"High-sounding" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be driven to sometimes, from my own thoughtlessness or forgetfulness to accomplish these comforts for him. I had always scrupulously avoided talking of my household affairs before him; but when Aunt Lina discoursed so eloquently and learnedly in his presence, slipping in once in a while such high-sounding words as "domestic economy," "well-ordered household," "proper distribution of time and labor," &c., &c., he began to prick up his ears, and fancy his thrifty little daughter Enna was not quite so excellent in her management as he ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... planned for war. She was approximately ready for it. Under the shelter of such high-sounding phrases as "We demand our place in the sun," and "The seas must be free," the German people were educated into the belief that the hour of ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... find others writing brilliant high-sounding prefaces of outrageous length, raising great expectations of the wonders to follow— and then comes a poor little appendix of a—history; it is like nothing in the world but a child—say the Eros you must have seen in a picture playing in an enormous mask of Heracles or a Titan; parturiunt ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... belief was, and is, that my question puzzled him, for he was far too good-natured not to have answered it at once if he had been able. I told the story to my brother officers, who were amused by the comparison with the Grand Llama, and we sometimes called the major by that high-sounding ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Froebel opened his first school at Griesheim, under the high-sounding title of "Universal German Educational Institute." At first he had his five nephews as his only pupils. Soon after, the school was removed to Keilhau, near Rudolstadt, in the Thueringian Forest. Here he was joined by his old friends Middendorff and Langethal. This institution ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... from my political writings that I was a good hand at fiction, I turned my thoughts to novel-writing. These I wrote in the same pompous, inflated style as I had used in my other publications, hoping that my fine high-sounding periods would assist to make the unsuspecting reader swallow all the insidious reasoning, absurdity and nonsense I ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... seed. Choose a reliable seed house, one that takes a pride in keeping the choicest strains of all the leading flowers and has too much regard for its reputation to send out inferior seeds under some high-sounding title. ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... president of the Directory responded in pompous and high-sounding words. "Minister plenipotentiary of the United States," he said, "by presenting this day to the executive Directory your letter of recall, you offer a very strange spectacle to Europe. Rich in her freedom, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... not her name!" and Angus laughed too—"It wouldn't do to give her real name!—but Ketchup's quite as good and high-sounding as the one she's got. And as I tell you, the whole 'staff' was convulsed. Three shareholders came down post haste to the office—one at full speed in a motor,—and said how dare I mention Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup at all? It was like my presumption to notice ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... turbans or caps were the distinguishing badges of their respective corps—a half-moon, a lion, the sun, and various other devices. The regiments were not numbered as with us, but adopted some magniloquent high-sounding title suggestive of their valour in war, fearlessness of ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... him pain; but he was not to be diverted from his purpose. The man who would try to heal every suffering brute was accustomed to see those whom he loved best grieve on his account. Marriage, he would say, ought not to hinder a man in following his soul's vocation; and he was fond of using this high-sounding name to justify himself in his own and his wife's eyes, in doing things to which he was prompted only by restlessness and unsatisfied energy. Without this he would, no doubt, have done his best for the imperilled sisterhood, but it added to his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... were to step down out of your frame, change your velvets and laces for trousers and coat, leave off your great peruke, and wear a derby hat instead of that picturesque, floppy affair, and try your fortune with some Twentieth Century damsel, your high-sounding gallantries, and flattering phrases, would fall singularly flat, and you would ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... enkindle similar ardor. Accompanied by a magnificent retinue of her brilliantly-accoutred generals, she swept, like a gorgeous vision, before her troops. She lavished presents upon her officers, and in high-sounding phrase harangued the soldiers; but there was not a private in the ranks who did not know that she was a wicked and a polluted woman. She had talent, but no soul. All her efforts were unavailing to evoke one single electric spark of emotion. She had sense ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... passed a place which was overgrown, in broad patches, with misshapen stunted bushes—a rare occurrence in this part of the country, where wood is scarce. My driver bestowed upon this tangled brushwood the high-sounding name of jungle. I should rather have compared them with the dwarfed bushes and shrubs of Iceland. The country beyond this woody district had a very remarkable appearance; the ground was in many places torn and fissured, as if in ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... amused and interested M. Zola when he took his walks around Norwood was to note the often curious and often high-sounding names bestowed on villa residences. As a rule the smaller the place the more grandiose the appellation bestowed on it. Some of the names M. Zola, having now made progress with his English, could readily understand; others, ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... returned with another man, his uncle, who was said to be a servant of the king of Menilla. He had been sent to act as ambassador, with certain other Moros who accompanied him. He tried to make us understand, with high-sounding words, that his master was a most magnificent lord. After a great show of authority and many pauses, he finally declared that the king of Menilla wished to be the friend of the Spaniards, and that he would be pleased to have them settle in his land, as they had done in Cubu ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... said my father, pouring himself a second glass of port, and turned over my high-sounding phrase with a faint hint of distaste; "Constructive Statesmanship. No. Once a barrister always a barrister. You'll only be a party politician.... Vulgar men.... Vulgar.... If you ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... Walker. For my own share in the spoils of this Trojan adventure, I chose a well-legged mule, young, lively, and well enough looking generally; and thenceforward I was entitled to call myself "Mounted Ranger," according to General Walker's rather high-sounding classification. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... the Senate had pronounced a high-sounding address, assuring him there need be no alarm on account of all the disturbances, urging him to take courage and promising the support of the senators in ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... square in Paris has a high-sounding name, For instance, that spot which has been the theater of so much tragedy, upon which so much human blood has been poured, is called the Place de la Concorde. It much more appropriately might be called the Place of Blood. So there ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... in it (if the little transaction deserves so high-sounding a name) was, in every sense of the words, strictly necessary. Julia Wentworth had resided for years with her grandfather, a pragmatic old gentleman, to whom from pure affection she had long yielded an obedience which he would have had no right to extort, and which he was sometimes disposed ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... the best New England stock, and although she had been named Sarah and her husband's name was Nathaniel, we have seen that the son had been endowed with the rather high-sounding name of Quincy Adams, which his schoolmates had shortened to Quince, and his college friends had still further abbreviated to Quinn. Quincy had two sisters and they had been equally honored with high-sounding appellations, the elder ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... preliminaries being settled, the new boys were turned over to the examiners, to have their classes and position in the school defined; and uncle Rutherford made his exit, only too thankful that the irrepressible Jim had not added to his list of high-sounding appellations, "President that is to be of these ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... God! The love of God! High-sounding, hollow words which enable hypocrites to take advantage of the common people; fantastic passion kindled in the heart of fools for the amazement ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... and because he felt that it could not be possible that such lofty personages would talk the same language as ordinary people, he picked out from a dictionary, which he managed somehow to get hold of, French words, German words, English words, and high-sounding Danish words, and strung them all together to make up the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... flamed up. He possessed, it seemed, the other necessary qualifications; for a thin tenor voice, not unmusical, was his, and also a smattering of Hebrew which he had picked up at Cambridge because he liked the fine, high-sounding names of deities and angels to be found in that language. Courage and imagination he lumped in, so to speak, with the rest, and in the gilt-edged diary he affected he wrote: "Have taken on Skale's odd advertisement. I like the man's name. The experience may prove an adventure. While ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... friend now dropped their high-sounding style of speech, and spoke for some minutes rapidly in an undertone. It was finally arranged that on a given day, at a certain hour, the woman should take the four horses down the shores of the lake to its lower end, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... that he was called Freddie now; the King had given him a high-sounding name,—the Chevalier Frederick; and by that name he was spoken of by everybody, except that Toby sometimes forgot and called him the Chandelier. As for the Chevalier Frederick, his interest was mainly in the Queen's three children, Robert, ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... he come? He did not know or care. Had he been a psychologist he might have attempted to frame reasons, building them from foundations of high-sounding phrases, but he was a materialist, and the science of mental phenomena had no place in his brain. Something had impelled him to come and here he was, and that was reason enough for him. And because he had no motive in coming he was taking his time. He ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... wilt drive me mad!" wrathfully exclaimed Buchan. "It shall be as thou sayest; and more, I will gain the royal warrant for the deed—permission to this effect may shorten this cursed confinement for us both. I have forgotten the boy's age; his mother's high-sounding patriotism may have tinctured him ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... that rose ever so little above the general level, that was not named after, and intimately associated with, some event or individual. Every mass of seaweed became a familiar object. The various little pools and inlets, many of them not larger than a dining-room table, received high-sounding and dignified names—such as Port Stevenson, Port, Erskine, Taylor's Track, Neill's Pool, &c. Of course the fish that frequented the pools, and the shell-fish that covered the rock, became subjects of much attention, and, in some ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... there are elaborate rules of etiquette concerning titles and forms of address, none but a Master of Ceremonies can hope to be thoroughly familiar with them, or to be able to address the distinguished people without withholding from them their due share of high-sounding titles and epithets; and, be it whispered, these same distinguished people, however broad-minded and magnanimous they may be in other respects, are sometimes extremely sensitive in this respect. And even after one has mastered all the rules ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... also several officials with high-sounding titles who were going out to their stations in German East Africa. These gentlemen were mostly accompanied by wives and babies and between them they imparted a spirited scene of domesticity to the life on shipboard. The effect ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... Dutch. The natives are said to look back with affection to the English rule under Sir Stamford Raffles, and often express a wish that the country again belonged to Great Britain. In the centre of the south side of the island is a tract of country nominally ruled by two native princes, with the high-sounding titles of Emperor or Sunan of Surakerta, and the Sultan of Yugyakerta. Madura is also divided between the Sultan of Bankalang and the Panambehan of Sumanap. But these princes, potent as from their titles they may be supposed to be, are completely under the influence of Dutch viceroys, or residents ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... plainly, in the grace and harmony of the actor's utterance. For the actor himself is not accountable for the false poetry of his author; that, the hearer is to judge of; if it passes upon him, the actor can have no quarrel to it; who, if the periods given him are round, smooth, spirited, and high-sounding, even in a false passion, must throw out the same fire and grace, as may be required in one justly rising from nature; where those his excellencies will then be only more pleasing in proportion to the taste of his hearer. And I am of opinion, that to the extraordinary ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... for a great press agent to arise and stem the growing public hostility to the railroads. The "Age-Gazette" did not use the phrase "press agent," as the appellation has not as yet come into its full dignity. It employed the more euphonious term "Railroad Diplomatist." Still, high-sounding titles have their use, as when some of my brother editors call their "reporters" "Special Commissioners," and their foreign ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... Canada, but the grant is so furiously opposed by the merchants of the coast towns that it is revoked until the Marquis de la Roche, who had been a page at the French court, again obtains monopoly, with many high-sounding titles as Governor, and the added obligation that he must colonize the new land. What with wars and court intrigue, it is 1598 before the Governor of Canada is ready to sail. Of his two hundred people taken from jails, all but sixty have obtained their freedom by paying ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... is too childish. What! make a complaint in form against me for taking a lover off your hands when you did not know what to do with him! Do you quarrel in England every time you change partners in a country dance? But I must be serious; for the high-sounding words treachery and perfidy are surely sufficient to make any body grave. Seriously, then, if you are resolved to be tragical, et de me faire une scene, I must submit—console myself, and, above all things, take ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... still more difficult for me was the number of foreigners—Turks, Egyptians, Persians, Tunisians. I say nothing of the Corsicans, who were very numerous that day, because during my four years at the Territorial I have become accustomed to the pronunciation of those high-sounding, interminable names, always followed by that of the locality: "Paganetti de Porto Vecchio, Bastelica di ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... High Decision" is a title more high-sounding than descriptive. If the story had been called "The Slaves of Low Decision" it would be ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... must scrupulously guard against vulgarisms. Simplicity and terseness of language are the characteristics of a well educated and highly cultivated person. It is the uneducated or those who are but half educated, who use long words and high-sounding phrases. A hyperbolical way of speaking is mere flippancy, and should be avoided. Such phrases as "awfully pretty," "immensely jolly," "abominably stupid," "disgustingly mean," are of this nature, and should be avoided. Awkwardness of attitude ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... some toast, so-and-so, some milk and butter, or cream, so-and-so, put this and that in it, then you dish it up and call it—oh! I can't say what he calls it; but, if you will believe me, it is just 'cream toast,' and nothing else, disguised under a high-sounding name to deceive innocent people, and make them believe they are eating something very high-toned. Just a little more tea, papa. But I am up to their tricks and I'll not palm off any old-fashioned dishes on you, under a Frenchified name," and she chatted on, helping him and preparing ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... any reporter in Chicago would have given his ears to hear, was a quiet one. The Governor dominated the situation, and at the very outset he made this clear. In his dealings with the Intelligent Voter he was wont to call a spade by many high-sounding names, but when he chose he could call it a spade, and he did choose ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... and almost unknown but high-sounding name, many eyes were turned toward the door through which the newcomer must enter. A hum of ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... lady's name's a high-sounding one, and she's not at all backward about airing it; it rolls off her sweet tongue as easy as water off a duck's back—Mrs. Richmond Montague," and the girl tossed her head and drew herself up in imitation of her mistress's haughty air in a way that would have done credit ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... to drain a mug of wine. He turned to the king, passing his hand over his forehead. "By no such high-sounding title," he answered. "I am but a poor devil with a heart too big for his body and a hope too large for his hoop. Had I been begotten in a brocaded bed, I might have led armies and served France; have loved ladies without fear of cudgellings, and told kings truths without dread ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Bent, Bates and Wallace, The Crossing of Greenland, Eothen, the meanderings of Modestine, The Path to Rome, and all, or almost all, of E. F. Knight. I have run through most of them at one breath, and the sum total would not bend a moderately stout bookshelf. How many high-sounding works on the other hand, are already worse than dead, or, should we say, better dead? The case of Smollett's Travels, there is good reason to hope, is only one of ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... ii.) have compiled, in 850 folio pages, the life of Mahomet and the annals of the caliphs. They enjoyed the advantage of reading, and sometimes correcting, the Arabic text; yet, notwithstanding their high-sounding boasts, I cannot find, after the conclusion of my work, that they have afforded me much (if any) additional information. The dull mass is not quickened by a spark of philosophy or taste; and the compilers indulge the criticism of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... Catholicism; those cavaliers that hack and hew at each other in knightly tournaments; those gentle squires and virtuous dames of high degree; the Norseland heroes and minnesingers; the monks and nuns; ancestral tombs thrilling with prophetic powers; colourless passion, dignified by the high-sounding title of renunciation, and set to the accompaniment of tolling bells; a ceaseless whining of the 'Miserere'; how distasteful all that has become to me since then!" And—of Fouque's romances—"But ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... whole worldly estate across his shoulder, in the shape of rifle and ax; Jemima, with her whole paternal inheritance close at her heels, in the shape of an unshapely, gigantic negro youth, destined in after years to win for himself among the Red warriors of the wilderness the high-sounding title of "The Big Black Brave of the Bushy Head." With brave and cheerful hearts, which the pioneer must maintain, or sink, they had gone to work, and cutting out a broad green patch from the vine-inwoven ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... number of evils inflicted upon this country by the McClellan infatuation, must be added the fact that many young men, with otherwise sound intellects, have been taken in, stultified, poisoned beyond cure, by high-sounding words, as strategy, all-embracing scientific combinations, &c.—words identified with incapacity, defeats, ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... important of these missions, politically considered, was, however, that of the Duque de Feria,[70] who arrived in France with a brilliant suite, charged with the most specious and high-sounding professions and promises of Philip of Spain, who pledged himself to support the Regency under all circumstances, and to place at the disposal of the Queen whatever assistance she might require against both external and internal enemies. These magnificent assurances ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... week nothing had been said to them in the way of disapproval, they went on to choose the other members of the club; to appoint times and places for meeting; and to organize in as methodic and high-sounding a manner as their limited experience ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... to solve the problem of sorrow. Indeed there is no solution of it, unless the individual soul works out its own solution. Most attempts at a philosophy of sorrow just end in high-sounding words. Explanations, which profess to cover all the ground, are as futile as the ordinary blundering attempts at comfort, which only charm ache with sound and patch grief with proverbs. The sorrow of our hearts is not appreciably lessened by argument. ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... they answered for rhyme. By way of proving its progress, he showed us a composition by a man who was deaf and dumb, in praise of Morosofia, who, merely by the use of his eyes and hands, had made an ingenious and high-sounding piece of eloquence, though I confess that the sense was somewhat obscure. We went away filled with admiration for the great ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... who believe that the Indians, as a race, have been greatly sinned against, and to sustain their views, have called in the assistance of flowery-written romances and the high-sounding language of prose and poetry. Much of this novelty and interest rubs off by coming in contact with the savage as he really exists. Admiration often changes, in this case, into distrust and even enmity. It is ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... rhetorical personifications, and the invective of maniacs is the prevailing tone. The same defect characterizes the best speeches, namely, an overexcited brain, a passion for high-sounding terms, the constant use of stilts and an incapacity for seeing things as they are and of so describing them. Men of talent, Isnard, Guadet, Vergniaud himself, are carried away by hollow sonorous phrases like a ship with too much canvas for its ballast. Their minds are stimulated ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... one people, one God!" were words once emphatically pronounced by Kaiser Wilhelm. But with the Japanese such high-sounding words as these are quite unnecessary. In the heart of all, from the Tenno to the lowest rickshaw coolie, there exists a jealous national consciousness, as natural as the beating of the heart itself, which unites the forces of religion, of the political idea and of intellectual culture into ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... stood before the fire with his hands under his coat-tails, his chin raised, and his eyes dreamily upward, and Tall Tom caught the boy in just this attitude one day and made fun of him before all the others. He tried some high-sounding phrases on Melissa, and Melissa told him he must be crazy. Once, even, he tried to kiss her hand gallantly and she slapped his face. Undaunted, he made a lance of white ash, threaded some loose yarn into Melissa's colors, as he told himself, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... who is our heroine, when we shall come to her, had been entrusted, somewhat unwillingly, to her aunt, Juliet St. Leger Temple; Juliet never wrote her name only in full, as above. She was proud of her maiden name. St. Leger was romantic, high-sounding, aristocratic. Temple—well, Temple had been well enough in the early days of her courtship. She thought she loved John Temple so very profoundly that she would have married him even if he went by Smith or Jones. She had read Charlotte Temple, and she knew people by ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... there was no enemy in sight. The fort was deserted. A citizen of the town came out with a flag of truce. The General who had called upon his men in high-sounding words, the officer who was going to make New Madrid a Thermopylae, and himself a Leonidas in history,—the nine thousand infantry had gone! Two or three soldiers were found asleep. They rubbed their eyes and stared wildly when they were told that they were prisoners, that their comrades ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... prisoners with many high-sounding words about the seriousness of obstructing the traffic in the national capital, and inadvertently slipped into a discourse on Russia, and the dangers of revolution. We always wondered why the government was not clever enough to eliminate political discourses, ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... officials at headquarters, who slept on, however, undisturbed. But the word was passed along the line of Police posts over the plains and far out into British Columbia to watch for signs and to be on guard. The Police paid little heed to the high-sounding resolutions of a few angry excitable half-breeds, who, daring though they were and thoroughly able to give a good account of themselves in any trouble that might arise, were quite insignificant in number; but there was another ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... most important of them, Ludwig was not by any means the only competitor for Lola's favours. Men of wealth and position—the bearers of high-sounding titles—with politicians and place-hunters, fluttered round her. It is to her credit that she sent ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... nor animal, capable of living towards either Eternity or Time. But it is one thing to frame beautiful theories on these subjects: another when the unresolved dualism of your own personality (though you may not give it this high-sounding name) becomes the main fact of consciousness, perpetually reasserts itself as a vital problem, and refuses to ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... what," he enquired with the tedious irony of ennui, "is one indebted for this unexpected honour on the part of the First Under-Secretary of the British Secret Service? Or whatever your high-sounding official ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... with pleasure. "I ought to," he said; "there isn't a man in this western country that understands the business better or has got it down any finer than my uncle. He may not be able to talk so glibly or use such high-sounding names for things as you fellows, but he can come pretty near telling whether a mine will pay for the handling, and if it has any value he generally knows how to go to ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... produced a lack of high spiritual purpose in the nation at large; there was much confusion of ideas and ideals; and also much triviality, which was especially offensive when it masqueraded under some high-sounding name. An unhealthy sentimentality—the antithesis of morality—has gone hand in hand with a peculiarly sordid and repulsive materialism. The result was a soil in which various noxious weeds flourished rankly; and of these ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... This was what he had meant. He had known all along, and plotted with them; even if his stomach had turned now, he had been a party to this infamy. Even then she did not hate him; she saw him, misled as she had been by Doyle's high-sounding phrases, lured on by one of those wild dreams of empire to which men were sometimes given. She did not love him any more; she was sorry ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... how beautiful you look! Please to give me some little spectacles, all my own!" She could not resist this entreaty,—(who could?)—and little "Squire Specs" does not mind the shouts of his companions or the high-sounding nicknames they give him, he so rejoices in what seems to him a new ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... never waxed old; in that long interval of time it never cooled"—he remarks that it was then "forty years since he put together a youthful essay on these matters, which with vast confidence I called by the high-sounding title, The Greatest Birth of Time." "The Greatest Birth of Time," whatever it was, has perished, though the name, altered to "Partus Temporis Masculus" has survived, attached to some fragments of uncertain ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... woman had done, and aimed it at the fire. He did not throw it there, however, but tossed it carelessly into the well of the desk, and laughed again. The sheer folly of the thing offended him, and he was ashamed of his own eager speculation, as one who pores over the high-sounding announcements in the agony column of the daily paper, and finds nothing but advertisement and triviality. He walked to the window, and stared out at the languid morning life of his quarter; the maids in slatternly print dresses washing door-steps, the fish-monger ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... There be snares and pitfalls abounding there. We have seen enough to know so much. There be bitter strivings and envyings and hatreds amongst those of lofty degree. I would have my children wed with godly and proper men; but I would sooner give them to simple gentlemen of no high-sounding title, than to those whose duties in life will call them to places round about the throne, and will throw them amidst ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... several military stations named after the late emperors: a Maximianopolis and a Dioclesianopolis in the Upper Thebaid; a Theodosianopolis in the Lower Thebaid, and a second Theodosianopolis in Arcadia. But it is not easy to determine what villages were meant by these high-sounding names, which were perhaps only used ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... not be allowed to be come merely a high-sounding phrase, a vague generality, a pious hope, to which everyone can give lip-service. They must be made to have real meaning in terms of the daily thoughts and acts of every man, woman and child in our land during the coming year and during the years ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... of exasperation. "Are men and women nothing more than names? Do the souls of them count for nothing? Is there no joy in life, no happiness, that wealth and pleasure and empty, high-sounding titles are to be its only aims? I had set you high—so high, Aline—a thing scarce earthly. There is joy in your heart, intelligence in your mind; and, as I thought, the vision that pierces husks and shams to claim the core of reality for its own. Yet you will surrender all for ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... the other hand, the claims of all the other elements, that had cooperated in the revolution of February, were recognized by the lion's share that they received in the government. Hence, in no period do we find a more motley mixture of high-sounding phrases together with actual doubt and helplessness; of more enthusiastic reform aspirations, together with a more slavish adherence to the old routine; more seeming harmony permeating the whole of society ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... I e'er took delight in thy praises, 'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases, Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover She thought that I was not unworthy to ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... may appear to the eyes of some, and high-sounding as they may strike the ears of many, they do not affect me with any force. In the first place, I do not perceive how they bear upon the question before me; it merely refers to the seizure of New Orleans, not to the maintenance ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... were the marvellous remedies which were advertised, and keen was the rivalry among empirics, in their efforts to outdo their brethren in the selection of high-sounding names for their vaunted panaceas. Among the latter were to be found such choice nostrums as rectifiers of the vitals, which were warranted to supply the places of all other ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... set an example of mercantile honor and integrity, are flattered among the populace, receive the attentions of very fine and very virtuous ladies, wield a potential voice in the city government, and lead in the greatest development of internal improvements;—that these men even whisper high-sounding words of morality, and the established custom considers their example no ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... Donna Susanna Torrebianca?" She tried the name on her tongue. "Yes, for an impromptu, Torrebianca is n't bad. It's picturesque, and high-sounding, and yet not—not invraisemblable. You don't think it invraisemblable? So here 's luck to that bold adventuress, that knightess-errant, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... Echevarria sent for the nearest Jesuit priest to mediate, and he luckily, or unluckily, proved to be that Father Thadeus Ennis, who played so prominent a part in the futile rising which the enemies of the Jesuits have chosen to dignify with the high-sounding title of the ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... author of "Pericles and Aspasia" was standing in the middle of the room when we entered, and his voice sounded like an explosion of first-class artillery. Seeing Procter enter, he immediately began to address him compliments in high-sounding Latin. Poor modest Procter pretended to stop his ears that he might not listen to Landor's eulogistic phrases. Kenyon came to the rescue by declaring the breakfast had been waiting half an hour. When we arrived at the table Landor ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... persistent, but more self-denying, conscientious, and truly patriotic. Napoleon's aim was "Glory;" Wellington's watchword, like Nelson's, was "Duty." The former word, it is said, does not once occur in his despatches; the latter often, but never accompanied by any high-sounding professions. The greatest difficulties could neither embarrass nor intimidate Wellington; his energy invariably rising in proportion to the obstacles to be surmounted. The patience, the firmness, the resolution, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... authority in this state. To me, who am but a plain man, the proceeding looks a little too refined and too ingenious; it has too much the air of a political stratagem, adopted for the sake of giving, under a high-sounding name, an importance to the public declarations of this club, which, when the matter came to be closely inspected, they did not altogether so well deserve. It is a policy that has very much the complexion ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... among the olive trees on the island of Skyros, Brooke found at least one Certainty—that of being "among the English poets." He would probably be the last to ask a more high-sounding epitaph. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... without causing much damage to her timbers or risk of her stability; and this roominess, besides, allowed good accommodation aft for a large number of passengers, although in this instance I was the single solitary "landsman" aboard—that is, if a young shaver of thirteen can be dignified with such a high-sounding title! ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... town. The horse-park, the deer-park, the cow-park, were not quite sufficient to answer the ideas I had attached to the word park: but I was quite astonished and mortified when I beheld the bits and corners of land near the town of Glenthorn, on which these high-sounding titles had been bestowed:—just what would feed a cow is sufficient in Ireland ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... hair falls off, from diminished action of the scalp, preparations of cantharides often prove useful; they are sold under various high-sounding titles. The following directions are as good as any of the ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... the effort to secure justice for others or justice for ourselves, save as conditioned upon the attitude we are willing to take toward our Army, and especially toward our Navy. It is not merely unwise, it is contemptible, for a nation, as for an individual, to use high-sounding language to proclaim its purposes, or to take positions which are ridiculous if unsupported by potential force, and then to refuse to provide this force. If there is no intention of providing and of keeping the force necessary to back up a strong attitude, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... mused, fastening her hands in the lapels of his coat. "I thought you'd have a high-sounding handle.... Will ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... the St. James's Magazine describing the opening day of the session of the new Household Suffrage Parliament. It was called "The Birthday of an Era," and, looking back, I think I was fully entitled to make use of that somewhat high-sounding phrase. It was the beginning of the Gladstonian epoch in English history, and, for good or for evil (in my own opinion mainly for good), it was destined to make a deep impression on the institutions and fortunes of the nation. When Mr. ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... officer laughing. "There, there, there, my lad, I'm not going to quarrel with you, and we will not use high-sounding phrases about loyalty, and fealty, and duty, and the like. There, I am glad to welcome you to our side. There are a hundred guineas in that bag. Take them, but spend them sensibly, or you will be suspected. ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... few additions to Geoffrey's Arthurian history, but his real contribution to the legend is the new spirit that he put into it. In the first place his vehicle is the swift-moving French octo-syllabic couplet, which alone gives an entirely different tone to the narrative from that of Geoffrey's high-sounding Latin prose. Wace, moreover, was Norman born and Norman bred, and he inherited the possessions of his race—a love of fact, the power of clear thought, the appreciation of simplicity, the command of elegance in form. Such a spirit indeed was his as in ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... dressy appearance. What could this chipper little city chap be, with his trig form and well-bred manners, in such marked contrast with those of the swaggering English sparrow? Afterwards he was identified as the house-finch, which rejoices in the high-sounding Latin name of Carpodacus mexicanus frontalis. His distribution is restricted to the Rocky Mountain district chiefly south of the fortieth parallel ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... due to an unconscious power, and to proceed to demonstrate them in the presence of the unconscious through all nature, is to make an unwarrantable saltus in reasoning. What, in fact, is this 'unconscious' but a high-sounding name to veil our ignorance? Is the unconscious any better explanation of phenomena we do not understand than the 'devil-devil' by which Australian tribes explain the Leyden jar and its phenomena? Does it increase our knowledge to know that we do not know the origin of language or the ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... old servants remaining in the lonely house were delighted to see the young master home again. Olympia, the coloured cook, whose high-sounding cognomen was usually reduced to Olly, gave him a welcome equal to what might be expected from a whole plantation of darkies. Her eyes and teeth shone in perpetual smiles, her gaily turbaned head and dusky hands gesticulated ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... organise a complaisant Senate, a mute legislative body, and a Tribunals which was to have the semblance of being independent, by the aid of some fine speeches and high-sounding phrases. He easily appointed the Senators, but it was different with the Tribunats. He hesitated long before he fixed upon the candidates for that body, which inspired him with an anticipatory fear. However, on arriving at power he dared not oppose himself to the exigencies ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... principle in a manner so clear and simple, that you will be able, if you exercise your mind, to understand its nature, and apply it to practice as you go along; for I would rather give you one useful idea, than fifty high-sounding words, the meaning of which you would ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... principles sufficiently to bestow upon baby number six a name more appropriate to prospective beauty and charm. The most sensible people have the most serious relapses, and once having given rein to her imagination nothing less than three names would satisfy her—and those three the high-sounding Patricia ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Benengeli, the Arab and Manchegan author, relates in this most grave, high-sounding, minute, delightful, and original history that after the discussion between the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha and his squire Sancho Panza which is set down at the end of chapter twenty-one, Don Quixote raised his eyes and saw coming along ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... O'Meara, "had the reputation of being a man of talent: but I did not find him so. I employed him to write; but he did not display ability, he used many flowers of rhetoric, but no solid argument; nothing but coglionerie wrapped up in high-sounding language." ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a high-sounding name cost no more than a simple one, Kalimann chose the most imposing he could find, and, his country's hero in mind, called himself Sandor Hunyadi. This historic title revived, as it were, his latent patriotism, and, digging his gun and cartridge-box from their ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... to be running away. The ebb came again, at length, however, and then we made sail, and began to turn down with the tide. It was near sunset before we got a view of the two or three spires that then piloted strangers to the town. New York was not the "commercial emporium" in 1796; so high-sounding a title, indeed, scarce belonging to the simple English of the period, it requiring a very great collection of half-educated men to venture on so ambitious an appellation—the only emporium that existed in America, during the last century, being a slop-shop ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... crowded into the little sitting-room of the house. Each one of them bore a high-sounding title. There were present, besides Percival, State Treasurer Landover, Chief Justice Malone, Minister of War Platt, Minister of Marine Mott, Minister of Agriculture Pedro Drom, State Clerk Flattner, Surgeon General Cullen, ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... I have left much of youthful folly to be ashamed of, besmirching the pages of the Bharati; and this shames me not for its literary defects alone but for its atrocious impudence, its extravagant excesses and its high-sounding artificiality. At the same time I am free to recognise that the writings of that period were pervaded with an enthusiasm the value of which cannot be small. It was a period to which, if error was natural, so was the boyish faculty of hoping, believing and rejoicing. And if the fuel ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... and dozens of cigarettes. They have bulging, knobby foreheads and bristling pompadours, and some of the rawest of them wear wild-looking beards, and thick spectacles, and cravats and trousers that Lew Fields never even dreamed of. They are all graduates of high-sounding foreign universities and are horribly learned and brilliant, but they are the worst ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... of little great men who seek to impose on you by pompous ways, proud looks, and high-sounding words; but there was no such poor pride and pretension about Sir Philip Sidney. He was gay and free-hearted, frank in his words, simple and gentle in his manner, and always earnest in the endeavor to be and do good. His writings ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... does reach the stage where he sincerely pities your so-called abominable creature. Then he has really advanced in his morality. Let the pity impress itself deeply upon him and your abominable creature has preached better to him than all your high-sounding phrases. ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... let him out. He did not thus phrase the position even to himself. He clothed it in other and high-sounding words. It was after all a sort of convention to accept acquittal as the proof of innocence. But at the back of his mind from first to last there was an immense fear of the figure which he himself would cut if he refused his consent to ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... city was the happy hunting-ground of quacks, who gave themselves high-sounding names and wore gorgeous raiment. They went about followed by a retinue of pupils and grateful patients. In some cases the patients were compelled to promise, in the event of being cured, that they would ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... speeches, the best known of which is that beginning, "O Sleep, O gentle Sleep." To the comic groups Shakespeare added a number of new figures, among them the braggart Pistol, whose speech bristles with the high-sounding terms he has borrowed from the theater, and old Justice Shallow, so fond of recalling the gay nights and days which are as much figments of his imagination as is his assumed familiarity with the great John of ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... of the fort, Law received from the Shahzada various high-sounding titles and the right to have the royal music played before him; but as he could not afford to entertain the native musicians, he allowed the privilege ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... Europe, and Asia was divided into factions over this affair, and very nearly went to pieces. But it was ridiculous to arrest him in the first place, for he could not incite a feather to riot. He is one of those flamboyant wind-bags, with a terrific command of high-sounding phrases, eloquent gestures, and fine eyes—the kind sixteen-year-old girls admire—to think I once loved him, or thought I did! He is a big little physical coward and prides himself on being the realisation ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... Singh. And certainly I shall leave no stone unturned if you persist in your amazing idea of dismissing the other Hindus from college. For what—I ask you? Dismissed—for what? Because they love liberty enough to give their lives to it! The day you dismiss them, burn our high-sounding manifesto, Mr Fejevary, and admit that Morton College now sells her soul to ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... him say all that one wished; for he was convinced that his interlocutor passed an agreeable moment, whose remembrance would never be forgotten. His patients might wait in pain or anguish, he did not hasten the majestic delivery of his high-sounding phrases with choice adjectives; and unless it was to go to a dinner-party, which he did at least five days in the week, he could not leave you until after he had made you partake of the admiration that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... their position! They not souls at all—the life of the soul was not for them, the laws of the soul had nothing to do with them. They were two bodies—two miserable and cold and sick and tormented bodies; and with yet a third body, utterly helpless and dependent upon them—in defiance of all the most high-sounding pronouncements about "the soul"! ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... too the technical details of his work—those rough methods by which men might be coerced, and the high-sounding phrases with which to gild the coercion. All that morning he had sat side by side with Dr. Layton in the chapter-house, inspecting the books, comparing the possessions of the monastery with the inventories of them, examining witnesses as to the credibility of the lists offered, and making ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... opinion of their own importance in the American scale of power.... Having thus infected them... he easily formed them into a nominal republican government—crowned their old Archimagus emperor after a pleasing new savage form, and invented a variety of high-sounding titles for all the members of ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... Sakr-el-Bahr should lie to clear himself. Here no high-sounding phrase of Faith would answer. And explanation was unavoidable, and he was conscious that he could not afford one that did not go ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... remarkable thing, but Billy, who should have replied to the aged man in all sorts of high-sounding language, could find nothing to reply ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... constitution or civil compact; and, what was more important, they also showed the common-sense American spirit that led them to adopt the scheme of government which should in the simplest way best serve their needs, without bothering their heads over mere high-sounding abstractions.[26] ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... him the first only of Irish poets, and, as we suppose his Lordship must mean, of Irish poets of the present day. The title may be, for aught we know to the contrary, perfectly appropriate; but we cannot conceive how Mr. Moore comes by the high-sounding name of "patriot;" what pretence there is for such an appellation; by what effort of intellect or of courage he has placed his name above those idols of Irish worship, Messrs. Scully, Connell, and Dromgoole. Mr. Moore has written words ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... been a very devout woman and had died young, but had incurred the hatred of the Marchesa by marrying the very man whom the latter had picked out for herself, namely, the elder of two brothers, and the Marchesa had reluctantly consented to marry the other, who had a much less high-sounding title and a far smaller fortune. She had revenged herself in various small ways, and had often turned her brother-in-law's wife to ridicule by representing her as an ascetic mediaeval saint, in contorted attitudes of ecstasy, with sunken cheeks and ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford |
