when, to warn proud cities, war appears Waged in the troubled ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... this spirit? Or were their writings cultivated by some teacher of a village school, who communicated by a method, which genius of a transcendental order knows so well how to employ, a taste for these sublime inquiries, so that at length they gradually worked their way to the anvil and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... scaly, strange and queer, Has come from out the womb of earliest time, Thou hast, O Barnum, in thy keeping here, Nor is this all—for triumphs more sublime ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... Tavia, and she began to dance around the room. "Isn't it sublime!" And then she caught Dorothy and made her ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... one was superinduced on ours, in the shape of a robbery of our plate committed while we were staring ourselves out of countenance at the gay spectacle; our faithless domestics having taken that opportunity of indulging their own taste for the "sublime and beautiful." 'Tis to be hoped they got enough of the "beautiful" at the show, as we indulged them with a touch of the "sublime" (which has one of its sources in terror) when we discovered our loss. But we enjoyed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... the wants of a magnificent sultan, descendant of the Prophet and distributor of crowns, must be supplied; and to do this, the Sublime Porte needed money. Unconsciously imitating the Roman Senate, the Turkish Divan put up the empire for sale by public auction. All employments were sold to the highest bidder; pachas, beys, cadis, ministers of every rank, and clerks of every class ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... great, the pompous, or heroic stile of dance. They spared for no pains nor cost, towards the perfection of their dances. The figures were exquisite. The least number of the figurers were forty or fifty. Their dresses were magnificent and in taste. Their decorations were sublime. A competent skill in the theatrical, or actor's art, and a great one in that of dancing, was necessary for being admitted into the number of figurers. In short, every thing was in the highest order, and very fit to prove the mistake of those who imagine that the dances ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... Action has its art as well as literature. Here Norreys had but to deal with the calling of the scholar, the formation of the writer, and so to guide the perceptions towards those varieties in the sublime and beautiful, the just combination of which is at once CREATION. Man himself is but a combination of elements. He who combines in nature, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... a pleasure from the real Hath our manly prime, Though the mystic light is shaded, And the rosy dreams have faded; For our strengthen'd spirits see all Things matured by Time, Growing out of the ideal Unto truth sublime; ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... Mooki, chieftain of the flour-bag head, Told him, 'Spos'n snake bite pfeller, pfeller mostly drop down dead; Spos'n snake bite old goanna, then you watch a while you see, Old goanna cure himself with eating little pfeller tree.' 'That's the cure,' said William Johnson, 'point me out this plant sublime,' But King Billy, feeling lazy, said he'd go another time. Thus it came to pass that Johnson, having got the tale by rote, Followed every stray goanna, ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... last minister, a man of great ability, amid the smoke of battle, and he had gone forth as Napoleon went, with a martial record which the corroding years even yet have scarcely tarnished. Fierce had been the fight, the factions grimly equal, and beclouded with a sublime confusion as to which side had been led by heaven and which by Belial. On this point, even now, they do not exactly see ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... who shall, by arduous labor, discover this sacred place of deposite, wherein all naked the sublime Truth is hidden; for he may be assured that he has found the True Light, the True Felicity, the True Heavenly Good. Then may it truly be said that he is one of the True Elect; for it is the only real and most Sublime Science ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... And lofty hills and waving forests, where The human voice had never yet been heard, Or other sound, save when the depths were stirred By the loud screams of some lone midnight bird. But high o'er all the lofty city rose, Firm in its strength, sublime in its repose; On every hand by nature fortified, And strongly built; with air of conscious pride Gazed from its heights upon the scene below, And bade defiance to each lurking foe; Confiding in its bulwarks firm and sure, It calmly slept ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... MacNair, with a voice of bitterness, yet with a melancholy glance of admiration in the direction of the Congressman; "he is more dangerous than sick. His will is sublime, Kate; nothing can soften ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... sent shudders through him gradually began to assume the inevitability of custom. Even the vision of the Weeping Willow, sorrowing at death withheld, failed to shake him. The third night he slept undisturbed in the lap of frenzy and madness. There was something at once pathetic and sublime in his adaptability to the broken suits of fortune. He was learning what every man learns sooner or later—to play the hand that is dealt, even in the face ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... charming sight to behold myriads of tiny flowers fringing our very paths, and little groves of shrubs and young trees around us; yet it is a gratification of the highest order, to witness the animals of almost every country on the earth assembled within a few acres; and it is indeed a sublime study to observe how beautifully the links in the great chain of nature are wrought, and how admirably are the habits and structure of some of these animals adapted to the wants of man, while all are subservient to some great purpose in the scale of creation. How clearly are these truths ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 535, Saturday, February 25, 1832. • Various
... were all sown in the Declaration of Independence; and their fruits can never be eradicated but by the dissolution of the Union. The calculators of the value of the Union, who would palm upon you, in the place of this sublime invention, a mere cluster of sovereign, confederated states, do but sow the wind ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... for themselves, but also to their children and children's children, even to the thousandth generation and beyond that. This ought certainly to move and impel us to risk our hearts in all confidence with God, if we wish all temporal and eternal good, since the Supreme Majesty makes such sublime offers and presents such cordial inducements ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... gold ring on her third finger. "He isn't much of an actor, poor dear. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he has been hissed off two-and-thirty stages in Great Britain alone. Indeed, he's the very worst actor I ever saw, although I don't tell him. But as a husband he's sublime." ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... visionary soul shall dwell On joys that were; no more endure to weigh The shame and anguish of the evil day, Wisely forgetful! O'er the ocean swell Sublime of Hope, I seek the cottag'd dell 5 Where Virtue calm with careless step may stray, And dancing to the moonlight roundelay, The wizard Passions weave an holy spell. Eyes that have ach'd with Sorrow! Ye shall weep Tears of doubt-mingled joy, like theirs who start 10 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... I am an author. My book is a romance entitled, The Foundling's Farewell. Of course you have heard of it. It is blood-curdling but sympathetic, romantic but realistic, pathetic and sublime. The passage, for instance, in which the Duke of BARTLEMY repels the advances of the orphan charwoman is—but you have read it, and I need not therefore enlarge further upon it. After it had been published two days, I began ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... managing a theatre should make any distinction on account of race or color. This amendment is above all praise. It was the result of a moral exaltation, such as the world never before had seen. There were years during the war, and after, when the American people were simply sublime; when their generosity was boundless; when they were willing to endure any hardship to make ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... with all his other charms? His contempt for government, as we poor wretches know it, is sublime; and yet he is the safest man I know. The law, he often told me, was like a lie; useful only to scoundrels—torn-down scoundrels, ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... its limits. It has been thought, and I believe with reason, that Michael Angelo sometimes transgressed those limits; and, I think, I have seen figures of him of which it was very difficult to determine whether they were in the highest degree sublime or extremely ridiculous. Such faults may be said to be the ebullitions of genius; but at least he had this merit, that he never was insipid; and whatever passion his works may excite, ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... every dollar received. He said that his "government," when it came in possession of all its territory, would hold him personally responsible for the claims he had surrendered to the provost-marshal. His impudence was so sublime that I was rather amused than indignant. I told him, however, that if he would remain in Memphis I did not believe the Confederate government would ever molest him. He left, no doubt, as much amazed at my assurance as I was at the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... to feel our sturdy little vessel tearing along through this heavy sea—jumping stern up, as the great waves caught her—dashing the water gaily from her bows, at the return dip—and holding on her way as bravely and surely as the largest yacht that ever was built. After a long look at the sublime view around us, my friend and I went below again; and in spite of the noise of wind and sea, managed to fall asleep. The next event was a call from deck at half-past six in the morning, informing us that we were entering Mangerton Bay. ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests; in all time, Calm or convulsed,—in breeze, or gale, or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime Dark-heaving;—boundless, endless, and sublime,— The image of Eternity,—the throne Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee; thou goest forth, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... With the sublime love of woman, conquering all dread, she dropped to her knees and laid her head on the pillow of the couch by the side of that ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... bacchanalian song, or forbid the ribald jest, all sat to listen to and applaud their host's inimitable stories, his grotesque descriptions, his wayward thoughts and fantastic images; to hearken to his close analysis, his robust reasoning, his wondrous pathos, his sublime exaggeration; and, as the wine circulated, to observe yet more his chameleon aspect and Protean character unfold itself; now grovelling like the Paradisal toad, wherein, at the ear of Eve, was hidden the form of Lucifer; now, touched by the Ithuriel ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... lay hold of no worthier theme than that offered by the story of Pele. In this epic we find the natural and the supernatural, the everyday events of nature and the sublime phenomena of nature's wonderland, so interwoven as to make a story rich in strong human and deific coloring. It is true that the genius of the Hawaiian was not equal to the task of assembling the dissevered parts and of combining into artistic unity the materials his own imagination ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... but still in active motion, through little lonely valleys, which, opening on the road from time to time, seemed to invite the traveller to explore their recesses. The Cheviots rose before me in frowning majesty; not, indeed, with the sublime variety of rock and cliff which characterizes mountains of the primary class but huge, round-headed, and clothed with a dark robe of russet, gaining, by their extent and desolate appearance, an influence upon the ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... will you hesitate; still will you do nothing? Will you sit with sublime indifference and allow events to shape themselves? No longer can you say the responsibility is upon the Executive. He has thrown it upon you. He has notified you that he can do nothing; and you therefore know he will do nothing. He has ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... inexorable limit of time. For the full development of his thought, the speeches Lincoln made separately at other places afforded him a freer opportunity. A quotation from his language on one of these occasions is therefore here added, as a better illustration of his style and logic, where his sublime theme carried him into one of ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... Christian art. "By giving to the Virgin's head," says Sir James Tuckett, "a third of the total height of the figure, the old master attracts the spectator's attention and keeps it directed towards the more sublime parts of the human figure, and in particular the eyes, which we ordinarily describe as the spiritual organs. In this picture, colouring and design conspire to produce an ideal and mystical impression. The vermilion of the cheeks does not recall the natural appearance of the skin; ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... stable lantern in his hand and a forage cap on one side of his head, standing a little in advance of a group of grooms and helpers, took a bit of straw out of his mouth, and smiled a smile of sublime scorn and security. "Win, sir? I should be glad to know as when was that ere King ever beat yet; or you either, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... to interpose their mummeries between man and his Creator—it is, probable that such scenes as caused the nations to shudder, throughout so large a portion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries will continue to repeat themselves at intervals in various parts of the earth. Nothing can be more sublime than the self-sacrifice, nothing more demoniac than the crimes, which human creatures have seemed always ready to exhibit ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a hansom cab swept round the corner, its dashing driver smoking a cigar in sublime self-satisfaction, and looking carelessly right and left for a "fare." This exquisite almost ran into the engine! There was a terrific howl from all the firemen; the cabby turned his smart horse with a bound to one side, and lost his cigar in the act—in reference to which misfortune ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... it at its best from the 3rd to the 10th of October (1858), between which dates it was visible near the western horizon just after sunset, the tail extending in a broad curve towards the north, and forming a sublime object. Macedo consulted all the old almanacs in the place to ascertain whether it was the same comet as that of 1811, which ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... Impressionist art is simple. In the beginning of this century the tradition of French art—the tradition of Boucher, Fragonard, and Watteau—had been completely lost; having produced genius, their art died. Ingres is the sublime flower of the classic art which succeeded the art of the palace and the boudoir: further than Ingres it was impossible to go, and his art died. Then the Turners and Constables came to France, and they begot ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... in and around these passes is of the most sublime description. As I should assuredly fail, however, in describing it, I must content myself with a narration of some personal adventures which befel me in an attempt to carry into effect a long cherished determination ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty |
