"Preeminent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sale: The candidates for seats in the Convention to meet in Richmond were on the ground, actively speaking both publicly and privately. Mr. George Chrisman, one of them, a man of preeminent wisdom in things relating to government, publicly avowed himself opposed to secession on the basis of both principle and policy. "On the ground of principle," said he, "secession violates the pledge of sacred honor made by the several States when they set their hands and seals to ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... important services to his country would fall far short of the tribute due to his character. Uniting with the most unaffected simplicity the highest degree of personal valor and of intellectual energy, he stands preeminent before the world and for after ages in that band of heroic spirits who upon the ocean and the land formed and sustained during the second war with Great Britain the martial reputation of their country. To this high and honorable purpose General Brown may be truly ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... Jowler was a dog of preeminent abilities and exceptional virtues, we but faintly echo the verdict of a bereaved Universe. Endowed with a gigantic intellect and a warm heart, modest in his demeanour genial in his intercourse with friends and acquaintances, and forbearing towards strangers ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... no doubt she had great merits—she was charming, sympathetic, intelligent, cultivated. More than this (for it had not been Isabel's ill-fortune to go through life without meeting in her own sex several persons of whom no less could fairly be said), she was rare, superior and preeminent. There are many amiable people in the world, and Madame Merle was far from being vulgarly good-natured and restlessly witty. She knew how to think—an accomplishment rare in women; and she had thought to very ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... performed on the following evening. Its ever fresh and cheerful melodies presented a fine contrast to the severely intellectual style of "Elijah." In rendering purely melodic phrases, Herr Formes was not so preeminent as in declamatory passages. Not always strictly in tune, not specially graceful, slow in delivery, even beyond the requirements of a dignified style, he impressed the audience rather by the volume and richness of his tones ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... great people. I say more: you are a great populace. Your fisticuffs are even better than your sword thrusts. You have an appetite. You are the nation which eats other nations—a magnificent function! This suction of the world makes England preeminent. As politicians and philosophers, in the management of colonies, populations, and industry, and in the desire to do others any harm which may turn to your own good, you stand alone. The hour will come when two boards will be put up on earth—inscribed on one side, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... roofing a given space? These fine works have their whole value as expression; it is with their visible contempt of thrift that our admiration begins. They pared away the stone to the minimum that safety demanded, and beyond it,—yet not from thrift, but to make the design more preeminent and necessary, and to owe as little as possible to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... at the hotel a requisition for lunch, and move forth for a survey. The chief streets are wide and airy, but a turn places one instantly in an older France. We ramble with curiosity in and out among the streets and shops, finding no one preeminent attraction, but an infinite number of minor ones which maintain the equation. In fact there is little for the guide-book sight-seer in Bayonne. The cathedral leaves only a dim impression of being in ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... with all these mistakes and failures, not always creditable or pardonable, has given Bacon his preeminent place in the ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... dreamed at all, either sleeping or waking. If by some chance she had fallen into musings, she would have mused blood and iron, the superiority of the German nation, cookery in its three forms feine, buergerliche, and Hausmannskost, in all which forms she was preeminent in skill—she would have mused, that is, on facts, plain and undisputed. If she had had children she would have made an excellent mother; as it was she made excellent cakes—also a form of activity to be commended. She was a Dettingen ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... believers are the subjects of preeminent privileges and blessings. Special promises are made to them from love to their parents; great advantages are theirs, directly and indirectly, from their relation to those who are the true worshippers of God; forbearance, long suffering, the remembrance ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... later in "Les Caracteres" of La Bruyere, who dropped personalities and gave them the form of permanent types. It is a literature peculiarly adapted to the flexibility and fine perception of the French mind, and one in which it has been preeminent, from the analytic but diffuse Mlle. de Scudery, and the clear, terse, spirited Cardinal de Retz, to the fine, penetrating, and exquisitely finished Sainte-Beuve, the prince of modern critics and literary artists. It was this skill in vivid delineation that ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... record; take the cake * [U. S.]. become larger, render larger &c. (increase) 35, (expand) 194. Adj. superior, greater, major, higher; exceeding &c. v.;great &c. 31; distinguished, ultra[Lat]; vaulting; more than a match for. supreme, greatest, utmost, paramount, preeminent, foremost, crowning; first-rate &c. (important) 642, (excellent) 648; unrivaled peerless, matchless; none such, second to none, sans pareil[Fr]; unparagoned[obs3], unparalleled, unequalled, unapproached[obs3], unsurpassed; superlative, inimitable facile princeps[Lat], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... its exercise,—as a specimen of his manner of treating a great constitutional question when numerous authorities and precedents are to be examined and set aside, this speech deserves to be studied. With the exception of Gen. Marshall's speech in the case of Jonathan Robbins, it stands preeminent in our political literature as a model of profound research, of thorough argumentation, and of overwhelming strength. The reader at this day feels that he is borne along by a force which is not only equal to the occasion, ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... also with a few maternal conditions which seriously affect the embryo, often seriously enough to cause its expulsion, alive or dead. In this respect, certain constitutional disorders are preeminent. Bright's disease and diabetes are prejudicial to the development of the embryo; women suffering from either of them must be watched with great care. Occasionally, such pregnancies come to a premature end in spite of every precaution. ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... away these privileges in the case stated in the passage under consideration, would have been preeminent rigor; for the case described, is not that of a servant born in the house of a master, nor that of a minor, whose unexpired minority had been sold by the father, neither was it the case of an Israelite, who though of age, had not yet ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... has the power of transformation and of making itself visible or invisible. At will it reduces itself to the size of a silk-worm, or is swollen until it fills the space of heaven and earth. This is the creature especially preeminent in art, literature and rhetoric. There are nine kinds of dragons, all with various features and functions, and artists and authors revel in their representation. The celestial dragon guards the mansions of the gods and supports them lest they fall; the spiritual dragon causes the winds ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... systematizing truth he was the greatest benefactor to the cause of "orthodoxy" that appeared in Europe for several centuries, admired for his genius as much as Spencer and other great lights of science are in our day, but standing preeminent and lofty over all, like a beacon light to give both guidance and warning to inquiring minds in every part of Christendom. Nor could popes and sovereigns render too great honor to such a prodigy of genius. They offered him the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... Shakespeare—I do not mean of his words, but of his tone, for that is what distinguishes the master. You might as well try it with the Venus of Melos. In Shakespeare it is always the higher thing, the thought, the fancy, that is preeminent; it is Caesar that draws all eyes, and not the chariot in which he rides, or the throng which is but the reverberation of his supremacy. If not, how explain the charm with which he dominates in all tongues, even under the disenchantment ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... Derbyshire with a suggestion of mountain dignity. The Ardennes, in short—and this is their scenic weakness—never attain to the proper mountain spirit. There is a further point, however, in which they also recall Derbyshire, but in which they are far preeminent. This is the vast agglomeration of caves and vertical potholes—like those in Craven, but here called etonnoirs—that riddle the rolling wolds in all directions. Chief among these is the mammoth cave ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... this happy moment. It seemed to be enough for anyone to have arrived by the same conveyance as Mrs. Blackett, who presently had her court inside the house, while Mrs. Todd, large, hospitable, and preeminent, was the centre of a rapidly increasing crowd about the lilac bushes. Small companies were continually coming up the long green slope from the water, and nearly all the boats had come to shore. I counted three or four that were baffled ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... tell me that Messrs. A. and B. are the most gracious, unassuming people in the world, and yet preeminent in the ranges of science I am referring to. I know that as well as you. But mark this which I am going to say once for all: If I had not force enough to project a principle full in the face of the half dozen most obvious facts which seem to contradict it, I would think only in single file from ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... contained these passages as sacred, it is more than doubtful whether any of the Jews regarded them as sacred in precisely the same sense as the written Law. To the Jews Moses was and is a colossal form, preeminent in authority above ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... attracted to the councils of their country. He had afterwards been active in promoting those measures which led to the convention at Philadelphia, of which he was a member, and had greatly contributed to the adoption of the constitution by the State of New York. In the preeminent part he had performed, both in the military and civil transactions of his country, he had acquired a great degree of well-merited fame, and the frankness of his manners, the openness of his temper, the warmth of his feelings, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... beauty and accomplishments. It was also said, he added, that the lady had prevailed on her father to sanction young Osborne's addresses to her, and that the baronet, who was a strong political partizan, calculating upon his preeminent talents, intended to bring him into parliament, in order to strengthen his party. He added that he himself was then starting for London, to pursue his son, and rescue him from an act which would stamp his name ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... far as I have been able to ascertain, were universal among American Indians, and apparently fundamental. These have already been referred to as the "eneepee," or vapor-bath, and the "chan-du-hu-pah-yu-za-pee," or ceremonial of the pipe. In our Siouan legends and traditions these two are preeminent, as handed down from the most ancient time and ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... teaching of truth, the power even granted to them sometimes over Nature and disease, without feeling himself transported into a world far above this, and without placing his confidence in what God himself has declared so powerful and preeminent ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Turks turned to this historic and preeminent friend for succor. The Turkish cabinet cabled frantically to Great Britain to intercede for them; the people in mass-meeting in ancient St. Sophia's echoed the same appeal. For grim humor, the spectacle has scarcely an equal in modern history. Besought and entreated, the British, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... the lowering eyes of undecided colour beneath the receding brow, but also in every shiftless attitude and movement of his great gaunt body, and even in the torn coat and shapeless felt hat—both once black, but both now a dirty gray—his aspect proclaimed him the preeminent rowdy of his town. ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of Dresden is well known to most amateurs from the engravings which have been made of many of its most capital pictures. In the works of Correggio it stands preeminent above all others; and although some of these have suffered by injudicious cleaning, still they are by Correggio. In the works of Titian, Raffaelle, Lionardo da Vinci, Parmiggiano, Andrea del Sarto, the Caracci, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... brilliant achievements of pagan antiquity are dwarfed in comparison with these. Until quite lately, indeed, the student of history has had his attention too narrowly confined to the ages that have been preeminent for literature and art—the so-called classical ages—and thus his sense of historical perspective has been impaired. When Mr. Freeman uses Gregory of Tours as a text-book, he shows that he realizes how an epoch may be none the ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... wing to your imagination. Behold yourself preeminent in your field of effort. Dream of yourself as the best civil engineer of your time, or the soundest banker or ablest merchant. If you are a farmer fancy yourself the master of all the secrets science is daily discovering in this most engaging ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... "The Russians are preeminent," said I, "because they possess both the inspiration—the fire—and the training. In no other nation or school are the two so perfectly joined. In the Turkish dancers there is perfect grace and freedom, but no life. In Desiree Le Mire, for example, there is indeed life; but ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... cathedrals alone, the Isle of France stands preeminent among the provinces for each of the thirteen provincial styles of architecture which are allocated by the Societe des Monuments Historiques. A comparatively small and unified province, it comprehends within and contiguous to its borders ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... any art, they remember the plain and simple proceedings of the old artists, who attained their grand results by penetrating themselves with some noble and significant action, not by inflating themselves with a belief in the preeminent importance and greatness of their own times. They do not talk of their mission, nor of interpreting their age, nor of the coming poet; all this, they know, is the mere delirium of vanity; their business is not to praise their ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... recognized public market for securities, the market which is organized and safeguarded and depended upon as a standard of values, is an undertaking of great responsibility in any community. To take this step in New York, which is one of the four preeminent financial centers of the world, involved a responsibility of a magnitude difficult adequately to estimate. Upon the continuity of this market rest the vast money loans secured by the pledge of listed securities; numberless individuals ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... reader conceive to himself a clear frosty November morning, the scene an open heath, having for the background that huge chain of mountains in which Skiddaw and Saddleback are preeminent; let him look along that BLIND ROAD, by which I mean the track so slightly marked by the passengers' footsteps that it can but be traced by a slight shade of verdure from the darker heath around it, and, being only visible ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... this abyss of iniquity and vileness invokes the abyss of strength and splendour to praise Thy preeminent Glory.' Well, is that pretty well expressed, our friend? Try; recite that to Our Lady and She will unbind you; then prayer will come of itself. Such little ways are permitted by Her, and we must be humble enough not to presume to do ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... and hostess, and when the party of three faced toward the dining-room entrance, so familiar to the boy, he felt as if his legs must give way under him. There have since been other red-letter days in Edward Bok's life, but the moment that still stands out preeminent is that when two colored head waiters at the dining-room entrance, whom he had so often watched, bowed low and escorted the party to their table. At last, he was in that sumptuous dining-hall. The entire room took on the picture of one great eye, and that eye centred on the party of three—as, in ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... all the citizens of the different classes were properly called classici, but only those of the chief class, those who possessed an income of a certain fixed sum. Those who possessed a smaller income were described by the term infra classem, below the preeminent class. The word classicus was used in a figurative sense by Aulus Gellius, and applied to writers: a writer of worth and distinction, classicus assiduusque scriptor, a writer who is of account, has real property, and is not lost in the proletariate ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... nature, from our rational understanding and our social affection; and is, in the proper use of it, the peculiar ornament and distinction of man, whether we compare him with other orders in the creation, or view him as an individual preeminent among his fellows. Hence that science which makes known the nature and structure of speech, and immediately concerns the correct and elegant use of language, while it surpasses all the conceptions of the stupid or unlearned, and presents nothing that ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... that an author to whom such magnificent works were due would himself pass judgment and publicly express his opinion—this aroused the greatest hopes. Moreover, men of worth quickly gathered about him, and this alliance of preeminent litterateurs was so active that the Merkur during a period of several years may be employed as a textbook of our literary history. On the public generally its influence was profound and significant, for if, on the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... day Elizabeth met two or three superior people from the city, men and women of note, whose presence at the board was like meteor flashes—kindling everything with brilliancy; but among the most cheerful and most witty this wretched woman shone forth preeminent. Every word she spoke carried electric fire with it. Her cheeks were scarlet; her eyes radiant. The lips that had been so pale in her husband's presence a few hours before, glowed like ripe cherries with the sunshine upon ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it. Without pretensions to that high confidence you reposed in our first and greatest revolutionary character, whose preeminent services had entitled him to the first place in his country's love and destined for him the fairest page in the volume of faithful history, I ask so much confidence only as may give firmness and effect to the legal administration ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... for him, [1:17]and he is before all things, and in him all things consist, [1:18]and he is the head of the body, the church; who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that he might himself be preeminent in all things, [1:19]for in him [God] was well pleased that all fullness should dwell, [1:20]and through him to reconcile all things to himself, making peace through the blood of his cross, through him, whether things on the earth or things ...
— The New Testament • Various
... poets stand preeminent. Dr. Jose Fernandez Madrid (d. 1830) was a physician and statesman, and for a short time president of the Republic. His lyrics are largely the expression of admiration for Bolivar and of hatred toward Spain: his verses are usually sonorous and correct (Poesias, Havana, ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... in the midst of the vast Algonquin territory was the region occupied by the Huron-Iroquois family. In thrift, intelligence, skill in fortification, and daring in war, this stock stands preeminent among all native Americans. It included the Eries and Hurons, in Canada; {9} the Susquehannocks, on the Susquehanna; and the Conestogas, also in Pennsylvania. But by far the most important branch was the renowned confederacy called the Five Nations. This included the Senecas, Onondagas, Cayugas, ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... Preeminent among the hickories which have produced nuts, stands the Weschcke variety, which has borne the greatest quantity with the most regularity. This variety, grafted on bitternut in 1932, produced one nut that year. Its bearing record has been unbroken from ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... the insignificance of the criminal; the blamelessness—so far as in our sphere of existence the best of men may be held blameless—of the victim. Not one of our murdered Presidents had an enemy in the world; they were all of such preeminent purity of life that no pretext could be given for the attack of passional crime; they were all men of democratic instincts, who could never have offended the most jealous advocates of equality; they were of kindly and generous nature, to whom wrong or injustice ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... her planning, her dress and ardor and moods, were directed to one never-lost-sight-of end; but he disposed his attention in a hundred channels. Lee began to be aware of the tremendous single economy of women, the constant bending back of their instincts to a single preeminent purpose. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... who attempted something in this way; but he (the Turk, I mean), was untrammelled by ecclesiastical prejudice. But why should we tarry in the past? Have we not Mr. Proctor with us, both in Knowledge and the Cornhill? Does not the preeminent authority, Professor Pettigrew Bell, himself declare, with the weight, too, of the Encyclopodia Britannica, that 'the number of successful flying models is considerable. It is not too much to expect,' he goes on, 'that the problem of artificial flight will ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... Perhaps, if we explore the life of this great apostle, and seek to discover its springs, we may find the clue to his abounding hope. Roaming then through the entire records of his life and teachings, do we discover any significant emphasis? Preeminent above all other suggestions, I am imprest with his vivid sense of the reality of the redemptive work of Christ. Turn where I will, the redemptive work of the Christ evidences itself as the base and groundwork of his life. It is not only that here and there are solid statements of ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... a diaeresis in preeminent, and accented "e's in debris and denouement. These have been replaced with ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Kenelm's hand. Kenelm read it listlessly, with an increased contempt for an artist who could so find in gratified vanity consolation for the life gone from earth. But, listlessly as he read the letter, the sincere and fervent enthusiasm of the laudatory contents impressed him, and the preeminent authority of the signature ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hardly any action, but there is the same incisive character-drawing and clear etching of conditions that characterize the earlier work. It is a maturer effort and a more forceful political argument, hence it lacks the charm and simplicity which assign Noli Me Tangere to a preeminent place in Philippine literature. The light satire of the earlier work is replaced by bitter sarcasm delivered with deliberate intent, for the iron had evidently entered his soul with broadening experience ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... effect individual examples might be cited innumerable. Look at Wordsworth and Byron, both preeminent for sensibility to the beautiful; but, from deep diverseness in other leading mental gifts, the one, through the light of this vivifying power, became a poet of the propensities and the understanding, a poet ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... peacefulness of Swiss press and politics are due to the national development of today as expressed in appropriate institutions. Of these institutions the most effective, the fundamental, is direct legislation, accompanied as it is with general education. In education the Swiss are preeminent among nations. Illiteracy is at a lower percentage than in any other country; primary instruction is free and compulsory in all the cantons; and that the higher education is general is shown in the four ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... "Before being a wife or mother, one is a human being; and neither motherly nor wifely destination can overbalance or replace the human, but must become its means, not end. As above the poet, the painter, or the hero, so above the mother, does the human being rise preeminent." ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Overbeck had been for generations preeminent for learning and piety, and biographers have scarcely sufficiently taken into account either the Classic or the Christian inheritance of the painter. Religious teaching and living came by long lineal descent (see Family Chart on page xvi.): the great, great, great grandfather, ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... to the public the "WHITE HOUSE COOK BOOK," the publishers believe they can justly claim that it more fully represents the progress and present perfection of the culinary art than any previous work. In point of authorship, it stands preeminent. Hugo Ziemann was at one time caterer for that Prince Napoleon who was killed while fighting the Zulus in Africa. He was afterwards steward of the famous Hotel Splendide in Paris. Later he conducted the celebrated Brunswick Cafe in New York, and still later he gave to the Hotel ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... avoidance of each other. The continental war came to an end; the manufacturing distress increased exceedingly. There came troublous times, and a fierce warfare of politics. Great Stockington was torn asunder by rival parties. On one side stood preeminent, Mr. Spires; on the other towered conspicuously, Simon Deg. Simon was grown rich, and extremely popular. He was on all occasions the advocate of the people. He said that he had sprung from, and was one of them. He had bought a large tract of land on one ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... the armies of Italy. Her fascinating manners and her wonderful powers of persuasion were more influential than the loyalty of any dozen men in France in attaching to him the adherents who would promote his interests. Josephine was to the drawing-room and the salon what Napoleon was to the field—a preeminent leader. The secret of her personality that made her the Empress not only of the hearts of the Frenchmen, but also of the nations her husband conquered, has been beautifully told by herself. "There is only one occasion," she said to a friend, "in which I would voluntarily use the words, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... nations trace their origin to barbarians, the foundations of our nation were laid by civilized men, by Christians. Many of them were men of distinguished families, of powerful talents, of great learning and of preeminent wisdom, of decision of character, and of most inflexible integrity. And yet not unfrequently they have been treated as if they had no virtues; while their sins and follies have been sedulously immortalized in ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... house had been prepared for him, and that she had got the town in a state of great anxiety to see him. To tell the truth, this busy, bustling woman had been blowing a noisy trumpet for him in advance, and enlisting a large amount of female sympathy by stating that he was preeminent as an advocate of woman's rights ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... of the instinctive philosophy which, now and then, stands so well in the stead of experience, Mr. Ellison would have found himself precipitated, by the very extraordinary successes of his life, into the common vortex of Unhappiness which yawns for those of preeminent endowments. But it is by no means my present object to pen an essay on Happiness. The ideas of my friend may be summed up in a few words. He admitted but four unvarying laws, or rather elementary principles, of Bliss. That which he considered chief, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... broadened and popularized by several influential writers in the sixteenth century, among whom stand preeminent the Florentine diplomat Machiavelli (1469-1527), whose Prince really founded the modern science of politics, and who taught the dangerous doctrine that a ruler, bent on exercising a benevolent despotism, is justified in employing any means to achieve his purpose; Ariosto (1474-1533), ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... communication which induces me to modify the language of condemnation with which I characterized your order. It but strengthens me in the opinion that it stands "preeminent in the dark history of war for studied and ingenious cruelty." Your original order was stripped of all pretenses; you announced the edict for the sole reason that it was "to the interest of the United States." This alone you offered to us and the civilized world as an all-sufficient reason for disregarding ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... repentance, nor dared he to refuse any who were admitted to spiritual communion with the Redeemer. Every sect which celebrated the Lord's Supper, fenced the table round with ritual observances, except the Baptist church at Bedford, which stood preeminent for non-sectarianism. A singular proof of this is, that the catechism called Instruction of the Ignorant, written and published by Bunyan, is admirably adapted for the use, not only of his own church, but ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... justification of a comparison which some will deem presumptuous. Be this as it may, there will probably be little dissent from the opinion that the characteristic trait common to the two is an unrivaled scientific sagacity. In this these two naturalists seem to us, each in his way, preeminent. There is a characteristic likeness, too—underlying much difference—in their admirable manner of dealing with facts closely, and at first hand, without the interposition of the formal laws, vague ideal conceptions, or "glittering generalities" which some ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... then, these two general types of legislation, the one proposing local improvements, the other seeking social justice for the Negro race, were preeminent in the measures proposed by the Negro Congressmen. On the other hand, however, most of these measures, regardless of merit, met in general one of three fates: they were either sidetracked in committee, reported adversely, or defeated after ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... that sun which is the first proceeding of His Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, and from that in those things which come immediately after; and thus in order down to things lowest, which are less perfect as they are farther removed. Without such preeminent perfection in things prior and simple, neither man nor any kind of animal could have come into existence from seed, and afterwards continue to exist; nor could the seeds of trees and shrubs vegetate and bear fruit. For the more prior anything ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... with snakelike movements, directed toward her; every object she touched turned into a slippery tongue. Human countenances grew dim, save one, which, despite guilt and condemnation, was enthroned, in heroic suffering, high above the others, nay, appeared preeminent through his guilt as well as his defiance. And the day she was told that she was to confront Bastide Grammont in order to accuse him, her pulses beat in joyous measure again for the first time, and she arrayed herself as if ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... would ever have chosen to condescend to appeal to law without violence, when he was the most powerful party of the two as far as strength went; so as to allow himself now to be put on a level with those men among whom he might have been preeminent, and of his own free will to abandon a custom most pleasant to him, and one which by reason of its antiquity had almost the force ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... the subduing tints on in small touches, as in the exercise of tinting the chess-board. Of each of these methods I have something to tell you separately: but that is distinct from the subject of gradation, which I must not quit without once more pressing upon you the preeminent necessity of introducing it everywhere. I have profound dislike of anything like habit of hand, and yet, in this one instance, I feel almost tempted to encourage you to get into a habit of never touching paper with colour, without securing a gradation. You will ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the theatre of the most splendid hunts of the sixteenth century, and down through the ages it has ever held a preeminent place; holds it to-day even. Louis XVI in the Revolutionary torment even regretted the cutting off of his prerogative of the royal hunt, but he had no choice in the matter. In his journal of 1789 one reads: "the cerf runs alone in the Parc en Bas" (Rambouillet), ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... directly and purely Darwinian elements I should class as preeminent the work of Wallace and of Bates; for no two sets of facts have done more to fix in ordinary intelligent minds a belief in organic evolution and in natural selection as its guiding factor than the facts of geographical distribution and of protective colour and mimicry. The facts of geology ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... should desire to attach myself.... He is one whom I respect beyond measure; he stands almost alone as representative of principles with which I cordially agree; and as a man of business, and one who humanly speaking is sure to rise, he is preeminent.'—Lang's Life of Lord ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... case reported by ancient history, in which government has been established with deliberation and consent, the task of framing it has not been committed to an assembly of men, but has been performed by some individual citizen of preeminent wisdom ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... expressed his unbounded admiration for Luther as a "preeminent servant of Christ—praeclarus Christi servus." (C. R. 37, 54.) In his Answer of 1543 against the Romanist Pighius he said: "Concerning Luther we testify without dissimulation now as heretofore that we esteem him as a distinguished apostle of Christ, by whose labor and service, above ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... Hamilton and Madison—two of the most eminent of the authors of the Constitution, and the two preeminent contemporary expounders of its meaning—is the most valuable that could be offered for its interpretation. That of all the other statesmen of the period only tends to confirm the same conclusions. ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... this chord is preeminent in the sunset key, and the western skies ever chant their evening hymn in the 5th, 7th, and 2d of the ethereal music. The correspondence of the sub-dominant would be red, green, and indigo; of the chord of the 6th, red, yellow, and indigo; ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... foreseeing future events. It is true that the holy men through whom the Almighty thought meet to reveal his intentions relative to the church, were usually selected from the order of persons now described. But there were several exceptions, among whom stood preeminent the eloquent Daniel and the pathetic Amos. To prophesy, therefore, in the later times of the Hebrew commonwealth meant most generally the explication and enforcement of Divine truth—an import of the term which was extended into the era of the New Testament, when the more ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... three hundred and fifty-five delegates present,—a much larger number than took part in any of the other state conventions. The people of all parts of Massachusetts were very thoroughly represented, as befitted the state which was preeminent in the active political life of its town meetings, and the work done here was in some respects decisive in its effect upon the adoption of ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... other subjects of great and general importance to the people of this country, I can not be mistaken, I think, in regarding as preeminent the policy and measures which are designed to secure the restoration of the currency to that normal and healthful condition in which, by the resumption of specie payments, our internal trade and foreign ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... members of the oligarchy, who threw all moral restraints to the winds, Napoleon towers above them. Take any grounds—administrative, strategical, religious, domestic—he was preeminent above his contemporaries. On religious grounds alone, those thoughts of his which have been recorded not only disclose the insight of a man of affairs, but reveal the thinking mind of a deeply religious being. His conversations with ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... of the art. The business was pushed ahead at every point by its captains. Every man in his place, trying to give a little better service than yesterday—that was the keynote of the Hudson period. There was no one preeminent genius. Each important step forward was the result of the cooperation of many minds, and the prodding ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... the awful considerations that now bow down my mind, there is one that stands preeminent above the rest. You are the highest judicature in the realm; you sit here as judges, and decide all causes, civil and criminal, without appeal. It is a Judge's just duty never to pronounce a sentence, in the most trifling case, without hearing. Will you make ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... black chaos of whirling agonies, now together, now parting; so that each may make their separate sting felt, and, in turn, each will have to be faced. Preeminent among the dark host, towering above even the thought of Barbara, is the sense of my own degradation. There must have been something in my conduct to justify his taking me so confidently for the bad, light woman he did. One does not get such a character for nothing. ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... once the preeminent beau of the neighborhood, spite of the prejudice against learning. He brushed his hair straight up in front, and wore a sky-blue ribbon for a guard to his silver watch, and walked as if the tall heels of his blunt boots were egg-shells and not leather. Yet ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... then, for this purpose? Everything that will minister to the result—Organization, Leadership, Bible Study, Through-the-Week Activity, Material Equipment, Teaching, Song, Prayer, Reproof, Inspiration, Guidance, and all else that the Sunday school may know or discover. Two factors in it all are preeminent: Christ and the Boy. All else are but means. The boy a loving, serving follower of his Lord! ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother-tongue. We must teach them some foreign language. The claims of our own language it is hardly necessary to recapitulate. It stands preeminent even among the languages of the West. It abounds with works of imagination not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us; with models of every species of eloquence; with historical compositions, which, considered merely as narratives, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... beauties) there are two passages of preeminent merit. The first is where the lover, after a flight of rapturous commendation, expresses his wonder why all men that are about his mistress, even to her very servants, do not view her with the same eyes ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... Yet well I recollect the timid glance Of wonder and amazement which I cast On those heroic forms. When they went forth It seem'd as though Olympus had sent down The glorious figures of a bygone world, To frighten Ilion; and above them all, Great Agamemnon tower'd preeminent! Oh, tell me! Fell the hero in his home, Through Clytemnestra's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... not improbable that the only way of maintaining our present preeminent trade position and averting a panic is by declaring war on Germany. The submarine has added the last item to the danger of a financial world crash. There is now an uncertainty about our being drawn into the war; no more considerable credits can be privately placed in the United States. In the ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... that the person in question played admirably at whist. "And do you seriously say, doctor," said the learned counsel, "that a person having a superior capacity for a game so difficult, and which requires in a preeminent degree, memory, judgment, and combination, can be at the same time deranged in his understanding?"—"I am no card player," said the doctor, with great address, "but I have read in history that cards were invented for the amusement of an insane ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... of Queen Victoria, celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of her reign, was made the occasion for holding the third Colonial Conference. It was attended by the Premiers of all the colonies. Among them Wilfrid Laurier, or Sir Wilfrid as he now became, stood easily preeminent. In the Jubilee festivities, among the crowds in London streets and the gatherings in court and council, his picturesque and courtly figure, his unmistakable note of distinction, his silvery eloquence, and, not least, the fact that this ruler of the greatest of ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... how I dreaded it, for I knew the power of association—the effect of localities and customary external habits on the feelings. You may take a careworn, dyspeptic, melancholy man out for a week's excursion, and he will show himself preeminent in all good fellowship. But as the familiar sights gradually open on him at returning, you may see the shadows flitting down upon his brow and entering his soul. How many good resolutions of change and reform—of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... there are exceptional cases, usually when it is probably undergoing certain pathological changes, which may result in lameness and disable the animal, in which case surgical treatment will be indicated, especially if repeated blisters have failed to improve the symptoms. Line firing is then a preeminent suggestion, and many a useful life has received a new lease as the result of this operation timely performed. Another method of firing, which consists in emptying the sac by means of punctures through and through, made with a red-hot needle or wire, and the subsequent ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... by voices which command respect. To such pleas this is not the place to give large room, or to discriminate in detail between the reasonable and unreasonable elements in the attacks on a system of education in which a preeminent position is allotted to the literature of antiquity. While fully admitting that much time and labour are still wasted in efforts to plant the study of ancient and especially of Greek literature ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... had previously dealt thus justly with the natives. It is in comparison with Pizarro and Cortes that the colonists of all other nations in America appear to an advantage; but the fame of William Penn stands, and ever will stand, preeminent for unexceptionable justice and peace in his relations ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... contained a greater number of clever and selfish politicians. The places in the gift of the Crown were not enough to satisfy one twentieth part of the placehunters, every one of whom thought that his own services had been preeminent, and that, whoever might be passed by, he ought to be remembered. William did his best to satisfy these innumerable and insatiable claimants by putting many offices into commission. There were however a few great posts which it was impossible to divide. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in importance, for practical purposes as well as for the theoretical aspect of the subject. It is now being applied on a large scale to nearly all ornamental plants. It is the one great principle now in universal practice as well as one of preeminent scientific value. Of course, the main arguments of the evolution theory rest upon morphologic, systematic, geographic and paleontologic evidence. But the question as to how we can coordinate the relation between existing ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... this woman, rich and preeminent as she was, filled the soul of the girl, who herself was so much to be pitied. But when the lady had come up to her, and asked, in her deep voice, what was the danger that threatened her brother, Melissa, with unembarrassed grace, and although it was the first time she had ever addressed a lady ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... as illustrious heroes, is to be judged by the laws and standards of lesser creatures. In fashioning her, nature and art have worked together: in her, poetry walks the earth. The question of good or bad is entirely to be put aside: it is a rustic's impertinence—a bourgeois' vulgarity. She is preeminent, voila tout. Has she grace and beauty? Then you are answered: such possessions are an assurance that her influence in the aggregate must be for good. Thunder, destructive to insects, refreshes earth: so she. So sang the rhapsodist. Possibly a scholarly little French gentleman, going down ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Squeers, but in general his puppets are too artificial to excite any personal resentment. There are evidently set up merely to be knocked down. Few would identify themselves with Heap or Scrooge, and although the moral taught is appreciated by all, no class is hit, but only men who seem to be preeminent in churlishness or villainy. Dickens is remarkable for his gentleness whenever his humour touches the poor, and while he makes amusement out of their simplicity and ignorance, he throws in some sterling qualities. They often form the principal characters in his books, and ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... old man say Aias, and asked: "Who then is this other Achaian warrior, goodly and great, preeminent among the Archives by the measure of ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... The distinctive, preeminent, official business for the next four years, of making small things in this country look small and of gently, quietly making small men feel small, has been assigned by our people recently, to ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Produced with preeminent success in London and New York. Mr. Van Druten's new play deals with the women of one family, women so unlike that they set one another off startlingly. There is the tart, querulous old Mrs. Venables, and there are her three daughters—Nellie ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... What of his preeminent position, the First Hall-man was reputed to be quite wealthy. In addition to his miscellaneous grafts, he grafted on us. We farmed the general wretchedness, and the First Hall-man was Farmer-General over all of us. We held our particular grafts by his permission, and we ...
— The Road • Jack London
... had disappeared, why not retain the place for the sake of the ancient worthies whom tradition had handed down as at one time or another connected with it? There was rarely difficulty in selecting from among contemporary poets one of preeminent talent, whose elevation to the laurel would offend none of his fellows. There was certainly no difficulty in the present case. There was palpable evidence that Tennyson was by all admission the hierophant of his order; and it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... had arisen, and an irregular mob of strange creatures swept out of the distance toward the pool. Some were like pygmies, some had bloody noses. Their talk consisted of feverish, breathless ejaculations,—a gibberish in which the words "rot," "oach," and "giddy" were preeminent. Some were exciting themselves by chewing a kind of "bhang" made from the plant called pappahmint; others had their faces streaked ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte |
