"Loftiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about something; an' so, nacherally, when he onbosoms himse'f of that howl about Texas, we don't pay no speshul heed. It ain't three days, however, before it begins to break on us that for once Monte's right. Texas has certainly changed. Thar's a sooperior manner, what you'd call a loftiness, about him, which is hard to onderstand an' harder to put up with. It gets to be his habit constant to reemark in a wearied way, as he slops out his drinks, that we-all'll have to excoose him talkin' to us much, because he's got cares on his mind, ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... prince, which familiarized it with foreign intervention, came all the disasters which followed. But who does not admire the people which was wrought up by its venerated preacher to a mood of such sustained loftiness that for the first time in Italy it set the example of sparing a conquered foe while the whole history of its past taught nothing but vengeance and extermination? The glow which melted patriotism into one with moral regeneration ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... is the absence of all comic relief—although Shakespeare was to prove later that this has a useful place in tragedy. A smile, a jest would be sacrilege in the prevailing gloom. Two effects alone are aimed at; an impression of loftiness in the theme, and a profound melancholy. Not warm gushing tears. Those are the outcome of a personal sorrow, small and ignoble beside an abstract grief at 'the falls of princes', 'the tumbling down of crowns', 'the ruin of proud realms'. What does the reader or spectator know of Ferrex ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... imposing air, from their great size and loftiness: the wheels are six feet in diameter; but every part of the ornament is of the meanest and most paltry description, save only the covering of striped and spangled broad-cloth, the splendid and gorgeous effect of which makes up in a great ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... longer the inactive scholar, the gay companion, he rose at once to pre-eminence above all his fellow-citizens. Never before had authority been borne with so austere an integrity, so uncorrupt a zeal. He had sought to impregnate his colleagues with the same loftiness of principle—he had failed. Now secure in his footing, he had begun openly to appeal to the people; and already a new spirit seemed to ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... departed. Through the interview he, no doubt, conducted himself in a way that did him peculiar credit. Yet the warmth of his temper could not be entirely suppressed: and even when he was most exemplary, there was an apparent loftiness in his manner that was calculated to irritate; and the very grandeur with which he suppressed his passions, operated indirectly as a taunt to his opponent. The interview was prompted by the noblest sentiments; but it unquestionably served to widen the ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... when to bully them, when to flatter them, and when to neglect them. He and the waters made a centre round which the rest of her interests might group themselves. Church. She found a vicar with nothing of Mr. Wharton's enthusiasm and loftiness of aim, but with a greater realization of people's capacities. He too had made a study of elderly ladies, who are always such an important branch of congregations. He could see that what Miss Symons was in his drawing-room, touchy, incompetent, and snappish she would be in any ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... champion platitude of commercial civilisation. Aberdeen would have been a far finer example of the schematic city of which theorists dream. There is something heroic about the spaciousness of its streets, the loftiness of the buildings, and the omnipresence of granite—a Tyrtaean spirit, which finds its supreme embodiment in the noble statue of Wallace poised on rough craglets of unpolished granite, and of General Gordon with his martial cloak around ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... only to Ellen Glanville, that I laid aside an affectation, which I knew was little likely to attract a taste so refined and unadulterated as her's. I discovered in her a mind which, while it charmed me by its tenderness and freshness, elevated me by its loftiness of thought. She was, at heart, perhaps, as ambitious as myself; but while my aspirations were concealed by affectation, her's were softened by her timidity, and purified by her religion. There were moments ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lusting for loftiness! There are so many convulsions of the ambitions! Show me that thou art not a lusting and ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... with darkness my master's soul, and disturbed the sleep of his nights. You wanted to have Henry Howard in your power; and this crafty and hypocritical earl knew how to conceal his guilt so securely under the mask of virtue and loftiness of soul! But I knew him, and behind this mask I had seen his face distorted with passion and crime. I wanted to unmask him; but for this, it was necessary that I should deceive first him, and then for ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... evening, Marion cast about her mental horizon for some scene or association in her life that would suggest the desired name. The first that came to her was the picture of a towering mountain, conspicuous not so much for its actual loftiness as for its deceptive appearance of great height. In all her experiences at home, it had never occurred to Marion to think of this individual portion of prehistoric geologic upheaval as a mass of earth and ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... with introducing himself; as he did so, he bowed with such loftiness, moved his legs with such an agreeable air, and drew his heels together with such polished courtesy that no one could fail to feel, 'that man has both linen and moral principles of the first quality!' The ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... hydra of revolution, which has become more terrible than ever in the person of this murderer and villain! We alone must avenge the blood of the just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely on?... England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot understand the Emperor Alexander's loftiness of soul. She has refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some secret motive in our actions. What answer did Novosiltsev get? None. The English have not understood and cannot understand the self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for himself, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the drawing-rooms first; and she admired the unusual loftiness of the rooms, the blaze of white and gold, and of ce'ladon and gold, and the great Russian lusters, and the mighty mirrors. But when they got to the dining-room she was enchanted. That lofty and magnificent ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... this one; speculatively, on the other hand, there is a gain, for the expectation of total transformations and millenniums on earth is a very crude illusion, while the relation of the soul to nature is an open question in philosophy, and there will always be a great loftiness and poetic sincerity in the feeling that the soul is a stranger in this world and has other destinies ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... was full of fresh hopes of happiness for his people and himself. If the compact was made, the time had arrived for him to establish a home of his own, and Miriam's image again appeared in all its loftiness and beauty. The thought of gaining this splendid maiden was fairly intoxicating, and he wondered whether he was worthy of her, and if it would not be presumptuous to aspire to the hand of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... man, who recollects, that their poor and invincible ancestors were not distinguished from the meanest of the soldiers, by the delicacy of their food, or the splendor of their apparel. But the modern nobles measure their rank and consequence according to the loftiness of their chariots, [37] and the weighty magnificence of their dress. Their long robes of silk and purple float in the wind; and as they are agitated, by art or accident, they occasionally discover the under garments, the rich tunics, embroidered with the figures of various ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... into it of "purposes" and "expediencies," is an invention, and independent of the emotion itself. The aim of the purely spiritual love of the second stage was not propagation, and yet it was an emotion whose loftiness cannot easily be surpassed. With the deification of woman love reached far beyond the beloved into infinitude, and the phenomenon of the love-death renders all the supposed generic purpose of love impossible. But even if we ignored love altogether and ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... all the majesty of a lawful prince, and Statius only the blustering of a tyrant. But when men affect a virtue which they cannot easily reach, they fall into a vice, which bears the nearest resemblance to it. Thus, an injudicious poet, who aims at loftiness, runs easily into the swelling puffy style, because it looks like greatness. I remember, when I was a boy, I thought inimitable Spencer a mean poet, in comparison of Sylvester's "Dubartas," and was wrapt into an ecstasy when I read ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... element in the words is hatred, as fixed as the knowledge is clear. God's supremacy and loftiness, and Christ's nature, are recognised, but only the more abhorred. The name of God can be used as a spell to sway Jesus, but it has no power to touch this fierce hatred into submission. 'The devils also believe and tremble.' This, then, is a dark possibility, which has become ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... thinking than is often supposed. The prime merit of Rousseau, in comparing him with the brilliant chief of the rationalistic school of the time, is his reverence; reverence for moral worth in however obscure intellectual company, for the dignity of human character and the loftiness of duty, for some of those cravings of the human mind after the divine and incommensurable, which may indeed often be content with solutions proved by long time and slow experience to be inadequate, but ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... 'And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be brought low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. And the idols shall utterly pass away. And men shall go into the caves of the rocks, and into the ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... spheres of statesmanship [are not] those of a hero or a saint. Passionate earnestness and self-devotion, complete concentration of every faculty on an unselfish aim, uncalculating daring, a delicacy of conscience and a loftiness of aim far exceeding those of the average of men, are here likely to prove rather a hindrance than an assistance. The politician deals very largely with the superficial and the commonplace; his art is in a great measure that of skilful compromise, and in the conditions of modern ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... is a bad bargain-driver. David's nature was of the sensitive and affectionate type that shrinks from a dispute, and gives way at once if an opponent touches his feelings. His loftiness of feeling, and the fact that the old toper had himself well in hand, put him still further at a disadvantage in a dispute about money matters with his own father, especially as he credited that father ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... encouraged by the most constant success. And in the last terrible hours, when the monsters who had already murdered her husband were preparing the same fate for herself, she met their hatred and ferocity with a loftiness of spirit which even hopelessness could not subdue. Long before, she had declared that she had learned, from the example of her mother, not to fear death; and she showed that this was no empty boast when she rose in the last scenes of her life as ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... genuine their reverence for the gods, do not seem to have supposed any part of their duty to the gods to consist in keeping their bodies untainted. Exquisite as was their sense of beauty, of beauty of mind as well as beauty of form, with all their loftiness and their nobleness, with their ready love of moral excellence when manifested, as fortitude, or devotion to liberty and to home, they had little or no idea of what we mean by morality. With a few rare exceptions, pollution, too detestable to be even named among ourselves, was of familiar ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... gorgeously got up and profusely and beautifully illustrated volume is one of engrossing interest. All the characters are skilfully drawn, the events are interestingly marshalled, and the plot most naturally developed. For humour and pathos, for sympathy yet fidelity, for loftiness of tone yet simplicity of style, this charming volume has few superiors. Here and there it reminds us of Mark Twain, anon of Dickens, and often of George Eliot, for the authoress has many of the strong points of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... not answer. Aemilia had explained to him all that she knew of her religion, but while admitting the beauty of its teaching, and the loftiness of its morals, he had not yet been able to bring himself to believe the great facts upon ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... replied for an hour in an eloquent and convincing defense of the Christian religion, in which he answered in order every objection the young men had uttered. So impressive was the simplicity and loftiness of his discourse that the erstwhile critics were ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... sweetness with her heats; forever longing, and forever unsated, it parched her lips and burnt her gasping mouth, but there was no draught to allay it. And even so food failed of its office. Kindly hands brought to her, whose queenliness asserted itself to their souls with an innocent loftiness, careless of pomp or insignia, all delicate dates and exquisite viands; but neither the keen and stimulating odors of savory meat, the crisp whiteness of freshest bread, nor the slow-dropping gold of honeycomb could tempt ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Pastures, where the prohibition law was strictly enforced; there was no such person as a thief in the whole community, and the tramps were gone long ago. Yet here was he, famed at home for the rectitude of his life and the loftiness of his aims, consorting with drunkards and thieves and tramps, and warned against what he was doing by a policeman, as if he was doing it of his own will. It was very strange business. If it was all a punishment for taking ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... be even more than this? The character of John was strong, grand in its wild magnificence—like some Alpine crag, with the pines on its slopes and the deep dark lake at its foot; he had courage, resolution, an iron will, a loftiness of soul that could hold commerce with the unseen and eternal. He was a man capable of vast heights and depths. He could hold fellowship with the eternal God as a man speaks with his friend, and could suffer unutterable agonies in self-questioning and depression. But is ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... this was all a dream. He fixed a scrutinizing gaze upon the grand chamberlain, who, having delivered his message, stood in buckram dignity, drawn up to his full stature, curling his whiskers, stroking his beard, and looking down upon him with inexpressible loftiness through his lack-lustre eyes. There was no doubting the word of so grave ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... silhouette of one. The need of expression that drove him to composition was indubitably mighty. The passion with which he addressed himself to his labor despite all discouragement and lack of success, the loftiness and nobleness of the task which he set for himself, the splendor of the intentions, reveal how fierce a fire burnt in the man. He was not one of those who come to music to form little jewels. On the contrary, in gesture he was ever one of the eminently faithful. He came ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... written many years ago, a few remarks suggested by the perusal of a recent work which has caused great sensation by the talent which pervades it, by its boldness, and original writing. I allude to the work of M. Taine upon English literature; therein he appreciates, in a manly, fine style, all the loftiness of Lord Byron's poetry, but always under the influence of a received, and not self-formed, opinion. He likewise deserves, by his appreciations and conclusions, the reproaches addressed to the other critics of the illustrious and calumniated poet. In this work, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... instance by participation in local politics and other social contests, and by such practice of charity as must be accompanied by physical exertion and bad smells. Culture is, to them, the name for that serenity and loftiness of mind that can be attained and preserved only by keeping a safe distance from the madding crowd; and the cultured man is pictured by them as sitting in a comfortable chair, preferably with a book in his hand, and rapt ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... old historian, who tells the story in Latin, "is the sense, but not the words in order as he sang them in his sleep. For verses, though never so well composed, cannot be literally (that is word for word) translated out of one language into another without losing much of their beauty and loftiness."* ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... the Arctic regions. "The Exact Sciences, what else is there to depend on?" thinks French cultivated society: "and has not Monsieur done a feat in that line?" Monsieur, with fine ex-military manners, has a certain austere gravity, reticent loftiness and polite dogmatism, which confirms that opinion. A studious ex-military man,—was Captain of Dragoons once, but too fond of study,—who is conscious to himself, or who would fain be conscious, that he is, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... thoughtful. He was a handsome man, turning forty. His face was strong, clean shaved, except a light mustache, with full sensual lips and an unusually fine brow. It was the brow of intellect—all in front. Behind and above there was no loftiness of ideality or of veneration. His smile was constant, and though slightly cold, was always approachable. His manner was decisive, but clever always, and ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... blood, that it might swill what it had thirsted for; and Holofernes, beheaded; and his Assyrians flying at his death; and Troy, all become cinders and hollow places. Oh! what a fall from pride was there! Now, maintain the loftiness of your looks, ye sons of Eve, and walk with proud steps, bending not your eyes on the dust ye were, lest ye perceive the evil of ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... Morality and Morals as some excuse for certain absurdities which are occasional fashions in speech and writing—certain old lay-figures, as ugly as the queerest Asiatic idol, which at different periods get propped into loftiness, and attired in magnificent Venetian drapery, so that whether they have a human face or not is of little consequence. One is, the notion that there is a radical, irreconcilable opposition between intellect and morality. I do not mean the simple statement of fact, which everybody knows, that ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... Henry beyond all hope of reconciliation, and he died in exile because he would not listen to any compromise which might be an acknowledgment that he had exaggerated his own claims. Thus, despite the undoubted purity of his life and the ultimate loftiness of his ideals, he is to be regarded rather as a man of immense force of character than as a great ecclesiastical statesman, rather as the stirrer-up of divine discontent than as a creative mind which gives a new turn to the desires and impulses ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... but found the wall thereof as it were one block, without breach or way of ingress; and on the third day, he came again in sight of his companions, dazed and amazed at what he had seen of the extent and loftiness of the place, and said, "O Emir, the easiest place of access is this where you have alighted." Then Musa took Talib and Abd al-Samad and ascended the highest hill which overlooked the city. When they reached the top, they beheld beneath them a city, never saw eyes a greater ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... may possess strong mental capacities, and vice-versa. Persons of superior mental capacities may lack loftiness of character. It might happen that in so mating as to prevent the perpetuation of an undesirable trait, physical, mental or moral, a desirable trait would be lost along with it. In any mating transaction, therefore, choice must necessarily compromise upon ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... generation to present life to it as life is not. As a general rule I'm not much taken up with eminent reformers. They're a class of citizens I don't admire, though I admit they have their uses in supplying loftiness of view and generally keeping up the more serious kinds of charm practised by the female sex. But in the matter of the effect of movies on the young mind those reformers may be right. It seems to me you've gathered in some foolish notions about life, Mr. Phillips. ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... of an hour later the door of the gaol opened and Commander Mattei came in: he found Murat standing with head proudly erect and folded arms. There was an expression of indefinable loftiness in this half-naked man whose face was stained with blood and bespattered with mud. Mattei ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... ones, exposed to the shafts of calumny and scorn because of your fidelity to your God; encountering, it may be, the coldness and estrangement of those dear to you, who can not, perhaps, sympathize in the holiness of your walk and the loftiness of your aims, "consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye be weary and faint in your minds!" What is your "contradiction" to His? Soon your cross, whatever it be, will have an end. "The seat of the scorner" ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... houses, and a consistency in political and private life for which all parties involuntarily respected them. But, unfortunately, as so often happens in a time of transition, the most disinterested persons, the men whose loftiness of view and wise principles would have gained the confidence of the French nation and led them to believe in the generosity of a novel and spirited policy—these men, to repeat, were taken out of affairs, and public business was allowed to fall into the hands of others, who found it to ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... decorating it for the occasion. Here, on the twenty-third of October, 1672, the three estates of Canada were convoked, with as much pomp and splendor as circumstances would permit. Then Frontenac, with the ease of a man of the world and the loftiness of a grand seigneur, delivered himself of the harangue he had prepared. He wrote exceedingly well; he is said also to have excelled as an orator; certainly he was never averse to the tones of his own eloquence. His speech was addressed to a double audience: the throng ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... Sits enthroned with the symbol of pomp by his side. The beauty is glorious that beams in his face, His mien is majestic, his movement is grace! Before him a prophet, with hair long and white Falling down o'er a mantle as sable as night, With a glance of stern loftiness, cheek cold and pale, And a gesture of earnestness, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... sacrifices for these objects, will voluntarily exclaim, 'We will break our swords,' and will destroy its whole military system, lock, stock, and barrel. To make ourselves defenceless (after having been most strongly defended), from loftiness of sentiment, is the means towards genuine peace.... The so-called armed peace that prevails at present in all countries is a sign of a bellicose disposition, that trusts neither itself nor its neighbour, and, partly ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... replica of my proud, dark father, as everyone said. I remember the sally of an indignant Parisian street arab, who called after me: "Hey, boy, why so high and mighty?" And in my own country, where one turns more quickly to measures sharper than words, this loftiness brought upon me even fiercer attacks. A country lad imitated my proud bearing and pure Italian, getting for it a slap with a towel which I carried on my way to bathe in the sea. On my return the answer came - a ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... scheme, and in this instance the relation is made closer by the paneled wainscot which is carried about all four walls. In this wainscot two panel sections under each closet are hung as double doors opening into small supplementary closets. Owing to the loftiness of the room, the closet doors have been elaborated by ornate broken pedimental heads repeating the cornice on a smaller scale, and which are supported by paneled pilasters and large consoles superbly carved with an ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... and had generally been his wont; but subjugation had reached another stage in him. He summoned all possible pleadings on the girl's behalf: her talents, her youth, her grievous trials. Devotion to classical music cannot but argue a certain loftiness of mind; it might, in truth, be somehow akin to 'religion'. Remembering his own follies and vices at the age of four-and-twenty, was it not reason, no less than charity, to see in Alma the hope of future good? Nay, if it came to that, did she not embody infinitely more virtue, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... rides to motes and Things before his foes. He has sent his sons harvesting in the Isles. He takes deliberate heed of death—to meet it, Like those whom Odin needs. He is fey, I tell you— And if we are past the foolish ardour of girls For heroisms and profitless loftiness We shall get gone when bedtime clears the house. 'T is much to have to be a hero's wife, And I shall wonder if Hallgerd cares about it: Yet she may kindle to it ere my heart quickens. I tell you, ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... general attribution of Goody Two-Shoes to him may be correct. Charles Welsh, who edited the best recent edition for schools, says it "will always deserve a place among the classics of childhood for its literary merit, the purity and loftiness of its tone, and its sound sense, while the whimsical, confidential, affectionate style which the author employs, makes it attractive even to children who have long since passed the spelling-book stage." The version that follows has been shortened by ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... of human conduct; treating patriotism and disinterestedness with an elaborate sneer, and receiving the suggestions of duty with a horse-laugh. There is a difference not easily to be mistaken between the lessening of men which is occasioned by the loftiness of the platform whence the observation is made, and that which is produced by the malignant envy of the observer; between the gloomy judicial ferocity of a Pope or a Tacitus, and the villain levity which revels in the contemplation of imputed ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... not equally costly. It takes but few teachers, but few years, and but little study, to make a farmer or a mechanic: the generative effort and—if I may venture to use such language—the period of social gestation are proportional to the loftiness of the capacity. But while the physician, the poet, the artist, and the savant produce but little, and that slowly, the productions of the farmer are much less uncertain, and do not require so long a time. Whatever be then the capacity of a man,—when this capacity is once created,—it does not ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... portrayal of life's deepest, most vital, most solemn interests. I think nothing in literature since Goldsmith's 'Vicar of Wakefield' equals your description of the flight of Ramona and Alessandro. Such delicate pathos and tender joy, such pure conception of life's realities, and such loftiness of self-abnegating love! How much richer and happier the world is with ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... concern for our welfare; and this solicitude is not only pardonable, but may justly be demanded from those who chuse us for their companions. This state of things was more slow to arrive on this occasion than on most others, on account of the gravity and loftiness ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... of it as Troup poured out his diatribe; and this thought was, that he was no longer conscious of any greatness in him. Through all the conflicts, trials, and formidable obstacles of previous years he had been sustained by his consciousness of superlative gifts combined with loftiness of purpose. Had not his greatness been dinned into his ears, he would have been as familiar with it. But he seemed to himself to have shrivelled, his very soul might have been in ashes—incremated in the flames of his passions. He had triumphed ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... and notable generalizations have, however, already thrust themselves into these chapters to illustrate his appreciation of the loftiness of his theme, his candor, and his genuine sympathy with those to whose ill-fated heroism he gave such ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... British politics. There are, of course, in all professions, including (I dare say) that of burglary. There still are in the political arena gentlemen whose single aim, pursued with undeviating loftiness of purpose, is the service of their country. I will not pretend to think their number large, for I know it is not. (But I dare say it is larger than it will be a few years hence, when we have pursued a little farther the enlightened ideal of governance ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... stand above the mob of democratic writers; and of a truth Monsieur Maxime du Camp and Monsieur Laurent Pichat, his two leaders, had none of those smoking-cafe vulgarities which have procured so many subscribers to the "Siecle" newspaper. Both poets, Laurent Pichat with remarkable loftiness, Maxime du Camp with bizarre energy, intent upon an ideal which democracy has a right to pursue, since it has not yet found it, men of the world, capable of discussing in full dress the most perplexed questions of Socialism, they accept none of those party-chains which so often bow down ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... itself to an overwhelming extent on the Parish Churches and Cathedrals of the country, and to it he added a Dome. There is one feature that these two apparent opposites have in common. Gothic Churches vary greatly, but many of them are notable for their appearance of loftiness. The clustered columns seem to lead the eye upwards to the roof, as if men naturally went about the world cramped and confined, and were now bidden turn their gaze to the heights. A dome has a somewhat similar effect: it carries on the gaze and it gives an increased ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... dangerously fly in sunder, as wanting that native spring and toughness which our English oak is indu'd withal. And here we forget not the stress which Sir H. Wotton, and other architects put even in the very position of their growth, their native streightness and loftiness, for columns, supporters, cross-beams, &c. and 'tis found that the rough-grain'd body of a stubbed oak, is the fittest timber for the case of a cyder-mill, and such like engines, as best enduring the unquietness of a ponderous rolling-stone. For shingles, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... imbibed to drown his mental anguish acted like poison upon a weak and ailing body, now more than usually debilitated by insufficient food. In the winter of 1823, Clare found himself almost penniless; yet with inborn loftiness of mind, he hid the fact from his family, so as not to distress them. His wife and parents, therefore, lived as well as ever, while he, to save expenditure, got into the habit of absenting himself at meal-times, pretending to call upon friends and acquaintances. ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... Florence Nightingale have all the comforts of life when she did her great work? Was it not by her indomitable perseverance, her great patience, and her enthusiasm for others that she won such an honored place for herself? You know almost before I say it, that there can be no loftiness of purpose, no enthusiasm, if there are not difficulties to be conquered, and you all know that complaining about sick people will never alter their characteristics, and that complaining about the nervousness ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... hear no more injuries. He said: "You'll don' got money enough, Mr. Durgin, by gosh! to reduce my wages," and he started down the hill toward Whitwell's house with as great loftiness as could comport with a down-hill gait and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Execution at the Mark, will immediately discover, that the Noise of the Discharge was a great deal too big for the Diameter of the Bullet. It is just the same thing with an unsinewy Imagination, sent abroad in sounding Numbers; The Loftiness of the Expression will astonish shallow Readers into a temporary Admiration, and support it, for a while; but the Bounce, however loud, goes no farther than the Ear; The Heart remains unreach'd by the Languor of ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... withered. And the birds chirped at times; but their note was mournful and complaining. All within this house, until Harley's arrival, had been strange and saddening to Helen's timid and subdued spirits. Lady Lansmere had received her kindly, but with a certain restraint; and the loftiness of manner, common to the countess with all but Harley, had awed and chilled the diffident orphan. Lady Lansmere's very interest in Harley's choice, her attempts to draw Helen out of her reserve, her watchful eyes whenever Helen shyly spoke or shyly moved, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with its absurd obesity; and in shape and complexion bearing a close resemblance to a sun-flower stuck into a Dutch cheese. The awe with which she regarded her nephew arose partly from his size, but principally from the aristocratic loftiness of his birth—being the third in descent from the original founder of the family, while nothing stood between her and the tallow vat except the six years during which her father had enacted the country squire. What could be more appalling to these unhappy beings ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... revolutionary age,—an age of intense earnestness, when the grandest truths were agitated; an age of experiment, of bold discussions, of wild fanaticisms, of bitter hatreds, of unconquerable prejudices, yet of great loftiness and spiritual power,—that the star of Oliver Cromwell arose. He was born in the year 1599, of a good family. He was a country squire, a gentleman farmer, though not much given to fox-hunting or dinner hilarities, preferring to read political pamphlets, or to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... as Randolph. He was a high-bred, high-spirited man of thirty, descended from a long line of proud and chivalrous men; educated, refined, sensitive, generous, and brave. His fine talents, his dash, his polished manner, his industry, his integrity, his loftiness of character, had lifted him upon the shoulders of popularity and prosperity; so that, in the city of his home, there was not another man of his age, a member of his profession, the law, who was so well known, so well liked, or wielded such ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... he accepted this manly response. Although, contrary to his custom, he had a lady on his knee, he adjured the young prince, with a sublime loftiness of soul, to be ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... venerable Areopagus. Regarding the three as one harmonious and united performance, altogether not so long as one play of Shakspeare's, they are certainly not surpassed in greatness of thought, in loftiness of conception, and in sustained vigour of execution, by any poem in the compass of literature; nor, observing their simple but compact symmetry as a whole, shall we do right to subscribe to those who deny to Aeschylus the skill of the artist, while they ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is of a high order: in brightness of expression and unsolicited ease and natural vehemence of language, he stands in the first rank of poets: in choice of subjects, in happiness of conception, and loftiness of imagination, he recedes into the second. He owes little of his fame to his objects, for, saving the beauty of a few ladies, they were all of an ordinary kind: he sought neither in romance nor in history for themes to the muse; he took up topics from life around which were familiar ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... history with later emperors. But the "Meditations" of the good emperor survive, like the writings of Epictetus, St. Augustine, and Thomas a Kempis: one of the few immortal books,—immortal, in this case, not for artistic excellence, like the writings of Thucydides and Tacitus, but for the loftiness of thoughts alone; so precious that the saints of the Middle Ages secretly preserved them as in accord with their own experiences. It is from these "Meditations" that we derive our best knowledge of Marcus Aurelius. They reveal the man,—and a man of sorrows, as the truly great are apt to be, when ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... symmetrical. Attired in a rough forester's costume, of the mode of 1737, and of the roughest texture and rudest make, his wild garb would have determined his rank as sufficiently humble in the scale of society, had not a certain loftiness of manner, and bold, though reckless deportment, argued pretensions on the part of the wearer to a more elevated station in life, and contradicted, in a great measure, the impression produced by the homely appearance of his habiliments. A cap of shaggy brown fur, fancifully, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... lovely verdure, impregnated with the sweet odours of the Gospel. The author's contributions to religious literature are marked not less by their eminently evangelical and practical characters, their purity and loftiness of thought, than by their beautiful simplicity of language ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... seed, to fall on the sod; Tranquil its lakes were, and lovely its shores, While idly each stream o'er the fretting rocks pours. Its forests are fair and its mines fathomless, Grand are its mountains in their loftiness; Its fields wait the plow, and its harbors the ships, No sail down the blue of the water-way slips. God keeps in his palm, through centuries dim, This hid, idle seed. It belongeth to him. Away in a corner, where God only knows, The seed when he plants it quickens and grows. The pale ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... out passages that indicate these qualities. What admirable characteristics does the whole selection exhibit? Simplicity, directness, and eloquence of language, noble emotion, loftiness of character, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... in the broad sense," explained Dora, with the loftiness of one who addresses a throng from a pulpit. Then shaking a finger, "'The wicked flee when no man pursueth'—Proverbs, twenty-eighth ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... palpitate newly. Was it at the novelty simply, or the almost incredible fulfilment about to be given to her girlish dreams of being "somebody"—walking through her own furlong of corridor and under her own ceilings of an out-of-sight loftiness, where her own painted Spring was shedding painted flowers, and her own fore-shortened Zephyrs were blowing their trumpets over her; while her own servants, lackeys in clothing but men in bulk and shape, were as nought in her ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... his obliging intention, but absolutely refused, with great loftiness of demeanour, to appropriate to his own use any part of the money which Pickle had gained, and seemed affronted at the other's entertaining a sentiment so unworthy of his character. He would not even accept, in the way of loan, such an addition to his own stock, as would amount to ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... alms, we know not well how to begin it, or in what words to dress it. Or if our zeal emboldens us to speak freely, our words have less effect upon them, because they treat us with an assuming air of loftiness, as if that which we received from them had made them our masters, and put them in possession of despising us. What I say, relates chiefly to a sort of persons, who are plunged in vice, who would willingly be credited with ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill, and fortitude of the voyager. The martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism worth a lifetime of softness and security. A man upon whom continuous sunshine falls is like the earth in August: he becomes parched and dry and hard and close-grained. Men have drawn from adversity the elements of greatness. If you have the blues, go ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... with native American myths, this one bears undeniable marks of its aboriginal origin. Its frequent puerilities and inanities, its generally low and coarse range of thought and expression, its occasional loftiness of both, its strange metaphors and the prominence of strictly heathen names and potencies, bring it into unmistakable relationship to the true ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... Mrs. Cowperwood," she commented, turning to the painting by Van Beers. "It's high in key, isn't it?" she said, loftily, but with an innocent loftiness that appealed to him. He liked spirit and some presumption in a woman. "What brilliant colors! I like the idea of the garden and ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... be instituted to require Spain to surrender, as the States did then surrender, all fugitives escaped into their limits. Hamilton and Sedgwick from the North, and Madison from the South, made that report—men, the loftiness of whose purpose and genius might put to shame the puny efforts now made to disturb that which lies at the very foundation of the Government ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd; The next, in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go; To make a third, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... of this age may be mentioned Speroni, whose writings are distinguished by harmony, freedom, and eloquence of style; Tasso, whose dialogues unite loftiness of thought with elegance of style; Castiglione (1468-1529), whose "Cortigiano" is in equal estimation as a manual of elegance of manners and as a model of pure Italian; and Della Casa, whose "Galateo" is a complete system of politeness, couched in elegant language, and a work to which ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... advantage of chanting the already performed, so full of glories, reminiscences dear to the minds of men." And he says too that, "The educated world seems to have been growing more and more ennuied for ages, leaving to our time the inheritance of it all." And he further says: "The ranges of heroism and loftiness with which Greek and feudal poets endow'd their godlike or lordly born characters, I was to endow the democratic averages of America. I was to show that we, here and to-day, are eligible to the grandest and the best—more eligible now than ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Monsieur de Garnache," said he with a fine loftiness, and in his heart he pondered what he would say and how he should say it; how he should stand, how move, and how look. His roving eye caught sight of his secretary. He remembered something—the cherished pose of being a man plunged fathoms-deep ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... loftiness of Notre Dame, moreover, gives it a sublimity which would swallow up anything that might look gewgawy in its ornamentation, were we to consider it window by window, or pillar by pillar. It is an advantage of these vast edifices, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... weaknesses did not obscure the loftiness of his character. The capricious malignity and brutal injustice of the Great Frederick might as well be cited against the acknowledged grandeur of his career, as an indictment be brought against Stanton's fame on his personal defects, glaring and even exasperating ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the impression she herself made upon Violet—it was the same she made upon everyone. No one could look long at Florence Digby and not recognize the loftiness of her spirit and the generous nature of her impulses. In person she was tall, and as she leaned to take Violet's hand, the difference between them brought out the salient points in each, to the great admiration ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... formalist appears transformed into a sage or poet, conversing with the people in a warm, cordial tone, about the phenomena of nature, history, and life. The reader is often thrown into amazement by the depth of thought and the loftiness of feeling manifested in the Agada. Involuntarily one pays the tribute of reverence to its practical wisdom, to its touching legends pervaded by the magic breath of poesy, to the patriarchal purity of its views. But these pearls ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... independent person (when I talk) in reality there are few things in this world I would rather see than a new person coming up the walk to my door. We cannot, of course, let the celebrities know it, lest they grow intolerable in their top-loftiness, but if they must have us, we cannot well get along without them—without the colour and variety which they lend to a gray world. I have spent many a precious moment alone in my fields looking up the road (with what wistful casualness!) ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... in his first letter to the Corinthians, writes: "And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not in loftiness of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of Christ. For I judge not myself to know anything among you, but Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And my speech and my preaching was not in the persuasive words of human wisdom, but in the ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... heartily. "You swaggering dandy!" he replied. "Did you take a bet at the Belvedere to intrude on His Loftiness? And have you a guinea or two on supping a cup of coffee with him? Upon my honour, you must now be nearly at the end of your follies. Mother, where ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... this moral spring; he would cripple at a blow all the virtues. I do not, however, place this noblest of sentiments on the somewhat isolated height where it is put by the exclusive adorers of liberty. Let us not confound dignity with mere loftiness. Moreover, by the side of dignity let us never forget that other inspiring sentiment, which is at least its equal in value, humanity; that is to say, the remembrance, the care, of that great number who are condemned to a life of poverty and suffering, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... this charming; but at the same time he could not conceal from himself the fact that Margaret's passion for the poetic cut, so to speak, both ways. He admired and loved the loftiness of her soul, but, on the other hand, it was a tough job having to live up to it. For Archibald was a very ordinary young man. They had tried to inoculate him with a love of poetry at school, but it had not taken. Until he was thirty he had been satisfied to class all poetry (except that ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse |
