"Matchless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mind, To have the Young-one in his sight, when he Wrought in the field, or on his shepherd's stool Sat with a fettered sheep before him stretched Under the large old oak, that near his door 165 Stood single, and, from matchless depth of shade, Chosen for the shearer's covert from the sun, Thence in our rustic dialect was called The CLIPPING TREE, a name which yet it bears. There, while they two were sitting in the shade, 170 With others round them, earnest all and blithe, Would Michael ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... then in absolute childhood she put forward the blossoms and the dignity of a woman. Never yet did my eye light upon creature that was born of woman, nor could it enter my heart to conceive one, possessing a figure more matchless in its proportions, more statuesque, and more deliberately and advisedly to be characterized by no adequate word but the word magnificent, (a word too often and lightly abused.) In reality, speaking of women, I have seen many beautiful figures, but hardly one ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... to do, and to make him take back his divorced queen Ingelburga of Denmark. Braisnes, planted upon a peak, overlooks what is left of the exquisite twelfth-century church of St.-Yved, ruthlessly battered and abused in 1793, and robbed of certain matchless monuments in enamelled copper for the benefit of a syndicate of patriotic rogues. The Chateaux de Gandelu, de Neuville, de St.-Lambert are ruins. The lordly cradle of the great House of Guise; the tower of Marchais in which, tradition tells us, the League was first conceived ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Courts are not upright, intelligent and learned? Who then can justly complain? Yet the stripling of yesterday—the bold projector—the unprincipled ad ambitious, with a host of deceived followers, with matchless effrontery, arraign the conduct of these magistrates and loudly demand that they be driven from their offices, and ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... Her eyes, so far as that might be, Her soul's rich jewel should illume; Alas! but how imperfectly! For could a heart that throbb'd to bless Its friends with boundless tenderness,— Or could that heaven-descended mind Which, in its matchless beauty, join'd The strength of man with woman's grace,— Be given to sculptor to express? O Iris, who canst charm the soul— Nay, bind it with supreme control,— Whom as myself I can but love,— (Nay, not that word: as I'm a man, Your court has placed ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... should wax feeble. It is because I love you that I hold your fame far dearer than my love. Go rather forth again, travel through heathen lands, defend the weak against the strong; go, battle for the right, show yourself the matchless knight you are; and God and my love go ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... that matchless piece of sculptured oak [Picture: Effigy in oak of Emperor Rudolph II.] which represents the Emperor Rudolph II., the size of life (five feet six inches in height), and which was brought from Aix-la-Chapelle ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... why it is that both have their roots in man's divided nature, and struggle, as it were, for the mastery. Which can be said to be the most exquisite in all beauty of imagination, of refined language, of faultless and matchless melody, of these two passages, in which the same image is used for the most opposite purposes;—first, in that song of temptation, the sweetest note in that description of Acrasia's Bower of Bliss, which, as a picture of the ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... Jupiter sent Iris to King Priam to encourage him to go to Achilles and beg the body of his son. Iris delivered her message, and Priam immediately prepared to obey. He opened his treasures and took out rich garments and cloths, with ten talents in gold and two splendid tripods and a golden cup of matchless workmanship. Then he called to his sons and bade them draw forth his litter and place in it the various articles designed ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... heart and carried her off. And at this very moment she must be hiding somewhere in Ferrara, perhaps not a quarter of a mile from here! In a convent, no doubt, in some gloomy old house full of yellow-faced Carmelite or Franciscan nuns, with her glorious hair and her matchless complexion! I can see her in my imagination, a gilded rose amongst cabbages, a luscious peach in a heap ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... days, the melody gradually ceases. The young are out of the nest and must be cared for, and the moulting season is at hand. After the Cricket has commenced to drone his monotonous refrain beneath your window, you will not, till another season, hear the Wood-Thrush in all his matchless eloquence. The Bobolink has become careworn and fretful, and blurts out snatches of his song between his scolding and upbraiding, as you approach the vicinity of his nest, oscillating between anxiety for his brood and solicitude for his musical reputation. Some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... most affectionate, and most considerate letters that a sincere and sensible woman ever wrote to the most petulant, suspicious, perverse, and irrestrainable of men. For patience and exquisite sweetness of friendship some of these letters are matchless, and we can only conjecture the wearing querulousness of the letters to which they were replies. If through no fault of her own she had been the occasion of the monstrous delirium of which he never shook off the consequences, at least this good soul did all that ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... steady demand, particularly from the boys. Frank Bolles is a great favorite with them. The excursions to the woods have a new and aesthetic interest. What would Emerson have thought when he wrote that matchless bit— ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... stone the matchless Digby lies, Digby the great, the valiant and the wise: This age's wonder for his noble parts; Skill'd in six tongues, and learn'd in all the arts. Born on the day he died, th' eleventh of June, On which he bravely fought at Scanderoon. 'Tis rare that one and self-same day should be His day of birth, ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... as the despatches with which he soon began to electrify his soldiers and all France. "I awaken full of thee," he wrote; "thy portrait and yester eve's intoxicating charm have left my senses no repose. Sweet and matchless Josephine, how strange your influence upon my heart! Are you angry, do I see you sad, are you uneasy, ... my soul is moved with grief, and there is no rest for your friend; but is there then more when, yielding to an overmastering desire, I draw from your lips, your heart, a flame ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... soldiers of the army were now selected and pitted against him, and he overthrew seven of them in rapid succession. The emperor, delighted with this matchless display of vigor and agility, presented him with a golden collar in reward, and ordered that he should be placed in the horse-guards that formed ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... admiring and loving them. They were, in a way, sign-posts of her development. She had begun to buy them when she had stopped working in colour with a man who had a famous studio in New York. One day she had gone with the man to an exhibition of oil paintings which were infused with a matchless poetry of colour. ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... that watch'd the Colchian fleece, Foil'd the fierce warriors of wide-plundering Greece; Warriors of matchless might and wondrous birth, Jove's sceptred sons and demigods of earth. High on the sacred tree, the glittering prize Hangs o'er its guard, and tires the warriors' eyes; First their hurl'd spears his spiral folds ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... boxes called Sileni, and discourses of the manifest resemblance of his own work with Socrates. 'Opening this box,' which is Socrates, says he, 'you would have found within it a heavenly and inestimable drug, a more than human understanding, an admirable virtue, matchless learning, invincible courage, inimitable sobriety, certain contentment of mind, perfect assurance, and an incredible disregard of all that for which men cunningly do so much watch, run, sail, fight, travel, toil, and turmoil themselves.' ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... the purpose of arranging the various matters in connection with their prosecution of the fur trade. Here Sir George Simpson, for many years the energetic and despotic Governor, used to come to meet these officials, travelling by birch canoe, manned by his matchless crew of Iroquois Indians, all the way from Montreal, a distance of several thousand miles. Here immense quantities of furs were collected from the different trading posts, and then shipped to England ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... comprises every feature which can heighten the picturesque; noble mountains, a lake-like sea, and deeply indented coast-line, rocks, islets, and, above all, a vegetation so luxuriant that the eye never wearies with gazing on its matchless tints. Anjer combines all these beauties, and possesses the incalculable advantage of being within a moderate ride of the refreshing coolness of the hills. We here procured water and provisions in abundance, being daily visited by crowds of canoes filled ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... traversing trackless oceans. They would talk about the sea fights of Aboukir and Trafalgar, and the battles of Arcola, Marengo, Jena, Austerlitz, the Russian campaign, the retreat from Moscow, his deportation to Elba, his escape therefrom, and his matchless march into Paris, and then the great encounter of Waterloo, combined with the divorce of Josephine and the marriage with Marie Louise; all of which, as I remember it now, was set forth in the most voluble and ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... one about the primeval world had passed for the time, and like Henry he was concentrating all his energy and attention upon the present, which was full enough of work and danger. He and the young Hercules together made a matchless pair. He was second only to Henry in the skill and lore of the wilderness. He was a true son of the forest, and, though uneducated in the bookish sense, he was so full of wiles and cunning that he was the Ulysses of the five, and as such his fame had spread along the whole border, ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... week. North, South, East, and West Belvern, New Belvern, Old Belvern, Great Belvern, Little Belvern, Belvern Link, Belvern Common, and Belvern Wells. They are all nestled together in the velvet hollows or on the wooded crowns of the matchless Belvern Hills, from which they look down upon the fairest plains that ever blessed the eye. One can see from their heights a score of market towns and villages, three splendid cathedrals, each in a different county, the queenly Severn winding like a silver thread among the trees, with ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... majesty, robed in the matchless splendour of a ruler's state, redolent with all the mimic glories of a king's insignia, the modelled puppet from the senseless clay, that wore in life the imperial purple, and moved a breathing thing, chief actor in its childish mummeries, may here be seen shining in tinselled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... Grave not only expresses, as no one else has expressed, the quality of Wordsworth's genius, but in single lines assigned to each, the same service is done for Milton, Shakespeare, Shelley, Coleridge, and Byron. This is a matchless illustration of the kind of criticism that is in itself genius; for we may quarrel with Mr. Spingarn as much as we please on his general dogmatic principle of the identity of genius and taste; here we have so admirable an example of what he means by creative criticism, that it is a pity he ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... the theatre when he was obliged to; gathering courage to do his best and to display his powers from the constant success he had. The papers were full of his praises, saying that he was absolutely without rival from the very first night he sang, matchless and supreme from the moment he first opened his mouth, and all that kind of nonsense. I dare say he is now, but he could not have been really the greatest singer living, so soon. However, he used to bring me the newspapers that had notices of him, though he never appeared to ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... dewdrops that hang on tree and bush into sparkling diamonds, and burnishing the motionless flood of water, till a new and mighty firmament is reflected in the wave; as if Nature, rising early from her couch, paused to gaze with admiration on her resplendent image reflected in the depths of her own matchless mirror. The profound stillness, too, broken only by the measured sweep of the oars, fills the soul with awe; whilst a tranquil but unbounded happiness steals over the heart of the traveller as he gazes out upon the distant horizon, broken here and there by small verdant islets, floating as ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the epistles of the New Testament. This summer, as my eighth year advanced, we read the 'Epistle to the Hebrews', with very great deliberation, stopping every moment, that my Father might expound it, verse by verse. The extraordinary beauty of the language—for instance, the matchless cadences and images of the first chapter—made a certain impression upon my imagination, and were (I think) my earliest initiation into the magic of literature. I was incapable of defining what I felt, but I certainly had a grip in the throat, which was in its essence a purely ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... a balance resting on no ulterior principle, but undoubtedly pleasant for the comfortable classes. Nothing is left but the rough guesswork, which, if a fine name be wanted, may be called Baconian induction. The 'matchless constitution,' as Bentham calls it, represents a convenient compromise, and the tendency is to attach exaggerated importance to its ostensible terms. When Macaulay asserted against Mill[118] that it was impossible to say which element—monarchy, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... modest flower, of matchless worth! Thou sweet, enticing, bonny gem; Blest is the soil that gave thee birth, And bless'd thine honour'd parent stem. But doubly bless'd shall be the youth To whom thy heaving bosom warms; Possess'd of beauty, love, and truth, He 'll clasp an angel ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... familiar with the case of the missing pendants to which Holmes referred, and on the quest for which he was now about to embark. There may be some of you, however, who have never heard of the mysterious robbery of Gaffany & Co., by which two diamonds of almost matchless purity—half of a quartet of these stones—pear-shaped and valued at $50,000 each, had disappeared almost as if the earth had opened and swallowed them up. They were a part of the famous Gloria Diamond, found last year at Kimberley, a ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... Creator's works! Thee, goddess, thee the Eternal did ordain, His softer substitute on earth to reign; And, wheresoe'er thy happy footsteps tread, Nature in triumph after thee is led! Angels with pleasure view thy matchless grace, And love their ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... and all night; the sun came out only at long intervals, and then often but for a moment; the atmosphere, much of the time, was like lead; the moon and stars seemed to have left the sky; even the English landscape, in spite of its matchless verdure and beauty, put on a forbidding aspect. All nature, indeed, was under a cloud. This, added to her frail health, made the summer a very trying one to Mrs. Prentiss, and yet it afforded her not a little real delight. Some of her pleasantest days in Europe were spent in England. The following ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... symmetry and grace of these lovely beings. Their chief beauty appeared in a mobility of expression. It was the divine fire of Thought that illumined every feature, which, while gazing upon the Aphrodite of Praxitiles, we must think was all that the matchless marble lacked. Emotion passed over their features like ripples over a stream. Their eyes were limpid wells of loveliness, where every impulse of their ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... sweet humor, that ever were there Since Cervantes met death in his gentle despair; Nay, don't be embarrassed, nor look so beseeching, I sha'n't run directly against my own preaching, And, having just laughed at their Raphaels and Dantes, Go to setting you up beside matchless Cervantes; But allow me to speak what I honestly feel,— To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele, Throw in all of Addison, minus the chill, 1449 With the whole of that partnership's stock and good-will, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... and, ostensibly catching the light upon the facets of the matchless stone, peeped into the circlet. To my surprise the words inscribed on the gold were "Kismet and Miss Cunningham." They were absolutely unbroken, not a letter blurred, and the surface of the ring gave the appearance of having been untouched since first it was fashioned. ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... broke Which freed her from the unchristian yoke, With him his gentle daughter came; Nor there, since Menelaus' dame Forsook her lord and land, to prove What woes await on lawless love, Had fairer form adorned the shore Than she, the matchless stranger, bore.[op] ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... she did,—whether it were in display of her own matchless talents, or whether it were as one member of a general party,—nothing could exceed the amiable, kind, and unassuming deportment ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... affairs of a great empire, such a man, after long years of observation, practice, and perpetual discipline, would have become what Sir Robert Peel was in the latter portion of his life—a transcendent administrator of public business and a matchless master of debate ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... her matchless training at the level of mysteriously performed duties pat to the moment and without command, appeared with a tray of vases. Each vase was filled to precisely half its capacity with water. There were also a folded newspaper, a pair of small gilt scissors and a saucer. Low Jinks spread ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... accidental—-it could not be fortuitous, the resemblance of that half-seen but beautiful female hand with one which his lips had once touched, and, while they touched it, had internally sworn allegiance to the lovely owner. Had further proof been wanting, there was the glimmer of that matchless ruby ring on that snow-white finger, whose invaluable worth Kenneth would yet have prized less than the slightest sign which that finger could have made; and, veiled too, as she was, he might see, by chance or by favour, a stray curl of the dark ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... of Claude are by no means equal to what we had expected, from the celebrity which his name has acquired, or the matchless beauty which the engravings from him possess. They are but eleven in number, and cannot be in any degree compared with those which are to be found in Mr Angerstein's collection. To those, however, who have been accustomed to study the designs of this great master, through the ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Desdemona was right in loving a man for the dangers he had passed, the thought that there should be harbors less fluctuating, a lively appreciation of the achievements of pilots in boarding Atlantic liners. The broad decks of the Olympia, built by the builders of the matchless Oregon, had a comforting solidity under my feet. The Admiral was believed to be having a nap; but he was wide awake, and invited the visitor to take a big chair, which, after having accompanied the launch in the dance with the whitecaps, was peculiarly luxurious. ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... been his for the asking, but he had no taste for politics. After serving with honor for some years on the bench he retired into private practice, and thereafter his name became one to conjure with in the law courts. By sheer power of his matchless oratory and unanswerable logic he won case after case for his clients and it is a tribute to his name to record the plain fact that in all his career he never championed a cause of which he need be ashamed. Powerful financial interests had attempted to secure his services by offers of princely ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... Lord George's division led them off the road; this was, however, a necessary precaution in order to shun houses, the lights from which might have tempted the drenched and hungry soldiers to stray, and take shelter. Then the hardy and energetic general of his matchless forces first felt the effects of this laborious march in unusual ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... walking with ladies, and he felt ashamed of himself when a glance told him that his companion was put to overmuch exertion. The glance led him to observe Miriam's gait; its grace and refinement gave him a sudden sensation of keen pleasure. He thought, without wishing to do so, of Cecily; her matchless, maidenly charm in movement was something of quite another kind. Mrs. Baske trod the common earth, yet with, it seemed to him, a dignity that distinguished her ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... boy of ten. As my inner eye traced their different outlines, and followed them in their graceful growth from year to year, my heart was seized with a sudden and irresistible longing to hold fast these beloved but passing images of the brain. What joy, I thought, would it be to transfix the matchless beauty which had wrought itself thus into the visions of my old age! to preserve for ever, unchanging, every varied phase of that material but marvellous structure which the glorious human soul had animated and informed through all its ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... up your dearest spirits: Consider who the king your father sends, To whom he sends, and what's his embassy: Yourself, held precious in the world's esteem, To parley with the sole inheritor Of all perfections that a man may owe, Matchless Navarre; the plea of no less weight Than Aquitaine, a dowry for a queen. Be now as prodigal of all dear grace As Nature was in making graces dear When she did starve the general world beside, And prodigally gave ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... diverse construction. But those human instruments were fabricated, one and all, by the Hands of the same Divine Artist: and I have yet to learn that when the same man builds an organ, fills it with breath, and performs upon it a piece of his own composition with matchless skill,—I have yet to learn that any part of the honour, any part of the praise, any part of the glory of the performance is to be withheld from him! ... The illustration is at least as old as Christianity ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... "Your foes you'll banish, Soon the glory shall be won; Nor shall setting Phoebus vanish, Ere the matchless deed be done!" ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... set upon a hillside. The top a breezy elevation crowned with foliage and commanding a view of matchless beauty. To the west, beneath, a sea of verdure rolling away in mighty billows, which here bear upon their crests a tiny wood, a diminutive dwelling, a flock of sheep or a drove of cattle, and there sweep apparently almost over a shadowy town which nestles between two of the emerald waves. Far, ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... means of the destruction of the existing Federal system and of the expulsion of Austria from Germany.... The German people desired one course of action; Bismarck had determined on something totally different; with matchless resolution and skill he bore down all the opposition of people and of the [European] courts, and forced a reluctant nation to the goal which he himself ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... laughed, grimly confident and determined, not a few were they who sighed for Beltane for his youth's sake, and because of his golden curls and gentle eyes, for this Gefroi was accounted a very strong man, and a matchless wrestler withal. ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... precious slabs of marble, priceless columns of beautiful marble. And where the mosaics have been destroyed or left unfinished, as in the cupola and the body of the church, baroque artists have filled the place with their paintings, paintings which in their own style are matchless and which it is now foolishly proposed should ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... Matchless in the days of their love were Lochallen and the daughter of Lorma. But their beauty has ceas'd on Arthula; and the place of their rest is unknown. The family of Lorma has fail'd, and strangers rejoice in his hall: But voices of sorrow are heard when the stillness of midnight ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... with his fine voice and clear, earnest eyes, was in possession at all times of a charm of manner that had for me an irresistible fascination. But when he talked of God, his greatness as seen in his works, the magnificent and matchless glory by which we were surrounded: above all, when he spoke of His tenderness and love, I realized as I had never done before the beauty of holiness, and the happiness, in this life even, of a soul firmly anchored in ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... to the guidance of one who, like the "Ancient Mariner," holds his listener fascinated and breathless. Once her guardian had warned her not to study Poe too closely, but the book was often in his own hand, and, yielding to the matchless ease and rapidity of his diction, she found herself wandering in a wilderness of baffling suggestions. Under the drapery of "William Wilson," of "Morella," and "Ligeia," she caught tantalizing glimpses of recondite psychological ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... the government of Athens to a pure democracy. And then, by the magic of his influence, it sprang from its ashes in a form so beautiful, it was known as the "City of the Gods." The matchless temples and colonnades which arose on the Acropolis, adorned by the sculptures of Phidias, are still the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... of matchless beauty. The clouds that swung low in the early morning had floated higher and higher till they hung now in shining billows above the highest balsam-crowned peaks in ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... as for flesh, what new materials are springing up among you every month, spiritual and physical, for a state such as "eye hath not seen nor ear heard?"—railroads, electric telegraphs, associate-lodging-houses, club-houses, sanitary reforms, experimental schools, chemical agriculture, a matchless school of inductive science, an equally matchless school of naturalist painters,—and all this in the very workshop of the world! Look, again, at the healthy craving after religious art and ceremonial,— the strong desire ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... the light pursue, This story is for you, Who seek to find a way Unto the clearer day. If on the darkness past One backward look ye cast, Your weak and wandering eyes Have lost the matchless prize. ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... began her opening song, "In Lichter Waffen Scheine," her face was upon the instant forgotten. She became a Voice—pure, miraculous, all-compelling; and the listeners seemed to hold breath while the matchless melody wove round them its ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... own hands the body of an innocent maiden, your sister, who has never done aught to harm you. Do then as ye list, but have a care how ye will answer it to the highest Judge of all. Again, I say, the lamb feareth naught, for it is in the hand of the Good Shepherd." When my matchless child had thus spoken, Dom. Consul rose, pulled off the black skull-cap which he ever wore, because the top of his head was already bald, bowed to the court, and said, "We hereby make known to the worshipful court, that the question ordinary and extraordinary ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... and praise Thy matchless might, When thousands Thou hast left in night, That I am here afore Thy sight, For gifts an' grace A burning and a shining light To ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... might be won by kindly treatment, by an air of filial respect, by caresses; he may feel the personal ascendency of Napoleon, the prestige of his presence and conversation, the invasion of his genius. Inexhaustible in arguments, matchless in the adaptation of ideas to circumstances, the most amiable and most imperious of interlocutors, stentorian and mild, tragic and comic by turns, the most eloquent of sophists and the most irresistible of fascinators, as soon as he meets a man face to face, he wins him, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... They will remember with gratitude the joys they have derived from the effusions of his fruitful intellect; they will call to their recollection the joyous chorus of the prisoners in Fidelio,—the sublime and adoring hymn of the "Alleluia" in The Mount of Olives,—the matchless pomp of the Sinfonia Eroica,—the passionate beauty of the sentiment of Adelaida,—the aerial grace of his quartets and waltzes,—the thrilling and almost awful pathos of the dirge written for six trombones,—but, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... around my heart, Attraction deeper still— The gifted poet's sacred art, The minstrel's matchless skill. Yea; every scene that Burns and Scott Have touch'd with magic hand Is in my sight a hallow'd spot, Mine own ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... one was wounded, the other, having lost his whole army, had fled from the field with scarcely fifty men; that the master of the horse, an authority equal to that of consul, had been routed and put to flight; that the dictator, because he had never engaged in a pitched battle, was esteemed a matchless general; that the Bruttii, the Apulians, part of the Samnites and of the Lucanians had revolted to the Carthaginians. That Capua, which was the capital not only of Campania, but after the ruin of the Roman power by the battle of Cannae, of Italy also, had delivered itself over to Hannibal. ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... itself is a land of impermanence. Rivers shift their courses, coasts their outline, plains their level; volcanic peaks heighten or crumble; valleys are blocked by lava-floods or landslides; lakes appear and disappear. Even the matchless shape of Fuji, that snowy miracle which has been the inspiration of artists for centuries, is said to have been slightly changed since my advent to the country; and not a few other mountains have in the same short ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... He has enough of practical knowledge to speak scholarly and wisely to those of whose intelligence he stands in awe; and, to say the truth, this faculty, joined to his matchless impudence, imposed upon me for some time when I first knew him. But I have since understood, that when he is among fools and womankind, he exhibits himself as a perfect charlatantalks of the magisteriumof sympathies and antipathiesof ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... arrangement or impulse, I knew not which, everybody rose to their feet. Only Elsa and I sat still. The curtain rose and Coralie was revealed in her rare beauty and her matchless calm. A moment later the great full feelingless voice filled the theatre; she had had no doubt that she could fill the theatre. I saw Struboff leaning back in his chair, his shoulders eloquent of despair; I saw Wetter with straining eyes and ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... suddenly thrown out a thousand new faculties and charms. Doubtless you remember she was gifted, but who would have thought she could have blossomed so! She was all light and softness and air; she is now all fire and skill as well. Matchless! matchless! Every day sees her with some new capacity, some fresh and delicate aplomb. She has set the town admiring, and jealous mothers prophesy trist ending for her. Her swift mastery of the social ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... because it is told in few words and with unadorned phrase,—yet, as I said to begin with, it is hard not to feel that the world is being defrauded, when for any reason, however amiable, the possessor of such a matchless voice has no ambition to make ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... the Tories seemed to have been swept away by the cyclone as resistlessly as the Liberals and the Irish, and the Tory paeans in honour of the Old Man which were to be found in the Tory organs next day only echoed the bounteous and generous recognition of his matchless powers which one heard from Tories in the lobbies throughout the evening. And as to the effect of the speech on Mr. Gladstone himself, it was to bring out a dramatic and mimetic power on which he very rarely ventures, and which in anybody but a perfect master of the House ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... thicket, and clearing it, walked gently forward about twenty yards, when he suddenly came down with tremendous violence right on his broadside. To my intense mortification, the heavy fall was accompanied by a loud, sharp crack, and on going up I found one of his matchless tusks broken short off by the lip. This was a glorious day's sport: I had bagged, in one afternoon, probably the two finest bull elephants in Bamangwato, and, had it not been for the destruction of their noble trophies, which were the two finest pair of tusks I had obtained that ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Dryden with Virgil, Tasso, or Milton; for he recognized as well as we that the power to embellish and to imitate successfully does not constitute the highest excellence in poetry. In the Epistle to a Friend he affirmed his admiration for Dryden's matchless style, his harmony, his lofty strains, his youthful fire, and even his wit—in the main, qualities of style and expression. But by 1700 Wesley had absorbed enough of the new puritanism that was rising in England to qualify his praise; now ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... behold him very differently engaged—giving an exhibition of his superb physical gifts, his strength, his courage, and his matchless address. On June 24, at a bull-fight held in Rome—Spanish tauromachia having been introduced from Naples, where it flourished under the Aragon dominion—he went down into the arena, and on horseback, ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... tonight, O Sweet, and wail, A spectre at my door, Shall mortal Fear make Love immortal fail— I shall but love you more, Who from Death's house returning, give me still One moment's comfort in my matchless ill. —Shadow Houses. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... take on his triumphant way; he would even have bestowed forgiveness on his greatest enemy if he had met him then;—for the divine joy of love was singing in his heart and raising him to the serene and glorious empyrean of heroes and gods. Oh matchless magic of the human heart, which confounds all the hypotheses of science, and flouts all ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... the Ambassadors. He subsequently disappeared, and it was rumoured, among ill-natured people, that, far from being a mandarin, the fellow was a mere impostor. But nobody ever really discovered the nature of the comments that had been lurking behind the matchless impassivity of that ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... therefore a highly laudable endeavor undertaken by the Intercollegiate Menorah Association to arouse the dormant spirit of self-respect in the academic Jewish youth, to stir in him the ambition to study and know this matchless history and literature, and to kindle in his soul anew that idealism which made the Jew throughout all the ages endure and brave the onslaughts of the empires and churches and the persecuting mobs, so that even to-day he is as young and as vigorous ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... service which could be accomplished only by a man of rarely balanced judgment, of firm grasp of essential principles, of wide reading and familiarity with the political ideals of other lands, and, above all, of matchless courage. Rarely, if ever, has there been delivered in Canada a speech of such momentous importance, or one so firmly based on the first principles with which Canadian statesmen too rarely concern {49} themselves, as that which he addressed to Le Club Canadien, a ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... to distinguish themselves. The reign of Elizabeth, being that of a maiden queen, was distinguished by the decorum of the courtiers, and especially the affectation of the deepest deference to the sovereign. After the acknowledgment of the Queen's matchless perfections, the same devotion was extended to beauty as it existed among the lesser stars in her court, who sparkled, as it was the mode to say, by her reflected lustre. It is true, that gallant knights no longer vowed to Heaven, the peacock, and the ladies, to perform some feat of extravagant ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... them on her return from the visit to America that had immediately succeeded her marriage, determined for her by this event as promptly as an excursion of the like strange order had been prescribed in his own case. "Isn't the immense, the really quite matchless beauty of our position that we have to 'do' nothing in life at all?—nothing except the usual, necessary, everyday thing which consists in one's not being more of a fool than one can help. That's all—but that's as true for one time as for another. There has been plenty of 'doing,' and ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... his compliments to Miss Minford, and to assure her, from the depths of his heart, that his feelings toward her are only those of the purest admiration for the matchless charms of her mind and person. He takes this method of explaining himself, because he has observed with great sorrow that Miss Minford has shown a desire to avoid him on several recent occasions, when they have accidentally met in the street. It was Mr. Lynville's ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... splendid look-out above. Months passed away in this happy abode. Sometimes we visited the distant mountains, ever exploring, ever learning, ever rejoicing; but always returning to our happy home with a renewed relish of its rare comforts and matchless advantages. ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... lamentable quarrel with her husband, the episode in which, vindictively, disingenuously as they themselves had behaved, one had to admit that he had put himself more grossly in the wrong than at any moment of his life. He had begun by insulting the matchless Mulvilles for these more specious protectors, and then, according to his wont at the end of a few months, had dug a still deeper ditch for his aberration than the chasm left yawning behind. The chasm at Wimbledon was now blessedly closed; ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... at Newbridge?" asked Mrs. Jonas, helping herself a second time to Mrs. Eben's matchless black fruit cake, and thereby bestowing a subtle compliment which Mrs. Eben ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Base mime, he doth! My Lord Gui of Ells, Lord Seneschal of Raddemore, is myfriend, a very mirror of knightly prowess, the sure might of whose lance none may abide. He is, in very truth, the doughtiest champion in all this fair country, matchless at any and every weapon, a- horse or a-foot, in sooth a very Ajax, Achilles, Hector, Roland and Oliver together and at once, one and indivisible, aye—by Cupid ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... to be noted that Paul himself when at his best rises above his theology or forgets it. The words of his which have lodged deepest in the world's heart are the vital precepts of conduct, and the utterances of love and hope. In one matchless passage, he celebrates "charity"—simple human love—as the one sufficient, ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... of the children. The king was greatly astonished, and while he was engaged in deep thought about the matter the palace was suddenly lit up by lights of dazzling brightness. On inquiring into the cause he learnt that the little princess had opened her eyes, and that they shone with matchless brilliancy. ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... of his life—this matchless son, his brighter counterpart carved in breathing ivory, touching his arm, and balancing himself proudly on the swaying floor of the chariot. As the horses pranced around the ring, a great shout ...
— The Lost Word - A Christmas Legend of Long Ago • Henry Van Dyke
... he sung, in melting lays, His Mary's charms an' matchless feature, While echoes answer'd frae the braes, That skirt the banks of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... without any inspiration from the one Source of all true good, and so has no basis but pride, which is itself a bubble. Accordingly her character appears to me among the finest, in some respects the very finest, in Shakespeare's matchless ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... problem is not to secure new advantages but to maintain those which we already possess. Our system of government made up of three separate and independent departments, our divided sovereignty composed of Nation and State, the matchless wisdom that is enshrined in our Constitution, all these need constant effort and tireless vigilance for their protection ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... literary creator of a high order. It is a thoroughly fresh and effective poem on a subject as hackneyed as the highway; it is as deep as truth itself, yet light as the movement of a dance. We had almost forgotten, what the world will never forget, the matchless softness and transparent delicacy of "Near the Lake." Those lines, of themselves, unconsciously, court "the soft promoter of the poet's strain," and almost seem about to break into music. It is agreeable to find that, instead of being seduced into a false style ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... New Amsterdam began to quake now for the fate of their matchless champion, Antony the Trumpeter, who had acquired prodigious favor in the eyes of the women by means of his whiskers and his trumpet. Him did Peter the Headstrong cause to be brought into his presence, and eyeing ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... a beautiful one. There was not a cloud in the sky, and the full moon was sailing in matchless majesty through the star-studded vault above, while the brilliantly lighted house and park, with the entrancing music from the pavilion floating out to him on the still air, added their charm to ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... life to be the happy object. The only merit on my part which it does not exceed is to be found in the warmth of my gratitude and the patriotic devotion that binds to the United States the loving heart of an adopted son. The honor was enhanced by the occasion—the birthday of the matchless Washington, of whom it is the most gratifying circumstance to have been the beloved and ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... to him: "Sir, you may live many years, and do many things, but you will be best known to posterity as the author of 'My faith looks up to Thee.'" The prediction proved true. His devoted heart flowed out in that one matchless lily that has filled so many hearts and sanctuaries with its rich fragrance. Dr. Palmer preached several times in my Brooklyn pulpit. He was once with us on a sacramental Sabbath. While the deacons were passing the sacred elements among the congregation the dear old man ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... loss was serious to their respective parties. Madison was incontestably the finest reasoning power, and Ames, as an orator, had no equal in our history until Webster appeared to dwarf all other fame beside his matchless eloquence. Parties were nicely balanced, the nominal majority being on the Federal side. Harper and Griswold retained the lead of the administration party. Giles still led the Republican opposition, but Gallatin was its main stay, always ready, always informed, and already ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... for their outstretched hands to have touched it, was what appeared to be a framed picture, exquisitely painted,—a picture perfect in outline matchless in color, faultless in detail,—but which was in reality nothing but a large latticed window thrown wide open to admit the air. They could now see distinctly through the shadows cast by the stately pines, a long, low, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... would not open the case with prayer, because it might give offence to friends of other Christian denominations; he would just knock the front off and let this matchless piece of statuary from the blue skies of Italy dazzle them with its beauty. It needed no words from him, but he would just like to remind any of his flock present that the collection next Sunday was for the heathen ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... weep? Her matchless spirit soars Beyond where splendid shines the orb of day; And weeping angels lead her to those bowers, Where endless pleasures ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... "How long did my great grandsires, the highsouled sons of Pandu of matchless prowess, dwell in the Gandhamadana mountain? And what did those exceedingly powerful ones, gifted with manliness, do? And what was the food of those high-souled ones, when those heroes of the worlds dwelt ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... weapons used in warfare, and also in the art of stratagem, by which a skilful leader is often enabled to conquer when opposed to an otherwise overwhelming multitude. In all these accomplishments Quang excelled to an exceptional degree; for although unprepossessing in appearance he united matchless strength to an untiring subtlety. No other person in the entire Province of Kiang-si could hurl a javelin so unerringly while uttering sounds of terrifying menace, or could cause his sword to revolve around him so rapidly, while his face looked out from the glittering circles with ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... raised by her breath had been very fitful, and a momentary irradiation of flesh was all that it had disclosed of her face. That consisted of two matchless lips and a cheek only, her head being still enveloped. She threw away the stick, took the glass in her hand, the telescope under ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... all sorts of cruel taxes. Thus the strength of the people was drained and the resources of the country were exhausted, creating a position over which he eventually had no control whatever. Ten years ago I wrote an article in the Hsin Mim Tsung Pao remarking that Diaz was a matchless fraud. I said then that a nation-wide calamity would befall Mexico after his death and that the Mexican nation would be reduced to a mere shadow. (My friend Mr. Tang Chio-tun also wrote an article, before the internal ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... ready at a moment's notice and on the smallest cause to fly at the others' throats! Contrary to every principle alike of morality, religion, political economy and social science! All true; and yet how wonderful, how matchless was the amount of deathless work produced under the conditions of that order ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... quiver with reanimation, was curved in the curl of flowers in bud, and sweet and kind as the animate soul of a rose. A womanly chin turned, none could say where, into the matchless sweep and curve of the throat and breast, a glimpse of which he had had vouchsafed ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... known so lovable a child. All Daisy did seemed to her perfect. For instant obedience and instant comprehension she declared her matchless. ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... you are, Mr. Somers," he said. "In the name of all this company let me congratulate you on having become the owner of the matchless 'Odontoglossum Pavo' for what, under all the circumstances, I consider the quite moderate ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... pass that the lame boy Hephaestus, exiled from his father's court on account of his ugliness, became the world-renowned royal blacksmith, honored by all for his patient endurance of wrong, for his matchless skill, and for ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... injunctions, profound metaphysics and pithy proverbs, psalms of unrivalled grandeur and pastorals of exquisite loveliness, parables fraught with solemn meaning, the mournful wisdom of the preacher, the exultant faith of the apostle, the matchless eloquence of Job and Isaiah, the apocalyptic ecstasy of St. John. At a time when there was as yet no English literature for the common people, this untold wealth of Hebrew literature was implanted in the English mind as in a virgin soil. Great consequences have ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... stood transfixed with amazement and admiration, not ten yards distant. I took his measure at a glance,—a large male, with dark legs, and massive tail tipped with white,—a most magnificent creature; but so astonished and fascinated was I by this sudden appearance and matchless beauty, that not till I had caught the last glimpse of him, as he disappeared over a knoll, did I awake to my duty as a sportsman, and realize what an opportunity to distinguish myself I had unconsciously ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... matchless power of silence! There are words that concentrate in themselves the glory of a lifetime; but there is a silence that is more precious than they. Speech ripples over the surface of life, but silence sinks into its depths. Airy ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?" Unfolding the omnipotency of Christ's love in the hour of sickness and sorrow—also the profound sympathy with the sorrowing sisters of Bethany in their great bereavement; and His matchless power over death and the grave, because He said, "I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... did I feel, 70 In that enormous City's turbulent world Of men and things, what benefit I owed To thee, and those domains of rural peace, Where to the sense of beauty first my heart Was opened; [C] tract more exquisitely fair 75 Than that famed paradise often thousand trees, [D] Or Gehol's matchless gardens, [E] for delight Of the Tartarian dynasty composed (Beyond that mighty wall, not fabulous, China's stupendous mound) by patient toil 80 Of myriads and boon nature's lavish help; [F] There, in a clime from widest empire ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... turn from Cressid, "matchless in beauty," and warm with sweet life, but not ignoble even in the season of her weakness, to another personage of the poem. In itself the character of Pandarus is one of the most revolting which imagination can devise; so much so that the name has become proverbial ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... forth he would be in darkness. It was not enough that he was weak, sick, lost and alone in the mysterious depths of this old mine, but now darkness had come, thick darkness to crown his suffering and bar his path to freedom. His self-imposed courage had almost given way. It required matchless bravery to face a peril such as this without a murmur, and still find ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... all thir vertue; least bad men should boast Thir specious deeds on earth, which glory excites, Or close ambition varnisht o're with zeal. Thus they thir doubtful consultations dark Ended rejoycing in thir matchless Chief: As when from mountain tops the dusky clouds Ascending, while the North wind sleeps, o'respread Heav'ns chearful face, the lowring Element 490 Scowls ore the dark'nd lantskip Snow, or showre; If chance the radiant Sun with farewell sweet Extend his ev'ning beam, the fields ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... really appreciated my efforts was dear old Joe Jefferson. When I gave him to understand that I was anxious to see him in one of his matchless characterizations, he inquired if I had a family that shared my anxiety, and when informed that I had, he generously tendered all hands a pass to the family circle. The Lord loves a cheerful giver, but the Lord help any one who strikes ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... in the sunset glow until they become only huge elm-trees overtopping a dusty lane .... the trolley-bells are softened so that they are but the distant tinkle of the homeward herd on the hills .... and you and I in matchless freedom are once more trudging the Old Dear Road side by side, answering the call of the wondrous Voice of Boyhood sounding ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright
... basket. It was a generous tea. A long loaf, butter in a cabbage-leaf, a bottle of milk, a bottle of water, cake, and large, smooth, yellow gooseberries in a box that had once held an extra-sized bottle of somebody's matchless something for the hair and moustache. Mabel cautiously advanced her incredible arms from the rhododendron and leaned on one of her spindly elbows, Gerald cut bread and butter, while Kathleen obligingly ran round, at Mabel's request, to see that the green coverings had not dropped from any ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... immigration. "A country where law and order prevail to perfection may find its material prosperity checked by a deadly and fatal climate; or, on the other hand, a people may destroy all the advantages accruing from matchless natural resources and climate by persistent disregard of life and property. A rather startling confirmation of this economic truth is afforded by the fact that homicide has been as destructive of life in the South as yellow fever. Although ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... knights present had accomplished their vow, by each of them breaking five lances, the Prince was to declare the victor in the first day's tourney, who should receive as prize a warhorse of exquisite beauty and matchless strength; and in addition to this reward of valour, it was now declared, he should have the peculiar honour of naming the Queen of Love and Beauty, by whom the prize should be given ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... king) your speech displays The matchless merit of the chief you praise: Heroes in various climes myself have found, For martial deeds and depth of thought renown'd; But Ithacus, unrivall'd in his claim, May boast a title to the loudest fame: In battle calm he guides the rapid storm, Wise to resolve, and patient ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... suggestion of pallor for an instant upon the countenance of the princess? Was there a quick but imperceptible intaking of her breath? Was there a deepening in the expression of her matchless eyes, and an imperceptible widening of them, as they dwelt upon her companion? Was there a stiffening of her figure in its attitude of quiet repose, and did her muscles attain a sudden rigidity, induced by that startling announcement? Saberevski could not have answered any one of ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... has no archaic epoch." Osborn says, "It bursts upon us at once in the flower of its highest perfection." Seiss says ("A, Miracle in Stone," p. 40), "It suddenly takes its place in the world in all its matchless magnificence, without father, without mother, and as clean apart from all evolution as if it had dropped from the unknown heavens." ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... found by Pierrot Desbarats, who, laughing to scorn the superstitious fears of his fellow-villagers, had brought it home in triumph. It was his purpose to go, at some convenient season, to Halifax, and there sell the matchless crystal, of whose value the priest had been able to give him some idea. But that very spring ill luck had crossed the threshold of Pierrot's cabin, a threshold over which he was even then preparing ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... centre, the king being headless and limbless, and the horse in little better condition.] I visit the mortuary effigies of noble old Henry VIII., and Judge Jeffreys, and the preserved gorilla, and try to make up my mind which of my ancestors I admire the most. I go to that matchless Hyde Park and drive all around it, and then I start to enter it at the Marble Arch—-and—am induced to "change my mind." [Cabs are not permitted in Hyde Park—nothing less aristocratic than a private carriage.] It is a great benefaction—is Hyde Park. There, in his hansom cab, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ruined as its exterior is by the stupidity of the restoring architect, and insulted as its glorious interior is by the pompous undertakers' lies, by the vainglory and ignorance of the last two centuries and a half—little besides that and the matchless Hall near it: but when we can get beyond that smoky world, there, out in the country we may still see the works of our fathers yet alive amidst the very nature they were wrought into, and of which they are so completely ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... tinsel or affectation thwarts our admiration. The execution is worthy of the thought, which is simply beautiful. The portrait is like Raphael's divinest Madonna, with the changing radiance and velvety warmth of life thrown into the matchless face. Why could we not have had more such, instead of such indifferent domesticities as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... which we had just ascended, or Glen Croe which we now descended, it must have been a very dreadful place indeed. Fortunately for us, the weather began to improve, and before we reached Loch Long with its lofty ramparts the sun shone out in all its matchless glory and lighted up not only the loch but the whole of the amphitheatre formed by the lofty hills that surrounded it. A passenger steamboat plying on the bosom of the loch lent additional interest to the scene, and the combined ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... From the altitude we had reached on the Sydney road, we could see above the unbroken line of the horizon west from Noonoon town, and the Blue Australian Mountains stretched across the view in an endless succession of round-topped peaks painted in their matchless cerulean tints, which, near the end of day, were royal in their splendour. For a hundred miles they reigned supreme before the fringe of the endless plains was reached—peak after peak, gorge on gorge, ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... up the thrust with another, but with the skill that was his alone he partly parried it, though my blade found his sword arm, just above the elbow joint; but as Simon's now useless hand fell to his side he saw his defeat, and, with matchless presence of mind, drove his spurs into his horse, and dashing off at full speed was lost to view in ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... to understand; and she understood that, too; and she gazed critically upon Sylvia Landis as a very young mother might inspect a rival infant with whom her matchless ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... is called by the Italians "metallo di voce," or, "metal of the voice." Those who heard Madame Sarah Bernhardt fifteen or twenty years ago will readily understand why her countless friends and admirers always spoke of her matchless organ as ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... plane-trees which shaded the numerous walks there assembled the master-spirits of the age. This was the favorite resort of poets and philosophers. Here the divine spirit of Plato poured forth its sublimest speculations in streams of matchless eloquence; and here he founded a school which was destined to exert a powerful and perennial influence on human minds and ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the jewel—cast away so majestically was one of a pair which Cleopatra wore as ear-rings, and that when Antony restrained his hostess from a repetition of the draught, she presented the now matchless pearl to him. Another version implies that the ear-ring^ had been originally one monster pearl, which Cleopatra had caused to be sawn in two to gratify her lust for ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... drowned! Aroused by this, he hurried faster on— The veil of mist his guide—until, anon, He reached a bend, which brought before his view The mighty Cataract's wonders, ever new; Yet at such distance he could not well trace The varied beauties of that matchless place! Most eagerly he took the road again; Nor paused to seek the company of men, Who, reared amid these wonders, seldom feel The deep emotions, or the fervid zeal Which he then felt, as nearer still he drew, And found his dreams ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... founded a war fund called the "Chatham Chest"; and, after great pressure, the Queen granted L20,000 and the loan of six battleships to the Syndicate. Happily the commercial people gave freely, as they always do. What trouble these matchless patriots had to overcome! Intrigue, treason, religious fanaticism, begrudging of supplies, the constant shortage of stores and provisions at every critical stage of a crisis, the contradictory instructions from the exasperating ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... into a fountain of water, into a cloud of mist, into a burning flame, and into a senseless rock. But Peleus held her fast; and she changed then into a tawny lion, and then into a tall tree, and lastly she took her own matchless form again. ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... vassals and its instruments, would have been in Bismarck's eyes no gain but actual detriment to Germany. The German people desired one course of action; Bismarck had determined on something totally different; and with matchless resolution and skill he bore down all opposition of people and of Courts, and forced a reluctant nation to the goal which he had himself chosen for it. The first point of conflict was the apparent recognition by Bismarck of the rights ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... they their doubtful consultations dark Ended, rejoicing in their matchless Chief; {164} As, when from mountain-tops the dusky clouds Ascending, while the North-wind sleeps, o'erspread Heaven's cheerful face, the louring element Scowls o'er the darkened landskip snow or shower, If chance ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... and her countenance was deathly pale. Her dress, as she came beneath the lamp, was, I saw, coarse, yet clean, and her beautiful, regular features, which in her photograph had held me in such fascination, were even more sweet and more matchless than I had believed them to be. I stood ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... good for his vile age, he stands alone; One of the fierce Allobroges, Whose manly virtue was derived Direct from heavenly powers, Not from this dry, unfruitful earth of ours; Whence he alone, unarmed,— O matchless courage!—from the stage, Did war upon the ruthless tyrants wage; The only war, the only weapon left, Against the crimes and follies of the age. First, and alone, he took the field: None followed him; all else were cowards tame, Lost to all sense of ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... the Rue de la Paix, is certainly a most magnificent front elevation; containing large and splendid houses, of elaborate exterior ornament. When completed, to the right, it will present an almost matchless front of domestic architecture, built upon the Grecian model. It was in this place, facing his own regal residence of the Thuileries, that the unfortunate Louis—surrounded by a ferocious and bloodthirsty mob—was butchered ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... that lasted fifty years. We have but little idea of her great military organization, after arms became a profession and a career. We can but call up scattered pictures to show us rags and fragments of the immense host that patrolled the world with measured tread and matchless precision of serried rank, in tens and scores and hundreds of thousands, for centuries, shoulder to shoulder and flank to flank, learning its own strength by degrees, till it suddenly grasped all power, gave it to one ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... around the lean little figure! What echoes and visions! The Rhine, the gardens, the clang of the press, the Fischmarkt, the friendly smiles at Froben's and Meyer's firesides; his marriage; the stars and dews and perfume of all his dreams in the years—those matchless years of a man's young manhood—when he had walked with angels as well as peasants, had seen the Way of the Cross, the Christ in the Grave, and the Risen Lord even more clearly than the faces of flesh and blood. Eheu fugaces! "God help thee, Elia, ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... extinguished by the dire catastrophe of Culloden, than that it should have lingered on, the shadow of an old tradition. There is nothing now to prevent us from dwelling with pride and admiration on the matchless devotion displayed by the Highlanders, in 1745, in behalf of the heir of him whom they acknowledged as their lawful king. No feeling can arise to repress the interest and the sympathy which is excited by the perusal of the ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... the mathematician for mathematicians, so Bach is the musician for musicians. While Handel may be considered a purely independent and parallel growth, it is not too much to assert that without Sebastian Bach and his matchless studies for the piano, organ, and orchestra, we could not have had the varied musical development in sonata and symphony from such masters as Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Three of Sebastian Bach's sons became distinguished musicians, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... Makeless, matchless, Makers, authors, poets, Mas,ease, discomfort, Mal engine, evil design, Mal-fortune, ill-luck, mishap, Marches, borders, Mass-penny, offering at mass for the dead, Matche old, machicolated, with ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... seen Rip Van Winkle, and everybody has expressed the same unbounded admiration of Mr. JEFFERSON'S matchless genius. But the world never has been, and doubtless never will be, without the pestiferous presence of Reformers, Men of Progress, Earnest Men, who insist upon improving everything after their own fashion, and who are unhappy because ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... had spread all round that Temple of hern. Old Gobelin never wove such tapestry. No Empress of the wonder-laden East ever had hung in her boodore such a marvelous green texture as drooped down in emerald canopies above us. No golden lamp ever gin such a light as sifted down over the matchless green overhead, to light that solemn sanctuary. No organ ever gin out such sweet sound as the birds warbled anon or oftener. No jeweled ornaments ever sparkled on a altar like the emerald and gold winged butterflies flutterin' ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... her matchless cauf Four cletchin' streas,(9) did Nan, Twea wheaten an' twea oaten streas, Bud niver tell'd her man. She platted 'em when t' harvest mean Her colour'd cheek made pale, For nea lass plats her band for bairns And then blirts(10) ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... get used to this?' he said. 'Yes or no! Can you bear such a thing of the charnel-house near you? Judge for yourself; Barbara. Your Adonis, your matchless ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... Gem, Boston Marrow, Hubbard Improved, Warty Hubbard, Pike's Peak or Sibley, Turban or Turk's Cap, Butman Tobacco.—Connecticut Seed Leaf, Conqueror, Little Dutch, Orinoco Yellow, Tuckahoe, White Burley Sunflowers.-Mammoth Russian Tomatoes.-Dwarf Monarch, Matchless, Dwarf Aristocrat, Long Keeper, Early Atlantic Prize, New Stone, Ignotum, Paragon, Scoville's Hubird, Trophy, Queen Red, Acme, Dwarf Champion, Imperial, Ponderosa, Golden Queen or Sunrise, Peach, Plum-Shaped Yellow, ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... without being transported into a transcendental rapture that illumines his countenance with a blissful radiance, and inspires him with a glowing eloquence which, he thinks, is nevertheless beggared by the matchless reality. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... have thought of him!) in painting his marvellous pictures. He became a great favourite of the Khan and was always about the court, and Marco Polo must have known him well and perhaps have watched him at work painting those matchless landscapes, and those pictures of horses and men for which he was famous. Marco loved horses, as, indeed, he loved all kinds of sport (of which he had plenty, for the Khan was a great hunter and hawker), and he has left a word picture of the white brood mares at Shansi, which ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... right, righteous, right- minded; well-intentioned, creditable, laudable, commendable, praiseworthy; above all praise, beyond all praise; excellent, admirable; sterling, pure, noble; whole-souled[obs3]. exemplary; matchless, peerless; saintly, saint-like; heaven-born, angelic, seraphic, godlike. Adv. virtuously &c, adj.; e merito[Lat]. Phr. esse quam videri bonus malebat [Lat][Sallust]; Schonheit vergeht Tugend besteht[Ger]; "virtue the greatest of all monarchies" [Swift]; virtus ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... the atonement, Maurice holds, is a subject of misconception, and the notions of it, as they now obtain in Christendom, darken and bewilder the mind. What Christ has really done for us through suffering was his matchless sympathy; he became our brother, and was not our mediatorial substitute but a natural representative. On this ground, a regeneration is communicated to all, not by virtue of any appropriating faith, but as a result of the sympathetic death of Christ. The ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... and drove them back in broken fragments. Wild with triumph, the Southern riflemen rushed after them and also hurled back other riflemen that were coming up to their support. But on the plain they encountered the matchless Northern artillery. A battery of sixteen heavy guns met their advancing line with a storm of canister, before which they were compelled to retreat, leaving ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler |
