"Preeminent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... way she described the life of a teacher in a great American school system: its routine, its spying supervision, its injustices, its mechanical ideals, its one preeminent ambition to teach as many years as it was necessary to obtain a pension. There were the superintendents, the supervisors, the special teachers, the principals—petty officers of a petty tyranny ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... wing to your imagination. Behold yourself preeminent in your field of effort. Dream of yourself as the best civil engineer of your time, or the soundest banker or ablest merchant. If you are a farmer fancy yourself the master of all the secrets science is daily discovering in this most engaging of occupations; picture yourself as the man ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... some measure succeeded in demonstrating that the former two, instead of being rules, were mere inconveniences attached to the local peculiarities of the Athenian drama; that the last alone deserved the name of a principle, and that in the preservation of this unity Shakspeare stood preeminent. Yet, instead of unity of action, I should greatly prefer the more appropriate, though scholastic and uncouth, words homogeneity, proportionateness, and totality of interest,—expressions, which involve the distinction, or rather the essential difference, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... Turks turned to this historic and preeminent friend for succor. The Turkish cabinet cabled frantically to Great Britain to intercede for them; the people in mass-meeting in ancient St. Sophia's echoed the same appeal. For grim humor, the spectacle has scarcely an equal in modern history. Besought and entreated, the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... the chief text-book in the art of living, and preeminent in its kind is the Life of Johnson. Here is the instance of a man who was born into a life stripped of all ornament and artificiality. His equipment in mind and stature was Olympian, but the odds against him were proportionate to his powers. Without fear or complaint, without ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... BULL, however, there has been no call for affected admiration. He has compelled not only admiration but enthusiasm; not indeed by mere artistical 'execution,' although in this he is acknowledged to be preeminent, but by the creations of genius, which 'take the full heart captive.' Let the distant reader imagine an audience of three thousand persons awaiting in breathless expectance the entrance upon the Park-stage ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... Mr. Bryce's noble and discerning book deserves to hold its preeminent place for at least twenty ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... enforcement of them depended on the Intendant. As long as he was a man of integrity, New France might live as happily as a family under a despotic but wise father. It was when the Intendant became corrupt that the system fell to pieces. {123} Of all the intendants of New France, one name stands preeminent, that of Jean Talon, who came to Canada, aged forty, in 1665, at the time the country became a Crown Province. One of eleven children of Irish origin, Talon had been educated at the Jesuit College of Paris, and had served as an intendant in France before coming ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... score of northern counties been inundated by the "Yankees" but the waves were pushing far into the interior, where they met and mingled with the counter-current. Both Illinois and Indiana became, in a preeminent degree, melting-pots in which was fused by slow and sometimes painful processes an amalgam which Bryce and other keen observers have pronounced the most American thing ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... mind, and endangering the life of his patient. Besides this, a large class of surgical diseases of the male is of so delicate a nature as altogether to forbid inspection by female students. Yet a complete understanding of this particular class of diseases is of preeminent importance to the community. Moreover, such affections can be thoroughly studied only in the clinics of the large cities, and the opportunity for studying them, so far from being curtailed, should be extended to the utmost possible ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... district, was everything but friendly or agreeable. The ferment occasioned by the impotent rebellion of W.L. Mackenzie had hardly subsided. The public mind was in a sore and excited state. Men looked distrustfully upon each other, and the demon of party reigned preeminent, as much in the drawing-room ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... And without whom am to no end, my Guide And Head, what thou hast said is just and right. For wee to him indeed all praises owe, And daily thanks, I chiefly who enjoy So farr the happier Lot, enjoying thee Preeminent by so much odds, while thou Like consort to thy self canst no where find. That day I oft remember, when from sleep I first awak't, and found my self repos'd 450 Under a shade on flours, much wondring where And what I was, whence thither brought, and how. Not distant far from ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the useful inventions of the present century, there are four which are of preeminent consequence. The honor connected with each of these, as is generally the case with great inventions, belongs to no individual exclusively. Several, and in some cases many persons, can fairly claim a larger or smaller share in it. (1) The most efficient agent in bringing the steam-engine ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... professional self-interest, unshaken by our genuine admiration for its predecessors, and despite our inherent inclination toward modest conservatism, we unhesitatingly record the conviction that "The Cruise of the Kawa" stands preeminent in the literature of modern exploration—a supreme, superlative epic of the ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... from bold and lawless innovations, he yet had scope to exercise his genius. The differences between the Parthenon and any other contemporary Doric temple would seem slight, when regarded singly; but the preeminent perfection of the Parthenon lay in just those ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... toward the dining-room entrance, so familiar to the boy, he felt as if his legs must give way under him. There have since been other red-letter days in Edward Bok's life, but the moment that still stands out preeminent is that when two colored head waiters at the dining-room entrance, whom he had so often watched, bowed low and escorted the party to their table. At last, he was in that sumptuous dining-hall. The entire room took on the picture of ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... picture of what the child may do later on in his own self-culture. The home nursery is the real place of actual experience for the average child, with the family table and the intimate association with father and mother and brother and sister. These make a school of preeminent ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... collegiate course, for which they have slowly and thoroughly prepared while their physical organization was maturing in happy freedom, and when they give to this higher intellectual labor the strength and enthusiasm that are at that age of all the life preeminent and most perfectly balanced, then we shall know what educated woman is, and learn her possible capacities in all that makes for the ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... judged by the laws and standards of lesser creatures. In fashioning her, nature and art have worked together: in her, poetry walks the earth. The question of good or bad is entirely to be put aside: it is a rustic's impertinence—a bourgeois' vulgarity. She is preeminent, voila tout. Has she grace and beauty? Then you are answered: such possessions are an assurance that her influence in the aggregate must be for good. Thunder, destructive to insects, refreshes earth: so she. So sang the rhapsodist. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... genteel comedy, Mr. Wood must certainly be considered preeminent, with the exception of Mr. Cooper only, who though perhaps[2] excelling him in some tragical characters, is considered by many good judges, as by no means his superior in ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... had been for generations preeminent for learning and piety, and biographers have scarcely sufficiently taken into account either the Classic or the Christian inheritance of the painter. Religious teaching and living came by long lineal descent (see Family Chart on page xvi.): the great, great, ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... his way up from that;—from throwing cart-wheels for the amusement of the queues waiting at the pit entrances of theaters, from the ribald knock-about of East End halls, from the hilarity of Drury Lane pantomimes. Professionally his success was a solid indubitable thing. If he weren't actually preeminent in his special field, at least there was no one who was accorded a ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... she touched turned into a slippery tongue. Human countenances grew dim, save one, which, despite guilt and condemnation, was enthroned, in heroic suffering, high above the others, nay, appeared preeminent through his guilt as well as his defiance. And the day she was told that she was to confront Bastide Grammont in order to accuse him, her pulses beat in joyous measure again for the first time, and she arrayed herself as if ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... rival.... Thy inhabitants [appeal for aid?]. Gilgamesh does not leave a son to his father. Day and night,... He, the ruler of walled Uruk,... He, their ruler,... The strong, the preeminent, the cunning,... Gilgamesh does not leave the virgin to [her mother], The daughter to her warrior, the wife to her husband. The gods [of heaven] hear their cry. They cry aloud to Aruru, "Thou hast created him, Now create a rival (?) ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... unswervingly followed a career devoted to the cause of the whole nation and of the whole people. Among all those who fought in this, the greatest struggle for righteousness which the present century has seen, these men stand preeminent; and among them Farragut stands first. It was his good fortune that by his life he offered an example, not only of patriotism, but of supreme skill and daring in his profession. He belongs to that class of commanders ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... who was to become his Son;"[555] but we ought not to ask if Irenaeus understood the incarnation as a definite purpose necessarily involved in the Sonship, as this question falls outside the sphere of Patristic thinking. No doubt the incarnation constantly formed the preeminent interest of Irenaeus, and owing to this interest he was able to put aside or throw a veil over the mythological speculations of the Apologists regarding the Logos, and to proceed at once ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... reader conceive to himself a clear frosty November morning, the scene an open heath, having for the background that huge chain of mountains in which Skiddaw and Saddleback are preeminent; let him look along that BLIND ROAD, by which I mean the track so slightly marked by the passengers' footsteps that it can but be traced by a slight shade of verdure from the darker heath around it, and, being only visible to the eye when at some distance, ceases ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of believers are the subjects of preeminent privileges and blessings. Special promises are made to them from love to their parents; great advantages are theirs, directly and indirectly, from their relation to those who are the true worshippers ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother-tongue. We must teach them some foreign language. The claims of our own language it is hardly necessary to recapitulate. It stands preeminent even among the languages of the West. It abounds with works of imagination not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us; with models of every species of eloquence; with historical compositions, which, considered merely as narratives, have seldom been surpassed, and ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... that now bow down my mind, there is one that stands preeminent above the rest. You are the highest judicature in the realm; you sit here as judges, and decide all causes, civil and criminal, without appeal. It is a Judge's just duty never to pronounce a sentence, in the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... American passengers, who came out with us in the "Cambria," waiting for admission, as but one party was allowed in the house at a time. We all had to wait till the company within came out. And of all the faces, expressive of chagrin, those of the Americans were preeminent. They looked as sour as vinegar, and as bitter as gall, when they found I was to be admitted on equal terms with themselves. When the door was opened, I walked in, on an equal footing with my white fellow-citizens, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... the beach of the Indian Ocean on the one hand, and to the ice creeks of the North Sea on the other. On the north and west the influence was of the Latins; on the south and east, of the Greeks. Two nations, preeminent above all the rest, represent to us the force of derived mind on either side. As the central power is eclipsed, the orbs of reflected light gather into their fulness; and when sensuality and idolatry had done their work, and the religion of the empire was ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... his manner of treating a great constitutional question when numerous authorities and precedents are to be examined and set aside, this speech deserves to be studied. With the exception of Gen. Marshall's speech in the case of Jonathan Robbins, it stands preeminent in our political literature as a model of profound research, of thorough argumentation, and of overwhelming strength. The reader at this day feels that he is borne along by a force which is not only equal to the occasion, but above ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... improvement, you cannot rigidly adhere to them. There are numberless instances when the propensity or inclination of the child may appear to you to be aggravating and annoying; nevertheless, you must not let your irritability interfere with the development of that trait preeminent to ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... out in the evening. Then Mr. Hawthorne reads to me. At present we can only get along with the old English writers, and we find that they are the hive from which all modern honey is stolen. They are thick-set with thought, instead of one thought serving for a whole book. Shakespeare is preeminent; Spenser is music. We dare to dislike Milton when he goes to heaven. We do not recognize God in his picture of Him. There is something so penetrating and clear in Mr. Hawthorne's intellect, that now I am acquainted with it, merely thinking of him as I read winnows the chaff from the wheat at once. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... capacity was the point at issue. On a cross interrogation, he admitted that the person in question played admirably at whist. "And do you seriously say, doctor," said the learned counsel, "that a person having a superior capacity for a game so difficult, and which requires in a preeminent degree, memory, judgment, and combination, can be at the same time deranged in his understanding?"—"I am no card player," said the doctor, with great address, "but I have read in history that cards were invented for the amusement ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... being English. You are a great people. I say more: you are a great populace. Your fisticuffs are even better than your sword thrusts. You have an appetite. You are the nation which eats other nations—a magnificent function! This suction of the world makes England preeminent. As politicians and philosophers, in the management of colonies, populations, and industry, and in the desire to do others any harm which may turn to your own good, you stand alone. The hour will come when two boards will be put up on earth—inscribed on one side, Men; on the other, Englishmen. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... archetype of his father, a very remarkable man; his piety was equally warm and sincere; and, in all the private relations of life, as an elder of the church, a husband, a father, a master, and a friend, he was preeminent. His writings want that variety, originality, and ease, which shine so conspicuously even in the prose works of the poet; but they have many redeeming points about them. His taste was as pure as his judgment was masculine. He has been heard to say, that the two most pleasurable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... from the Mexican in that it recognizes, in its developed form, one preeminent deity, the sun-god, from whom issues all authority. Along with him stand two prominent figures, Viracocha and Pachacamac, who also are credited with great powers. Apparently they were local universal deities who were incorporated into the Peruvian system ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... accepted exile with entire willingness and remarkable cheerfulness, and never took any pains at all to get recalled, was crushed in spirit about an affair in which he had shewn more firmness and constancy than anyone else, even than the preeminent M. Scaurus himself! But, again, the account they had received, or rather the conjectures they were indulging in about him, they now transferred to me, imagining that I should be more than usually broken in spirit: whereas, in fact, ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Athabaskans of Hudson's Bay were on about the same level of savagery. They made no pottery, knew nothing of horticulture, depended for subsistence entirely upon bread-roots, fish, and game, and thus had no village life. They were mere prowlers in the upper status of savagery.[34] The Apaches of Arizona, preeminent even among red men for atrocious cruelty, are an offshoot from the Athabaskan stock. Very little better are the Shoshones and Bannocks that still wander among the lonely bare mountains and over the weird sage-brush plains of Idaho. The region west of the Rocky Mountains and north of New Mexico ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... the house had been prepared for him, and that she had got the town in a state of great anxiety to see him. To tell the truth, this busy, bustling woman had been blowing a noisy trumpet for him in advance, and enlisting a large amount of female sympathy by stating that he was preeminent as an advocate of ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... its inns, lacked not business. Its churches were thronged with worshipers. Through its narrow streets proud noble and prouder ecclesiastic, thrifty merchant and active artisan, passed and repassed in an unceasing stream. It was rich in points of interest, preeminent among which were its castle and its convent. In the castle the stout-hearted Loudunians found a refuge and a stronghold against the ambitions of the feudal lords and the tyranny of the crown. To its convent, pleasantly situated in a grove of time-honored trees, they sent ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... Cowper gave a new impulse to the curiosity of poetical readers, by a natural train of thought and the unlaboured effusions of genuine feeling. There is no doubt that a fearful regard to models stifles all force and preeminent merit. The burst of the French Revolution set the faculties of all young persons free. It was dangerous to secondary talents, and only led them into extravagances and absurdities. To Wordsworth, Southey, Scott, it was the removal of a ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... obscurity, the insignificance of the criminal; the blamelessness—so far as in our sphere of existence the best of men may be held blameless—of the victim. Not one of our murdered Presidents had an enemy in the world; they were all of such preeminent purity of life that no pretext could be given for the attack of passional crime; they were all men of democratic instincts, who could never have offended the most jealous advocates of equality; they were of kindly and generous nature, to whom wrong or injustice was impossible; of moderate fortune, ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... is any one faculty which General Haupt appears to possess in a preeminent degree, it is resource. He never finds an engineering problem so difficult that some satisfactory mode of solution does not present itself to his mind. He seems to comprehend intuitively the difficulties of a position, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... general his puppets are too artificial to excite any personal resentment. There are evidently set up merely to be knocked down. Few would identify themselves with Heap or Scrooge, and although the moral taught is appreciated by all, no class is hit, but only men who seem to be preeminent in churlishness or villainy. Dickens is remarkable for his gentleness whenever his humour touches the poor, and while he makes amusement out of their simplicity and ignorance, he throws in some sterling qualities. They often form the principal characters in his books, and there is nearly always in ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... era of big business. Under his regime great things were done in the development of the art. The business was pushed ahead at every point by its captains. Every man in his place, trying to give a little better service than yesterday—that was the keynote of the Hudson period. There was no one preeminent genius. Each important step forward was the result of the cooperation of many minds, and the prodding necessities of a ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... dreaded it, for I knew the power of association—the effect of localities and customary external habits on the feelings. You may take a careworn, dyspeptic, melancholy man out for a week's excursion, and he will show himself preeminent in all good fellowship. But as the familiar sights gradually open on him at returning, you may see the shadows flitting down upon his brow and entering his soul. How many good resolutions of change and reform—of breaking old associations and forming new ones—we make when absent ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Theology. The Lutheran Church Review, 1917: "It is doubtful whether any other single book ever published in America by any theologian more profoundly impressed a large [English] church constituency, or did more to mold its character. As theologian and confessor Dr. Krauth stands preeminent in the [English] Lutheran Church." (144.) For twenty years Charles Porterfield Krauth was one of the prominent theologians of the General Synod, and since 1866 the leader and most conservative, competent, and influential theologian of the General Council. Krauth was a star of the first magnitude ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... persuasion were more influential than the loyalty of any dozen men in France in attaching to him the adherents who would promote his interests. Josephine was to the drawing-room and the salon what Napoleon was to the field—a preeminent leader. The secret of her personality that made her the Empress not only of the hearts of the Frenchmen, but also of the nations her husband conquered, has been beautifully told by herself. "There is only one occasion," she said to a friend, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... appetite you have!" he drawled, admiringly. "I imagine it would stand by you, even if you were in love. As a specimen of the perfectly healthy animal you stand preeminent, my dear Stafford. By the way, shall I spoil your lunch if I read you out a list of the guests whom we are expecting this afternoon? Sir Stephen was good enough to furnish me with it, with the amiable wish that I might find some friend on it. What do you say ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... these privileges in the case stated in the passage under consideration, would have been preeminent rigor; for the case described, is not that of a servant born in the house of a master, nor that of a minor, whose unexpired minority had been sold by the father, neither was it the case of an Israelite, who though of age, had not yet ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... a sad hero for a careless story. The only ideal he had ever had, besides one, was to arrive at the fine fame of printer's ink: headlines, bill-boards, critical notices, reproductions of his photograph. But this was long ago. He had longed to be chronicled in his time, preeminent and large; this he had desired with that hungry passion for display which only an actor can feel. But this, remember, was once upon a time. His other ideal—no need to mention it amid Momus and his mimes!—was to sway people with laughter and tears, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it. Without pretensions to that high confidence you reposed in our first and greatest revolutionary character, whose preeminent services had entitled him to the first place in his country's love and destined for him the fairest page in the volume of faithful history, I ask so much confidence only as may give firmness and effect to the legal administration of your affairs. ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... other walks of art, this power of sympathy is unquestionably in landscape unrivalled; and it will be one of our pleasantest future tasks to analyze in his various drawing the character it always gives; a character, indeed, more or less marked in all good work whatever, but to which, being preeminent in him, I shall always hereafter give the name of ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Siwash the Eta Bita Pies, when I was in college, were preeminent in the art of near-killing freshmen. We used to call our initiation "A little journey to the pearly gates," and once or twice it looked for a short time as if the victim had mislaid his return ticket. Treat yourself to an election ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... the chess-board. Of each of these methods I have something to tell you separately: but that is distinct from the subject of gradation, which I must not quit without once more pressing upon you the preeminent necessity of introducing it everywhere. I have profound dislike of anything like habit of hand, and yet, in this one instance, I feel almost tempted to encourage you to get into a habit of never touching paper with ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... in 1992 to more than 4% in 1993, with inflation moving down from 4% to 3%. The voters' rejection in December 1992 of a referendum on membership in the EEA which was supported by most political, business, and financial leaders has raised doubts that the country can maintain its preeminent prosperity and leadership in commercial banking in the 21st century. Despite these problems, Swiss per capita output, general living standards, education and science, health care, and diet remain unsurpassed in Europe. The country has few natural resources ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... satire as insipid as his wit. He attempts to ridicule Dr. Franklin, but can any man of sense conceive any poignancy in styling this great philosopher, "poor Richard," or "the old lightning rod." Franklin, whose researches in philosophy have placed him preeminent among the first characters in this country, or in Europe: is it possible then that such a contemptible wretch as Peter Porcupine, (who never gave any specimen of his philosophy, but in bearing with Christian patience a severe whipping at the public post) can injure the ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... even discerned by the nations which they more particularly concerned. The British sea-power, notwithstanding the first year of the war of 1812, had come out of the great European conflict unshaken and indeed more preeminent than ever. The words used, half a century before by a writer in the great French 'Encyclopedie,' seemed more exact than when first written. 'L'empiredesmers,' he says, is, 'le plus avantageux de tous les empires; les Phoeniciens le possedoient autre fois et ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... that Juno never uttered; but we were forced to go astray in the footsteps of these poetic fictions, and to say in prose much what he expressed in verse. And his speaking was most applauded, in whom the passions of rage and grief were most preeminent, and clothed in the most fitting language, maintaining the dignity of the character. What is it to me, O my true life, my God, that my declamation was applauded above so many of my own age and class? is not all this smoke and wind? and was there nothing else whereon to exercise ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... some will deem presumptuous. Be this as it may, there will probably be little dissent from the opinion that the characteristic trait common to the two is an unrivaled scientific sagacity. In this these two naturalists seem to us, each in his way, preeminent. There is a characteristic likeness, too—underlying much difference—in their admirable manner of dealing with facts closely, and at first hand, without the interposition of the formal laws, vague ideal conceptions, or "glittering generalities" ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... manner than by a careful avoidance of each other. The continental war came to an end; the manufacturing distress increased exceedingly. There came troublous times, and a fierce warfare of politics. Great Stockington was torn asunder by rival parties. On one side stood preeminent, Mr. Spires; on the other towered conspicuously, Simon Deg. Simon was grown rich, and extremely popular. He was on all occasions the advocate of the people. He said that he had sprung from, and was one of them. He had bought a large tract of land on ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... purpose? Everything that will minister to the result—Organization, Leadership, Bible Study, Through-the-Week Activity, Material Equipment, Teaching, Song, Prayer, Reproof, Inspiration, Guidance, and all else that the Sunday school may know or discover. Two factors in it all are preeminent: Christ and the Boy. All else are but means. The boy a loving, serving follower of his Lord! This ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... placing timid children in a constrained position, and bullying them as in a witness-box. As usual in such cases, the most audacious and self-possessed were the lucky recipients of the honors. The reader will imagine that in the present instance M'liss and Clytie were preeminent and divided public attention: M'liss with her clearness of material perception and self- reliance, and Clytie with her placid self-esteem and saintlike correctness of deportment. The other little ones were timid and blundering. M'liss's ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... day Elizabeth met two or three superior people from the city, men and women of note, whose presence at the board was like meteor flashes—kindling everything with brilliancy; but among the most cheerful and most witty this wretched woman shone forth preeminent. Every word she spoke carried electric fire with it. Her cheeks were scarlet; her eyes radiant. The lips that had been so pale in her husband's presence a few hours before, glowed like ripe cherries with the sunshine upon them. In her desperation ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... and neither motherly nor wifely destination can overbalance or replace the human, but must become its means, not end. As above the poet, the painter, or the hero, so above the mother, does the human being rise preeminent." ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... also with a few maternal conditions which seriously affect the embryo, often seriously enough to cause its expulsion, alive or dead. In this respect, certain constitutional disorders are preeminent. Bright's disease and diabetes are prejudicial to the development of the embryo; women suffering from either of them must be watched with great care. Occasionally, such pregnancies come to a premature end ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... walk of life, in scenes gladsome or sad, the old Domine was a constant presence, an influence for righteousness, moulding his people in that simplicity of life and independence of spirit, which in all times have been preeminent as features in the Dutch character. Into the homespun of common life, he wove the threads of gold, revealing by life and precept that type of religion which is not "too bright and good for human ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Madame Merle. There was no doubt she had great merits—she was charming, sympathetic, intelligent, cultivated. More than this (for it had not been Isabel's ill-fortune to go through life without meeting in her own sex several persons of whom no less could fairly be said), she was rare, superior and preeminent. There are many amiable people in the world, and Madame Merle was far from being vulgarly good-natured and restlessly witty. She knew how to think—an accomplishment rare in women; and she had thought to very good purpose. Of course, too, she knew how to feel; Isabel couldn't have spent a week ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... market for securities, the market which is organized and safeguarded and depended upon as a standard of values, is an undertaking of great responsibility in any community. To take this step in New York, which is one of the four preeminent financial centers of the world, involved a responsibility of a magnitude difficult adequately to estimate. Upon the continuity of this market rest the vast money loans secured by the pledge of listed securities; numberless individuals depend upon it in times of crisis to enable them ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... that "constitutional" slavetrade. Loaded with the curse of God and man, it stands amidst minor iniquities, like Satan in Pandemonium, preeminent and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the last Thursday in October of the same year. And in the name of the Government and of the people of the United States I do hereby invite all the nations of the earth to take part in the commemoration of an event that is preeminent in human history and of lasting interest to mankind by appointing representatives thereto and sending such exhibits to the World's Columbian Exposition as will most fitly and fully illustrate their resources, their industries, and their ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... full of pure and devotional sentiment, rendered with good, oftentimes rich, color, until after the Bellini. Then the portrayal of purely physical beauty, with refinement of line and gorgeousness of color, became preeminent. The works of several artists of note, Palma Vecchio, Palma Giovine, Bonifazio Veronese, and Bordone, so resemble each other and Titian's less important works, that there has been much uncertainty as to the true authorship of many ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... were guilty of this wickedness three men stand preeminent, Russell, Godolphin and Marlborough. No three men could be, in head and heart, more unlike to one another; and the peculiar qualities of each gave a peculiar character to his villany. The treason of Russell is to be ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Medes and Persians." Official employments would be open to the people of both countries. Even the fame and glory of empire would attain, in the minds of men, almost as much to the one nation as the other. If Media descended from her preeminent rank, it was to occupy a station only a little below the highest, and one which left her a very distinct superiority over all the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... best and noblest faculties of human nature, from our rational understanding and our social affection; and is, in the proper use of it, the peculiar ornament and distinction of man, whether we compare him with other orders in the creation, or view him as an individual preeminent among his fellows. Hence that science which makes known the nature and structure of speech, and immediately concerns the correct and elegant use of language, while it surpasses all the conceptions of the stupid or unlearned, and presents ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... history, in which government has been established with deliberation and consent, the task of framing it has not been committed to an assembly of men, but has been performed by some individual citizen of preeminent wisdom and ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... 1. Letter to Hamilton. The Rev. R.P. Graves, M.A.—Wordsworth's friend—is engaged in preparing a Life of this preeminent mathematician and many-gifted man of genius, than whom there seems to have been no contemporary who so deeply impressed Wordsworth intellectually, or so won his heart. The 'Poems' of Miss Hamilton (1 vol. 1838) sparkle with beauties, often ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Europe, John William Draper, speaking of the teaching of celibacy among the Early Fathers, [Footnote: 2-Vol. 1, page 426.] says: "The sinfulness of the marriage relation and the preeminent value of chastity followed from their principles. If it was objected to such practices that by their universal adoption the human species would soon be extinguished and no man would remain to offer praises to God, these zealots, ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... secular, centers in the biographies of such great men as Anthony, Basil, Jerome, Benedict, Francis, Dominic and Loyola. To understand the character of the powerful forces set in motion by the coming of the monks to Rome, it is necessary to know the leading spirits whose preeminent abilities and lofty personalities made Western monasticism what ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... contained a greater number of clever and selfish politicians. The places in the gift of the Crown were not enough to satisfy one twentieth part of the placehunters, every one of whom thought that his own services had been preeminent, and that, whoever might be passed by, he ought to be remembered. William did his best to satisfy these innumerable and insatiable claimants by putting many offices into commission. There were however a few great posts which it was impossible to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... prosecution which, as a judge, it may be his lot to try, one consideration which is undeniable is, that a member of a cabinet is of necessity, and by the very nature of his position in it, a party man, and that it is of preeminent importance to the impartiality of the judicial bench, and to the confidence of the people in the purity, integrity, and freedom from political bias of their decisions, that the judges should be exempt from all suspicion of party connection. Lord Campbell even goes the length of saying, what ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... professors of this comprehensive art, the terrible Martin Schenk was preeminent; and he was now ravaging the Cologne territory, having recently passed again to the service of the States. Immediately connected with the chief military events of the period which now occupies us, he was also the very archetype of the marauders whose existence was characteristic ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... minutes in pleasant conversation, complimenting one another, evidently not a little pleased with themselves, and resolved not to leave the settling of their preeminent prowess to any one else. Indeed, the scene enacted between the mayor and the major would have become extremely affecting but for Alderman O'Toole, who, being a man of much understanding, proposed that they seal their friendship ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... and philosophy. After the lapse of nearly a hundred years, and in this first year of the twentieth century, his views have taken root and flourished with a surprising strength and vigor, and his name is preeminent among the ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... of the period best illustrated by a study of two great men who are preeminent in the educational affairs of the time,—namely, Tertullian and ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... that there is a sense in which the most brilliant achievements of pagan antiquity are dwarfed in comparison with these. Until quite lately, indeed, the student of history has had his attention too narrowly confined to the ages that have been preeminent for literature and art—the so-called classical ages—and thus his sense of historical perspective has been impaired. When Mr. Freeman uses Gregory of Tours as a text-book, he shows that he realizes how an epoch may be none the less portentous though it has not had ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... splendor of his court. During this period the French language, manners, dress, art, literature, and science became the accepted standards of good society in all civilized lands. France still retains in large measure the preeminent position which she secured under the ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... composer that her brilliant talents stand preeminent. MOZART, BEETHOVEN, and a host of others excelled in this respect, but they all lack that exquisite pathos and graceful rhetoric which so distinguished this queen of literature. The beautiful creations of that fruitful brain ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... one. He in effect challenges anyone to point out any factor in nature which gives a preeminent status to the congruence relation which mankind has actually adopted. But undeniably the position is very paradoxical. Bertrand Russell had a controversy with him on this question, and pointed out that on Poincare's principles there was nothing in ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... contained these passages as sacred, it is more than doubtful whether any of the Jews regarded them as sacred in precisely the same sense as the written Law. To the Jews Moses was and is a colossal form, preeminent in authority above ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... made a tour through the Western States, and was received everywhere with enthusiasm, and hailed as the great expounder and defender of the Constitution. The following winter he stood forward as the preeminent champion of the Bank against the President. Everything seemed to point to him as the natural candidate of the opposition. The Legislature of Massachusetts nominated him for the presidency, and he himself deeply desired the office, for the fever now burned strongly within him. But the movement ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... ethical qualities of divine perfection set forth in scripture for man's imitation Holiness stands preeminent. God, the perfect being, is the type of holiness, and men are holy in proportion as their lives are Godlike. This conception of holiness is fundamental in the Old Testament. It is summed up in a command almost ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... audiences. His voice was unusually powerful, clear and melodious, and he used it with consummate skill. In the preparation of his sermons he meditated much but wrote not a word, so that he was in the truest sense a purely extemporaneous speaker. Sincerity, intensity, imagination and humor, he had in preeminent degree, and an English style that has been described as "a long bright river of silver speech which unwound, evenly and endlessly, like a ribbon from a revolving spool that could fill itself as fast as it emptied itself." Thirty-eight ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... is a black chaos of whirling agonies, now together, now parting; so that each may make their separate sting felt, and, in turn, each will have to be faced. Preeminent among the dark host, towering above even the thought of Barbara, is the sense of my own degradation. There must have been something in my conduct to justify his taking me so confidently for the bad, ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Derbyshire with a suggestion of mountain dignity. The Ardennes, in short—and this is their scenic weakness—never attain to the proper mountain spirit. There is a further point, however, in which they also recall Derbyshire, but in which they are far preeminent. This is the vast agglomeration of caves and vertical potholes—like those in Craven, but here called etonnoirs—that riddle the rolling wolds in all directions. Chief among these is the mammoth cave of Han, the mere perambulation of which is said to occupy more than two ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... no empty boast that places Americans preeminent over the men of every other nation in their courtesy to women; and Miselle would fain most gratefully acknowledge the constant attention and kindness everywhere offered to her, while never once was she annoyed by obtrusive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... of the directly and purely Darwinian elements I should class as preeminent the work of Wallace and of Bates; for no two sets of facts have done more to fix in ordinary intelligent minds a belief in organic evolution and in natural selection as its guiding factor than the facts of geographical distribution and of protective colour and mimicry. The facts of geology ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... larger, render larger &c. (increase) 35, (expand) 194. Adj. superior, greater, major, higher; exceeding &c. v.;great &c. 31; distinguished, ultra[Lat]; vaulting; more than a match for. supreme, greatest, utmost, paramount, preeminent, foremost, crowning; first-rate &c. (important) 642, (excellent) 648; unrivaled peerless, matchless; none such, second to none, sans pareil[Fr]; unparagoned[obs3], unparalleled, unequalled, unapproached[obs3], unsurpassed; superlative, inimitable facile princeps[Lat], incomparable, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Then it became doubly necessary for her to think right concerning them. They had not met for years until this summer; and now there could surely be but one result from their meeting again. So they stood, equal and preeminent, prince and princess of Sylvia's mental realm, and there she meant to let them reign; meant to rejoice in their happiness, and never to permit herself to dream one dream of this ideal man which could not pass under the espionage of ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... conjugal fidelity; in her left, the pomegranate. There exists no certain copy of the Hera of Polycleitos. The head of Hera in Naples may, perhaps, give us some idea of the type of divine beauty preferred by the sculptor who was preeminent for his ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... thus admitted, that one mind influencing two bodies, would only involve a diversity of operations, but in reality be one in essence; or otherwise, (as an hypothetical argument, illustrative of truth) if one preeminent mind, or spiritual subsistence, unconnected with matter, possessed an undivided and sovereign dominion over two or more disembodied minds, so as to become the exclusive source of all their subtlest volitions ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... more so in the present instance, because after the fall of Gaius and the sweeping and bloody prosecutions of Opimius there existed at the moment absolutely no one, who, either by blood-relationship to the fallen chief of the state or by preeminent ability, might feel himself warranted in even attempting to occupy the vacant place. Gaius had departed from the world childless, and the son whom Tiberius had left behind him died before reaching manhood; the whole popular party, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... mistakes and failures, not always creditable or pardonable, has given Bacon his preeminent place ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... his preeminent position, the First Hall-man was reputed to be quite wealthy. In addition to his miscellaneous grafts, he grafted on us. We farmed the general wretchedness, and the First Hall-man was Farmer-General over all of us. We held our particular grafts by his permission, and ...
— The Road • Jack London
... founded—Amanda Reist stood well in her classes. In botany she was the preeminent figure of the entire school. "Ask Amanda Reist, she'll tell you," became the slogan among the students. "Yellow violets, lady-slippers, wild ginger—she'll tell you where they grow or get ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... into the world, and that an author to whom such magnificent works were due would himself pass judgment and publicly express his opinion—this aroused the greatest hopes. Moreover, men of worth quickly gathered about him, and this alliance of preeminent litterateurs was so active that the Merkur during a period of several years may be employed as a textbook of our literary history. On the public generally its influence was profound and significant, for if, on the one hand, reading and criticism became the possession of a greater multitude, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... FRANKLIN were not men of genius, as the world understands that term. It was by probity, industry, perseverance, a well-strung nerve, and an iron will, that they conquered the obstacles before them, and acquired that true greatness which has made their names preeminent among the famous of earth, and their example the inspiration of American youth. Circumstances may do something for us; we can do more for ourselves. We must have faith, we must be in earnest.' The healthful American spirit which pervades ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... about this harmonization, or co-ordination, the nervous system has been provided. As the nervous and muscular systems are of preeminent importance in voice-production, they will now be considered with more detail than it is necessary to give ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... great rivers of Maine the Penobscot and Kennebec stand preeminent, on account of their maritime importance, their depth and adaptability to the purposes of internal navigation; but there are others less known, yet no less essential to the wealth of the country, which, encumbered ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... itself constantly in reading Kielland. Their methods of workmanship and their attitude toward life have many points in common. The charm of style, the delicacy of touch, and felicity of phrase, are in both cases preeminent. Daudet has, however, the advantage (or, as he himself asserts, the disadvantage) of working in a flexible and highly finished language, which bears the impress of the labors of a hundred masters; while Kielland has ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... the instinctive philosophy which, now and then, stands so well in the stead of experience, Mr. Ellison would have found himself precipitated, by the very extraordinary successes of his life, into the common vortex of Unhappiness which yawns for those of preeminent endowments. But it is by no means my present object to pen an essay on Happiness. The ideas of my friend may be summed up in a few words. He admitted but four unvarying laws, or rather elementary principles, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... predominance of English influence in the seaboard colonies of America, the history of the divisions of the Christian people of England is of preeminent importance to the beginnings of the American church. The curiously diverse elements that entered into the English Reformation, and the violent vicissitudes that marked the course of it, were all represented in the parties existing ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... was at once the preeminent beau of the neighborhood, spite of the prejudice against learning. He brushed his hair straight up in front, and wore a sky-blue ribbon for a guard to his silver watch, and walked as if the tall heels of his blunt boots were egg-shells and not leather. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... are preeminent," said I, "because they possess both the inspiration—the fire—and the training. In no other nation or school are the two so perfectly joined. In the Turkish dancers there is perfect grace and freedom, but no life. In Desiree ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... well-placed inner confidence which is the foundation of military character. From the knowing of what to do comes the knowing of how to do, which is likewise important. Much is conveyed in few words in Army Field Forces' "Brief on Practical Concepts of Leadership." It is stressed therein that the preeminent quality which all great commanders have owned in common is a positiveness of manner and of viewpoint, the power to concentrate on means to a given end to the exclusion of exaggerated fears of the obstacles which lie athwart ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... poem, "like a rose-leaf through oil"; and his eyes, in their dark fire, were more lustrous than smoky topaz. His voice was mellow and musical, and his every movement and gesture a new revelation of human grace. Among thousands, yea, tens of thousands, of handsome men, he stood preeminent. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... It will be noticed that, lovely as the shadbush is, its smaller flowers have shorter pedicels than the serviceberry's; consequently its feathery sprays, which are flung outward to the sunshine in April and May, lack something of the grace for which its sister stands preeminent. Under cultivation both species assume conventional form, and lose the wild irregularities of growth that charm us in Nature's garden. Indians believed, what is an obvious fact, that when this bush whitens the swampy river banks, shad are swimming up the stream from ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... Abraham Shue's sale: The candidates for seats in the Convention to meet in Richmond were on the ground, actively speaking both publicly and privately. Mr. George Chrisman, one of them, a man of preeminent wisdom in things relating to government, publicly avowed himself opposed to secession on the basis of both principle and policy. "On the ground of principle," said he, "secession violates the pledge of sacred honor made by the several States when ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... a brief sketch of games and their uses without reference to the topic of origins. This has been studied chiefly from two different viewpoints, that of ethnology, in which the work of Mr. Stewart Culin is preeminent, and that of folklore, in which in English Mrs. Gomme and Mr. Newell have done the most extensive work. Both of these modes of study lead to the conclusion that the great mass of games originated in the childhood of the race as serious religious or divinitory rites. Indeed, many are so used ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft |
