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Paragon   /pˈɛrəgˌɑn/   Listen
Paragon

noun
1.
An ideal instance; a perfect embodiment of a concept.  Synonyms: beau ideal, idol, perfection.
2.
Model of excellence or perfection of a kind; one having no equal.  Synonyms: apotheosis, ideal, nonesuch, nonpareil, nonsuch, saint.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Paragon" Quotes from Famous Books



... accomplishments; and Sidney, the Bayard of England, "that glorious star, that lively pattern of virtue and the lovely joy of all the learned sort, ... born into the world to show unto our age a sample of ancient virtue." The English paragon of excellence was but thirty-two years old when he was slain at Zutphen, the Italian Phoenix but thirty-one when he was carried off by a fever, and the Scotch prodigy of gifts and attainments was only twenty-two when he was assassinated by his worthless ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... you're rather prejudiced, Bertie. You're such a convinced Londoner yourself that you think every one who lives in the country must be a paragon of virtue, just as people who live in the country suppose their London friends to be given up to wickedness and frivolity. Lots of people have a very ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson

... years, the succession of carefully selected governesses since, the lessons, the food, the dentist, the doctors, the clothes, the amusements,—all had been scrupulously, almost religiously, provided according to the best modern theories. Nothing had been left to chance. Marian should be a paragon, physically and morally. Yet, her mother had to confess, the child bored her,—was a wooden doll! In the scientifically sterilized atmosphere in which she had lived, no vicious germ had been allowed to fasten itself on the young organism, and yet thus far ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... quickly. "You've surprised, shocked and grieved me beyond words, both of you, also made me feel a trifle foolish. My judgment is shaken to the earth. Here I've been holding you up as a kind of paragon, a fossilized Galahad, with a horizon just at your elbows, to find you touring France, faisant l'aimable with a frolicsome ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... the stage of Quebec history just at this time. In 1782 the frigate Albemarle, twenty-eight guns, lay in the harbour, and her brilliant, handsome commander was Horatio Nelson. This paragon of fortune had entered His Majesty's Navy as a child of twelve; at fourteen he was captain's coxswain on the expedition of the Carcass to the North Pole; and now, with an astonishing experience crowded into a life of twenty-four years, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... became the constant adviser in all important affairs; and that she might not be less thoroughly feminine, I am glad to see it recorded that she introduced improved modes of dress and manners among her ladies. The emperor told his priests one day that until he had married this paragon he had not known what marriage meant. But her grandest achievement is yet to be told. The emperor had previously been dissolute, probably from his first pure dream of love having been so cruelly dispelled—who knows?—but Noor Mahal lifted him into higher regions, and made him a better ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... each usually contrives to have some special beauty or some exclusive possession on which a peculiar fame rests. For example, the church of San Georgia Maggiore has some wooden carved-work by a Belgian artist, of surprising beauty. Gli Scalzi is a paragon of elaborate decoration. The church of the Frari, old and Gothic, is full of grand tombs, including those of several doges, that of Titian, and a monument to Canova. The Santa Maria della Salute has a fine collection of pictures over and above ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various

... ways, too, as will be seen from the following quotation from a Colorado writer: "White-headed, grave, and sedate, he seems a very paragon of propriety, and if you appear to be a suitable personage, he will be apt to give you a bit of advice. Becoming confidential, he sputters out a lot of nonsense which causes you to think him a veritable 'whiskey Jack.' Yet, whenever he is disposed, a more bland, mind-your-own-business ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... together again," Kate said. "They'll come together fast enough if they like each other," said Mrs Greenow. "Alice is young still, and they tell me she's as good looking as ever. A girl with her money won't have far to seek for a husband, even if this paragon from Cambridgeshire should not turn ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... The paragon shuffled out. It was bright and sunny in the street, but in Mr. Buffin's heart there was no sunlight. He was not a quick thinker, but he had come quite swiftly to the conclusion that London was no longer the place for him. Sid Marks had been in court chewing ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse

... their loyalty, have received it with shouts of derision and disgust. The flattery of Roman emperors and Roman Popes, if as extravagant, was not so personal. Even Louis XIV. was not celebrated in his dreary old age, as a model of ideal beauty and a paragon of romantic perfection. It was no worship of a secluded and distant object of loyalty: the men who thus flattered knew perfectly well, often by painful experience, what Elizabeth was: able, indeed, high-spirited, successful, but ungrateful to her servants, capricious, vain, ill-tempered, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... father, striking his broad chest, cried again and again, with rapturous delight, "A paragon of a woman!" and Seitz Siebenburg, in bitter disappointment, whispered, "The fourteen saintly helpers in time of need might learn from you how to draw from the clamps what is not worth rescue and probably despaired ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... This paragon of valleys burst upon us as such scenes, to be witnessed with advantage, ought to do, without the slightest warning or expectation. The road by which we approached it, being completely shut in with wood, ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... captain held a seat in the House of Commons and that he voted with the ministry; and further, that his vote might, when required, be forthcoming, the frigate was never sea-going, except during the recess. It must be admitted that H.M. ship Paragon did occasionally get under weigh and remain cruising in sight of land for two or three days, until the steward reported that the milk provided for the captain's table was turning sour; upon which important information the helm was ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat

... to ride and hunt with that then just dawning demigod of American boyhood,—Buffalo Bill? Sneer and scoff and cavil as did their little rivals for a time, calumny was crushed and scoffers blighted that wonderful March morning when, before the whole assembled school, there suddenly appeared that paragon of plainsmen, that idol of all well-bred young Westerners, he whom only on flaring posters or in the glare of the footlights had they been permitted to see, and smiling, superbly handsome, king of scouts and Indian-fighters, Buffalo Bill himself stepped ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... like model young men," answered Sara impatiently. "And I really think I hate Lige Baxter. He has always been held up to me as such a paragon. I'm tired of hearing about all his perfections. I know them all off by heart. He doesn't drink, he doesn't smoke, he doesn't steal, he doesn't tell fibs, he never loses his temper, he doesn't swear, and he goes to church regularly. Such a faultless creature as that would certainly get on my ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Here in a week, you have made me more popular than I made myself since my accession. In court, in camp, in council, men are pleased to call you paragon." ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... by the 5.40 p.m. train, reaching their destination a little before eleven. There they took rooms at the George, a quiet hotel in Baker Street, close to the Paragon Station. ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... ago I entered the employ of Stephen Steel, the New York banker. He is a man whom the people of the city and the country at large look upon as a paragon. His words are constantly quoted in the papers; his advice is sought by ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... Youghal, who was wrapped up in her servants, began talking at houses where she called of her paragon among saises—the man who was never too busy to get up in the morning and pick flowers for the breakfast-table, and who blacked—actually BLACKED—the hoofs of his horse like a London coachman! The turnout of Miss Youghal's ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... length to that desert coast. He it was that had extended to us the ghost of a chance. He who so recently had been but one of forty in the groom's luxurious employ; a polisher of brass, a holy-stoner of decks, a wage-earning paragon who was not permitted to think, was now a thinker and a strategist, a wage-taker from no man, and the obvious master of ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... castles; some one must needs inhabit them. Some paragon of refinement and of beauty will one day appear, for whose tripping feet his wealth will lay down a path of pearls and gold. The lonely, star-lit nights at sea encourage such phantasms; and the break of the waves upon the bow, with their myriad ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... held the whip hand because a king cannot produce princes without his wife, while the wife can produce princes without the king; besides Frederick Augustus was no paragon, and he who plants horns, must not ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer

... every degree are shown by history, usually tho not always, to make for the monistic view. This is no proper occasion to enter upon the general subject of mysticism, but I will quote one mystical pronouncement to show just what I mean. The paragon of all monistic systems is the Vedanta philosophy of Hindostan, and the paragon of Vedantist missionaries was the late Swami Vivekananda who visited our shores some years ago. The method of Vedantism is the mystical method. You do not reason, but after going through ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... truth! For his wife Anna, who was endowed with invaluable virtues, which made her a model among wives and a paragon among mothers, had not been equally endowed physically, for, in one word, she was hideous. Her hair, which was coarse though it was thin, was the color of the national half-and-half, but of thick half-and-half which looked as if it had been already swallowed several times, and her ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... reminded me of yourself. In fact, it was your likeness to yourself that created the first emotion in my widowed heart. Had I fallen in love with anybody else, my dearest Nina, you might have cause for anger; but I assert, to fall in love with my own wife proves me a paragon ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... them hastily, without taking good and disinterested opinion as to their value. They often dispose of treasures worth thousands, for a ten pound note, and take pride in the bargain. Here, let history mention with due honour the paragon of her sex and the pattern to all wives of book-collecting men— Madame Fertiault. It is thus that she addresses her lord in a charming triolet ("Les Amoureux du Livre," ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... distinguished for his proficiency in the arts. Among other extraordinary productions he formed a man of clay, of such exquisite workmanship, as to have wanted nothing but a living soul to cause him to be acknowledged as the paragon of the world. Minerva beheld the performance of Prometheus with approbation, and offered him her assistance. She conducted him to heaven, where he watched his opportunity to carry off on the tip of his wand a portion of celestial fire from the chariot ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... in your opinion, be a paragon either of beauty or virtue. Now, as you have given up the last, you must uphold her charms unequalled, and her person without a parallel." "I do, I do uphold she will sail upon a parallel as well as e'er a frigate that was rigged ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... more than likely already to have begun a big affair of friendship with somebody. She will get so thick with that one that she will have no time for anyone else; and then she will find out the person is not the paragon she had imagined and come weeping back to me," said Molly, throwing her arm around Elise and giving her a ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... act again. She has always been an enigma to the majority of the show people. Never any trumpets, jewelry, petty squabbles, lime-lights, and silks; she never read criticisms, save those I sent her. Managers had to knock on her dressing-room door. Oh, I do not say that she is an absolute paragon, but I do say that she is a good woman, of high ideals, loyal, generous, frank, and honest. And I have often wondered why the devil I couldn't fall in love ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... eagerness—the elder ones of the party with a certain air of quiet pleasure, as though they knew more than they said, and the younger with all the childish exuberance of youthful delight. Clara Mourtray seemed to be, from all I was hourly hearing, the very paragon and pattern of every thing. If any one was praised for beauty, Clara was immediately pronounced much prettier—did any one sing, Clara's voice and taste were far superior. In our homeward walk, should ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... into a curtain'd room, Where mournful glimmers of the mellow sun Lie dreaming on the walls! Dim-eyed and sad, And dumb with agony, two parents bend O'er a pale image, in the coffin laid,— Their infant once, the laughing, leaping boy, The paragon and nursling of their souls! Death touch'd him, and the life-glow fled away, Swift as a gay hour's fancy; fresh and cold As winter's shadow, with his eye-lids seal'd, Like violet-lips at eve, he lies enrobed An offering to the grave! but, pure ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various

... the Disposals Board in disposing of the accumulations at Slough, St. Omer and elsewhere was decidedly lively. Mr. HOPE led off by attacking the recent report of the Committee on National Expenditure, and declared that its Chairman, though a paragon of truth, was not necessarily a mirror of accuracy. The Chairman himself (Sir F. BANBURY), seated for the nonce upon the Opposition Bench, replied with appropriate vigour in a speech which caused Sir GORDON HEWART to remark that the passion for censoriousness ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various

... he was a very paragon, with a fine manly countenance, frank-hearted, blithe, and, in many points of character, very like my old friend the Lord Eaglesham, who was shot. Indeed, in some respects, he was even above his lordship; for he had a great turn at ready wit, and could joke ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt

... of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet to me what ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge

... between young people is impossible to avoid, since during courtship both wear masks, each trying to impress the other that he or she is a paragon of all virtues. The net result is, that the truth often becomes a horrible revelation immediately after the wedding ceremony. Unhappy and mismated marriages, without means of rectification, are the curse of civilization, the ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton

... and the shaggy grey eyebrows slowly unbent, as he took his visitor's little hands and looked kindly down into her grave face. From her infancy he had petted and fondled her and she stood as little in awe of him as of Paragon. ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... such a paragon of goodness generally,' said the colonel. 'Wasn't it you and some others who scared our dairymaid into fits one night last winter, by playing pranks, after dark, outside the ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre

... I say, a careless answer, and turning upon her heel; and not coming to me at my first word, I flung a book which I had in my hand, at her head. And, this fine lady of your's, this paragon of meekness and humility, in so many words, bids me, or, which is worse, tells my own daughter to bid me, never to take a book into my hands again, if I won't make a better use of it:—and yet, what better use can ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... is not clear or vivid. He dilates on her mental, moral, spiritual and physical qualities, according to his mood, and the flattery to her was never too fulsome. Possibly she was not fully aware before that she was such a paragon of virtue, but believing in the superior insight of Petrarch she said, "It must be so." Thus is flattery always acceptable, nor can it be overdone unless it be laid ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... come into the world irregularly. A moral objection she was always willing to recognise. She sent for Renard, and conjured him to tell her whether the prince was really the good man which he had described him; Renard assured her that he was the very paragon of the world. ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... Custodio's home the butcher's son was considered as the paragon of all perfections and beauties; Manuel alone protested and El Carnicerin (the little butcher),—as he had named him derisively from the very first moment,—was the ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... all that's forbearing, be considerate of my weak nerves! You, too, Beauchamp. Well, she must have been a paragon to make the conquest of two of the most inveterate bachelors in all Paris! But where is this marvel of excellence—pardon me, Beauchamp," perceiving that the journalist looked yet more grave, and seemed in no mood for ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg

... been said that Miss Baker was going to spend the evening with an old friend. I trust that Miss Todd, umquhile of the valley of Jehoshaphat, and now of No. 7 Paragon, Littlebath, has not been forgotten; Miss Todd of the free heart and ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... "sea-anchor" over the side to "hold her to it," whether or not a man was justified in abandoning his ship under certain given circumstances, these were debated pro and con. Always Pearson's "Uncle Jim" was held up as the final authority, the paragon of sea captains, by the visitor, and, while his host pretended to agree, with modest reservations, in this estimate of his relative, he was more and more certain that his hero was bound to become a youthful edition of Elisha Warren himself—and he thanked the fates which had brought ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... This paragon had been Resident in the Principality of Bakuta to the north of Bombay when Stella had first arrived. But he had been moved now to Chitipur in Rajputana. It was supposed that he was writing in his leisure moments ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... apart The richest flowering of all art: And, as the great all-loving Day Through smallest chambers takes its way, That thou might'st break thy daily bread With prophet, savior and head; That thou might'st cherish for thine own The riches of sweet Mary's Son, Boy-Rabbi, Israel's paragon. And thoughtest thou such guest Would in thy hall take up his rest? Would rushing life forget her laws, Fate's glowing revolution pause? High omens ask diviner guess; Not to be conned to tediousness And know my higher gifts unbind The zone that girds the incarnate mind. When the scanty ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... arduous campaigns against the Turks during the following years. In 1750 he was promoted to be a captain of cuirassiers by the Empress Elizabeth, and about 1760 he retired from the Russian service to live upon his patrimonial estate at Bodenwerder in the congenial society of his wife and his paragon among huntsmen, Roesemeyer, for whose particular benefit he maintained a fine pack of hounds. He kept open house, and loved to divert his guests with stories, not in the braggart vein of Dugald Dalgetty, but so embellished with palpably extravagant ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... conscious of her attractions; he was utterly unprepared for this complete ignoring of adornment now, albeit he was for the first time aware how her real prettiness made it unnecessary. She looked fully as charming in this grotesque head-covering as she had in that paragon of fashion, the new hat, which ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... waiting for the heart of our paragon to reveal itself, life in Queen Street was diversified, in the Fall of 1773, by an ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... length, "the count is very agreeable, and his daughter is the paragon of all the virtues and accomplishments." There was something a little disparaging in his tone as he made the last remark, which seemed to me a clumsy device to throw me off the scent, if scent there were. Considering ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... hiding them. He had learned Hebrew, not from printed books, as ordinary scholars are wont to do, but from MSS., and found it so easy a matter, it "only took two hours," and it was simply "out of curiosity" that he undertook it. Before mentally placing this paragon among the classics, we showed him our MS. Roll (exquisitely written, as many visitors are aware, in unpointed Hebrew), and asked him to read a few words. This was indeed pricking the bubble. Tell ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and movement, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!—Shakespeare. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... gathering, mustering. Melt, thaw, fuse, dissolve, liquefy. Memory, remembrance, recollection, reminiscence, retrospection. Misrepresent, misinterpret, falsify, distort, warp. Mix, compound, amalgamate, weld, combine, blend, concoct. Model, pattern, prototype, criterion, standard, exemplar, paragon, archetype, ideal. Motive, incentive, inducement, desire, purpose. Move, actuate, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... of Lorraine, and made, as it was hoped, a future powerful instrument to aid Catholic French objects against England, and the reformation in France and elsewhere. As she grew towards womanhood in the bravest and most amorous court in Europe, the queen-dauphiness became a paragon of beauty, charm, accomplishments, the theme of poets, the despair of lovers ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... animal knows that the best bits possess an astringent flavour; that the sides of a passage not carefully planed are painful to the skin. This is the utmost limit of its acquired wisdom. In comparison, the statue with the sensitive nostrils was a marvel of knowledge, a paragon too generously endowed by its inventor. It remembered, compared, judged, reasoned: does the drowsily digesting paunch remember? Does it compare? Does it reason? I defined the Capricorn-grub as a bit of an intestine that crawls about. The undeniable accuracy of this definition provides me with my ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... Verus, nodding to the old man. "Caesar will be far better pleased with such a paragon of charmers as that sweet creature, than with all your old writs of citizenship ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... had added to the original Moggs' Primrose several varieties of scented and superfatted, a "special nurseries used in the household of the Duke of Kent and for the old Queen in Infancy," a plate powder, "the Paragon," and a knife powder. We roped in a good little second-rate black-lead firm, and carried their origins back into the mists of antiquity. It was my uncle's own unaided idea that we should associate that commodity with the Black Prince. He became industriously ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... McElroy," she glared at him with straightening lips, "that I misunderstood you to say George Washington was not a paragon of truth?" ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... his aged father. In another he unhesitatingly divorces his wife for having dared to poke fun, in the shape of bodkins, at some wooden effigies of his parents which he had had set up in the house for daily devotional contemplation. Finally another paragon actually sells himself in perpetuity as a slave that he may thus procure the wherewithal to bury with due honor his anything but worthy progenitor, who had first cheated his neighbors and then squandered his ill-gotten gains in riotous living. Of these tales, ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... being spared the fabrication by which she had intended to dismiss her paragon without hurting his feelings, thanked Fitzjocelyn more than ever, and was sure that dear ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of mind—if it turns up within your circle, as before mentioned. King of clubs announces a man of dark complexion who is humane, upright, &c., in fact, just the man for a husband. Queen of clubs is equally propitious as the emblem of a dark lady who would prove a paragon wife. Knave of clubs, a jolly good friend in every way. Ten of clubs always flurries the heart of the inquirer—especially if 'hard up'—for it denotes riches speedily forthcoming from an unexpected quarter—which is usually the case in such circumstances; but then it also threatens the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... throat-cutting and Sabbath-breaking except when very old people gossip over the fire, and your wickedness brightens up the evening for them. To the rest of us you are just a stone in the churchyard which describes you as a paragon of all the virtues. And outside of Bellegarde, sir, your name and deeds mean nothing now to anybody, and no one anywhere remembers you. So really your wickedness is not bothering any person now save these poor toiling devils: and I think that, in consequence, you ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... notify you, at any rate, as I notified Osmond, that I wash my hands of the love-affairs of Miss Pansy and Mr. Edward Rosier. Je n'y peux rien, moi! I can't talk to Pansy about him. Especially," added Madame Merle, "as I don't think him a paragon ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... and his senses asleep, would jump up also at the striking of a clock, and, as it were, with hilarity, say, "It is high time I chose a wife," and thereupon begin to look about, among the streets and tennis-parties known to him, for that impossible paragon,—a wife ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... answered gently. "But you were not describing an imaginary paragon. Hadn't you Millicent ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... others are. But since the others are all in step with each other, I am afraid the presumptive evidence is rather heavily against Jock. And Jock is well known to all of us. Nobody likes him, and nobody knows why they don't like him. In many respects he is a paragon of goodness. He loves his church, or he would not have stuck to it year in and year out as he has done. He is not self-assertive; he is quite willing to efface his own personality and be invisible. He is generous to a fault. Nobody is more eager to do anything for the general ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... to follow in the footsteps of the mighty genius whose name he bore. But from his very infancy he developed traits widely different from those of the stern philosopher whom we had set up before him as the paragon of human excellence. I have always suspected that little Erasmus inherited his frivolous disposition from his uncle (his mother's brother), Lemuel Fothergill, who at the early age of nineteen ran away from the farm in Maine to travel ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field

... you all the things he says, but his greatest accomplishment is his singing. He is a double yellowhead—the only species of parrot which does sing. The African grays are better talkers, but they do not sing. They only whistle. What do I ask for him? Oh, I think $200 is cheap for such a paragon, don't you?"—N.Y. Tribune. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various

... piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form, in moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor

... you will have me afraid to meet the Herr. After holding him up as such a paragon, is it any wonder I should feel as small ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond

... the palisade which surrounded it, and walked down the cliff into Brighton quite disconsolate; he could not see how to get his way. He came into the Paragon Hotel and dressed for dinner as sulky as a naturally cheerful soul could be. He showed no readiness to talk, and his father presently condoled with him on his lowness of spirits. Tinker said briefly that he ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson

... Government provides for recognition and protection of all rights in and to the waters and shores of Lake Tahoe, including the rights of the general public and of the lovers of natural beauty everywhere, and it is believed that the charms, as well as the utilities, of this paragon of lakes can more safely be entrusted to a permanent government agency than to any single ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... distress was the town talk; nevertheless, the fleet arrived in the autumn, and brought the youthful Maria to the provinces. This young lady, if the faithful historiographer of the Farnese house is to be credited, was the paragon of princesses. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Esther Lockwin to note the upward drift of his political opportunities. It is silently taken for granted that he is a coming man. Whenever he shall cease his disinterested attentions to the widow it is clear he will be a paragon. And the critics who might aver as much, did they know the case, would be scandalized if he so mistreated the lady who has come ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern

... a long-hair'd boy, for even then I liv'd a pleasant life, I had a minion, and he dy'd: He was (so help me Hercules) a pearl, a paragon, nay perfection it self: But when the poor mother lamented him, and we also were doing the same, some witches got round the house on a sudden, you'd have taken them for hounds hunting a hare. We had ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... therefore know of thee, of whom men say, some that thou speakest truly, other some that thou speakest naughtily. But be the truth as it may, every knight yet saith to his own mistress that in all things she is the paragon of the world." ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... Duke of Milan—but for the admirable honours of her mind, which were so many and matchless, that virtue seemed to have planted there the paradise of her perfection." Philippo was so prone to jealousy, that he suspected even this paragon, and worked himself into a belief in her infidelity by such euphuisms as these: "The greener the Alisander leaves be, the more bitter is the sap, and the salamander is the most warm when he lieth furthest from the fire," therefore "women are most heart-hollow, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... resonance to non-resonance, and from that to tonelessness, and from that to quietude.... Was the fellow in process of making a long diminuendo—a possible matter of weeks or of months? As before, when confronted by what had once seemed a paragon of dash and vigor, he scarcely knew whether to be exasperated ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... without having seen the daughter. If the father consents, he informs her, and if she consents, the suitor sends his affianced presents of clothes and jewelry, which remain in her hands as a pledge of his fidelity. She is pictured to him as the paragon of beauty and excellence, but he is never allowed to see her, speak to her, or write to her, should she know how to write. His mother or aunt may see her or bring reports, but he does not see her until the wedding contract is signed ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... work; to find out what they knew, to classify them by their intelligence rather than by their knowledge, for they were all lamentably ignorant. Some among them were the children of parents who had been free before the war, and of these some few could read and one or two could write. One paragon, who could repeat the multiplication table, was immediately promoted to the position ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... With charms that could the mind beguile, There rose upon the lake's fair breast A hibernating, floating isle. Devoid of life it seemed at first, Chaotic, dull, with beauty none, But rays of sunshine on it burst And changed it to a paragon. ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite

... the free atmosphere, the grander Judaism he had yearned for. The town which boasted of the far-famed Moses Mendelssohn, of the paragon of wisdom and tolerance, was as petty as the Rabbi-ridden villages whose dust he had shaken off. A fierce anger against the Jews and this Mendelssohn shook him. This then was all he had gained by leaving his wife and children that he ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... Machiavellian tyrant, to dwell with admiring pride upon the philanthropic character of Alexander the Benevolent. All the cardinal virtues are his. He is the Liberator of the Serfs, the Deliverer of Downtrodden Nationalities, the Educator and Friend of the People—a monstrous paragon of princely perfection. The truth is that this Czar, albeit lacking the nerve of his sire, has from early youth shown the full absolutistic bent. Dire necessity only brought him to the accomplishment of some reforms. But the evidence ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... lands which I am asked to give away, alas, are not mine to bestow! My relation to them is simply that of trustee to an express trust. And shall I ever betray that trust? Never, sir! Rather perish Duluth! (Shouts of laughter.) Perish the paragon of cities! Rather let the freezing cyclones of the bleak Northwest bury it forever beneath the eddying sands of the raging St. Croix! ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various

... how exorbitant, that could have been asked for this little paragon, Madame de N. would very gladly have paid; but, unhappily, Sylphide was not to be sold: Lady R. was very fond of her, and never seemed to understand the various hints thrown out from time to time, with the utmost tact and delicacy, but still quite intelligibly, by Madame ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... panegyrics in verse, showing that the writers had been favored with the perusal of the volume before it was published. Valor, piety, virtue, learning, wit, are by them ascribed to the "great Smith," who is easily the wonder and paragon of his. age. All of them are stuffed with the affected conceits fashionable at the time. One of the most pedantic of these was addressed to him by Samuel Purchas when ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... physiological or the psychological reason of a single step in any of these series, and the cooerdination of the series even with each other, to say nothing of their adaptation to the stages of the child's development. This, if as pat and complete as is urged, would indeed constitute on the whole a paragon of all the harmony, beauty, totality in variety, etc., which make it so magnificent in the admirer's eyes. But the "45 tools, 72 exercises, 31 models, 15 of which are joints," all learned by teachers in one school year of daily work and by pupils ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... inimitable Shakespeare. 'What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a God! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!' Swift's friends often heard him lament the state of childhood and idiotism, to which some of the greatest men of this nation were reduced before their death. He mentioned, as examples within his own time, the duke ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... heavily loaded with burs. This particular tree is said to belong to a variety that is much advertised, but there is some question if it is a peculiar variety of the Paragon, because Mr. Engel, of Pennsylvania, is said to have furnished his own Paragon chestnut scions when the other people were short of stock. If the nursery firm that has put out this Paragon chestnut on the market with so much vigor and at such expense had been a little more ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... see! Eyes like the lakes of Killarney for clarity, Nose that turns up without any vulgarity, Smile like a cherub, and hair that is carroty— Whoop, you're a rarity, Barney McGee! Mellow as Tarragon, Prouder than Aragon— Hardly a paragon, You will agree— Here's all that's fine to you! Books and old wine to you! Girls be divine ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... peculiar mental and moral symptoms. She was saying that she could no longer manage the house, could not concentrate her mind on anything, could not refrain from strange caprices, could not remain calm, could not keep her temper, and was the worst conceivable wife for such a paragon as Arthur Prohack. Her daughter alone had saved the household organism from a catastrophe; her ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... raising his hand. "Let not the groping man thank the lamp, nor the briar the brook. Thank the sun whence the lamp hath his light, and the ocean to whom the brook oweth his waters. Thank that incomparable paragon, that consummate swan, that pearl of all perfection, my mistress, of whose brightness I am but the ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... immense gain in depth and delicacy acquired by English fiction since Richardson is well illustrated by a comparison of the latter's "Sir Charles Grandison" with Meredith's "The Egoist." One is a portrait for the time, the other for all time. Both, superficially viewed, are the same type: a male paragon before whom a bevy of women burn incense. But O the difference! Grandison is serious to his author, while Meredith, in skinning Willoughby alive like another Marsyas, is once and for all making the worship ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... the English, and these devils were keeping us in constant agitation. [1] His Majesty had therefore other things than pleasure to attend to. He ordered Piero Strozzi to go with ships of war into the English waters; but this was a very difficult undertaking, even for that great commander, without a paragon in his times in the art of war, and also without a paragon in his misfortunes. Several months passed without my receiving money or commissions; accordingly, I dismissed my work people with the exception of the two Italians, whom I set to making two big vases ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... her engagement with him, that he would give her no loophole of escape from him, that he intended to hold her so firmly that if she divided herself from him, she should be accounted among women a paragon of falseness. He was ready, he said, to marry her to-morrow. That was his wish, his idea of what would be best for both of them; and after that, if not to-morrow, then on the next day, and so on till the day should come on which she should ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... time, I wish to make a clear distinction between the men who bully and brutalize women for their own gratification and the men who find their highest pleasure in pleasing women. The latter may not be a paragon, yet as his desire is to give pleasure, not to corral it, he is a totally different being from the man who deceives, badgers, humiliates, and quarrels with one who can not defend herself, in order that he may find an ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... be happy in Tahiti? If she could find one of her own kind, a half-caste, a paragon of kindness and fidelity, she might be. With the white she would know only torture. There is but one American that I know who has made a native girl happy. Lovina, who keeps the Tiare Hotel in Papeite and who knows the gossip of all the South Seas, told me the story one day after he had ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... or sleep and has God indeed vouchsafed us reunion after separation? Praised be He who hath reknit our loves, after despair!' When the eunuch saw this, he ran to King Ghaiour and kissing the earth before him, said, 'O my lord, know that this is indeed the prince and paragon of astrologers; for he hath cured thy daughter from behind the curtain, without going in to her.' 'Look to it well,' said the King; 'is this news true?' 'O my lord,' answered the eunuch, 'come and see for thyself how she hath found strength to break the iron chains and is come forth ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous

... Shelley found a new inmate established in their lodgings. The incomparable Eliza, who was henceforth doomed to guide his destinies to an obscure catastrophe, had arrived from London. Harriet believed her sister to be a paragon of beauty, good sense, and propriety. She obeyed her elder sister like a mother; never questioned her wisdom; and foolishly allowed her to interpose between herself and her husband. Hogg had been told before her first appearance in the friendly circle that Eliza was "beautiful, exquisitely beautiful; ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... will comb you properly for once." Poor little Snow-white had no suspicion, and let the old woman do as she pleased, but hardly had she put the comb in her hair than the poison in it took effect, and the girl fell down senseless. "You paragon of beauty," said the wicked woman, "you are done for now," and she ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... this cup to one made up Of loveliness alone, A woman, of her gentle sex The seeming paragon; To whom the better elements And kindly stars have given A form so fair, that, like the air, 'Tis less ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... at midnight to do good to thy fellow creatures!—Here we find thee, within an hour after thy departure from thy home, on an 'errand of mercy,' embraced in the soft arms of a pretty wanton, and revelling in the delights of voluptuousness. We might have portrayed thee as a paragon of virtue and chastity; we might have described thee as rejecting with holy horror the advances of that frail but exceedingly fair young lady—we might have made a saint of thee, Frank. But we ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... a paragon of virtue, why didn't his guardian come to court himself and try to help the boy, instead of leaving it to a reporter?" sneered the officer who was trying so hard to make ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster

... spoke an Aureole of Virtue seemed to curdle above him, while his Countenance bore an Expression of Placid Triumph, which meant that he was the real Asbestos Paragon who had been tried in the Furnace ...
— More Fables • George Ade

... I love the king your father, and yourself, With more than foreign heart. We every day Expect him here: when he shall come and find Our paragon to all reports thus blasted, He will repent the breadth of his great voyage; Blame both my lord and me, that we have taken No care to your best courses. Go, I pray you, Walk, and be cheerful once again; ...
— Pericles Prince of Tyre • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... me, nor will be disdainful of my inferiority in parts, nor desire from me that which I do not possess, inasmuch as he who is unique in all things can have peers in none. Therefore your lordship, the light of our century without paragon upon this world, is unable to be satisfied with the productions of other men, having no match or equal to yourself. And if, peradventure, something of mine, such as I hope and promise to perform, give pleasure to your mind, I shall esteem it more ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... citie doth in a manner chalenge this at my hands, that I should describe her ... the fairest Lady, yet the richest Paragon, and Queene of Christendome.' ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... were to apply himself to show his contempt for fortune, and women, and good cheer, and idleness, and to begin to Catonise, what would he be but a hypocrite? Rameau must be what he is—a lucky rascal among rascals swollen with riches, and not a mighty paragon of virtue, or even a virtuous man, eating his dry crust of bread, either alone, or by the side of a pack of beggars. And, to cut it short, I do not get on with your felicity, or with the happiness of a few ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... extreme, If seriously he hath disease; He hath acquired the world's esteem And nothing more important sees; A paragon of virtue he! But what a nuisance it will be, Chained to his bedside night and day Without a chance to slip away. Ye need dissimulation base A dying man with art to soothe, Beneath his head the pillow smooth, And physic bring with mournful face, To sigh and meditate ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... the truth is, my tradesmen all renewed my credit on the strength of the match, and so we went on very well for a year; but at last they began to smell a rat, and grew importunate. I entreated Dia to interfere; but she was a paragon of daughters, and always took the side of her father. If she had only been dutiful to her husband, she would have been a perfect woman. At last I invited Deioneus to the Larissa races, with the intention of conciliating ...
— Ixion In Heaven • Benjamin Disraeli

... yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, What least defect or shadow of defect, What rumor, tattled by an enemy, Of inference loose, what lack of grace Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's,— Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, Jesus, good Paragon, thou ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford

... supper. They rallied me about my Amiens conquest, and my flight with that paragon of fidelity. I took their jokes in good part, glad enough at being permitted to revolve in my mind the plans I had meditated; but some words which fell from my father made me listen with earnest attention. He spoke of perfidy, and the not disinterested kindness he had ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost

... whom, as in a glass, we see, Mirrored in thy pure form and delicate, What beauties heaven and nature can create, The paragon of all their works to be! Fair soul, in whom love, pity, piety, Have found a home, as from thy outward state We clearly read, and are so rare and great That they adorn none other ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... man, the paragon of animals. "In form and moving how express and admirable!" His frame is perfect mechanism, instinct with glowing life, and guarded by the great conservative and healing powers of nature from disease and death. His vitality is surpassed by that of man, because ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell

... I said, with a kindly air of banter, "that the sight of Lilla Monti more than compensates you for that portion of the Neapolitan carnival which you lose by being here. But why you should wish me to behold this paragon of maidens I know not, unless you would have me regret my own ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... to regret that I had not seen a little of the town. In 1797, New York could not have had more than fifty thousand inhabitants, though it was just as much of a paragon then, in the eyes of all good Americans, as it is today. It is a sound patriotic rule to maintain that our best is always the best, for it never puts us in the wrong. I have seen enough of the world since to understand that we get a great many things wrong-end foremost, in this country of ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... political rather than a priestly life and was not to be thought of as his successor. In his place Aurelius, on his way to Syria, had nominated Lutorius Rusco, a man who impressed everyone at first sight, and more and more the better anyone knew him, as the paragon of a Pontifex. He was not lacking in ecclesiastical unction, but did not wallow in it as had Bambilio. He was pious, but did not think it necessary to advertise it day and night unremittingly. He was not lax in religious matters, but he was no ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... with her she seemed to be a little devil, encouraging everything that was bad in me. I don't know how she did it; but she did. And yet, Kathy, whatever they may say, I don't believe she's bad. I don't swear, of course, that she's a paragon of goodness——" ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... should! And her lover, like a boy who finds a pearl in the public street, and wonders as much that others did not see it as that he did, will tremble until he knows his passion is returned; feeling, of course, that the whole world must be in love with this paragon, who cannot possibly smile upon anything ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... a few months of the last fall of the auctioneer's hammer, she died suddenly in Paris, to the unspeakable grief of d'Orsay, who declared to the Countess's physician, Madden, "She was to me a mother! a dear, dear mother—a true, loving mother to me." Three years later this "paragon of all the perfections" followed the Countess behind the veil, and rests in a mausoleum, of his own designing, at Chamboury, with one of the most lovely women who have ever graced beauty with rare gifts of mind and with a warm and ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... What a paragon of scientific erudition must the public prosecutor be, in whose eyes all this is not sufficient to lend a publication the attribute ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... misgovernment that nations are roused to madness. It is not sufficient to look merely at the form of government. We must look also to the state of the public mind. The worst tyrant that ever had his neck wrung in modern Europe might have passed for a paragon of clemency in Persia or Morocco. Our Indian subjects submit patiently to a monopoly of salt. We tried a stamp duty, a duty so light as to be scarcely perceptible, on the fierce breed of the old Puritans; ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... learnt that Milicent was so near us; and her company would be a soothing solace to me now; but she is still in town with her mother; there is no one at the Grove but little Esther and her French governess, for Walter is always away. I saw that paragon of manly perfections in London: he seemed scarcely to merit the eulogiums of his mother and sister, though he certainly appeared more conversable and agreeable than Lord Lowborough, more candid and high-minded than Mr. ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... nose: Be her forehead and her eyes Full of incongruities: Be her cheeks so shallow too As to show her tongue wag through; Be her lips ill hung or set, And her grinders black as jet: Has she thin hair, hath she none, She's to me a paragon. ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... army life, he became the paragon of every poor private and raw recruit struggling with the miseries of goose-step, with whom he came even into momentary contact. For sometimes through a word or act, sometimes through a flash of the ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... for a tree which might provide bark for yet another canoe—his last work, a paragon? A few days passed and it became known that Cassowary was missing. His shrunken body disordered a patch of buff ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield



Words linked to "Paragon" :   jimhickey, class act, gold standard, crackerjack, humdinger, model, role model, jimdandy



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