"Quintessence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which spirits are caught and fastened upon the pages. Books are storehouses into which facts and principles have been harvested. Just as a bit of coal tells us what ferns and flowers grew in the far-off era, so the book gives us the very quintessence of man's thoughts about life and duty and death. Nor is there any other way of gaining these vital knowledges. Life is too short to obtain them through conversation or travel. Nor is any youth ready for his task until he has traced the rise and growth of houses, ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... dream of actually sharing in the banquet—is nevertheless as active and helpful as possible; but especially she is busy trying to keep the peace between the old house servants and the imported cook. This Sicilian is a notable character. To him cookery is not a handicraft: it is the triumph, the quintessence of all science and philosophy. He talks a strange professional jargon, and asserts that he is himself learned in astronomy—for that teaches the best seasons, e.g. for mackerel and haddock; in geometry,—that he might know how a boiler or ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... the immediate future was concerned. The years the most impressionable, from twenty to thirty, when the senses and the mind are the widest awake, I, the most impressionable of human beings, had spent in France, not among English residents, but among that which is the quintessence of the nation; I, not an indifferent spectator, but an enthusiast, striving heart and soul to identify himself with his environment, to shake himself free from race and language and to recreate himself as it were in the womb of a new nationality, assuming its ideals, its morals, and its modes of ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... for the most part morbidly moral people; but at all events they were saved later on from the delusion that nobody but Nietzsche had ever challenged our mercanto-Christian morality. I first heard the name of Nietzsche from a German mathematician, Miss Borchardt, who had read my Quintessence of Ibsenism, and told me that she saw what I had been reading: namely, Nietzsche's Jenseits von Gut and Bose. Which I protest I had never seen, and could not have read with any comfort, for want of the necessary German, ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... of Uriel, Which in Paradise befell. Once, among the Pleiads walking, Sayd overheard the young gods talking; And the treason, too long pent, To his ears was evident. The young deities discuss'd Laws of form, and metre just, Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams, What subsisteth, and what seems. One, with low tones that decide, And doubt and reverend use defied, With a look that solved the sphere, And stirr'd the devils everywhere, Gave his sentiment divine Against ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... baroque may visit the shrine of Saint Cataldo, a jovial nightmare in stone. And they who desire a literary pendant to this fantastic structure should read the life of the saint written by Morone in 1642. Like the shrine, it is the quintessence of insipid exuberance; there is something preposterous in its very title "Cataldiados," and whoever reads through those six books of Latin hexameters will arise from the perusal half-dazed. Somehow or other, it dislocates one's whole sense of terrestrial values ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... ties, with what intense and stubborn devotion to a single end, with what unscrupulous laxity and versatility in the choice of means, the Jesuits fought the battle of their Church, is written in every page of the annals of Europe during several generations. In the Order of Jesus was concentrated the quintessence of the Catholic spirit; and the history of the Order of Jesus is the history of the great Catholic reaction. That order possessed itself at once of all the strongholds which command the public mind, of the pulpit, of the press, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... really one of the things that makes up the law of compensation. The law of compensation itself is the quintessence ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... time he hastened towards him with open arms exclaiming, "A happy meeting with the mirror of chivalry, my worthy compatriot Don Quixote of La Mancha, the flower and cream of high breeding, the protection and relief of the distressed, the quintessence of knights-errant!" And so saying he clasped in his arms the knee of Don Quixote's left leg. He, astonished at the stranger's words and behaviour, looked at him attentively, and at length recognised him, very much surprised to see him there, and made great efforts to dismount. This, however, the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Stephen's Criminal Law on the subject of possession, and then turning to Pollock and Wright's enlightened book. Sir James Stephen is not the only writer whose attempts to analyze legal ideas have been confused by striving for a useless quintessence of all systems, instead of an accurate anatomy of one. The trouble with Austin was that he did not know enough English law. But still it is a practical advantage to master Austin, and his predecessors, Hobbes and Bentham, and his worthy successors, Holland ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... know, my dear, the History of the Lady is this— Her Intellects are as odd and as aukward as her Person; her mind a Composition of Hypocrisy and Vanity; her Head, like the Study of Don Quixot, Stuffed with the exploded— Romances— of the two last Centuries— her Style the quaint Quintessence of Romantic Fustian, and her Manners those of a ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... sire's were a difficult part; You're a byway to suicide, Adela Chart; But to read of, depicted by exquisite James, O, sure you're the flower and quintessence ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... devise something extraordinary.' Mme. D'Artlay's Diary, ii. 400. 'Dr. Johnson's history,' wrote Horace Walpole, on June 20, 1785, 'though he is going to have as many lives as a cat, might be reduced to four lines; but I shall wait to extract the quintessence till Sir John Hawkins, Madame Piozzi, and Mr. Boswell have produced their quartos.' Horace ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... average. And even the methods of the breeder of cattle, if they are to produce a permanent alteration in the species of cattle, must consist not only in breeding the desirable but in either killing the undesirable, or at least—what is the quintessence, the inner reality of death—in preventing them ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... and despotism, by the grace of the foreign secretaries of the three great powers of Europe, possesses a more singular body of military than even the defunct Ottoman corps of green-grocers. It consists of officers without troops. Its inventor, Armansperg, the quintessence of Bavarian corruption in Greece, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... "how such a book could be dangerous. It came to us so gray, so Cimmerian, so corpse-like, that we could hardly endure its presence; we shuddered before it as if it had been a spectre. It struck us as the very quintessence of musty age, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... part. They must not think that other men are so cowed or grown so tame, as to stand still blowing of their noses, whilst they bridle them and ride them at their pleasure. It is time to let the world see that this discipline which they so much adore, is the very quintessence ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... fashionable end and aim— Strasburgh, Rappe, Dutch, Scotch—whate'er thy name! Powder celestial! quintessence divine New joys entrance my soul while thou art mine; Who takes? who takes thee not? Where'er I range I smell thy sweets from ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... deities of the gulf would condescend to smoke the pipe of peace while their red children ventured to trespass a little on their domain; and hard indeed must have been the hearts of the said spirits had they refused so valuable an offering, for tobacco is the life and marrow, the quintessence of terrestrial felicity, the very joy and comfort of a voyageur, and the poor Indians had but little ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... very few passages, but these books are of such importance that every mathematician and engineer should read them. They are, if I may say so, a "mathematical biology"—the survey of a life long study of "tropisms," which is the name given to express "forced movements" in organisms. They give the quintessence of laboratory experiments as to what are the effects of different energies such as light (heliotropism), electricity (galvanotropism), gravity (geotropism), etc., in their reaction and influence upon the movements and actions of living organisms. These experiments are conclusive ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... the exact image of the Creator, the everlasting Father. As for you, and all the rest of the race, you dare not presume to compare yourselves with us. Probably you are made in the image of the second and third persons of the Trinity, while we carry upon our withered and wearisome faces the quintessence of the Godhead." ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... your husband and wishing to live alone —natural enough!—but what I cannot understand is that you, the quintessence of delicate breeding, should walk the streets at night and sit in dives. I wonder you can stand being in the room with such women, to ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... said Bertie, very immorally. "I'm glad you remind us of them, Vere; you're such a quintessence of decorum and respectability yourself! I say—anybody know anything of this fellow of the Tenth ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... suddenly reflected that he had never seen a book in her hand, except her prayer-book; how was he to do anything for a girl like that? For Godfrey knew no way of doing people good without the intervention of books. How could he get near one that had no taste for the quintessence of humanity? How was he to offer her the only help he had, when she desired no such help? "But," he continued, reflecting further, "she may have thirsted, may even now be athirst, without knowing that books are the bottles of the water of life!" Perhaps, if he could make her drink once, she ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... continue to regard him as the completed embodiment of their national ideals. And in the same measure that Tegnr stands forth as an expression of Swedish race characteristics it may be said that Fritiofs Saga is the quintessence of his own ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... good." Sir Terence was the very quintessence of courtliness, of concern for the other. "But if ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... and Mynheer Superbus Von Underduk having taken off his spectacles, wiped them, and deposited them in his pocket, so far forgot both himself and his dignity, as to turn round three times upon his heel in the quintessence of astonishment and admiration. There was no doubt about the matter—the pardon should be obtained. So at least swore, with a round oath, Professor Rub-a-dub, and so finally thought the illustrious Von Underduk, as he took ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... their persons,—some having three heads, and some four tusks, and some four mouths, and some four arms,—the Danavas met with destruction. And, then, O Bharata, in a moment I slew all those Danavas, with other swarms of arrows composed of the quintessence of stone, flaming like fire or the sun, and possessed of the force of the thunder-bolt. And, seeing them hewn by the Gandiva, and deprived of life, and thrown from the sky, I again bowed unto that god—the Destroyer of Tripura. And, seeing ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... love-songs of fresh adolescence! Around us such raptures celestial they flung That it seemed as if Paradise breathed its quintessence Through the seraph-toned lips of the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... letter—and even if the object had not been answered, I ought still to thank you. But it is thoroughly answered. Such a letter from such a hand! Sympathy is dear—very dear to me: but the sympathy of a poet, and of such a poet, is the quintessence of sympathy to me! Will you take back my gratitude for it?—agreeing, too, that of all the commerce done in the world, from Tyre to Carthage, the exchange of sympathy for gratitude is the ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... passion to hide its hideousness under the disguise of love, and thus this most sacred and hallowed name is prostituted to signify that which is most vile and loathsome. Depravity? No. Goodness of heart, generosity of affections, the very quintessence of good nature! But God is love, and love that does not see the image of the Creator in its object is not ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... these happy times appear; All that I have to live I'd gladly change For one such month as I have wasted here— To draw long dreams of beauty, love, and power, From founts of hope that never will outrun, And drink all life's quintessence in an hour, Give me the days when I ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the sight and choked. There was something appalling in the sight: it was the quintessence of horror, that widening pool of blood, staining the rug, and flowing from an invisible body that writhed and twisted, while moans of anguish came ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... beside Yeager must have been in her very early twenties, but her pretty face, finely modeled, had the provocative effrontery that is the note of twentieth-century young womanhood. Its audacity, which was the quintessence of worldliness, ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... that matter the very quintessence of woman. Even I, who have known her for years, don't pretend ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... she abstracts their forms, And draws a kind of quintessence from things; Which to her proper nature she transforms To bear them light on her ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to feel at last that I am really away from America—a satisfaction that I never really enjoyed as long as I stayed in Liverpool, where it seemed to me that the quintessence of nasal and hand-shaking Yankeedom was gradually filtered and sublimated through my consulate, on the way outward and homeward. I first got acquainted with my own countrymen there. At Rome, too, it was not much better. ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... pleasant to feel at last that I am really away from America—a satisfaction that I never really enjoyed as long as I stayed in Liverpool, where it seemed to be that the quintessence of nasal and hand-shaking Yankeedom was gradually filtered and sublimated through my consulate, on the way outward and homeward. I first got acquainted with my own countrymen there. At Rome too it was not ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... and kissed her dress and her hands. "I love you boundlessly," he said with panting breath; "you are to me the quintessence of all happiness, virtue, and beauty. I shall love you to the last hour of ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... the quintessence of modern essay-writing from Addison to Stevenson. There are probably no better works of the same kind in our literature. Some critics aver that there are ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... the cupboards, nor a cloud in the air; the wooden shutters are dainty, the candlesticks are dainty, the saint's scarlet hat is dainty, and its violet tassel, and its ribbon, and his blue cloak and his spare pair of shoes, and his little brown partridge—it is all a perfect quintessence of innocent luxury—absolute delight, without one drawback in it, nor taint of ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... sense of the word, books are popular philosophy. All cannot study the deepest problems of life or of science for themselves, but all can absorb the quintessence of thought in the pleasant and stimulating form in which it is served up in the best literature. Books accustom men to take pleasure in ideas and to cultivate a high and noble inward life. This, their supreme value for the moulding ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... in the "Recollections of the Arabian Nights." But how cold and gaudy, in spite of individual beauties, is that poem by the side of either of the Marianas, and especially of the one in which the scenery is drawn, simply and faithfully, from those counties which the world considers the quintessence ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... we read such [197]hyperbolical eulogiums, as of Aristotle, that he was wisdom itself in the abstract, [198]a miracle of nature, breathing libraries, as Eunapius of Longinus, lights of nature, giants for wit, quintessence of wit, divine spirits, eagles in the clouds, fallen from heaven, gods, spirits, lamps of the world, dictators, Nulla ferant talem saecla futura virum: monarchs, miracles, superintendents of wit and learning, oceanus, phoenix, atlas, monstrum, portentum ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... acquainted with God is the quintessence of good. 'This is life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... parts. For her I will besiege the private dens of my friends the booksellers. Dear, helpless little atomy! infinitesimal object of love! bud, germ, seed, blossom, tidbit, morsel, mannikin, tomtit, abbreviation, concentration, quintessence! tiny multum in parvo! charming diamond edition! thou small, red possibility! weeping promise of glad days to come! For thee will I put the world under contribution! For thee will I master 'pathy and 'logy and 'nomy and 'sophy! All was and is for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... and quizzed sexual selection; therefore, though I am fully convinced that it is largely true, you may imagine how pleased I am at what you say on your belief. This part of your letter to me is a quintessence of richness. The fact about butterflies attracted by coloured sepals is another good fact, worth its weight in gold. It would have delighted the heart of old Christian C. Sprengel—now many years ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... the tens of millions as compared with the hundreds of thousands or perhaps four or five millions of soldiers, and it is their suffering—bared as it is of the glory and excitement that usually lightens the life of the fighting man—that is the quintessence of war's tragedy. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... "spontaneous," because we are ignorant of their causation—is as wholly unknown to the historian of scientific ideas as it was to biological specialists before 1858. But that suggestion is the central idea of the 'Origin of Species,' and contains the quintessence of Darwinism. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... opposed to every natural instinct, can hardly be conceived, but the man had been strangling natural instincts for fifty years. Only pride of family remained. There were but few Tregenzas left and soon there would be none unless Tom carried on the name. Michael was the quintessence of the Tregenza spirit, the fruit of generations, the high-water mark. He stood on that giddy pinnacle which has religious mania for its precipice. To damn a dead woman was easier than to accept a wanton daughter. Better an unfaithful wife than ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... equality. Whatever opinions they may have expressed under the varying aspects of our Revolutionary epoch, the Constitution of these United States was the finality of their arduous toils, heroic achievements, and sublime wisdom; and that Constitution, the very sublimation and quintessence of a hundred civilizations, exhibiting the onward progress of the human race, recognizes the Right of Slavery, founded upon the immutable principles ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... ape the Turkish soldiers whom they had seen exercise in Mourzuk, walking in file, holding up sticks on their shoulders, and crying out "Shoulder arms!" or words to that effect. The guileless lads of Africa think these two magic words to be the quintessence of Turkish and European civilization, and that which renders the white men superior to their sable fathers. Two of the boys are dressed in old soldiers' jackets and look very droll. So we journey along as well ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... which, for all the unreality of their atmosphere, produce their effect owing to a mass of accurate observation and a profound sense of the realities of life. His characters, like Watteau's, seem to possess, not quite reality itself, but the very quintessence of rarefied reality—the distilled fragrance of all that is most refined, delicate and enchanting in the human spirit. His Aramintes, his Silvias, his Lucidors are purged of the grossnesses of existence; their minds and their hearts are miraculously one; in their conversations ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... is purged from evil in purgatory, and strengthened in good in the first heaven. In one region the extract of sufferings become conscience to deter us from doing wrong, in the other region the quintessence of good is transmuted to benevolence and altruism which are the basis of all true progress. Moreover, purgatory is far from being a place of punishment, it is perhaps the most beneficent realm in nature, for because of purgation we are born innocent life after life. The tendencies ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... iealious nurse, did apprehend her straite, yet would extract the quintessence of all: And therefore childe (quoth she) vse no deceipt, but tel me freely whence these teares doe fall I am thy nurse, and from my aged brest Thou hadst thy second being, tell the rest. I doe coniure thee, by these siluer haires, which are grown ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... me. My soul was calm as a summer's evening. When it pleased the Blessed Master that I should suffer reproach and vilification for my testimony, then it was that the river of joy which flows from the Throne flowed through my heart as never before. It was a new experience—a quintessence of joy. The shouts of burning martyrs were no longer a mystery. I stagger no more at the account of the saints who took joyfully the spoiling of their goods. My soul is bathed in an ocean of ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... or Maupassant, though I have profoundly appreciated the exquisite artistry of both these. No French writer, however, has moved me so much as the Spanish, for the French are wanting in the humor which endears these, and is the quintessence of their charm. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... I think, there's something in what Shaw teaches about no moral principles being quite fixed. Have you ever read The Quintessence of Ibsenism? Of course he went very ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... then that the white-headed man dropped his eyes for once; and for once the thin, hard lines of his mouth relaxed in a smile that seemed to epitomize all the evil that was in his face, and to give it forth in one sudden sour quintessence. ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... made her sought after wherever she went. She loved her opals as she loved all bright things; if it pleased her to wear them in the morning, she wore them; and in five minutes she was capable of making the sourest puritan forget to frown on her and them. To Robert she always seemed the quintessence of breeding, of aristocracy at their best. All her freaks, her sallies, her absurdities even, were graceful. At her freest and gayest there were things in her—restraints, reticences, perceptions—which ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... little monster in my eyes, who ought to have been sent out of the way at once of all companions capable of abandon and enjoyment; and, as to the "father" she quoted from, I could imagine him as the embodiment of asinine wisdom, so to speak—the quintessence of the practical, which so often, I observe, inclines ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... to avoid destruction; it is that we insensibly regard death as threatening to the continuance of the ego, in spite of the theories of a future life which we have so elaborately developed. Indeed, the psychical shrinking is really the quintessence of the physical fear. We cleave to the abstract idea closer even than to its concrete embodiment. Sooner would we forego this earthly existence than surrender that something we know as self. For sufficient cause we can imagine courting death; we cannot ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... began the story again. At the end of an hour she discovered that she had dressed up Trennahan in velvet and gold, doublet and hose. She laughed with grim merriment. Ignorant as she was, she was quick to see the incongruity between modern man in his quintessence and the romantic garments of a buried century. Also, her hero had addressed his ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Falsehood works ruin in THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY, but truth works equal ruin in THE WILD DUCK. There are no cardinal virtues of Ibsenism. There is no ideal man of Ibsen. All this is not only admitted, but vaunted in the most valuable and thoughtful of all the eulogies upon Ibsen, Mr. Bernard Shaw's QUINTESSENCE OF IBSENISM. Mr. Shaw sums up Ibsen's teaching in the phrase, "The golden rule is that there is no golden rule." In his eyes this absence of an enduring and positive ideal, this absence of a permanent key to virtue, ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the conscience, the permanently armed condition of Europe together with its profession of Christianity is alone enough to drive any man to despair, to doubt of the sanity of mankind, and to terminate an existence in this senseless and brutal world. This contradiction, which is a quintessence of all the other contradictions, is so terrible that to live and to take part in it is only possible if one does not think of it—if one ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... a quintessence of Protestant feeling," answered Vincent; "I consider myself a good Protestant; but the pleasure you have in hunting these men ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... undoubtedly would get rhetoric taught more effectively than would more philosophical or literary treatises. Thus in Guarino's school at Ferrara (1429-1460) the Ad Herennium was regarded as the quintessence of pure Ciceronian doctrine of oratory, and was made the starting point and standing authority in teaching rhetoric. In more advanced classes it was supplemented by the De oratore, Orator, and what was ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... have inclined him to laugh at all things. That at least is the value he now has for us. He is the portrait of perpetual irony, the spirit of the golden Sixteenth Century which delicately laughed at the whole world of thoughts and things, the quintessence of the poetry of Ariosto, the wit of Berni, all condensed into one incarnation and immortalised by truthfullest art. With the Gaul, the Spaniard, and the German at her gates, and in her cities, and encamped upon her fields, Italy still laughed; and when the voice ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... confined; Till at his second bidding Darkness fled, Light shone, and order from disorder sprung: Swift to their several quarters hasted then The cumbrous elements, earth, flood, air, fire; And this ethereal quintessence of Heaven Flew upward, spirited with various forms, That rolled orbicular, and turned to stars Numberless, as thou seest, and how they move; Each had his place appointed, each his course; The rest in circuit walls this ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... this wise and beneficial use of the national domain. Neither could he agree with Eastern statesmen who deplored the gratuitous distribution of lands, which by sale would yield large revenues. His often-repeated reply was the quintessence of Western statesmanship. The pioneer who went into the wilderness, to wrestle with all manner of hardships, was a true wealth-producer. As he cleared his land and tilled the soil, he not only himself became a tax-payer, but he increased the value of adjoining lands and added to the sum ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... does not accurately name a single one of the essential ingredients of true love, dwelling only on associated phenomena, whereas Shakspere's lines call attention to three states of mind which form part of the quintessence of romantic love—gallant "service," "adoration," and "purity"—while "patience and impatience" may perhaps be accepted as an equivalent of what I call the mixed ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... in the papers—at least he is idle, and wants some diplomatic work on his hands, in the regular way. How to avoid doing anything whatever, diplomatically, with this matter before him, is the very quintessence of diplomacy! He can look at it, read it, handle it, and return it to Lord John, and then diplomatically prove that this government never had any ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... some genuine thieves' literature after so much that was spurious; sharp as an etching, written with a shuddering soul. There is an intensity of consideration in the piece that shows it to be the transcript of familiar thoughts. It is the quintessence of many a doleful nightmare on the straw, when he felt himself swing helpless in the wind, and saw the birds turn about him, screaming and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... know what I expected. Perhaps nothing else than that special intensity of existence which is the quintessence of youthful aspirations. Whatever I expected I did not expect to be beset by hurricanes. I knew better than that. In the Gulf of Siam there are no hurricanes. But neither did I expect to find myself bound hand and foot to ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... Quintessence (Queen), sovereign of Ent['e]l['e]chie, the country of speculative science visited by Pantag'ruel and his companions in their search for "the oracle of the Holy Bottle."—Rabelais, Pantagruel, v. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... discomfort is provided by the type of master who lectures on a subject for half an hour, and then, with a bland smile, invites, or rather challenges, his form to write a 'good, long note' on the quintessence of his discourse. For the inexperienced this is an awful moment. They must write something—but what? For the last half hour they have been trying to impress the master with the fact that they belong to ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... upon and recast all images of beauty, to make them more perfectly beautiful, so, to vent his infinite horror of evil, he seized on all the worst images of crime or torture that he could find, and recast them so as to reach the quintessence of distilled badness. His pictures of war, famine, lust, and cruelty are, or seem, forced, although perhaps, as in the Cenci, he might urge that he had historical warrant for his descriptions, far better historical warrant, no doubt, than the beauty and ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... stronger worts, and then it would be neighbourly Charity to give them away to the poorer Person. Hence may appear the Hardship that many are under of being necessitated to drink of those Brewers Malt Liquors, who out of avarice boil their Hops to the last, that they may not lose any of their quintessence: Nay, I have known some of the little Victualling Brewers so stupendiously ignorant, that they have thought they acted the good Husband, when they have squeezed the Hops after they have been boiled ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... embellishment of a room they should be scrupulously avoided. In truth, even strong steady lights are inadmissible. The huge and unmeaning glass chandeliers, prism-cut, gas-lighted, and without shade, which dangle in our most fashionable drawing-rooms, may be cited as the quintessence of all that is false in taste ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... follows: "Satis disputasti; which is at much as to say, in the colloquial style, 'Bad enough.' Satis et bene disputasti, 'Pretty fair,—tolerable.' Satis et optime disputasti, 'Go thy ways, thou flower and quintessence of Wranglers.' Such are the compliments to be expected from the Moderator, after the act is ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... lounge in her parlors, drive her to the park, take her to the operas, concerts and plays, and compliment her good looks, which are wonderfully well preserved for a woman of forty-five. I am twenty-six, you know, and so no one ever associates us together in any kind of gossip. She is the very quintessence of fashion, and I am one of the danglers whose own light is made brighter by the reflection of her rays. Do you see the point? Well, then, in return for my attentions, she takes a very sisterly interest in my future wife, and has ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... precious garden patch; cut-worm and caterpillar had gone by the other way; the pip had overlooked her early chickens; and as for the customary onslaughts of wildcat, weasel, fox, and skunk, she had met them all with such triumphant success that she began to mistake her mere good luck for the quintessence of woodcraft. In fact, nothing had happened to challenge her infallibility, nothing whatever, until she found that the bears were beginning to concern themselves ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... food, as far as possible she should have them. The idea has long prevailed that if the mother does not get what her longing soul supremely desires, that the on-coming baby is going to cry and cry until it is given what the mother wanted with all her heart and did not get. Such an idea is the very quintessence of folly and the personification of ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... Blanche and her page had not been carried beyond the castle, it was related throughout Touraine that Messire Bruyn had still found himself sufficiently in funds to afford a child. Intact remained the virtue of Blanche, and by the quintessence of instruction drawn by her from the natural reservoir of women, she recognised how necessary it was to be silent concerning the venial sin with which her child was covered. So she became modest and good, and was cited as a virtuous person. And then to make use of him she ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... Ladyship's a Chymist in Diversions, extracts the quintessence of ev'ry Pleasure, and leaves the drossy Part upon the World; Agreements, when too tedious pall the Fancy, when short they quicken and refine our Appetites; and the sublimest Joy to Mortals known, evaporates the Moment that ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... immortality. Were the extreme claims of naturalism to be established, there would be no ground whatsoever upon which to maintain the immortality of man, mere dust returning unto dust. The philosophical concept of immortality is due to the supposition that the quintessence of the individual's nature is divine.[213:18] But several possibilities are at this point open to us. The first would maintain the survival after death of a recognizable and discrete personality. Another would suppose a preservation after death, through being taken up into the life ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... times exhorts every man to continue in the condition in which Providence has placed him. "And this rule," says he, "ordain I in all the churches." Yet—would any man believe it possible?—the very quintessence of abolitionism itself has been extracted from this passage of his writings! Let us consider for a moment the wonderful alchemy by which this ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... and believed about him, he was represented as an ugly, petty, mischievous spirit, who rejoiced in playing off all manner of fantastic tricks upon poor humanity. Milton seems to have been the first who succeeded in giving any but a ludicrous description of him. The sublime pride, which is the quintessence of evil, was unconceived before his time. All other limners made him merely grotesque, but Milton made him awful. In this the monks shewed themselves but miserable romancers; for their object undoubtedly was to represent the fiend as terrible as possible. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... orange water, if approved, and more sugar if necessary. Let it be well corked, and it will keep.—Lemonade may be prepared in a minute, by pounding a quarter of an ounce of citric or crystalised lemon acid, with a few drops of quintessence of lemon peel, and mixing it by degrees with a pint of clarified syrup ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... been refitting and amusing ourselves on shore by dancing at dignity balls given by the upper-class copper-coloured washerwomen, who are the quintessence of perfection in affectation, when we were obliged to bid adieu to these interesting copper and coal-skinned ladies, as the ship was reported ready for sea, and the following morning we weighed and stood out of the ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... and forethought into the industrial welter being 'contrary to the laws of political economy'" He would have seen, then, as one of the pioneers of the march to the plains of heaven [Footnote: The Quintessence of Ibsenism] that, of the kind of human purpose and design and forethought to be found in a government like that of Queen Victoria's uncles, the less the better. He would have seen, not the strong doing the weak down, but ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... [Footnote: Preceding intercourse.] are required. This hath no other Idea than of it selfe, and can have no reference but to itselfe. It is not one especiall consideration, nor two, nor three, nor foure, nor a thousand: It is I wot not what kinde of quintessence, of all this commixture, which having seized all my will, induced the same to plunge and lose it selfe in his, which likewise having seized all his will, brought it to lose and plunge it selfe in mine, with a mutuall greedinesse, and with a semblable ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... after that, if Smith wished to express the very quintessence of brutality and meanness, he would refer to the ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... more particularly those of the shrill-voiced and nagging or whining variety, the 'better halves' of Weller, Varden, Snagsby and Joe Gargery, not to speak of the Miggs, the Gummidge, and the M'Stinger. Like Mr. Swinburne and other true men, he regards Mrs. Gamp as representing the quintessence of literary art wielded by genius. Try (he urges with a fine curiosity) 'to imagine Sarah Gamp as a young girl'! But it is unfair to separate a phrase from a context in which every syllable is precious, reasonable, thrice ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... own natural and eternal motion ever the same. This is the fifth or divine element, the aetherial, by the schoolmen translated Quinta Essentia, whence by a curious degradation we have our modern word Quintessence, of that which is ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... in favour of three other alchemists, who boasted that they could not only transmute metals, but could impart perpetual youth, with unimpaired powers both of mind and body, by means of a specific called the Mother and Queen of Medicines, the Celestial Glory, the Quintessence or Elixir of Life. In favour of these "three lovers of the truth, and haters of deception," as they styled themselves, Henry dispensed with the law passed by his grandfather, Henry IV., against the undue multiplication ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Quintessence of Capitalism. A study of the history and psychology of the modern business man. Translated from the German by M. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Tragedies of Shakspeare, considered with Reference to their Fitness for Stage-Representation," is, in the opinion of good judges, the noblest criticism ever written. The brief, "matterful" notes to his Specimens of the Old English Dramatists are the very quintessence of criticism,—the flower and fruit of years of thoughtful reading of the old English drama. Nay, even his incidental allusions to his favorite old poets and prose-writers are worth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... Coke glad, how to cast about to bring both ends together, Mrs Turner and Weston being already hanged for killing Overbury with poison; but he, being the very quintessence of the law, presently informs the jury that if a man be done to death with pistols, poniards, swords, halter, poison, etc., so he be done to death, the indictment is good if he be but indicted for ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... eyes; when they lighted upon a huge bunch of violets just before them, and in most friendly neighbourhood to her nose. Fleda started up, and her "Oh!" fairly made the housekeeper laugh; it was the very quintessence ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... les produits Parisiens," says Monsieur Jules Janin (himself the quintessence of everything most Parisian), "le produit le plus Parisien, sans contredit, c'est la grisette." True; but our epigrammatist should have gone a step farther. He should have added that the grisette pur sang is to be found ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... her past an open bathroom door whose garment-littered floor showed indeed that the laundry hadn't been sent out for some time, into another room that was, so to speak, the quintessence of pinkness. This was Mrs. ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... The quintessence of common sense was expressed by Galileo Galilei when he said: "Some perhaps will say that the bitterest pain is the loss of life, but I say that there are others more bitter; for whosoever is deprived of life is deprived at the same time of the power to lament, not only this, but any other ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... meaning has been expressed even more plainly and forcibly than in their own prose. The reader will observe that of the whole twenty-three only two appear to have any knowledge on the subject, the famous A. R. Wallace and the brilliant Dr. Coues. The following is the essence or rather quintessence of the voluminous responses in the order in which they were published. The learned gentlemen ought to feel grateful for the increased candor, brevity and explicitness of their replies, when boiled down into the rhyming form, bringing out new beauties which were not apparent ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... Deux Mondes, wrote as follows:—"Cache sous le pseudonyme de Peter Plymley il adresse ces nouvelles provinciales a un reverend pasteur, qui est bien le parfait modele de la sottise protestante, la quintessence des docteurs Bowles et ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... and very evidently the same, who winnows all this earthly passion to a fine, fruitful dust, fit to make bread for angels. Ecstatic reason, passion justifying its intoxication by revealing the mysteries that it has come thus to apprehend, speak in the quintessence of Donne's verse with an exalted simplicity which seems to make a new language for love. It is the simplicity of a perfectly abstract geometrical problem, solved by one to whom the rapture of solution is the blossoming of pure reason. Read the poem called The Ecstasy, which ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... men, this Oxford pundit, this double-distilled quintessence of university perfection, this writer of religious treatises, this speaker of ecclesiastical speeches, had been like a little child in her hands; she had turned him inside out and read his very heart as she might have done that of a young ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... intensely exciting. Could he have known the chief cause of the intense emotion that filled Molly's slight figure with a feverish vitality would he have believed that she was happy? And yet she was, for no pirate king running his brig under the very nose of a man-of-war ever had more of the quintessence of the sense of adventure than Molly had, as Lady Dawning led her, the heiress of the year, into ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... which a debate arose was that which recognised the original contract between King and people. It was not to be expected that the Tory peers would suffer a phrase which contained the quintessence of Whiggism to pass unchallenged. A division took place; and it was determined by fifty-three votes to forty-six ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the ceremonial, part of the Vedas, and to no book less sacred." More accurately he might have said that it is a compend of all Hindu literatures, the traditional as well as the inspired, and with a much larger share of the former than of the latter. Pantheism, which is its quintessence, did not exist in the early Vedic times. Krishna was not known as a god even in the period of the Buddha.[78] And the Epics, which are so largely drawn upon, are later still. And it is upon the ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... altogether conversant and taken up with the faults, and blemishes, and oversights, and mistakes of other writers, and let the subject treated on be whatever it will, their imaginations are so entirely possessed and replete with the defects of other pens, that the very quintessence of what is bad does of necessity distil into their own, by which means the whole appears to be nothing else but an abstract of the ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... abstracts their forms, And draws a kind of quintessence from things, Which to her proper nature she transforms To bear them ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... the quintessence, The soul, and grand elixir of my wit: For he (according to his noble nature) Will not be known to want, though he do want, And will be bankrupted so much the sooner, And made the subject of our scorn ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... by female Wagnerites—for, in his latter days Wagner was thoroughly feminini generis—? Again I say, the Christians of to-day are too modest for me.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} If Wagner were a Christian, then Liszt was perhaps a Father of the Church!—The need of salvation, the quintessence of all Christian needs, has nothing in common with such clowns; it is the most straightforward expression of decadence, it is the most convincing and most painful affirmation of decadence, in sublime symbols and practices. The Christian wishes to be rid of himself. Le moi est toujours ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... him. He must go his way alone, unaided, or only secretly so, while his quondam friends watched his career from afar. So, thinking of this, he took the train one day, his charming mistress, now only twenty-six, coming to the station to see him off. He looked at her quite tenderly, for she was the quintessence of a certain type of ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... that quintessence of high ton, the late Lord Chesterfield, blush to behold his successor! who, with much share of humour, and of good humour also, has as little good breeding as any mail I ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... Jewish quarters. No settlement in which we find a minyan (ten men necessary for divine worship), but there we will also find a cheder, a school in which the Bible and the Talmud are taught. Indeed, study is the first duty of the Jew; it is the quintessence of his religion. The unravelling of God's Word has been from time immemorial regarded as the greatest need, the most ennobling occupation of man—a work commanded by God. The Talmud teems with precepts concerning ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... disappointing creature, after all a mere "quintessence of dust," unless he can rise above himself by relation with some superhuman being, and make his final fortune in some better region than this world. Reason requires that we love ourselves, and love our fellow-men, for and in order to the development of the highest gifts ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... from the rovings of whoredom: the reason is, because virtue or potency, with him who loves his married partner alone, is confined to one, and is thus collected and as it were concentrated; and then it becomes refined like a quintessence from which all defilement is separated, which would otherwise be dispersed and cast away in every direction. One of us five, who is a priest, has also added predestination as a cause of that virtue or potency, saying, 'Are not marriages predestinated? and this being the case, are not the progeny ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... commonness is its worth. But, it should be added, that such anecdotes are not told in the circumlocutory style of gossip, nor nipt in the bud by undeveloped brevity. We have Selden's pennyworth of spirit without the glass of water: the quintessence of condensation, which, we are told, is the result of time and experience, which rejects what is no longer essential. Here circumspection was necessary, and it has been well exercised. The anecdotes are not merely amusing but useful, since only when placed in juxtaposition ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 535, Saturday, February 25, 1832. • Various
... she and her hungry children could not live on less money in Belgium than they could in England. The good old post-captain had improved and beautified the place from a farm-labourer's cottage into a habitation which was the quintessence of picturesque inconvenience. Ceilings which you could touch with your hand; funny little fireplaces in angles of the rooms; a corkscrew staircase, which a stranger ascended or descended at peril of life or limb; no kitchen worth mentioning, ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... the quintessence of Christian Science. Your mental attitude controls your body. Happiness is your health. There is no devil but fear. As a man thinketh in his heart, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... silver urn, 480 (Bright climbs the blaze, the crackling faggots burn), Culls the green herb of China's envy'd bowers, In gaudy cups the steamy treasure pours; And, sweetly-smiling, on her bended knee Presents the fragrant quintessence of Tea. ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... from the same school as this is very small, but in quality they represent the highest development of Egyptian sculpture. It is fit that we should take our leave of Egyptian art with such a work as this before us, a work which gives us the quintessence of the artistic genius ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... Higher Command watching the death of guinea-pig, rabbit, and ape with increasing excitement and enthusiasm as the hideous effects of their discovery became apparent. Be sure an iron cross quickly hung over the iron heart that conceived and developed this filthy arm; for does it not offer the essence—quintessence of all "frightfulness?" Does it not challenge every human nerve-centre by its horror? Does it not, once proclaimed, by anticipation awake those very emotions of dread and dismay that make the stroke ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... desert while all the world was gone to hear strange things at Sainte-Baume. "Michaelis, you preach away, indeed, but you get no further forward; while Louisa has reached, has caught hold of the quintessence of ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... enjoyment became suddenly narrowed down and concentrated. The rest of the world dropped out of the picture, or rather it became merged for Finn in the picture he beheld of the Lady Desdemona; a study in tawny orange-gold and jetty black, gleaming where the sun touched her and embodying the quintessence of ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... world—all this quintessence of fashion and elegance, long out of date, all exhaled the acrid odour of rose-water and essence of mignonette ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian |
