"Superlative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that he remembered, with its rows upon rows of shelves whereon a whole regiment of bottles and glasses were drawn up in neat array, "dressed" and marshalled as if on parade; it was indeed a place of superlative tidiness where everything seemed to be in a perpetual state of ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
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... the head of them. See Authentic Records, Part II. p. 983, as Josephus could not but know very well; but that he was esteemed as very ancient by them, and that they knew they had been first of all denominated "Danai" from this very ancient king Danaus. Nor does this superlative degree always imply the "most ancient" of all without exception, but is sometimes to be rendered "very ancient" only, as is the case in the like superlative degrees of other ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
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... Race-courses are similar every where, and present the same objects; good horses, cruel riders, knowing men, dupes, jockeys, gamblers, and a large assemblage of mixed company. But this is a gayer scene than most others; and every epithet, appropriate to a course, diminutive or otherwise, must be in the superlative degree when applied to Ascot. This is the general, and often the only impression that most men ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
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... miraculously restored to sight. And, truly with a notable, almost miraculous, speed, the feelings of all Norway for King Olaf changed themselves, and were turned upside down, "within a year," or almost within a day. Superlative example of Extinctus amabitur idem. Not "Olaf the Thick-set" any longer, but "Olaf the Blessed" or Saint, now clearly in Heaven; such the name and character of him from that time to this. Two churches dedicated to him (out of four that once stood) stand in London ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
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... Then she controlled herself and began to put on garment after garment, jewel after jewel, all of superlative magnificence. Every moment she glided to the great mirror; as often she tore off a garment or a jewel, flung it down impatiently, and seized others from her boundless store. At last she stood clad like a fabled ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
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... need of our own nation and of the nations with which we are co-operating is an abundance of supplies, and especially of foodstuffs. The importance of an adequate food-supply, especially for the present year, is superlative. Without abundant food, alike for the armies and the peoples now at war, the whole great enterprise upon which we have embarked will break down and fail. The world's food reserves are low. Not only during the present emergency, but for some time after peace shall have come, both ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
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... are called the national character. Apart from any natural prepossession in my own favour, I believed I was. Still, in every page of this enlightened writer, I find some captivating hypocrisy which has never occurred to me before, or some superlative piece of selfishness to which I was utterly a stranger. I should quite blush for myself before this stupendous creature, if remembering his precepts, one might blush at anything. An amazing man! a nobleman indeed! any King or Queen may make ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
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... conversion—being turned around. Ask Peter what it is and, as he looks back upon his old benighted condition, he cries that it is like coming out of the darkness into a marvelous light. Ask Paul what it is and, with his love of superlative figures, he cries that it is like being dead and being raised again with a great resurrection. Ask John what it is and, with his mystical spirit, he says that it is being born again. See the variety that comes from vitality—no stiff methods, no stiff routine of experience, but throbbing ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
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... own vintage that I offer you; racy, fragrant of the soil, from a cask these hundred years sunk, so that it carries a smack, too, of the submerging brine. You know the old recipe for Wine of Cos, that full-bodied, seignorial, superlative, translunary wine. ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
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... and has been. Look I must do something to make my blood circulate, or I shall furnish a case for the coroner one of these mornings. I want excitement. I have taken up one thing after another, and gone just far enough to understand that there's no hope of reaching what I aimed at—superlative excellence; then the thing began to nauseate me. I'm like poor Jackson, the novelist, who groaned to me once that for fifteen years the reviewers had been describing his books as 'above the average.' In whatever I have ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
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... ratio as he lowered himself, in this public exhibition. Sometimes the party haggled about the price;[23] or the statue, while stepping into his niche, would turn round on the author to assist his invention. A patron of Peter Motteux, dissatisfied with Peter's colder temperament, composed the superlative dedication to himself, and completed the misery of the author by subscribing it with Motteux's name![24] Worse fared it when authors were the unlucky hawkers of their own works; of which I shall give a remarkable instance in MYLES DAVIES, a learned ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
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... transit His mercy shines forth more; and thus said David (Psalm, XLVII, 21) Domini, Domini, exitus mortis; [272] whence that reduplication which the Hebrew grammar calls ohatsere, [273] signifies the superlative in name and action. The same is the declaration of divine wisdom (Proverbs, XX): In viis justitiae ambulo, in medio semitarum judicii, ut ditem diligentes me. [274] The Father celestial summons them for the relief of their burdens, and of the troubles which they have ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
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... always thus met. The highest officer present—General, Colonel, or Commandant—was at every place at our disposition to explain things—and to explain them with that clarity of which the French alone have the secret and of which a superlative example exists in the official report of the earlier phases of the war, offered to the Anglo-Saxon public through Reuter. Automobiles and chauffeurs abounded for our small party of four. Never once at any moment of the day, whether driving furiously along somewhat deteriorated ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
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... knowledge of Chris Blauchard had served in some measure to explain the wonder. Of all women, she was the least likely to do the thing predicted by experience. She had tremendous force of character for one scarce twenty years of age; indeed, she lived a superlative life, and the man, woman, child, or dog that came within radius of her existence presently formed a definite part of it, and was loved or detested according to circumstances. Neutrality she could not understand. If her interests were wide, her prejudices were strong. A certain ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
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... that his title is the only one in the world compounded of greatness and the people in equal measure, is the pith of what the Germans brought to leaven the whole political world. He made the common man so great, that the world has consented to his unique and superlative baptismal title of Karl the Great, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
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... give The measure of love's wisdom with a blow, — Why can we not in turn receive it so, And end this murmur for the life we live? And when we do so frantically strive To win strange faith, why do we shun to know That in love's elemental over-glow God's wholeness gleams with light superlative? ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
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... not infrequently, gatherings of the Feldts at dinner, a noisy good-tempered uproar of a great many voices speaking at once; extraordinary quantities of superlative jewels and dresses of superfine textures; but the latter, Linda thought, were too vivid in pattern or color for the short full maternal figures they often adorned. But no one, it seemed, considered himself ageing or even, in spite of ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
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... are educated to music by his rhythm. Coleridge and Goethe are the only critics who have expressed our convictions with any adequate fidelity: but there is in all cultivated minds a silent appreciation of his superlative power and beauty, which, like Christianity, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
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... to the eyes of the universe, a rotating, gyrating, circumambulating astronomer, an animated teetotum lost in the sky. I saw no reason to hope that I should not go on thus forever, revolving around the sun until my bones, whitening among the stars, might be revealed to the superlative powers of some future telescope, and become a subject of absorbing interest, the topic of many a learned paper for the astronomers of a future age. Afterward I was comforted by the reflection that in airless space, although I might die and my body become desiccated, ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
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... might be well to state, signified the prairie; its melancholy personality having penetrated the very marrow of their train existence, they had come to refer to it by the monosyllable, as in certain nether circles the head of the house receives his superlative distinction in "He." ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
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... obliged to act as we do; I know, too, that we cannot do better; but should we rejoice at the fatal necessity which pushes us on to exert an action comparatively good and which will unavoidably end in a superlative evil?" ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
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... conscience is an inward thing, and none Can govern that aright but God alone. Nor can a well-informed conscience lower Her sails to any temporary power, Or bow to men's decrees; for that would be Treason in a superlative degree; For God alone can laws to conscience give, And that's a badge of His prerogative. This is the controversy of this day Between the holy God and sinful clay. God hath throughout the earth proclaim'd ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
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... transcriber of the record in 1906 has added a very illuminating note, revealing the immutability of the system and showing that the rulers possessed in a superlative degree the Bourbonesque trait of learning nothing and forgetting nothing: "Even when I was a missionary to the heathens from 1882 to 1892, I had occasion to observe the said policy, to inform the chief of the ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
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... wryte in prayse of a gentlewoman, I would neither praise her christal eye, nor her cherrie lippe, etc. For these things are trita et obvia. But I would either find some supernaturall cause whereby my penne might walke in the superlative degree, or els I would undertake to answer for any imperfection that shee hath, and thereupon rayse ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
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... who sprang up from a chair and curtsied fearsomely at the astonishing spectacle of Mr. Prohack, was fat in a superlative degree, and her obesity gave her a middle-aged air to which she probably had no right by the almanac. She looked quite forty, and might well have been not more than thirty. She made a typical London figure of the nondescript industrial class. It is inadequate ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
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... even bring it before the notice of the public. The error of most original people is in being just a trifle too original. It was in his business qualities—and these, after all, are the most essential to success, that Mr. Darwin showed himself so superlative. These are not only the most essential to success, but it is only by blaspheming the world in a way which no good citizen of the world will do, that we can deny them to be the ones which should most command our admiration. We are in the world; ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
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... action—puncture them practically instantaneously, before the absorbers could react. To that end they had arranged their circuits to hurl seven hundred sixty-five thousand kilofranks—the entire power of their massed accumulators and their highest possible cosmic intake—in one tiny bar of superlative density, less than one meter in diameter! Everything ready, Brandon shot in prodigious switches that launched that bolt—a bolt so vehement, so inconceivably intense, that it seemed fairly to blast the very ether out of existence as it tore its way along its carefully predetermined line. The intention ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
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... beauty is in the superlative degree. The king admires and ogles her as much as he dares to do in so holy a ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
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... America have developed an unfortunate tendency to overstate, overdraw, and exaggerate. It seems strange that there should be so strong a temptation to exaggerate in a country where the truth is more wonderful than fiction. The positive is stronger than the superlative, but we ignore this fact in our speech. Indeed, it is really difficult to ascertain the exact truth in America. How many American fortunes are built on misrepresentation that is needless, for nothing else is ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
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... matters, we may as well confess that les Americaines do gown themselves with superlative taste. Our peeresses and visitors from the States know what to wear and how to wear it; they show so much tact in their choice of colors, they put on their gay gowns and hats with such a completeness of touch, and display so much ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
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... friend of mine in London was lately consulted by a lady of quality, of most distinguished merit, what was the best History of England for her son to read. My friend recommended Hume's. But, upon recollecting that its usher was a superlative panegyrick on one, who endeavoured to sap the credit of our holy religion, he revoked his recommendation. I am really sorry for this ostentatious alliance; because I admire The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and value the greatest part of An Inquiry into the Nature ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
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... worshipped her like an idol. As a matter of fact, being quite independent financially, it was not as a paid companion at all that she had lived with her, though she chose to appear in that capacity. And, besides, Hyacinth herself, Anne had, in a most superlative degree, enjoyed the house, her little authority, the way she stood between Hyacinth and all tedious little practical matters. Like many a woman who was a virago at heart, Anne had a perfect passion for ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
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... became a far-reaching club. And, swinging it like a fiercely driven flail, he rushed into the crowd of savages, scattering them like chaff in a gale. The smashing blows fell on heads that split under their superlative force, and the ground about him became like a shambles. In a moment he discovered another figure in the shadowy darkness, fighting in a similar fashion, and he knew by the crude, disjointed oaths which were hurled with each blow, so full of a venomous hate, that Peigan Charley had somehow come to ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
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... a superlative moment in life when one stands on a structure as majestic as this which was at first a mere thought in the brain, which was afterward a plan on the paper, and which has been transported hither, from quarry and mine, from wood-yard and workshop, on ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
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... make-up. Show me a woman howling out her life on my grave, and then I'll believe Bainbridge. But I know all about Bainbridge. I know where he goes the evenings that he doesn't come here. Never mind—I'm silent as the grave. I don't need to tell a man of your superlative acumen what Bainbridge's talk implies. He mustn't talk to me though about woman's constancy and single-heartedness till he's ten years older; let him tell that stuff to Peters and ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
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... The superlative requires that the Christian shall have a body. Without a body the Christian is neither a complete human being nor a perfect son ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
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... japonicas, lay the blue and shining water-lake in its confining banks of green. And upon its softly quivering surface floated the rubber-neck-boat-birds, white and sweetly silent instead of red and screaming—and the superlative length and arched beauty of their necks surpassed the wildest of Ikey Borrachsohn's descriptions. And relying upon the strength and politeness of these wondrous birds there were indeed "mans und ladies und boys und little girls" embarking, disembarking, and placidly ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
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... this, too, by the fact that the present warden would furnish the men with only the same outfit as in summer, the under-clothes they might happen to have on at the time, added. And, in making out this summer suit, he would construe the letter of the law in the superlative degree, which says, "A suit of cheap clothing,"—he obtaining the cheapest, the most miserably poor. To illustrate, a man left prison in one of those suits, and, before walking a mile, was obliged to call and borrow sewing implements to repair them. The day after, another left, and ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
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... the picture of this incomparable tragedian, drawn by one who knew him and who has described his person for us minutely, meaning Antony Aston, in his theatrical pamphlet, called the Brief Supplement? Why it is absolutely this,—"Mr. Betterton," says his truthful panegyrist, "although a superlative good actor, laboured under an ill figure, being clumsily made, having a great head, a short, thick neck, stooped in the shoulders, and had fat, short arms, which he rarely lifted higher than his stomach. He had little eyes and a broad face, a little pock-fretten, a corpulent ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
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... Pilgrim has lost his Note-book, and has been persuaded to offer a reward which shall maintain the happy finder thereof in an asylum for life. Benson—superlative Benson—has turned his shoulders upon Raynham. None know whither he has departed. It is believed that the sole surviving member of the sect of the Shaddock-Dogmatists is under ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
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... [29] brings an object of his arbitrary likes or dislikes under discussion. At such times he is no observer, much less worshipper, of proportion in his delineations. Thorough-paced, scarcely controllable, his enthusiasm for or against admits no degree in its expression, save and except the superlative. Hence Mr. Froude's statement of facts or description of phenomena, whenever his feelings are enlisted either way, must be taken with the proverbial "grain of salt" by all when enjoying the luxury of perusing his books. So complete is ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
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... the morality of that arrangement.' That great Minister my prisoner refers to as 'an uncouth bully who bellowed like a mad bull.' In this respect it is my impression that the ex-Empress indorses his state of mind. What he likes she will place in the superlative; what he merely hates, she elevates to positive abhorrence. In this way she seems to flatter his decisions, which makes him smile quite indulgently at her, and hold her ascendency over his apparently veering mind. I can notice this ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
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... is paralleled by MacDowell's tone-picture. That, for nobility of conception, for majestic solemnity and pathos, is a musical performance which measures up to the level of superlative achievements. ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
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... card with the lines in horizontal position. Point to the lines and say: "See these lines. Look closely and tell me which one is longer. Put your finger on the longest one." We use the superlative as well as the comparative form of long because it is often more familiar to young subjects. If the child does not respond, say: "Show me which line is the biggest." Then withdraw the card, turn it about a few times, and present it again with ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
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... thre degrees: the positive, comparative, and superlative, if the first may be called ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
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... cat to his wife, "See, my dear, The superlative Circus is here! With the children we'll go,—'tis our duty, you know, Their young minds to enlighten ...
— A Book of Cheerful Cats and Other Animated Animals • J. G. Francis
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... her general characteristics of mind and body were ever subjected to such minute analysis as is exemplified in the present instance. Hands and feet, hair, eyes, ears, nose, and throat—all are depicted in most glowing and appreciative fashion; and, from the superlative degree of the adjectives, she must indeed have been fair to look upon and possessed of a great compelling charm. But from her lovely mouth—la bella bocca angelica, as he calls it—there never came ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
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... that he took the world quietly, and his doing so undoubtedly had important bearings on his style. We give another anecdote, which illustrates this peculiarity of his mind as well as the superlative folly of duelling. Not long after his marriage, with all his indifference to his wife, he was persuaded into a fit of singular jealousy. He was intimate with an ex-captain of dragoons, by name Poignant, who had retired to Chateau-Thierry; a frank, open-hearted man, but of extremely ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
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... field, did not know when they were beaten, whereas Wellington knew precisely when he was not beaten. The unbluffable would have triumphed anyhow, probably, because Napoleon was an academic soldier, doing the academic thing (the attack in columns and so forth) with superlative ability and energy; whilst Wellington was an original soldier who, instead of outdoing the terrible academic columns with still more terrible and academic columns, outwitted them with the thin red line, not of heroes, but, as this uncompromising realist ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
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... life, in plant and animal, flow side by side, but under the guidance of different laws. The problems of vegetable life are, it must be said, extremely obscure, and for the penetrating of that darkness we have long had to wait for instruments of a superlative sensitiveness. This has been the principal reason for our long clinging to mere theory, instead of looking for the demonstration of facts. But to learn the truth we have to put aside theories, and rely only on direct experiment. We have to abandon all our preconceptions, ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
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... satisfaction for a time of claiming the tallest structure in the world; and now that the new Tower of Babel which has sprung up in Paris has killed that pretention, I think we shall feel and speak more modestly about our stone hyperbole, our materialization of the American love of the superlative. We have the higher civilization among us, and we must try to keep down the forth-putting instincts of the lower. We do not want to see our national monument placarded as "the greatest show on earth,"—perhaps it is well that it is taken down ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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... and not once, but a score of times. The brocades that I promised to show you after supper will be my witness. And there are some superlative satin and silk lengths which my Lady Rayne wished particularly to see. Will ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
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... with her. I am still of the opinion that their admirable system of government, social and political, and their encouragement and provision for universal culture of so high an order, had more to do with the formation of superlative character than the elimination of ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
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... with them, we know no reason why any one else should; and I think Mrs. Bogus merits well of the republic, for doing what she can do towards the hospitalities of the season. I'm sure I never cursed her in my heart, even when her strong coffee has held mine eyes open till morning, and her superlative lobster-salads have given me the very darkest views of human life that ever dyspepsia and east wind could engender. Mrs. Bogus is the Eve who offers the apple; but, after all, I am the foolish Adam who take and eat what I know is going to hurt me, and I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
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... picture-gazing this morning at the famous Domenichino and Guido, both of which are superlative. I afterwards went to the beautiful cemetery of Bologna, beyond the walls, and found, besides the superb burial-ground, an original of a Custode, who reminded me of the grave-digger in Hamlet. He has a collection of capuchins' skulls, labelled on the forehead, and taking ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
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... greatest mathematician of antiquity, a man of superlative inventive power, well skilled in all the mechanical arts and sciences of the day. When Syracuse was taken by the Romans, he was unconscious of the fact, and slain, while busy on some problem, by a Roman ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
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... from England the year before, and had expended the whole of it in making electric light in Cetinje and building a Government house of superlative ugliness, and so vast that it seemed obviously intended to administer a much larger ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
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... the contrary, I think it has assisted it. Every neighbourhood loves to have a mystery of its own, and we, you must confess, have got a superlative one. The man has been found scrupulously honest, regular, and exact in his dealings; and were we to lose him now, and get a mere common-place person to succeed him, half the housewives of Walworth would perish of inanition. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
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... owe her two letters, and where to find a beau sentiment, I cannot tell! I believe I may have some by me in an old chest of draws, with some exploded red-heel shoes and full-bottom wigs; but they would come out so yellow and moth-eaten! Do bow to her, in every superlative degree in the language, that my eyes have been so bad, that as I wrote you word, over and over, I have not been able to write a line. That will move her, when she hears what melancholy descriptions I write, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
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... kinship drew him to Schiller, whose splendor of imagery and impassioned rhetoric were the very gifts which he himself in a superlative degree possessed. The breath of political and religious liberalism which pervades the writings of the German poet was also highly congenial to Tegner, and last, but not least, they were both light-loving, beauty-worshipping ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
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... somewhat dull, whilst, again, his harem, from the presence of numerous adult daughters, would be increased to an extent that might have overtaxed his once more active powers. Given some such rather exceptional situation, where a happy opportunity in superlative mother love wrestled with a for once satiated paternal appetite in desire, we may here discern a possible key of the sociological problem which occupies us, and which consisted in a conjunction within one ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
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... in everything else, sir, there is to be found the superlative, the quintessence,—the ideal. Consequently I have roamed East and West, and North and South, in quest ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
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... I'm bound to say, I regard your claim to the possession of good taste as completely established.... 'Ware the horse, there! Look out! look out!" His eyes had followed the tall figure of the Mother-Superior, moving with the superlative grace and ease that comes of perfect physical proportion, carrying the black nun's robes, wearing the flowing veil of the nun with the dignity of an ideal queen. And the next instant, his charger, held with some others by a mounted orderly before the gates, and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
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... opinion, as well as in that of the sultan, remained an unusual time in office, by an accusation enforced by a thousand purses of gold, he was enabled to produce a bowstring for his benefactor; and the sultan's "firman" appointed him to the vacant pachalik. His qualifications for office were all superlative: he was very short, very corpulent, very illiterate, very irascible, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
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... portly proportions, who, at some other period, may have walked. Despite his dimensions, he was agile and graceful in his sweeping salaams; when he spoke he emphasized every word with an appropriate sweep of the arm, and his eyebrows arched and his eyes bulged in superlative, ecstatic moments. The tassel of his tarboosh, a little red inverted flowerpot capping the summit, gyrated violently in moments of excitement. Altogether he was a mighty person. Perceiving this, the five great ones from ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
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... Jesus!" They spat on the ground to relieve the intensity of their contempt. "Who was He? A peasant! a Galilean! Nazareth!" Nazareth was put in as a sort of superlative degree of contempt. Of course, they could easily have found out about the lineage of Jesus. In the best meaning of the word, Jesus was an aristocrat. Apart from its philological derivation that word means one who traces his lineage back through a worthy line for a long way, and so one who has ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
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... than pure delight. He understood the ancient gods and their laughter; he smiled down with them upon the fret of the world and mortal fate. Father Jove, optimus maximus, was a grand fellow, a good Catholic in spite of misconception, and certainly immortal; god and gentleman both, large, lusty, superlative, tolerant, debonair. As for misconception, from this height Father Jove could overlook centuries of it at ease—the Middle Ages, for instance. Everyone had been more or less cracked in the Middle Ages—cracked as fiddles. Likely enough Jove had ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
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... indescribable mess, and by the mass of material left littered about, the enemy must indeed have beat a hasty retreat. The dug-outs were filthy to the last degree, and there was no sign of any system of sanitation having been used by these people, who (p. 062) considered their "Kultur" to be superlative, and who desired to impose it on the rest of mankind. All through the campaign, whenever one had the opportunity of inspecting hostile trenches and billets, one always found the same thing, filth and lack ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
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... shot. I went to the Bank on my own business, mind that. Ha! you know me by this time; I loathe spying; the thing jumped out of the book; I couldn't help seeing. Now I don't reckon how many positive fools go to make one superlative humbug; you're one of the lot, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
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... Spanish countries the mental activity of the people is principally manifested in an exuberant imagination which finds expression in superlative and poetical language. If there were any corresponding creative genius and executive ability in material affairs such a fertile and well-watered land as Puerto Rico would be the home of one of the richest communities on the globe. By her ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
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... will be one of great honor. The special honor, therefore, of the church is that of being the glorious bride or associate of the Lord Jesus, the King of glory. His recognition of her station as his own wife pictures the superlative degree of her honor and glory. Jesus said: "Father, I will ... that they be with me where I ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
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... Paris. Their figures have the last "look" and their jewels are simply divine. With all this beyond criticism, it is very difficult to say whether they are beautiful or not, naturally; the general effect is so perfect. They, as far as grooming and superlative "turnedoutness" is concerned (I had to make a new word), are the counterpart ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
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... Carter was invited to admire, and so on to a score of topics. The first thing was to make Carter think and talk, which he did in the happy-go-lucky way of his class, uttering nine mighty simple remarks, and then a bit of superlative wisdom, or something that sounded like it. And when he had shot his random bolts, Mr. Eden would begin and treat each picture as a text, and utter much wisdom on it ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
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... of my maisteris dere, Gowere and Chaucere, that on the steppis satt Of rethorike quhill thai were lyvand here, Superlative as poetis laureate, In moralitee and eloquence ornate, I recommend my buk in lynis sevin, And eke thair soulis un-to the ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
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... The superlative merits of Signora Ristori are so well known in America that the mere mention of her name is sure to recall some of the most delightful evenings ever spent by many of my readers. Her genius and beauty, her majesty and glorious method of declamation, have won her a foremost ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
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... returned from a lecturing-tour in the United States, and were much amused with her experiences. Having taken prolonged trips over the whole country from Maine to Texas for many successive years, Miss Anthony and I could easily add the superlative to all her narrations. She dined with us one day at Mrs. Mellen's, where we also had the pleasure of meeting Miss Jane Cobden, a daughter of the great Corn-law reformer, who was much interested in forming Liberal leagues, to encourage the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
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... understanding how the senses act, then there is no room for 'I' (soul) or ground for framing it; then all the accumulated mass of sorrow, sorrows born from life and death, being recognized as attributes of body, and as this body is not 'I,' nor offers ground for 'I,' then comes the great superlative, the source of peace unending. This thought of 'self' gives rise to all these sorrows, binding as with cords the world, but having found there is no 'I' that can be bound, then all these bonds are severed. There are no bonds ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
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... she breathed deeply in relief. "I knew you wouldn't fail me. Look at that field, Phares—oh, this is a perfect day! There should be a superlative form of perfect for a day like this! Those fields have as many colors as the shades reflected on a copper plate: lilac, tan, purple, rose, green ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
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... Fett in my ear, "and the books say that the feudal system is dead in England! Why, here's the very flower of it! Damme, though, the old gentleman is splendid; superlative, sir; it's ten to one against Coriolanus, and no takers. Between ourselves, Coriolanus was a pretty fellow, but talked too much. Phocion, sir? Did I hear you ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
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... that within which unspeakably distinguishes him from all other past and present Sansculottists. The grand unparalleled peculiarity of Teufelsdroeckh is, that with all this Descendentalism, he combines a Transcendentalism, no less superlative; whereby if on the one hand he degrade man below most animals, except those jacketed Gouda Cows, he, on the other, exalts him beyond the visible Heavens, almost to an equality ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
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... concerned, but in the comparison of adjectives and in the use of the cases it steadily made headway, and ultimately triumphed over the synthetical principle. The method adopted by literary Latin of indicating the comparative and the superlative degrees of an adjective, by adding the endings -ior and -issimus respectively, succumbed in the end to the practice of prefixing plus or magis and maxime to the positive form. To take another illustration of the same characteristic ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
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... at twelve. Algy was therefore in despair—for Algy was proud of his art. He still had good red beans, most excellent coffee, corn-fed bacon, the best of bread and butter, a hunger-inspiring stew of lamb, white potatoes, fine apple sauce, and superlative gingerbread on hand in great abundance, however, but in spite of ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
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... one can blame you or quarrel with you; all that any one can do is to invite you to read again, and, perhaps through his eloquence, seek to inspire you with—his own enthusiasm. Every work of art is superlative. Just as the lover thinks his sweetheart the most beautiful woman in the world, so he who appreciates a work of art finds it supreme. And among superlatives there is no comparison, no ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
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... like. It's really the art of imposing one's will upon someone else's, of making that other person see things as you want them to see them—not as they really are. It's the power of deception carried to a superlative degree. And when that power is exhausted, the ticket may be said to have expired—and the prisoner returns to the dungeon. Sometimes he takes the other person with him. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
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... nearer to being angry with Tanno than I had ever been in our lives. I comprehended why he, with all his superlative equipment of tact and intuition, had blundered; he could not but assume that circumstances were as they should have been rather than as they were; yet the blunder was, in a sense, unforgivable, and had created a social situation than which ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
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... Grandma talk or read, with such an ear And memory of both subject and big words, That he would take the book up afterwards And feign to "read aloud," with such success As caused his truthful elders real distress. But he must have big words—they seemed to give Extremer range to the superlative— That was his passion. "My Gran'ma," he said, One evening, after listening as she read Some heavy old historical review— With copious explanations thereunto Drawn out by his inquiring turn of mind,— "My Gran'ma she's read all ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
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... sentence was never finished. As the gloves fell open in his grasp he uttered a sudden, sharp ejaculation and I a smothered shriek. An object of superlative brilliancy had rolled out from them. The diamond! the gem which men said was worth a king's ransom, and which we all knew had just ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
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... to repair the streets of your towns, the public roads, and lighten the burden of taxation, by saying to men-stealers, we will allow you to sell your cargoes of slaves into this colony provided you share the spoils of your superlative crime! No, they had to tell the people that the introduction of Negro slaves, upon whom there was a tax, would entice sober and industrious white people to come among them, and would quicken the entire Province with a spirit of thrift never ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
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... things are dark and impossible of explanation, but we have already been taught a few lessons of superlative importance. We have learned that the soul is made for the light; that it can be satisfied only with love and truth; that every hindrance may be overcome; that the animal was made to be the servant of the spirit; that the body ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
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... that it was Jewdwine's coldness that preserved his incorruptibility; but he had so sincere a desire for purity in their relations, that he had submitted without resentment to the freezing process that ensured it. He had in reserve his expectation of the day when, by some superlative achievement, he would take that soul, hitherto invincible, by storm. But now, in his inmost heart he ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
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... of the finely elaborated execution, and also of the inward perfection of vacancy,—and, to say truth, with considerable impatience at being treated so very like infants, though the lollipops were so superlative. We gladly changed for one Emerson's English Traits; and read that, with increasing and ever increasing satisfaction every evening; blessing Heaven that there were still Books for grown-up people too! That truly is a Book all full of thoughts like winged ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
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... very considerable number ... of enlightened inhabitants, convinced of his integrity as a man, sincerity as a preacher, and superlative merit as a philosopher, were ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
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... for me to come into the dining-room just yet, but for fear my absence should cause you any inconvenience, I gave over my own pleasure: permit me, however, to finish my game." A slave followed with a terebinth table and crystal dice, and I noted one piece of luxury that was superlative; for instead of black and white pieces, he used gold and silver coins. He kept up a continual flow of various coarse expressions. We were still dallying with the relishes when a tray was brought in, on which was a basket containing a wooden hen with her wings rounded ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
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... growing surly, and the poor, worn-out horses were so stiff that they could barely travel any longer. The village, however, was only a few miles off, so that they were not more than an hour in reaching a miserable hovel, at the door of which was a man in the superlative degree of astonishment. He, at least, had never heard of Louvois and Louvois's orders, so that, for the promise of a gold-piece, he was easily induced to receive the desponding party. But his only bed was of straw, and he feared their excellencies would ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
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... noticed or more truly benefited by such a period of close contact with people who ought by experience and knowledge to know better than he. The only thing that is probable is a falling-off, not an advance. I think it highly doubtful whether a ploughman from Ayrshire, however superlative his genius, would now be received at all in "the best houses" and by the first men and women in Edinburgh; and if not in Edinburgh, surely nowhere else would such a reception as that given to Burns await the untutored ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
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... labor, with a public which frequently follows only certain morbid impressions, with connoisseurs who make him restless, with auctioneers who receive every new work with praise and estimates of value such as would fitly honor the most superlative production. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
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... of a classic." Most certainly; but not necessarily to that of a poetical classic. Jeffrey thought him "original and powerful." Granted; but there are plenty of original and powerful writers who are not poets. Wilson gave him the superlative for "original and vivid painting." Perhaps; but is Hogarth a poet? Jane Austen "thought she could have married him." She had not read his biography; but even if she had would that prove him to be a poet? Lord Tennyson is said to single out the ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
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... high: in the first or ground floor, are the shops; in the second, the merchants have their warehouses; and in the third, they usually live with their families. Those three different regions, sorry am I to say it, are all very dirty; indeed they may be said to be the positive, comparative, and superlative degrees of uncleanness. There are no glazed sashes in the windows, so that when it rains, and the shutters are closed, you are involved in utter darkness. The furniture is miserably scanty—some old fashioned, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
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... only to follow the history of these Semitic names in order to see that, in spite of their superlative meaning, they proved no stronger bulwark against polytheism than the Latin Optimus Maximus. The very names which we saw explained before as meaning the Highest, the Lord, the Master, are represented in the Phenician mythology as standing ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
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... is easy to understand why this first city venture of the budding author is always successful. He is primed by necessity to a superlative effort; mid the iron and stone and marble of the roaring city he has found this spot of singing birds and green grass and trees; every tender sentiment in his nature is baffling with the sweet pain of homesickness; his genius is aroused as it never may be ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
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... The whole idea is nothing less than atrocious; and, in our judgment, the Adapter's actual purpose in putting it forth is to make his own superlative goodness seem proved ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
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... the poor. In every case he would, if he had the power, visit every fault committed by them with the severest penalty awarded by the law. He was a stern, hard, cruel man, with no sympathy for any one, and was actuated by the most superlative contempt for the poor, from whom he drew his whole income. He was a clever, clear-headed, avaricious man; and he knew that the only means of keeping the peasantry in their present utterly helpless and dependent state, was to ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
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... income of two thousand francs, to allow himself the otium cum dignitate of the artist and paint pictures; but oh! what pictures! true pictures! each a finished picture! chouette, Koxnoff, chocnosoff! His future, his dreams of happiness, the superlative of his hopes—do you know what it was? To enter the Institute and obtain the grade of officer of the Legion of honor; to side down beside Schinner and Leon de Lora, to reach the Academy before Bridau, to wear a rosette ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
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... and lips. The flatterer is blear-eyed to ill, and cannot see vices; and his tongue walks ever in one track of unjust praises, and can no more tell how to discommend than to speak true. His speeches are full of wondering interjections, and all his titles are superlative, and both of them seldom ever but in presence. His base mind is well matched with a mercenary tongue, which is a willing slave to another man's ear; neither regardeth he how true, but how pleasing. His art is nothing but delightful cozenage, whose rules are smoothing and guarded with perjury; ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
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... speeches of universally acknowledged excellence, to revive public interest in the great body of his works. In the task of selection, it has been impossible to do full justice to his powers; for among the speeches omitted in this collection are to be found passages of superlative eloquence, maxims of political and moral wisdom which might be taken as mottoes for elaborate treatises on the philosophy of law and legislation, and important facts and principles which no student of history of the United States can overlook without betraying an ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
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... had two sons"—so begins the best and most famous story in the world's literature. Use of the absolute superlative is always dangerous, but none will gainsay that statement, I am sure. This story, which follows that familiar tale afar off, indeed, begins in the same way. And the parallelism between the two is exact up to a certain point. What difference a little point doth make; ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
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... endowed, slendidly equipped, and in the present enjoyment of freedom that is without bounds, and in a secrecy that to-day is as complete as can be imagined. What can he learn with certainty of what goes on within? If he hears claims of superlative gains by the experiments there carried on, how is he to weigh and decide their value? If there is cruelty behind those barred doors, how is he to prevent its constant recurrence? What, in short, should be the reasonable attitude of every intelligent ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
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... Highnesses ought to rejoice that they will soon become Christians, and that they will be taught the good customs of your kingdom. A better race there cannot be, and both the people and the lands are in such quantity that I know not how to write it. I have spoken in the superlative degree of the country and people of Juana which they call Cuba, but there is as much difference between them and this island and people as between day and night. I believe that no one who should see them could say less than I have said, and I repeat that the things and the ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
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... condensed moisture of the atmosphere, spiders hung their festooned network overhead, and cockroaches and ants, those domesticated pests of South Carolina, were running about the floor in swarms, and holding all legal rights to rations in superlative contempt. Two small apertures in the wall, about fourteen inches square, and double-barred with heavy flat iron, served to admit light and air. The reader may thus judge of its gloomy appearance, and what a miserable unhealthy ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
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... finite powers to compass the most stupendous designs in spite of physical or moral obstacles; submitting to every privation, braving danger and death, often even defying omnipotence, and all for the sake of some speculative tenet, some doubtful advantage, the post of honour burdened by superlative responsibility, or the eminence of power attended with perpetual care, is an object no less interesting to the philosopher, than it is miraculous to the peasant, who places enjoyment in ease and animal indulgence. It is on the motives ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
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... over seventy years of age. He was a rough diamond, kindly in his judgments unless his feeling of justice was injured; then he was implacable. Many sayings of his were current, among them a dry answer to a senator from Texas who, having dwelt in high- flown discourse on the superlative characteristics of the State he represented, wound up all by saying, "All that Texas needs to make it a paradise is water and good society,'' to which Wade instantly replied, "That 's all they need in hell.'' The nimbleness and ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
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... about anything, and he hides his genuine nature behind a cloud of slang. He belittles everything he touches, he is afraid to utter a word from his inner heart, and his talk becomes a mere dropping shower of verbal counters which ring hollow. The superlative degree is abhorrent to him unless he can misuse it for comic purposes; and, like the ridiculous dummy lord in "Nicholas Nickleby," he is quite capable of calling Shakespeare a "very clayver man." I have ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
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... to come. At the end of the year Leonetta had returned; and, if it is possible to imagine the superlative surpassed, certainly Leonetta's appearance on her return, her increased vivacity, her perfect command of French, her new tricks with her hair and clothes, utterly eclipsed the Leonetta who had left her Kensington home a ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
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... rope, almost like silk, and finished off with fancy knots; and at the beginning of the gangway, on the dirty quay, lay a beautiful mat bearing the name of the goddess, while at the end, on the pale, smooth deck, was another similar mat. The obvious costliness of that gangway and those superlative mats made Audrey feel poor, in spite of her ten million francs. And the next thing that impressed her was that immediately she got down on deck the yacht, in a very mysterious manner, had grown larger, and much larger. At the forward extremity of the deck certain blue figures lounging ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
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... heavy British hand there,' Sarrasin thought, recalling his many memories of many lands and races. He lay with his right arm thrown carelessly over the coverlets, and his left arm hidden. Given any assassin who is not of superlative quality, he will be on his guard as to the disclosed right arm, and will not trouble himself about the hidden left. The door opened. Somebody came gliding in. The somebody was breathing too heavily. 'A poor show of an assassin,' Sarrasin could ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
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... recommend it, which gives it precedence before everything else in education; and though this is saying a great deal, I shall endeavour to demonstrate that it is perfectly true. I have already shown that Cookery is of superlative benefit, both in ensuring health and in acting as a preventive against habits of intemperance. But it is as a medium for training that Cookery is at its very best; for it is in reality an art; indeed, it is a master art. At the same time, also, it is a science—the science of ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
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... of the Indian mind, his friendship and confidence must not suffer eclipse. It is a superlative task, for the inner Indian shrine is crossed by only a favoured few. The Indian is averse to being photographed, for he feels that every picture made of himself by so much shortens his life. He looks at his portrait, then feels of his person; he realizes ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
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... mind that can trade in corruption, and can deliberately pollute itself with ideal wickedness for the sake of spreading the contagion in society, I wish not to conceal or excuse the depravity. Such degradation of the dignity of genius, such abuse of superlative abilities, cannot be contemplated but with grief and indignation. What consolation can be had Dryden has afforded by living to repent, and to testify his repentance.' Johnson's Works, vii. 293. He quotes Congreve, and of Congreve he says: 'It is acknowledged, with universal ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
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... charm for the romantic Irish strain in her blood. The prospect of securing both entertainment and mystery at the modest expenditure of fifteen dollars a week impressed her as very good business, for she combined in the superlative degree the opposite qualities of romance and economy. To be sure, except for the advertisement she afforded and the gossip she provided, young Mrs. Fowler might not prove to be worth even her modest salary; but ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
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... Superficial suprajxa. Superficies suprajxo. Superfluity superfluo. Superfluous superflua. Superhuman superhoma. Superintend observi, zorgi pri. Superior supera. Superior, a superulo. Superiority supereco. Superlative (gram.) superlativo. Supernatural supernatura. Supernumerary ekstrulo. Superscription surskribo. Supersede anstatauxi. Superstition supersticxo. Superstitious supersticxa. Supervise ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
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... supper bolted to his room and began to scrub for the superlative toilette, after collecting a pair of kid gloves from Butcher Stevens and a purple tie from Dennis de Brian de Boru, Snorky Green was finally convinced that matters had reached a ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
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... tenor. But for your stupidity and sottishness you might have known, by attending to the public gazette, that you had your full quantity of ten thousand acres of land allowed you. But suppose you had really fallen short, do you think your superlative merit entitles you to greater indulgence than others?... All my concern is that I ever engaged in behalf of so ungrateful a fellow as you are." The writer of this letter, be it said in passing, was the man whom Mr. Weems and others tell us was knocked down before his soldiers, ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
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... United States Congress a few years ago, as one of the members for New York, but resigned his seat after holding it only a year—probably feeling outraged by the manners and morals, not to say superlative wickedness, of so many of his associates. Whatever may have been the cause which induced him to resign, he did well to give up his post. Nature had evidently not set him to the work. Of great ability, winning eloquence, and undoubted moral courage, his heart and temper were too ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
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... hymis of my maisteris dere, Gowere and Chaucere, that on steppis satt Of rhetorick, quhill thai war lyvand here, Superlative as poets laureate, In moralitee and eloquence ornate, I recommend my buik in lynis seven, And eke their saulis unto the blisse ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
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... d'Indy. His music is "psychologically subtle and spiritually rarefied: in colour it corresponds to the violet end of the spectrum." I turned the pages until I came to the name of Miss Gena Branscombe: "Inexhaustible buoyancy, a superlative emotional wealth, and wholly singular gift of musical intuition are the qualities which have shaped the composer's musical personality (without much effort of the imagination we might say that they are the qualities that shaped Beethoven's ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
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... all the merit of the hymn of Cleanthes to Jupiter, which you ascribe to it. It is as highly sublime as a chaste and correct imagination can permit itself to go. Yet in the contemplation of a being so superlative, the hyperbolic flights of the Psalmist may often be followed with approbation, even with rapture; and I have no hesitation in giving him the palm over all the hymnists of every language, and of every time. Turn to the 148th psalm in Brady and Tate's version. Have such ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
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... she, "you are pale and tired." And she began to use ornaments; took her bracelets out of her bag, and picked pearls out of her walls, and made a coronet, under which her eyes flashed at night with superlative beauty—conscious beauty brightened by the sense of being admired and looked at by the ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
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... not much given to metrical adventure, although one of her most original poems, As I Drank Tea Today, has an irregular rime-scheme. For the most part, she follows both in subject and style the poetic tradition. She has the gift of song—not indeed in the superlative degree—but nevertheless unmistakable; and she has a full mind. She is neither optimist nor pessimist; I should call her a sympathetic observer. The following poem sums up fairly ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
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... which followed so swiftly Darrell was in a sort of waking dream, a state of superlative happiness, unmarred as yet by phantoms from the shrouded past or misgivings as to the dim, uncertain future; past and future were for the time alike forgotten. One image dominated his mind,—the form and face of the fair ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
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... as if they meant to smile, but just because they could not help it, driven by the sweetness of the soul that lay behind them to betray its secret unawares. And the perfect oval of the outline of her face was lifted, so to say, into the superlative degree of soft fascination by a faint suggestion of the round ripeness of a fruit in its bloom, as if the Creator, by some magical extra touch of his chisel, had wished to exclaim: See how the full loveliness of a woman surpasses ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
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... platform; and from there the grounds are spread before the visitor in a perfect panorama. The paved avenues, all leading to the magnificent pile, miles of marble acqueducts filled with ornamental fish, playing fountains—all breathe the superlative of art, every fluttering ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
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... uneventful life. And then into this Arcadia dropped one day a stranger, with an amazing experience of the outer world, a kaleidoscopic brain, an extraordinary personal magnetism and a unique combination of driving force and superlative ambition. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
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... came in, and thought how like a sacred picture he looked; this, for her, was superlative praise. Martha's brother was there, ringing the one bell, which gave such a small fugitive sound that it made the white chapel seem like a tinkling bell-wether lost ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
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... Bohemia, was the daughter of James I. She married the Elector Frederick, who was driven from his throne owing to his own misconduct and folly, when his wife was forced to return and live as a pensioner in her native country. She is said to have been gifted in a superlative degree with all that is considered most lovely in a woman's character. On her husband's death in 1632 she went to live at the Hague, where she remained until the Restoration. There is a report that she married William, Earl of Craven, ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
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... her once and for all. She was the sublimation of every dream that his romantic heart had conceived. He felt faint for a moment at the difficulties which bristled between himself and this superlative being, but he was a youthful conqueror, and life had been very amiable to him. He shook courage into his spirit and asked to be presented ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
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... extreme: /adj./ A preferred superlative suffix for many hackish terms. See, for example, 'obscure in the extreme' under {obscure}, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
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... Parliamentary speeches and events, they are often obscure to me till I get them explained; and besides, I do not know several of the satirised heroes even by sight: however, the poetry and wit make amends, for they are superlative. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
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... repeat, how this scene would have ended, when there crossed the threshold a parsonage who came to take a part in the development of the drama. There entered, I say, a woman of twenty to twenty-two years of age, diminutive in body, superlative in audacity and grace. Neat and clean hose and shoes, short, black flounced petticoat, a linked girdle, head-dress or mantilla of fringed taffeta caught together at the nape of her neck, and a corner of it over her shoulder, she passed before my eyes with swaying ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
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... walking, the superlative of the miserable, past the facade of the hotel, when someone sprang out of a cab and spoke to her. And it ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
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... of an ordinary type. To a curious and superlative degree he could appreciate a defeat as well as a triumph. His adventures had been a part of a life in which he had not always expected to win, and in to-night's game he admitted that he had been hopelessly ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
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... at the head; yet this new Teacher spoke of it as having so small a beginning as to be comparable to a mustard seed. To make the illustration more effective He specified that the seed spoken of was "the least of all seeds." This superlative expression was made in a relative sense; for there were and are smaller seeds than the mustard, even among garden plants, among which rue and poppy have been named; but each of these plants is very small in maturity, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
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... removed to Sadler's Wells!! The pyrotechnics of the former have gone on a visit to the hydraulics of the latter, the red fire of Astley's has come in contact with the real water of the Wells, yet, marvel superlative! the unnatural meeting has been successful—there has not been a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
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... descriptions of them superlative follows upon superlative. The cocks of most species are arrayed in scarlet and black; the hens are not a whit less brilliantly attired in yellow and sable. One species lives entirely in the plains, others visit them in the cold weather; the ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
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... the noble Roman, Giovanni Colonna, begins with a promise to tell something of a storm which deserved the title of 'poetic,' and in a degree so superlative that no epithet but 'Homeric' would suffice to do it justice. This exordium is singularly characteristic of Petrarch, who never forgot that he was a literary man, and lost no opportunity of dragging the great names of antiquity into his rhetorical compositions. The catastrophe was ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
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... of vivid descriptions of the South Seas, "Typee," "Omoo," which were perfect of their kind, but still only superlative travel books, distinguished in style but seldom lifting beyond autobiography, began another reminiscent narrative in "Moby Dick." In spite of his profound intellectual growth away from the cool and humorous youth who paddled the Marquesan lake with primitive beauties beside him, he seems ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
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