"Pinnacle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The Soul Knows and feels, when in its acute stage, this horrible danger without comprehending its exact cause and nature, but it has about it the feeling that a man might have standing balanced on a narrow pinnacle. Unapproachable, untouchable only so long as he remains upon the summit, the eyes of a thousand enemies watch for his smallest descent: they watch day and night. What alone can enable the Soul to ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... I say? nay, rather a golden city, paved with emerald. For truly, every pinnacle and turret glanced or glowed, overlaid with gold, or bossed with jasper. Beneath, the unsullied sea drew in deep breathing, to and fro, its eddies of green wave. Deep-hearted, majestic, terrible as the sea,—the men of Venice moved in sway of power and war; pure as her pillars ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... styles which are endurable, and perhaps even very beautiful, in the hands of a first-rate artist and on the heads of those very few women who dress well; but which are more and more hideous the farther you get from that distant pinnacle of the mode, and the lower down they spread among the ranks of society. I thought, as I looked from one to another, I had never seen anything so ill in taste, so outraged in style, so unspeakable in ugliness as well as in pretension. I supposed then it was the fashion principally which was to ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... foaming seas of cloud, which appeared to separate high, bright peaks from shadowed vales, by incredible distances. As far as the eye could travel with utmost straining, away to the dark, imposing background of the Djurdjura range, billowed ridges and ravines, ravines and ridges, each pointing pinnacle or razor-shelf adorned with its coral-red hamlet, like a group of poisonous fungi, or the barnacles on a ship's steep side. Such an extraordinary landscape Stephen had never imagined, or seen except on a Japanese fan; ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... no longer touched the ground; a sense of supernatural buoyancy pervaded every fibre of his body: he felt himself floating in obscurity; then sinking softly, slowly, like a feather dropped from the pinnacle of a temple. Was this death? Nay, for all suddenly, as transported by the Sixth Supernatural Power, he stood again in light,—a perfumed, sleepy light, vapory, beautiful,—that bathed the marvellous streets of some Indian city. Now the ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... entertainment. The Count, at length, rose from the table, and addressing himself to the company, said, "Gentlemen, I was willing to convince you how well I can rely upon the officers of my artillery; for I ordered them to fire during the time we continued at dinner, at the pinnacle of the tent, and they have executed my ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... is quite unlike that of any other of our Hill-Thrushes with which I am acquainted. The bird itself is as often found in open rocky spots on the skirts of the forest as among the woods, loving to jump upon some stone or rocky pinnacle, from which it sends forth a sort of choking, chattering song, if such it can be called, or, with an up-jerk of the tail, hops away with a loud musical whistle, very much after the manner ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... the limbs, the oval outlines of the steed, even the very trappings, could be seen distinctly; and for the short period in which they were poised and motionless, the spectator might have fancied an equestrian statue of bronze, its pedestal the pinnacle of ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... of the way, I think," said Belinda: "for perhaps, as she has vowed vengeance against me, she might take a fancy to setting me upon that pinnacle ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... the shadows begin to fall, every turret and pinnacle stands out in bold relief. The bands of yellow and red shade into purple, and everything, save the long winding trail, begins to have a weird and ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... Amendment is a fitting capstone to their labors. Were the earnest women who fought and endured so heroically with them, but tools in the hands of the leaders, to place "manhood suffrage" on the highest pinnacle of the temple dedicated to Truth and Justice? And are they now to bow down, and worship in abject submission this fractional part of a principle, that has hitherto proclaimed itself, as knowing neither bond nor free, male nor female, but one ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... comfortable, too indulgent, many, perhaps, too selfish. And the stern hand of fate has scourged us to an elevation where we can see the great everlasting things that matter for a nation; the great peaks of honour we had forgotten—duty and patriotism clad in glittering white: the great pinnacle of sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven. We shall descend into the valleys again, but as long as the men and women of this generation last they will carry in their hearts the image of these great mountain peaks, whose foundations are unshaken though Europe rock and ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... here and there at a division of tenements, by way of slight partitions cut from the surface, wreaths of blue smoke issuing out of apertures and curling up the front, and the old feudal tower, called Lanterne de la Roche Corbon, crowning the summit, the superincumbent pinnacle of excavated rock on which it stands looking as if it were ready to fall and crush the whole population beneath, this lithographed village has altogether a curiously picturesque look." But at Beaumont-la-Ronce, north of Tours, ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... from the world or its proudest minions? It is E. whose life is once more in your hands—it is E. whom you are to save from being plucked of her borrowed plumes, discovered, branded, and trodden down, first by him, perhaps, who has raised her to this dizzy pinnacle!—The enclosure will reach you twice a-year—do not refuse it—it is out of my own allowance, and may be twice as much when you want it. With you it may do ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and mind that it be no beggarly desire. Wish to the very summit of wealth, or the topmost pinnacle of thy ambition, for ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... knew they were only of small extent. There was a pinnacle of rock and a single sea might possibly carry them over it; but the peril of being washed off was none the less. Now they could see the huge rise of the combing sea with its frowning black top rushing at the shoal, and smashing into an avalanche of snowy foam. They could hear ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... panting, upon that pinnacle, it was first a dazzling confusing view of roofs, chimneys, streets, bridges, places, spires, bell towers. Everything struck your eye at once: the carved gable, the pointed roof, the turrets suspended at the angles of the walls; the stone pyramids of the eleventh ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... I append, for I have been examining the mechanism of the gate since I came in, and have made a discovery which dislodges my savant from his pinnacle; namely, that the only fastening on the gate is a huge wooden latch, which not one of us had sense enough to lift; but then who thinks of taking a fort by assault and battery on the latch? Halicarnassus hit upon it by mere accident, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... which there was no waking. He considered the stability of his days—a lifetime followed upon high principles and founded on religious convictions that had comforted his sorrows and countenanced his joys. It seemed a trial undeserved, that in his old age he should be thrust upon a pinnacle of publicity, forced into the public eye, robbed of dignity, denied the privacy he esteemed as the most precious privilege that wealth could command. Stability was destroyed; to count upon the morrow seemed impossible. His thought, strung to a new morbidity, unknown till now, ran on and pictured, ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... dreams by night and his dreams by day; among the visions his soul had seen when he had sat under the old circuit rider and heard pictured the glories of the blessed when mortals should mingle with the shining hosts on high: and above even St. Hilda, on the very pinnacle of his new-born and ever-growing ambitions, Marjorie sat enthroned and alone. Light was all he remembered of her—the light of her eyes and of her hair—yes, and that one touch of her hand. His heart turned to water at the thought of seeing her again and his ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... 'Fidelity,' that she turned away and shuddered when she saw it fearlessly adventured on by a human being. A feeling of curiosity had afterwards induced her to return and see if the bold hunter had cleared the gulf, or perished in his mad attempt; but when she looked outward from the highest pinnacle of her rocky prison, she could discover no traces of him whatever. It then occurred to her, that, if successful in his leap, his progress must have been finally arrested by the impassable rock that terminated the ridge; in which case she might perchance obtain a nearer sight of his person. ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... in books would mount on a very high pinnacle of virtue and cast off Mr. Durnovo and all his works; but it is much more practical to make what use we can of him. That is a worldly-wise, nineteenth-century way of looking at it; we cannot ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... we stand on the dividing ridge of Time, the topmost pinnacle of humanity; and, looking backward over the vast ocean of life, we can discern amidst the rolling, heaving, struggling surges, which have engulfed so many grand hopes, and towering aims, and strong endeavors ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... advantages, whether it were the habit of his life, which was ever profuse, or that neglect of his private interests which almost inevitably accompanies the absorbing duties of public life, his affairs were always somewhat confused, and Lady Montfort, who wished to place him on a pinnacle, had resolved that he should marry an heiress. After long observation and careful inquiry and prolonged reflection, the lady she had fixed upon was Miss Neuchatel; and she it was who had made Lord Roehampton cross the room and address Adriana ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... personality, and drawn to him in a loving loyalty. The attraction to these very women was his unworldliness, his separateness, his devotion to an ideal which in their reason seemed a delusion. And no women would have been more sensitive than they to his fall from his spiritual pinnacle. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... believe that this is not merely a suggestive analogy, but really true as a tendency, not only with regard to man's gains by the conquest of electricity, but also with respect to every other signal victory which has brought him to his present pinnacle of discernment and rule. If this permutative principle in former advances lay undetected, it stands forth clearly in that latest accession to skill and interpretation which has been ushered in by Franklin ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... of the air,—who descendest on thy nest in the cleft of the inaccessible rock, who makest the mountain pinnacle thy perch and halting-place, and, scanning with steady eye the orb of glory right above thee, imprintest thy lordly talons in the stainless snows, that shoot back and scatter round his glittering shafts,—I ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... shops that bring vividly before us this specimen of the "Gothic madness" of our great grandfathers. An enormous octagonal tower arises from the centre of the strange pile of buildings, which is in the form of a cross with arms of equal length. Pinnacle and gargoyles, moulding and ornaments, all clashing and at war with each other, are stuck on anywhere and everywhere; the nightmare dream of a medievalist. If this was the fruit of Beckford's brain nothing more need be said. If that of Wyatt's, we can but be thankful that he did not live long ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... secrets reveal themselves, hidden things are proclaimed, and courts and juries, awed and abashed, yet elevated and inspired, accept and act upon his conclusions as infallible. For one hour he touches the pinnacle of human achievement. ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... glimmer of the thoughts, emotions, and meanings behind. And in the long run such a habit of inquiry must bear fruit in understanding and sympathy. Joseph Conrad (who seems, by the way, to be more read by newspaper men than any other writer) put very nobly the pinnacle of all scribblers' dreams when he said that human affairs deserve the tribute of "a sigh which is not a sob, a smile ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... combination of events placing in my hands, precisely at the moment of their greatest value, clear opportunities that none but a hopeless blunderer could have disregarded. What men call Chance operated in my favour as though with superb calculation, lifting me to this miniature pinnacle I could never have reached by my ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... and if we pursue a great end we cannot remain within the narrow limits which are set by law and custom to the actions of private individuals. We draw back just as we seem to have reached the goal, we let him fall whom we had raised, and lift him, whom we had stricken to the earth, to the pinnacle of glory, in short we profess—and for thousands of years have professed—the doctrine that every path is a right one that leads to the great end of securing to the priesthood the supreme power in the land. Rameses, saved by a miracle, vowing temples to the Gods, will ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... mademoiselle laid me forbade me to indulge in the luxury of evincing my gratitude. Gladly would I have escorted her back to her home—even if I could not make that home again what it had been, or restore her husband to the pinnacle from which I had dashed him—but I dared not do this. I was forced to content myself with less, and was about to offer to send one of my men with her, when a hurried knocking at the outer door arrested the words on ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... would as soon think of breaking in upon her innocent prayers, as she would of carrying off the works of philosophy from my study table. She is not narrow in her views; but if one could stand upon the very topmost pinnacle of broad-mindedness, one would doubtless see from it that even the narrow have ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... the wall to keep my balance. My fingers were still many inches from the coping. I jumped down and gave another ten minutes to the back-breaking work of carrying more boulders from the water to the wall. Then I widened my cairn below, so that I could stand firmly before springing upon the pinnacle with which I completed it. I knew well that this would collapse under me if I allowed my weight to rest more than an instant upon it. And so at last it did; but my fingers had clutched the coping in time; had grabbed it even as the insecure pyramid ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... melody of a passion song. "Howard, dear, I—I'm sitting in sackcloth and ashes. I saw it all—with my own eyes, and I could neither run nor scream. Oh, it was splendid! I never dreamed that any man could rise by the sheer power of his will to such a pinnacle of courage. Does that make amends—just a little? And won't you come to breakfast with us in the morning, and let me tell you afterward how miserable I've been—how I fairly nagged father into bringing this party out here so that I ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... deserves mention for the beauty of its situation, and the fine Alpine panorama which it commands. The glittering pinnacle of Monte Viso, is the most striking feature through this and ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... have patience and faith; and not suppose in haste, that when those hands are stretched out it will be needful for us to leave our standing-ground, or to cast ourselves down from the pinnacle of the temple to earn popularity; above all, from earnest students who are too high-minded to care ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... early. He found himself at the highest pinnacle of human happiness; but it was not that prevented him from sleeping; the question, the vital, fateful question—how he could dispose of his estate as quickly and as advantageously as possible—disturbed his rest. The most diverse plans were mixed up in his head, but ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... was roofed in before my foundations were laid. Not that I could not build as quickly and as well as he, if I chose. I could, but I never chose. While he, with serious face and rapt attention, piled layer upon layer, and pinnacle upon pinnacle, absorbed in his architectural ambition, I sat by watching him, or wondering who drew the beautiful picture on the lid of my box, or speculating on the quantity of bricks I should use in my building, but always neglecting to set myself to work till Jim's shout of triumph ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... on his solitary pinnacle, there was no figure in modern literature at the time of the Renascence to compare with the men of antiquity; there was no art to compete with their sculpture; there was no physical science but that which Greece had created. Above all, there was no other example of ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... look of the old guardsman, as he stood perched upon the high pinnacle of rock, was again too much for the muleteers; and one and all of them gave utterance to fresh peals of laughter. His young masters were too much concerned about their faithful Pouchskin to give way to mirth; but on ascertaining that he had only received a few ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... just crazy for him. You can hardly understand how the personality of the man permeates the wards, how he gives one the impression of some wonderful being who has reached a pinnacle, and remains there, smilingly, without heeding the crowd below that worships and cheers. And how ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... preparing. I was in high favour. Men of all ranks visited the earl; and dukes, lords, and barons became as familiar to me as gowns and caps had formerly been in the streets of Oxford. I stood on the very pinnacle of fortune; and, proud of my skill, like a rope-dancer that casts away his balancing pole, I took pleasure in standing on tiptoe. Noticed by the leading men, caressed and courted by their dependants, politics encouraging me on this hand, and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Poutrincourt landed on this headland, and ascended a steep and lofty summit which is not less than four hundred feet in height. Moss several feet in thickness, the growth of centuries, had gathered upon it, and, when he stood upon the pinnacle, it yielded and trembled like gelatine under his feet. He found himself in a critical situation. From this giddy and unstable height he had neither the skill or courage to return. After much anxiety, he was at length rescued by some of his more nimble sailors, who managed to put ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... 4th, 1901, reserve for light house purposes among other tracts of land or cites in the District of Alaska a tract described as follows: "Scotch Cap beginning at a point at low water mark, said point being three miles easterly of point at low water mark opposite Scotch Cap Pinnacle six (6) due north one mile, thence north seventy-one (71) degrees east true four (4) miles, thence south thirty-eight (38) degrees true to low water mark; thence follow the windings of the low water ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... Naukam. Joabert then severed the head from the body, divided the body into 4 quarters, which were burnt to ashes, and the ashes scattered to the four winds of heaven. Joabert then taking the head, etc., again reconciled. Solomon then ordered the head to be placed on the east pinnacle of ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... authenticity; whereupon everybody said that it was not genuine except three people who really counted, and these included the gentleman who had recommended the purchase of the Van Tromps by the nation. So enormous was the row upon the matter that the picture reached the very pinnacle of fame, and an Australian then travelling in England was determined to get that Van Tromp for ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... the bay. The wood was piled near the kitchen doors, and the Methodist minister, with a sigh of relief, came down from the mental pinnacle upon which he had endeavored during the summer to attract strangers, and preached sermons from his heart to the hearts of the Quintonites. A donation party was in the air, too, and the needy pastor grew ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... said Margaret McLeod; "ye weel know ye're on a pinnacle sae high o'e'r ither men, there's nae ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... nave, with its upper and lower rows of small, oblong windows, retires discreetly within a grove of elms, while a tall, slim spire grows slimmer through diminishing tiers of arches, balconies, and lancet lights till it dwindles away into a high, graceful pinnacle. ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... she only knew that she was afraid. Of what? Nor did she know that. She only knew that here were Gloria Gaynor and Mark King, man and girl—man and woman—set apart from the world, lifted above it, clear-cut figures upon a pinnacle piercing the infinite blue of the heavens, and that a mystery was unfolding before them. She had a wild wish to stop the flight of time, to thrust it back upon itself, to have the present not the present but to avoid the Now by racing back into the serenity of Just A Little While ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... tell of one who, amid the dry agnosticism of the later half of last century, had felt her faith, not indeed extinguished, but obscured and darkened. From the perusal of certain writers she had shrunk, perhaps with cowardice. They were put on such a pinnacle that she feared she would find no arguments fit to oppose to theirs. Weakly, she locked the skeleton cupboard. Then she was attacked by a malady which, while leaving her mind free and strong, she knew might be very speedily fatal. ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... Crane! and I'm proud to say that I'm the wife of that patriotic man. True, he could not go to war himself, on account of me and the children; but, I dare say, if he could have prevailed upon me to give him up to the cause of liberty, he'd have clomb rapidly to the highest pinnacle of earthly glory, and to-day I'd have been Mrs. General Crane, a leader of the brilliant society at Washington, with my name in the papers as 'the wife of our distinguished General Crane,' or the 'stately and dignified lady of the brave General;'" ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... now part—thou to enter on thy career of fame, I to set in motion every spring within my reach to advance thee to the pinnacle of glory and power. Henceforth thy name is Ibrahim! Go, then, my Ibrahim, and throw thyself at the feet of the reis-effendi, and that great minister will forthwith present thee to Piri Pasha, the grand vizier. Toil diligently—labor arduously—and the rest concerns me. Go, then, my Ibrahim, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... verger at his elbow he recollected how he had got through the minutes of a long sermon,—a sermon that had seemed to be very long,—in planning the way in which, if left to himself, he would climb to the pinnacle which culminated over the bishop's seat, and thence make his way along the capitals and vantages of stonework, till he would ascend into the triforium and thus become lord and master of the old building. How much ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... Fool's Paradise of German suprernacy arose. It is only in this way, by noting the long-preceding ignorance of the German citizen in the matter of politics, his absolute former non-interference in public affairs, and the dazed state of his mind when he suddenly found himself on the supposed pinnacle of world-power—that we can explain his easy acceptance of such cheap and ad hoc publications as those of Bernhardi and Houston Chamberlain, and the fact that he was so easily rushed into the false situation of the present war.[8] The absurd canards which at an early date gained ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... rush on with a terrific roar. Blunderbore instantly fetched them each a sounding whack on their skulls, leaped over both their backs, and bounded up the side of the iceberg, where he took refuge, and turned at bay on a little ice pinnacle constructed expressly for ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... will have been done away; the voice of reason will be unheard; the passions only will bear sway; famine, distress, havoc, and dismay will spread around; hatred, violence, war, and bloodshed will be the infallible consequence, and from the pinnacle of happiness, peace, refinement, and social advantage, we shall be hurled once more into a profounder abyss of misery, want, and barbarism than ever, by the sole operation of the principle of population!"—Such is a brief abstract of the argument of the Essay. ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... some phase of a divorce case, the speech a political person had made, or the price of stock. She was interested in anything so long as it was talk. And her own share in the conversation was good to hear. Every lady that passed us had a hat that stirred her to the top of rapture or the other pinnacle of disgust. She told me what ladies were frights and what were ducks. Under her scampering tongue I began to learn something of humanity, even though she saw most people as delightfully funny clowns or superb, majestical princes, but I noticed ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... other settler, they had better divide between them the property of this wild, sequestered valley, which is nearly twenty acres in extent. They confided that task to me, and I marked out two equal portions of land. One included the higher part of this enclosure, from the cloudy pinnacle of that rock, whence springs the river of Fan-Palms, to that precipitous cleft which you see on the summit of the mountain, and which, from its resemblance in form to the battlement of a fortress, is called the Embrasure. It is difficult ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... letter of February, 1493, printed in several languages, had been read in the courts of Europe with wonder and amazement. "What delicious food for an ingenious mind!" wrote Peter Martyr. In England, it was termed "a thing more divine than human." No other man ever rose to such a pinnacle of fame so suddenly; and no other man from such a height ever dropped out of sight so quickly. His three later voyages were miserable failures; a pitiful record of misfortunes, blunders, cruelties, moral delinquencies, quarrels, and impotent complainings. ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... himself awake. Slave did keep himself awake till Hakon dozed or slept, then swiftly cut off Hakon's head, and plunged out with it to the presence of Tryggveson. Tryggveson, detesting the traitor, useful as the treachery was, cut off the slave's head too, had it hung up along with Hakon's on the pinnacle of the Lade Gallows, where the populace pelted both heads with stones and many curses, especially the more important of the two. "Hakon the Bad" ever henceforth, instead of ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... manner we journeyed for about two hours, and the sun was just setting when we entered a region infinitely more dreary than any yet seen. It was a species of table-land, near the summit of an almost inaccessible hill, densely wooded from base to pinnacle, and interspersed with huge crags that appeared to lie loosely upon the soil, and in many cases were prevented from precipitating themselves into the valleys below, merely by the support of the trees against which they reclined. Deep ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... the White House Mr. Knox was at the pinnacle of his career and was as much admired by his new chief as by his martyred predecessor. In ability Mr. Roosevelt considered him next to Elihu Root, for which Mr. Root was never quite forgiven. It is generally known that President Roosevelt believed that Mr. Root was the best qualified man ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... far beneath us, pursuing its headlong course till it reached level ground, where it flowed in the midst of a beautiful but confined prairie. There was something sylvan and savage in the mountains on the farther side, clad from foot to pinnacle with trees, so closely growing that the eye was unable to obtain a glimpse of the hill sides, which were uneven with ravines and gulleys, the haunts of the wolf, the wild boar, and the corso, or mountain-stag; the latter of which, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... precious inheritance to the world of art. All his powers were swept impetuously into one current, the poetic side of art, and alike as critic and composer he stands in a relation to the music of the pianoforte which places him on a pinnacle only less lofty than that ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... sense of humour of the grocer and his wife. No. There was all the difference in the world. The comparison filled him less with consolation than with despair. The actor, mocking the octopus below, had calmly stepped from one rock pinnacle to another. He himself, Andrew Lackaday, in the depths, felt the irresistible grip of the horror twining round ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... directs his companions along its gentler slopes, and gives them a helping-hand to lift them over the final obstacles; it was by giant struggles over the debris of crumbling hopes, and through jungles of despair, and up the cliffs of apparent impossibility, that Bunyan forced his way to the pinnacle of his eventual joy; but no sooner was he standing there, than his eagle-eye detected the easier path, and he made it the business of his benevolent ministry to guide others into it. Though not the truth, an illustration is a stepping-stone towards it; ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... ages of the world, when brute force was regarded as the highest attribute of greatness, the men of might, the renowned warriors, the Nimrods and the Agamemnons, occupied the highest pinnacle of Society, and received homage from their fellows as supreme men. Of their age they were the supreme men. To our enlightened epoch, the fighting heroes of the past are but brutal bullies a little above the level of the animals whose ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... were not sorry when we came to the foot of it, there going into camp to await the return of Powell. One of our flags was planted at the end of an island below the canyon mouth, so that he might see it. Opposite our camp was a very striking pinnacle then called Cathedral Butte, but later changed to Gunnison. Here we took the boats out and gave them a good overhauling, which they badly needed. The descent through Desolation and Gray had ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... to enter into and fill my whole life. I lived but from Saturday to Saturday. The appearance of false shirt-fronts would cast me to the lowest depths of despair; their absence raised me to a pinnacle of hope. It was not till winter softened into spring that Fifty-Six nerved himself to learn his fate. One Saturday he sent me a new white waistcoat, a garment which had hitherto been shunned by his modest ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... a string of garlands, with which I decorated the house I inhabited, and in which, it is true, I had the vindictive haughtiness to spend almost as much money as he had wished to give me. The peace ratified, I thought as he was at the highest pinnacle of military and political fame, he would think of acquiring that of another nature, by reanimating his states, encouraging in them commerce and agriculture, creating a new soil, covering it with a new people, maintaining peace amongst his neighbors, and becoming the arbitrator, after having ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... towards a tall ragged pinnacle of granite, which rose up some ten or fifteen feet by itself, when all at once a great black bird hopped into sight, looking gigantic against the sky, gazed down in a one-sided way, and began to utter a series of hoarse croaks, which sounded like ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... with dogs and bears Pell-mell together by the ears, And, after painful bangs and knocks, 1365 To lie in limbo in the stocks, And from the pinnacle of ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Master and for his cause, women that do not do this work from a sense of duty, but because they love their Lord and Saviour. It seems to me we ought to put love in the same place where Christ put it, on the same pinnacle where Paul put it: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, it profiteth me nothing; though I understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, it profiteth ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various
... termination of the Council there was nothing left for Pius but to die. He stood upon a pinnacle which might well have made him nervous—lest haply the Solonian maxim, 'Call no man fortunate until his death,' should be verified in his person. During the two years of peace and retirement which he had still to pass, the unsuccessful conspiracy of Benedetto Accolti ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... which Bonaparte must have felt at the pinnacle of grandeur where fortune had placed him was not, however, entirely unmixed with uneasiness and vexation. Except at Berlin, in all the other great Courts the Emperor of the French was still Monsieur Bonaparte; and your country, of the subjugation of which he had spoken with ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of these last words. You cannot look at the canopy work or the pinnacle work of this cathedral without seeing that they do not merely suggest buds and leaves, but that the buds and leaves are there carven before your eyes. I myself cannot look at the tabernacle work of our stalls without being reminded of the young pine forests ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... May, When the Commodore Jacques Cartier to the westward sailed away; In the crowded old Cathedral, all the town were on their knees, For the safe return of kinsmen from the undiscovered seas; And every autumn blast that swept o'er pinnacle and pier, Filled manly hearts with sorrow, and gentle hearts ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... passed for a day through a region of isles. The sea was glassy save when a school of porpoises tore it apart in their pursuit of the flying fish. On its deep sapphire the islands seemed to float, sometimes a mere pinnacle of rock, sometimes a cone-shaped peak timbered down to the beach where the surf fell over. Toward evening, when the breeze freshened slightly, we seemed almost to brush the sides of some of these ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... Winkie had done nothing notoriously bad for three days, and so stood on a pinnacle ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... and he had immediately gained official recognition by sticking to his instruments for sixty-eight hours—recorded at fifteen-minute intervals in his log—when the whaler Goblin encountered a submerged pinnacle rock in the Island Passage and flashed the old ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... and from the threshing fields, piled on donkeys that one meets everywhere at this season, with their black, unbridled heads just visible beneath a pinnacle of golden straw. ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... street, and you will at once see our meaning. What a joyous upspringing of pinnacles and pointed roofs and spires! of no more earthly use, indeed, than so much pleasant laughter. There is no tower without its spire, no turret or gable without its pinnacle, no oriel without its pointed roof, no dormer without some such playful leaping up into the air. Every salient point attacks the sky with its long iron spindle, wrought with strange device and bearing a hospitable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... on the path of life. Seeking Fortune, to find and be treated by that whimsical goddess with good or ill. To be smiled or frowned upon, to be mounted upon the triumphing waves, rising higher and higher, until he had reached the pinnacle of Fame, or drifted about, sinking lower and lower in the dark waters, at last reaching the pool of ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... complete the structure, from the treasury of St. Croix county. It was perched on the top of one of the high bluffs in that town, and much private and judicial blasphemy has been expended by exhausted litigants and judges in climbing to its lofty pinnacle. I held a term in it ten years after ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... they engaged to fight in opposition, and a clamour arose. Telamonian Ajax first slew a man, the companion of Sarpedon, magnanimous Epicles, striking him with a rugged stone, which, mighty in size, lay highest up against a pinnacle within the wall. Not easily would a man support it with both hands, such as mortals now are, not although being very youthful; but he, raising it aloft, hurled it, and burst the four-coned helmet, and along ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... four or five years afterward! And of course the old count, who so kindly left the family group that was bidding Madelaine de Livilier good-bye, was not the Prime Minister Maurepas, who was not "only a few months returned from exile," and who was not then "at the pinnacle of royal favor"; for these matters were of earlier date, and this "most lovable old man in the world" wasn't any longer in the world at all, and had not been for eight years. He was ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... a buttelike pinnacle. The lights of the ship were close over us. And there were moving lights up there, tiny moving spots on the adjacent rocks. The brigands had come out, prowling about ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... short right now," the old man chuckled, "but after a few hikes up to Pinnacle Point, you should fit that little hoss jist like ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... Let us pass over his stormy life, and hear what he says when, on the pinnacle of earthly power and glory, he ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... 'set to watch the manners and behaviour of my countrymen and contemporaries,' [Footnote: Spectator 435.] and to extirpate anything 'that shocks modesty and good manners', [Footnote: Spectator 34.] such a censor was bound to place himself on a pinnacle above the passions and foibles which he was to rebuke. Yet occasionally Addison does appear a trifle self-satisfied. Pope's indictment of his character in the person of Atticus cannot be entirely set aside. His creed, as implied in Spectator 115, esteems the welfare of man as the prime end ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... walls, men by the door-posts get Some foothold up; with shielded left they meet the weapons' rain, While on the battlements above grip with the right they gain. The Dardans on the other side pluck roof and pinnacle From off the house; with such-like shot they now, beholding well The end anigh, all death at hand, make ready for the play: And gilded beams, the pomp and joy of fathers passed away. They roll adown, and other some with naked point and edge The nether doorways of the place in ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... yourselves cross-bowmen and let these two dogs keep their station under the walls of the castle? Heave over the coping stones from the battlement, an better may not be. Get pick-ax and levers and down with that huge pinnacle!" pointing to a heavy piece of stone-carved work ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... with bewildered eye. There was neither chapel nor convent, nor humble hermitage, to be seen; nothing but a moss-grown stone pinnacle, rising out of the centre of the area, surmounted by a cross. The greensward around appeared to have been sacred from the tread of man or beast, and the surrounding trees bent toward the cross, as ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... as a hill, for he had lived long in the heart of the towering Andes. Behind him lay the belt of woodland that separated the basin from the open sea, a scant league away. The cleft through the hill lay almost directly ahead. It's walls apparently were perpendicular; a hundred feet or less from the pinnacle, the opening spread out considerably, indicating landslides at some remote period, the natural sloughing off of earth and stone in the formation of this narrow, unnatural passage through the very centre ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... this dying world and set them once more to the labours, the intrigues, the mysteries and the cruelties which they had practised to make their last stand against the swarming hordes of the dead sea bottoms that had driven them step by step to the uttermost pinnacle of the world where they were now intrenched behind an impenetrable ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of the noble patriot, soon "put out his wings," and soared, ultimately, to a pinnacle of honor and renown attained by few among men. In the winter of 1793 and 1794, the public mind had become highly excited from the inflammatory appeals in behalf of France, by Citizen Genet, the French Minister ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... half-speed, dropped to quarter-speed, and began to sway softly from side to side as the huge air-planes beat the mist through which they moved, and the antennae of light pierced it. Still up they went, and on—yet swift enough to let Percy see one great pinnacle rear itself, elongate, sink down into a cruel needle, and vanish into nothingness a thousand feet below. The motion grew yet more nauseous, as the car moved up at a sharp angle preserving its level, simultaneously rising, advancing and swaying. Once, hoarse and sonorous, an unfrozen torrent roared ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... natural beauty of Sampaolo is to my thinking unparalleled. At a distance, as your ship approaches it, Sampaolo lies on the horizon like a beautiful soft cloud, all vague rose-colours and purples, a beautiful soft pinnacle of cloud. Then gradually, as you come nearer, the cloud changes, crystallises; and Sampaolo is like a great wonderful carving, a great wonderful carved jewel, a cameo cut on the sea, with a sort of aureole about it, an opalescence of haze and sunshine. Nearer still, its aspect ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... at Pleasure Bay, wandering about under the trees in front of the hotel. Down between them and the bank was a lot of men piling up a heap of round stones and crossing sticks of wood over them till a high sort of a cross-beam pinnacle was built, to which one of the men set fire. Mercy, how it blazed up and flashed through the cracks in the wood! They seemed to enjoy the blaze, and worked like beavers around it—though I don't know how a beaver works, never ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... imposing phenomenon does history present to us than the rise of Spanish power to the pinnacle of greatness and glory in the sixteenth century? The Mohammedans, after centuries of fierce and stubborn war, driven back; the whole peninsula brought under a single rule with a single creed; enormous acquisitions from the Netherlands of Naples, Sicily, the Canaries; France humbled, England ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... guards from the pinnacle came down and reported that the soldiers had ceased fighting the populace and, joining cause with them, were attempting to scale the pyramid by cutting steps in the icy surface. So again I went above and Nefert ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... object, which he could never quite consider human,—at his white and blue petticoats, and his effeminate face, so sleepy and so mindless, as if he expected him to turn into a plate or sugar-bowl, or begin flying in the air across some porcelain river, and alighting on the pinnacle of a pagoda. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... who hears not, a wagon go rattling along the road, and the shouting, whistling and singing of boys. It was past noon before he recalled the object with which he had left home that morning. He sat upon the very pinnacle of achievement—that is to say, he sat upon the very highest point in the orchard, his head up, his spirits up, with such a decidedly upward tendency that it was hard for him to make up his mind to descend to the plane of common life. However, he thought it must be ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... sailing across the sky changed from pigeon-gray to pink. All over the little academic town the tops of different buildings took on different tints: here the sun would pick out the green enameled on a pinnacle, there the scarlet tiles of a villa; here the copper ornament on some artistic shop, and there the sea-blue slates of some old and steep church roof. All these coloured crests seemed to have something oddly individual ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... this dignity and happiness, but he kept not his station, for the great dragon falling down from that pinnacle of honour he had in heaven, drew down with him the third part of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth, and thus man, who was in honour, is now associated with, and made like to, beasts or devils. He is a stranger to God from the womb, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... day had been lost, Miltiades, even though he had escaped death upon the field, would have been totally and irretrievably ruined; but as it was won, the result of the transaction was that he was raised to the highest pinnacle of glory and renown. ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... they had found out that the Hirondelle had left Yarmouth, on the Norfolk coast, where she had been lying for two or three days, the day before she was lost, and was then intending to cruise round the coast of Great Britain. The baron was immediately raised from the depths of despair to the highest pinnacle of hope on hearing this, for he felt sure Leon had gone ashore at Yarmouth to place the baby with some Englishwoman, and had remained there some days on purpose. Confiding his new hope to Pere Yvon, he at once decided to start that night for England by Dover and Calais, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... her father, Josephine for her mother, Eugene for her brother; with the richest endowments of person, mind, and heart, with glowing health, and surrounded by admirers, Hortense seemed now to be placed upon the very highest pinnacle ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... and study. He did not set himself about writing books for mankind, until he knew what they possessed and what they wanted. It was his opinion that a writer who would do any good should stand upon the pinnacle of his age, and from thence ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... the vagaries of an overwrought brain. He put forth his arm and found that it was so—there was no chair there and no figure seated in the chair. It was a trick of the light and an effect of imagination, an imagination that was hounded, day by day, from depth to pinnacle, from pinnacle to depth, back and forth like a shuttlecock in giant hands. No chair was there and no seated figure. He sank back on the settle and found that ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... have hitherto prevented the silk being used ... for textile fabrics." So that it comes to this: if spiders are useless because they eat each other, the bees do much the same thing (only wholesale), but it makes them commercially useful. The bee therefore we place upon a pinnacle of respectability, but the spider we despise. Faugh! the hypocrisy of it makes me sick. My children will be taught to venerate the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... then she would not have believed him, but caught her woe closer to her heart, and nursed it with fiercer tenderness against his shallow prating. Perhaps he might have told her too, that it is cruel kindness unasked to set people on a pinnacle, and, when they cannot keep foothold on that slippery height, to scorn their fall. Other things such an one might well have said, but more wisely left unsaid; for cool reason is a blister to heartache, and heartache is not ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... avail themselves of some opportunity of displaying the ascerbid feeling which has been created: not that I would wish an Englishman to subdue that just and natural pride which he must ever feel when he reflects on the pinnacle of greatness which his country has attained, through the genius, industry, and valour of her sons; yet it is a suaviter in modo which I wish him to preserve in his outward bearing towards the French, without ever compromising ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... wary. She strolled through the kitchen in a casual way. Harriet was busy about the grate, and paid no attention to her; so she secured the carving-knife without difficulty, went up to the attic, and opened the window. She was now on the dangerous pinnacle of a temple, risking her life in order to obtain the materials for a charm which would give ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Russell & Joy to her mind was a synonym for heartless destruction of happiness and life. The traffic itself was a great evil generality, and as such met condemnation. But in generalities, as in mountain ranges, there are specific points that tower out distinctively for consideration. Such a pinnacle of iniquity this liquor firm had seemed to Jean to be since her ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... on a pinnacle of rock. Steel-Blue had cut a swath around him 15 feet deep and five ...
— Acid Bath • Vaseleos Garson
... that affords a fresh view of the Bay of Naples at every one of its many twists and turnings. Over a ravine filled with masses of ilex and myrtle; past the fragment of the pirate Barbarossa's aerial castle, perched on a rocky pinnacle and looking like some fantastic creation of Gustave Dore's brush; the broad ribband of road leads across the steep northern flank of Monte Solaro, until it ends at Ana-Capri with its white houses nestling round a domed church. It is an easy ascent, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... heaven. Wealth, beauty, genius are as naught; and fame, that hollow, gilded bauble, brings not the promised delight, and an aching void remains in the embittered heart. One of our most talented authors, now seated on the pinnacle of ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... courage to step down from the pinnacle you stood on. So it's not cowardice that has set you down here. It's wrong conception. And I've thought of two things. The first, and best, is for you to go back. No one has taken your place, because no ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... seemed probable that Baptiste Lepoy would drop out of vogue before her translation of his temporarily famous novel was finished. However, the languid prosecution of the work had invested Mrs. Gaspilton with a certain literary dignity, even in Kensingate circles, and would place her on a pinnacle in St. Chuddocks, where hardly any one read French, and assuredly no one had heard ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... with the spirit of the departed poet-sage, and thus let his own words be the necromantic spell that raises the dead, and brings us into communion with that man who knew what was in men more than any other mere man ever did. Well was it for Shakspere that he was humble; else on what a desolate pinnacle of companionless solitude must he have stood! Where was he to find his peers? To most thoughtful minds it is a terrible fancy to suppose that there were no greater human being than themselves. From ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... isle. By the rebellion of a people on whom he had so long trampled with impunity, Charles was astonished and confounded; and in the first agony of grief and devotion, he was heard to exclaim, "O God! if thou hast decreed to humble me, grant me at least a gentle and gradual descent from the pinnacle of greatness!" His fleet and army, which already filled the seaports of Italy, were hastily recalled from the service of the Grecian war; and the situation of Messina exposed that town to the first storm of his revenge. Feeble in themselves, and yet hopeless of foreign ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... read what a man on the pinnacle of culture has said: "Experience shows that when culture spreads, it grows thin and colorless." Then one must not raise an outcry against the bearers of a new renaissance. I can no longer herald a renaissance; ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... form two small islands (or more, according to the number of the hills) included within one annular reef. Let the island continue subsiding, and the coral-reef will continue growing up on its own foundation, whilst the water gains inch by inch on the land, until the last and highest pinnacle is covered, and there remains a perfect atoll. A vertical section of this atoll is shown in the woodcut by the dotted lines;—a ship is anchored in its lagoon, but islets are not supposed yet to have been formed on the reef. The depth of the lagoon and ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... sitting on the little mound which marks the summit of the island—a mound stripped and riddled by rabbits—a heavy bank of fog began to work up from the south, behind Valentia, on the other jaw of Dingle Bay. As soon as I saw it I hurried down from the pinnacle where I was, so that I might get away from the more dangerous locality before the clouds overtook me. In spite of my haste I had not gone half a mile when an edge of fog whisked and circled round me, and ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... had the marriage been annulled than his titanic ambition leaped, as it always did, to a tremendous pinnacle. He would wed. He would have children. But he would wed no petty princess. This man who in his early youth had felt honored by a marriage with the almost declassee widow of a creole planter now stretched out his hand that he might take to himself a woman not merely ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... behold a forest spread With silken trees upon thy head, And when I see that other dress Of flowers set in comeliness; When I behold another grace In the ascent of curious lace, Which like a pinnacle doth show The top, and the top-gallant too. Then, when I see thy tresses bound Into an oval, square, or round, And knit in knots far more than I Can tell by tongue, or true-love tie; Next, when those lawny films I see Play with a ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... jutting crag which seemed almost to overhang the water; and going on farther amongst the wind-brushed pines, we came to another spot which we had previously viewed from above. It was a little round stone oratory perched on the crest of a jutting pinnacle, and linked to the main rock by a narrow causeway which rested on a slender arch. It was lit by a lantern in the roof, and over the altar was the marble effigy of a ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... that one of the domestics about his person informed him of the abdication of Napoleon; upon which he put himself in a great passion, and swore "it was a lie." This wretched old man was reduced from the highest pinnacle of grandeur to the most pitiable condition; none of his subjects were admitted to see him for many years; even his children were excluded, except upon particular occasions, and then they were admitted only in the presence of certain individuals. The old Queen had the care of his person, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... on my back as I lay concealed on a rock enveloped in a drab driving coat, which so closely resembled the rock in colour that even he was deceived, and, taking my back as the highest pinnacle, accommodated himself accordingly; neither did he discover his error till my hand grasped him by the legs. I have frequently had cormorants and shags perched around me within a few feet; but their suspicions seemed generally to be aroused by human smell, unless I had rubbed ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... spinning-wheel at one end of the piazza, honest Balt would sit smoking his evening pipe at the other, watching the achievements of a little wooden warrior, who, armed with a sword in each hand, was most valiantly fighting the wind on the pinnacle of the barn. In the meantime, Ichabod would carry on his suit with the daughter by the side of the spring under the great elm, or sauntering along in the twilight, that hour so favourable to the ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... the knobby, brown rock pinnacle that formed the head of Sunlight Basin and stared resentfully out over the baked desert and the forbidding hills and the occasional grassy hollows that stretched away and away to the skyline. So clear was the air that every slope, every hollow, every acarpous ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... Frank, lad," he said gravely; "you have had far more experience among these people in the city than I have, and you know the need of caution. Take care; a slip may mean destruction now we have climbed so near the pinnacle of our hopes. I will say no more than this—Go, and ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... the ornaments of his hastily constructed palaces, the absolute will to make the name Napoleon the most important thing in the world next to the name of God, these desires carried Napoleon to a pinnacle of fame which no ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon |
