"Greatness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some power, jealous of the greatness of America, has perfected a new and barbarous weapon of warfare, and without due warning and declaration of hostilities has launched it against us, not only do we denounce such uncivilized procedure, ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg
... greatness and renown diffuses its influence to a wide compass, but acts weakly ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... time to-morrow I shall be the happiest girl in the world or the most truly miserable," she thought to herself. But the greatness of the ordeal now had a certain composing effect, and Kitty, Mary and Florence started off in Sir John's carriage in apparently ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... fertile country flooded with mud, England showed no sign of her greatness in the days when she was putting forth all her strength to save herself from the worst consequences of her littleness. Most of the men of action, occupied to the last hour of their time with urgent practical work, had to leave to idler people, or to professional ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... not meant for the obscure, magnanimous conqueror of Flora de Barral; it was meant for the notorious financier whose enterprises had nothing to do with magnanimity. He had his physician in his days of greatness. I even seem to remember that the man was called at the trial on some small point or other. I can imagine that de Barral went to him when he saw, as he could hardly help seeing, the possibility of a "triumph ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... one year of anonymous greatness the aspiring Lord Mayor has to sacrifice his whole personality. He is to be the first citizen of London, but he must be very careful that London has never heard of him before. He has to live the life of a hermit, resolute neither to know nor to be known. For a year he shakes hands mechanically, ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... it, I am engaged in thinking of the cause of that Purusha, but alas, I am unable to comprehend that cause, excellent as it is. I shall, however, according to the measure of my knowledge, discourse to thee upon that eternal Purusha and his Oneness and supreme greatness. The learned speak of him as the one Purusha. That one eternal Being deserves the appellation of Mahapurusha (the great supreme Purusha). Fire is an element, but it may be seen to blaze up in a thousand places under thousand different circumstances. The Sun is one and single, but ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... those that separate the things of Nature from those of human art. Already in his student years, in spite of the most stringent poverty, his whole scheme of existence was that of one predestined to greatness, who takes that fact for granted, and stands forth immediately as a ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... who, they consider, belongs to them; and I think a moment after the terror I should greet them as friends from home, although they came bearing death and destruction on their wings. They would, for once, show to all this civilised littleness the terrible grandeur and greatness of the mighty ocean, and flavour the insipidity of the town with a little sea-salt terror. I should like to see a whale squeezed in between Prince's Street and Custom-house Street, glaring at a family on the upper floor, or the fine, gold-laced ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... work as an astronomer,—that which gained him world-wide fame among his brother astronomers,—was, as has been said, too mathematical and technical to appeal to the general public among his countrymen, who have had to take his greatness, in this regard, on trust. They have known him at first hand chiefly as author or editor of popular works such as his "Popular Astronomy" (1877); of his text-books on astronomy, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus; of his books on political economy, which science he was accustomed ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... department of antiquities. This department was augmented from time to time, notably by the acquisition of the treasures of Sir William Hamilton in 1773; but it was not till the beginning of the nineteenth century that the windfall came which laid the foundation for the future incomparable greatness of the museum as a repository ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... makes one think of the words of the poor heathen in Lycaonia—'The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men.' But if ever thou art a great man, little brother, it will be the good and not the great things of thy life that will bring thee peace. Nay, rather, neither thy goodness nor thy greatness, but the mercy ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... [2] The greatness of Palmyra was due to the trade along this route, and its decay began when the route was abandoned. The present town of Tadmor is near the ruins of ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... with the truthfulness of light. He has told a story in which the fact of sin is illuminated with the utmost truthfulness and the fact of redemption is portrayed with extraordinary power. There are lines of greatness in the book ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... whole peoples; nay! the very epitaph of the living Rome itself. The grandeur of the ruins of Rome,—heroism in ruin: it was under the influence of an imaginative anticipation of this, that he appeared to be speaking. And though the impression of the actual greatness of Rome on that day was but enhanced by the strain of contempt, falling with an accent of pathetic conviction from the emperor himself, and gaining from his pontifical pretensions the authority of a religious intimation, yet the curious interest of the discourse lay in this, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... to Dante's mind beneath the roof of pine-boughs. Nor is there any place in which the simile of the frogs and water-snake attains such dignity and grandeur. I must confess that till I saw the ponds and marshes of Ravenna, I used to fancy that the comparison was somewhat below the greatness of the subject; but there so grave a note of solemnity and desolation is struck, the scale of Nature is so large, and the serpents coiling in and out among the lily leaves and flowers are so much in their right place, that they suggest a scene by no ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... long farewell, to all my greatness! This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms And bears his blushing honors thick upon him; The third day comes a frost, a killing frost; And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a ripening, nips ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... and sent him to travel through Central Italy to inspect his fortresses; but this usurper soon fled to Spain, and in 1503 our painter was again in Florence. In 1504 his father died. From 1507 to 1512 Leonardo was at the summit of his greatness. Louis XII. appointed him his painter, and he labored for this monarch also to improve the water-works of Milan. For seven years he dwelt at Milan, making frequent journeys to Florence. But the political troubles ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... a proof," said she, "of the intellectual greatness of man, I should find it in this spot. I may see in that hut the emblem of his mind. That a Russian, two centuries ago—almost before the name of Russia was known in Europe—while its court had scarcely emerged from the feuds of barbarous factions, and its throne had been but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... took his seat The young kept silence, and the old rose up To do him honor. After his decree None spake again, for as a prince he dwelt Wearing the diadem of righteousness, And robed in that respect which greatness wins When leagued with goodness, and by wisdom crown'd. The grateful prayers and blessings of the souls Ready to perish, silently distill'd Upon him, as he slept. So as a tree Whose root is by the river's brink, he grew And flourish'd, while the dews like balm-drops hung ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... not to betray how cruelly the joke had wounded his aristocratic pride. The Austrian aristocracy was accustomed to such insults at the hands of the powerful and proud prime minister, and everybody knew that Thugut, the son of a poor ship-builder, in the midst of his greatness, liked to recall his modest descent, and to humble the nobility through the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... does not call me elsewhere; and the books I read are the works of William Shakespeare, John Milton, Albert Tennyson, and Francis Bacon. Me and John Fox also reads the 'History of Rome,' so as to prime ourselves with the greatness of the past; and we hopes the glorious examples of Romulus and Remus, but especially Hannibal, will sink into our minds to spur us along. I am desirous to acquaint you with the way I make my uncle's home brighter; but the 500 words is up. So looking forward eagerly ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... the Poet and his Purpose. Should any one of the readers of this Cycle doubt the enduring greatness of the lines, let him consider that I, Wolfgang Copernicus Addleburger, have seen fit to introduce ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin
... Vasudeva, the righteous Yudhishthira, with voice choked in tears, answered Janardana, saying, "What thou hast said, O Madhava, about the eminence of Bhishma, is perfectly true. I have not the slightest doubt regarding it. Indeed, I had heard of the high blessedness, as also the greatness, of the illustrious Bhishma from high-souled Brahmanas discoursing upon it. Thou, O slayer of foes, art the Creator of all the worlds. There cannot, therefore, O delighter of the Yadavas, be the slightest doubt in what thou sayest. If thy heart be inclined to show ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... feel our hearts hot—hissing in us. And ere their fire is revealed, it must burn its way out of us; though it consume us and itself. Oh, sleek-cheeked Plenty! smiling at thine own dimples;—vain for thee to reach out after greatness. Turn! turn! from all your tiers of cushions of eider-down—turn! and be broken on the wheels of many woes. At white-heat, brand thyself; and count the scars, like old war-worn veterans, over camp-fires. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... though he be a great one, is for the memory of his private friends. It is only as it colors his art that it is of public interest. It is his art itself, his gift to the world, that the world cares for; it is of the kind and quality of that art, the nature and the degree of its greatness, that the world wishes to hear. Because the man was my friend I have wished to give some glimpse of the manner of man he was; because the artist was the greatest our country has produced I am to try to give some idea ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... darkness and affliction, for many days he spoke a little of it to Tryon, who came, as was now his custom, to help pass away the evening. So Tryon was the first person in Wankelo to hear of Marice Hading's greatness of heart—and the last person in the world to believe in it. But he did not say so to Druro. He had long ago sized up Marice Hading's subtle mind and shallow soul, and it was not very difficult for him to read this riddle of new-born nobility. Druro and his rich mine were to pay ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... thing," was not without its compensations in the political experience he extracted from it. It brought before him the main interests of European diplomacy: won him access to the principal intrigues and intriguers of a Court in transitionship, by the death of Frederick, from eccentric greatness to orderly mediocrity; habituated him to ministerial correspondence and reports, which, if disgustingly mean, were, at all events, systematic and prescient, and secured him—I could wish to say honestly—those historic and statistical ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... a propaganda agency for the UN. It serves as an outlet for UN pamphlets and, with chapters in most key cities throughout the United States, as an organizer of meetings, lecture-series, and other programs which propagandize about the ineffable goodness and greatness of the United Nations as the maker and keeper ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... him for one supreme moment alone between France and anarchy,—between, we might almost say, the world and another terrible revolution. And then the sentimentalist proved himself a man. He confronted raving Paris, and subdued it. The old noble French blood in his veins rose to the greatness of the crisis. With a pardonable thrill of pride in a position so strange to a writer and a man of thought, into which, without any action of his own, he found himself forced, he describes how he faced the tumultuous mob of Paris for seventy ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... arsenal, and unluckily missed the ship-launch we went thither chiefly to see. It is no great matter though! one comes to Italy to look at buildings, statues, pictures, people! The ships and guns of England have been such as supported her greatness, established her dominion, and extended her commerce in such a manner as to excite the admiration and terror of Europe, whose kingdoms vainly as perfidiously combined with her own colonies against that power which they ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... chose to guide himself in all liberty towards the grand object he had always desired, which was to attach himself to the King without reserve, and to make out of this attachment, obtained by all sorts of means, the means of a greatness which he did not yet dare to figure to himself, but which time and opportunity would teach him how to avail himself of in the best manner, marching to it ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... was the tendency to make every form subserve some ulterior purpose of allegory and panegyric.[15] For the Roman its own beauty was no sufficient end of art. That the Aeneid was written for the glorification of Rome cannot be made a reproach to the poet; the greatness of the end lent dignity to the means. That the pastoral was forced to serve the menial part of a vehicle of sycophantic praise is less easily pardoned. In Vergil's hands a conversation between shepherds becomes an expression ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... in his writings. He was honest, candid, a sincere lover of virtue. He lamented incessantly the fall of the old republic, and does not spare Augustus or Tiberius, whom he believed to be its destroyers. Like Juvenal, whom he resembled in the severity of his censure as well as the greatness of his powers, Tacitus wrote in a sad, desponding temper of mind, as if he foresaw the swift decline ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... France. Truly their fame is each of a different kind. The latter fought for peace, not victory; the former rather for the laurel wreath than for that of oak leaves. It would indeed be ridiculous to measure the greatness of the two heroes with the same metre, and put one on the pedestal of the other, even as it would be absurd to set the statue of Lafayette on the Vendome column—that monument made of the cannon conquered on so many fields ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... a eulogy, even if truthful and merited, would be sufficiently inflated upon a tombstone raised to a dead chieftain by his bereaved admirers. What shall we say of such false and fulsome tribute, not to a god, not to the memory of departed greatness, but to a living, mortal man, and offered not by his adorers but by himself? Certainly, self-worship never went farther than in this remarkable monument, erected in Alva's honor, by Alva's hands. The statue was colossal, and was placed in the citadel of Antwerp. Its bronze was furnished ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... smiling. "Besides, dear child, I want to love. In spite of his cold heart, his lack of imagination, his cowardly indifference, and the envy which consumes him, I believe there is greatness behind those tatters; I hope to galvanize that heart, to save him from himself, to attach him to me. Alas! alas! I have a clear-seeing mind, but a ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... greatness of the mighty Master still rests upon Antwerp; wherever we turn in its narrow streets his glory lies therein, so that all mean things are thereby transfigured; and as we pace slowly through the winding ways, and by the edge of the stagnant water, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... see how slippery places all courtiers stand in Bewailing the vanity and disorders of the age Charles Barkeley's greatness is only his being pimp to the King Fanatiques do say that the end of the world is at hand Goldsmiths in supplying the King with money at dear rates He made but a poor sermon, but long Joyne the lion's ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... liberally assisted us with money and other things in a sickness which afflicted us all for a short time. We have restored to not a few persons their friends, from whom they had been torn by covert grudges; but I wish to avoid unpleasant allusions; and I only praise the greatness of soul of one woman in forgiving injuries. She sailed all the way from Europe, first to Mexico, then to these Philippine Islands, and finally to the Malucas, in search of her absent son. She found him at last in the island of Ternate, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... the Straits of Dover cut off a corner of Europe, made Great Britain an island, and later a single political unit. Situated between Europe and America with ports opening toward each, her position gives her the opportunity for naval and commercial greatness. The narrow sea separating her from the continent is a defence in war and a means ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... of his purpose. The sobs grew less despairing, her understanding of things less vague and uncertain. A few moments before she had felt that she was no kin to the world; now there was a new appreciation of love and its greatness in her soul. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... sanguine, energetic, and headstrong, astute withal, and full of ambition. A more vigorous agent for the execution of the proposed plan of conquest could not have been desired. The General Court of Massachusetts, contrary to its instinct and its past practice, resolved, in view of the greatness of the stake, to ask this time for help from the mother-country, and Vetch sailed for England, bearing an address to the Queen, begging for an armament to aid in the reduction of Canada and Acadia. The scheme waxed broader yet in the ardent brain ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... informed and yet lightsome in tone. If it was not the real originality of jazz music that was being discussed, it was the sureness of the natural untaught taste of the denizens of the East End and South London, and if not that then the greatness of male revue artistes, and if not that then the need of a national theatre and of a minister of fine arts, and if not that then the sculptural quality of the best novels and the fictional quality of the best sculpture, and if ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... And behind the great structure of human speech and the lesser varieties of language which arise out of the many degrees and kinds of human intercourse, there is also the unknown or over-ruling law of God or nature which gives order to it in its infinite greatness, and variety in its infinitesimal minuteness—both equally inscrutable to us. We need no longer discuss whether philology is to be classed with the Natural or the Mental sciences, if we frankly recognize ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... has faith in the mysterious power with which since January, 1849, he had been clad by the bourgeoisie. He takes himself for the Third Power, standing beside the other Powers of Government. He shares the faith of all the other heroes, or rather saints, of this epoch, whose greatness consists but in the interested good opinion that their own party holds of them, and who shrink into every-day figures so soon as circumstances invite them to perform miracles. Infidelity is, indeed, the deadly enemy of these supposed ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... of use in our literary criticism. It was least to be expected from a professorial chair in a venerable university—least of all from a professor not yet forty, who might have been expected to be weighed down and solemnized by the greatness of his function and the awfulness of his surroundings. Hence arose the simple and amusing wrath of pedestrian poets like Mr. Ichabod Wright, and ferocious pedants like Professor Francis Newman, and conventional worshippers of such idols as Scott and ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... the Lipsittsville Ozone. He was backed into a corner, and filled with tidings about the glories of Mr. and Mrs. Seth Appleby, their social position and athletic prowess and financial solidity, and the general surpassing greatness of Lipsittsville. In fact, Mr. Ford overdid it a little, and Mr. Hartwig began to look suspicious—like a man about to sneeze, or one who fears that you are going to try to ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... the world go on, and seem to insinuate that you would swallow a camel. No insinuation could be more base or unjust. But, nevertheless, I think you may be too over-scrupulous. What great man ever rose to greatness,' continued Alaric, after they had walked nearly the length of the building in silence, 'who thought it necessary to pick his steps in the ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... first motive for not killing the emperor, the second is that they believe a speedy death would be no fit punishment for the crime which Napoleon has perpetrated on humanity, while a perpetual, hopeless captivity, embittered by the omnipresent, ever alert consciousness of ruined greatness, of fame buried in dust and silence, would be a lasting penance more terrible to an ambitious land-robber ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach
... left us no clearer record of their once highly civilized occupancy? The carved pillars, ornamental fragments of temples, and stone slabs skillfully wrought, which are scattered through the jungle, and in some instances overgrown by dense forests, attest both material greatness and far-reaching antiquity. It would seem as though nature had tried to cover up the many wrinkles of age with blooming vegetation. There are no legends even extant relating to the earliest of these remains. Paestum, Memphis, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... little disgraced waiting maid, whom he was taking back, to the Asylum. It was preposterous, he thought, for Grace to call one as young as Edith a waiting maid, but it was like her, he knew. It had a lofty sound, and would impress some people with a sense of her greatness; so he could excuse it much more readily than the injustice done to the child by charging her with a crime of which he knew she was innocent. This it was, perhaps, which made him so kind to her, seeking to divert her mind ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... is almost banished from his page. It is not the title or the subject of one of his essays, only secondarily even of that on Immortality. Love, Friendship, Prudence, Heroism, Experience, Manners, Nature, Greatness, and a score of other matters—but none to show that he ever sat down to gather into separate and concentrated shape his reflections on the terrifying phantom that has haunted the mind of man from ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... which unite several partial chains have not the highest summits, either in the Andes or, for the most part, in the great mountain ranges of the old continent; it is not even certain that there is always in those knots a widening of the chain. The greatness of the mass, and the height so long attributed to points whence several considerable branches issue, was founded either on theoretic ideas or on false measures. The Cordilleras were compared to rivers that swell as they receive ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... national union between the South and the North. Once extinguished, there will be a thousand-fold increase in every element of Southern welfare, economical, social, and moral; and possibilities of national wealth and strength, greatness and glory, above every nation on the globe, will be established. Let slavery go down. Let us rejoice that in the progress and sequel of this war, it must and will ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... short-comings and the excellencies of patriarchal and of monarchical forms of government; exposed the warrings and bickerings among men; told of the manner in which a people escaped from bondage and raised themselves on the wreck of thrones, principalities, and powers, to greatness; published the laws by which that most chosen people were governed; and dwelt upon the perversity of human nature; and as other men, divinely inspired, have sublimely represented the highest stages of Jewish civilisation, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... "I have—so little time—for amusing myself, you know. My daughter, now, she is a great novel-reader. She buys a great many novels. Last year I read a book called "The Greatness of Our Country." It is a wonderful book. It said in that book that the United States could support a population of 400,000,000. I had no idea of that before. I asked Prof. So and So about it and he said why not: that China had 400,000,000 ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... behind, enter into their notion of a place. If the sea, for instance, lie just across the hills, sea-thoughts will come to them at intervals, and the tenor of their dreams from time to time will suffer a sea-change. And so here, in this forest, a knowledge of its greatness is for much in the effect produced. You reckon up the miles that lie between you and intrusion. You may walk before you all day long, and not fear to touch the barrier of your Eden, or stumble out of fairyland into the land of gin and steam-hammers. And there is an old tale enhances for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... along the Drive, paused to review a company of English-Americans who had served in the war, and then continued on his way to the Yacht Club jetty, where he was to take boat to the Renown. Lying in deep water high up in the town was this one of the greatest of the modern warships, her greatness considerably diminished by the buildings lifting above her. To her the Prince went after nearly three months' absence, and on her he lived during his stay ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... into a way of miscalling him by his Christian name, as one observes to be done now and again in reference to some special young man. Most of the men whom he called his friends called him Phineas. Even the Earl had done so more than once on occasions in which the greatness of his position had dropped for a moment out of his mind. Mrs. Low had called him Phineas when she regarded him as her husband's most cherished pupil; and Mrs. Bunce had called him Mr. Phineas. He had always been ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... knew that any one who aspired to this Eminent Honor had to be a Pippin. But he hoped that he could make some Contribution to the World of Thought that would jar the whole Educational System and help him to climb to the topmost Pinnacle of Human Greatness. ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... have with me two eunuchs with purses, in each a thousand dinars, and I will deliver him the thousand dinars of the dowry and make him a present of other thousand, that he may have cause to know my nobility and generosity and greatness of mind and the littleness of the world in my eyes; and for ten words he proffers me, I will answer him two. Then I will return to my house, and if one come to me on the bride's part, I will make him a present of money and clothe him in a robe of honour; but if he bring me a present, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... Betty in his arms, and gazed at me with an air of content, as if he would have shewn me the greatness of an English heart—a greatness which more than ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... present; by his fastidious reluctance from any recognition of his helpfulness. When this came in the form of gratitude taking credit to itself in a pose which reflected honor upon him as the architect of greatness, he was delightfully impatient of it, and he was most amusingly dramatic in reproducing the consciousness of certain ineffectual alumni who used to overwhelm him at Commencement solemnities with some ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... dear-bought experience. The wrecks, strewn along the shores, would be effectual warnings to our gallant vessel on the dangerous seas where they had sailed. In peace, plenty, and prosperity, we might be carried to the highest reach of national greatness. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and, compelling him to single combat, at one blow cut asunder his thigh- bone, and killed him on the spot. But ere he could obtain James's pardon for this slaughter, Angus was obliged to yield his castle of Hermitage, in exchange for that of Bothwell, which was some diminution to the family greatness. The sword with which he struck so remarkable a blow, was presented by his descendant, James Earl of Morton, afterwards Regent of Scotland, to Lord Lindesay of the Byres, when he defied Bothwell to single combat on Carberry-hill. See Introduction ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... greatness of his destination, as though it had raised him to an equality with the adventurous Saints, who established the banner of Christ among the Pagan nations of Europe. He was fond of dilating upon the importance of his mission, and of dwelling on the favour ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... Goldsmith by his contemporaries at school. Of course, as soon as he became famous, everybody began to hunt up recollections of his having said or done this or that, in order to prove that there were signs of the coming greatness. People began to remember that he had been suspected of scribbling verses, which he burned. What schoolboy has not done the like? We know how the biographers of great painters point out to us that ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... Osric the Lion replies, While rage and malignity gleam in his eyes; "Thy journey and life here must close: Thy castle's proud turrets no more shalt thou see; No more betwixt Blumenberg's lordship and me Shalt thou stand, and my greatness oppose. ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... Princess, Madam, and my General; And one, who from your Power of Beauty holds No less Dominion o'er th' adoring World, Than from the Greatness you were ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... perusals of your poem. I want to show you that I have honesty enough to tell you what I take to be truths, even when they are not quite on the side of approbation; and I do it in the firm faith that you have equal greatness of mind to hear them with pleasure. [Here follows a ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... her invaluable truths, begotten by reason, and capable of regenerating her fellow-creatures. Robespierre was to her, what her Saviour should have been; and he rewarded her devotion, by choosing her as the partner of his greatness. ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... very little. Popularity and prosperity can be manufactured by any shrewd press-agent employed at so much a year. Without publicity, the professional man or woman would never obtain a hearing. These are the days when incompetency properly boomed raises the incompetent to greatness—and even to Cabinet rank. Neither would the society woman ever obtain a friend without her boom," he went on. "Bah! I'm sick of it all!" he added with a sweep of his thin white hand. "But it is refreshing to talk with ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... only the survival of a primitive spiritual commerce which most of us have lost through the easier use of speech and print; but the sister took calm delight in it, and it bound the two to each other as though it were itself a sort of goodness or greatness. ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... in exile; that his heart yearned for his people, who were being changed into women under Seketulo's mild rule, and were growing poor because they no longer made war upon their neighbours and took the spoil; and therefore had he returned to them to restore the nation again to its former greatness. Then he turned to those who were within the palace, and bade them bring forth Seketulo; and when this was done, lo, it was but Seketulo's body that they brought forth, his heart having been split in twain by M'Bongwele's ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... when he saw Mordecai in the king's gate and noticed that he neither stood up nor moved for him, he was furiously angry with Mordecai. But Haman controlled his temper and went home. Then he called together his friends and Zeresh, his wife, and told them the greatness of his wealth, how many children he had, and all the ways in which the king had honored him, and how he had given him a place above the officials and the royal servants. Haman said, "Queen Esther brought no one in with ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... Pokanoket chief been denominated a king. If not a Charlemagne or a Louis XIV., he yet possessed elements of true greatness. While he lived his mind evidently guided, as his will dominated and prolonged, the war. This is saying much, for the Indian's disinclination to all strenuous or continuous exertion was pronounced and proverbial. Philip's ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... names are known everywhere. Alexander has been dead upwards of two thousand years, but the very English bumpkins sometimes christen their boys by the name of Alexander—can there be a greater evidence of his greatness? As for Napoleon, there are some parts of India in which his bust is worshipped.' Wishing to make up a triumvirate I mentioned the name of Wellington, to which Francis Ardry merely said, 'bah!' and resumed the subject ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... such a cathedral as the Duomo one feels it perhaps most of all, for it is the work of man, yet touched with mystery and wonder, and the knowledge that man is the author of such a marvel adds to its greatness. ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... his father an adventurous American of the superman type? Kate, looking at him with fresh interest, found her thoughts leaping to the surmise. She knew that he was, in a way, a great man—a man with a growing greatness. He had promulgated ideas so daring that his brother scientists were embarrassed to know where to place him. There were those who thought of him as a brilliant charlatan; but the convincing intelligence and self-control of his glance repudiated that idea. The Faust-like aspect of ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... God, it pleaseth thee Thy Godhead to declare; And what thy goodness did decree, Thy greatness did prepare: Thou spak'st, and heaven and earth appeared, And answered to thy call; As if their Maker's voice they Heard, Which is ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... greatness in Pennybet. He willingly acknowledged that the coup d'etat was not his but Salome's, and the riot must inevitably crumble away. So he made a point of leading the cheers that greeted my announcement, and, coming ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... years. We must picture to ourselves the aspect of the New World at the time when Elizabeth sat on the throne of England, and when the kingdoms of western Europe, Britain, France, and Spain, were rising from the confusion of the Middle Ages to national greatness. The existence of the New World had been known for nearly a hundred years. But it still remained shadowed in mystery and uncertainty. It was known that America lay as a vast continent, or island, as men often called it then, midway between Europe and the great empires ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... line," said Norman; "but I don't give into it, altogether. It is the hope and the thought of fame, that has made men great, from first to last. It is in every one that is not good for nothing, and always will be! The moving spirit of man's greatness!" ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... having discovered that ordinary bearers were too ignorant to believe in the Mahayana doctrine and appreciate the greatness of Buddhahood, thought it necessary to modify his teaching so as to adjust it to the capacity of ordinary people. So he went to Varanasi (or Benares) and preached his modified doctrine—that is, Hinayanism. The instruction given at that time has been handed down to us as the four ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... collectible. "I have been," he wrote, "these thirteen years the servant of Truth and Friends, and for my testimony's sake lost much,—not only the greatness and preferment of the world, but sixteen thousand pounds of my estate which, had I not been what I am, I had long ago obtained." It is doubtful, however, if the king would have ever paid a penny. It is certain that when William offered to exchange the money for a ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... interests are very extensive, with great stores in three of the world's great cities. He has displayed great genius for controlling the details of his vast enterprise. It is said that at one time when his business was developing its greatness, this was his habit. He would come to a clerk's desk unexpectedly and, sitting down quietly, note the transactions that came along. Here was a sales slip; three yards of calico, seven cents per yard, ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... exceeding deep, who will find it out?" I suppose I must take you as I do the Bible—find out and understand all I can; and on the strength of that, swallow the rest in a lump, by simple faith. Think me vain, if you will. Worldly greatness requires so much littleness to grow up in, that an infirmity more or less is not a matter ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... amassing wealth, or prudence averting calamity; but much about honour despising danger, and life sacrificed to duty. In an utilitarian or commercial age, such principles may appear extravagant or romantic; but it is from such extravagant romance that all the greatness of modern Europe has taken its rise. We cannot emancipate ourselves from their influence: a fountain of generous thoughts in every elevated bosom is perpetually gushing forth, from the ideas which have come down to ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... dressed in the gayest style of the day; and the tender native hue of her complexion incrusted with paint, and disguised by patches. She is then introduced to Colonel Chartres, and by artful flattery and liberal promises, becomes intoxicated with the dreams of imaginary greatness. A short time convinces her of how light a breath these promises were composed. Deserted by her keeper, and terrified by threats of an immediate arrest for the pompous paraphernalia of prostitution, after being a short time protected by one of the tribe of Levi, she is reduced ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... Domingo de Gruzman, proposed to renew in literature the scenes of the Holy Office among the Albigenses. Happily, the fire of Arcadian verse did not really burn! The institution was at first derided, then it triumphed and prevailed in such fame and greatness that, shining forth like a new sun, it consumed the splendor of the lesser lights of heaven, eclipsing the glitter of all those academies—the Thunderstruck, the Extravagant, the Humid, the ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... had said, Cain rose up against Abel, the only brother he had, with whom he had been brought up and with whom he had lived to that day. But not only the relationship Cain utterly forgot; he forgot their common parents also. The greatness of the grief he would cause his parents by such a grave crime, never entered his mind. He did not think that Abel was a brother, from whom he had never received any offense whatever. For Cain knew that the honor of having offered the ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... this drapery, made as early as 1523, is in the collection of the Archduke Charles of Austria. In these pictures, which are painted of life-size, he has exerted his utmost ability, and eschewed any peculiarities of his own which might interfere with the greatness of his design. "These pictures are the fruit of the deepest thought which then stirred the mind of Duerer, and are executed with overpowering force. Finished as they are they form the first complete work of art produced by Protestantism.[229-[]] What dignity and sublimity ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... their demands and their threats; and finally, Beckendorff has, of late years, so completely interwoven the policy of Reisenburg with that of Austria, that he feels that the rock on which he has determined to found the greatness of his country must be quitted for ever if he yield one jot to the caprice or the weakness ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... faces as he peered into the water: they were those of Coe and Trevethick. He kept them there, and would not have the pond dragged; but would go thither and gloat upon them for half a summer's day. The mansion was full of gay folks—his old town companions invited to visit him, and behold his greatness (as he had often imagined they should be): Tub Ryll was his jester now, and Parson Whymper his "chaplain." They were all playing pool as usual, and he was just about to make an easy hazard, when somebody jogged his elbow. It was ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... is, that slavery is the corner-stone of republican institutions, and essential for a manly development of character upon the part of the white population. Formerly slavery was looked upon as peculiarly pernicious to the diffusion of wealth and the progress of national greatness; now the South is intoxicated with ideas of the profitableness of slave labor, and the power of King Cotton in controlling the exchanges of the world. And the same change has taken place in relation to the African slave-trade. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... in every way to distract his mind from his sorrows by deeds of prowess. So during this time he performed several adventures of which there is not now space to tell you. But these adventures won such credit to his knighthood that all the world talked of his greatness. ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... replied the Spirit, 'if thou shouldst cut off the head of thy first-born Shaktidhar, that hath on his body the thirty-two auspicious marks of greatness. Were his head offered to the all-helpful Durga, the Rajah should live a hundred years, and I ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... stick to it; if you have good taste and a lively invention; if you are a man, and not a lubber;—then, in fine, you may become a Great Skater, just as with equal power and equal pains you may put your grip on any kind of Greatness. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... was thus effectually checked. Those aspirations after an ideal beauty which most nations that have become great have embodied in "immortal verse"—if they ever existed in Rome—faded away before her greatness reached its meridian, only to be rekindled into a shadowy and reflected brightness when Rome herself had ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... and in gods. Indeed, it is but simple statement of fact to say, that he who rests utterly in his action shall belittle not only whatsoever history has recorded, but all which that poet of poets, Mankind, has ever dreamed or fabled of grace and greatness. He shall not peer about with curiosity to spy approbation, or with zeal to defy censure; he shall not know if there be a spectator in the world; his most public deed shall be done in a divine privacy, on which no eye intrudes,—his most private in the boundless publicities ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... arose, and he said, "Whosoever will follow Arthur, let him be with him to-night in Cornwall, and whosoever will not, let him be opposed to Arthur even during the truce." And through the greatness of the tumult that ensued, Rhonabwy awoke. And when he awoke he was upon the yellow calfskin, having slept ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... all I have heard of the works of the masters in it, has been the mere sign and suggestion, such as the private piano may give. I never heard an oratorio, for instance, in my life—judge by that! It is a guess, I make, at all the greatness and divinity ... feeling in it, though, distinctly and certainly, that a composer like Beethoven must stand above the divinest painter in soul-godhead, and nearest to the true poet, of all artists. And this I felt ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... proceeded to the Tremont-house. Read the English papers; and saw the account of my old friend T. Sidney being made sheriff and alderman in the same week, with the likelihood of his being Sir Thomas before I return. "Some men are born great, and others have greatness thrust ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore |
