"Sublime" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 1781. Darwin was a “votary to poetry,” a philosopher, and a clever though an eccentric man. He wrote “The Botanic Garden,” which Anna Seward pronounced to be “a string of poetic brilliants,” and in which book Horace Walpole noted a passage “the most sublime in any author or in any of the few languages with which I am acquainted.” He inserted in it, as his own work, some lines of Anna Seward’s,—which was ungallant, to say the least. Anna Seward’s mother repressed her early attempts at poetry, so for a time she contented ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... operations; look at the foam beneath the bows, or at the smooth, eddying, serpentine track left far behind. I also loved to gaze from this elevated position upon the broad ocean, bounded on every side by the clear and distant horizon a grand and sublime sight. And then I indulged in daydreams of the most pleasing description, and built gay and fantastic castles in the air, which my reason told me the next moment ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... the sea was really nasty, the schooner wanted a lot of humouring, and it was clear from the glass that we were close to some dirt. We might be running out of it, or we might be running right crack into it. Well, there's always something sublime about a big deal like that; and it kind of raises a man in his own liking. We're a queer ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... very ancient and sublime writer concerning the defect of natural affection in the ostrich, may be well applied to the bird we are ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... Laughter, the Sublime, etc. While Beattie had given the preference to psychological and aesthetic questions, James Oswald (1772) appealed to common sense in matters of religion, describing it as an instinctive faculty of judgment concerning truth and falsehood. ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... that I should pretend to lessen the dignity of the sublime art of war by reducing it to such simple elements! I appreciate thoroughly the difference between the directing principles of combinations arranged in the quiet of the closet, and that special talent which is indispensable to the individual ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... deficient in wit; this was a form of practical wit, occasionally exhibited by creatures acting on their instincts. Warwick he pitied, and he put compulsion on himself to go and see the poor fellow, the subject of so sublime a generosity. Mr. Warwick sat in an arm-chair, his legs out straight on the heels, his jaw dragging hollow cheeks, his hands loosely joined; improving in health, he said. A demure woman of middle age was in attendance. He did not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... but they make beauty the mark of a God-fearing character. There is an un-Biblical lightness of touch, too, in their songs of life in the city, their epigrams, their society verses. And in those of their verses which most resemble the Bible, the passionate odes to Zion by Jehuda Halevi, the sublime meditations of Ibn Gebirol, the penitential prayers of Moses Ibn Ezra, though the echoes of the Bible are distinct enough, yet amid the echoes there sounds now and again the fresh, clear voice ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... so obviously the symbols of her hollow oligarchy itself, which to the world and to the sun in heaven, (like the brave palaces on her chief canal,) displayed a gallant guise, at once sublime, glittering, and august; while, within, its tortuous policy was twisted into murky and inextricable labyrinths, of which Necessity, Secresy, and Suspicion, formed the keystone; where Danger lurked at every winding, and whose darkling portals were watched ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... pepper, tea, and whisky, just as their social superiors seek the intrepid sixty per cent. man of St. James's, whose snuggery is perfumed by the best Havannahs that other people's money can buy. But when the soul of Mike rises to the sublime conception of a loan of five pounds he dismisses the old-fashioned usurer, and hies him to one of the branch banks which abound in every petty townlet in Western and Southern Ireland. When I say "abound" I mean to be taken literally. What would be thought in England, I wonder, of four ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality, combined with profundity of insight, ... which must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in the estimation of those who have no belief in his inspiration, in the very first rank of the men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. When this pre-eminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr to that mission who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching upon this man as the ideal representative ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Liverpool. "The rapt contemplation, the contrition of heart, the spirit of ardent faith which penetrated the whole assembly, more especially while the holy father distributed the sacred bread, were all things so sublime that they are easier to conceive ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... be heard above the wild warring of the elements—the thunder's roar, the furious lashing of the waves and the white, radiant lightning blazing across the vast expanse of water, making the scene sublime in its terrible grandeur. ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... but even here their true merit is to have brought the wisdom of Asia into Europe, for they invented nothing. Greece was the home of syllogism and of unreason. 'Read Plato: at every page you will draw a striking distinction. As often as he is Greek, he wearies you. He is only great, sublime, penetrating, when he is a theologian; in other words, when he is announcing positive and everlasting dogmas, free from all quibble, and which are so clearly marked with the eastern cast, that not to perceive it one must never have had a glimpse ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... of the house opened, and out crawled to the feet of the officer in command the miserable Israelite with his red hemmed skirt and greasy face. For this cowardly creature the Somauli policeman had perilled his life. Sublime! How could we help thinking of the talk at ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... he had been lured by the crystal murmur of a spring up a steep path. There, beneath a laurel-tree, he had beheld—and from her hand had received upon his brow water from the sacred fount,—a woman of a beauty grave and sublime: the ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... according to Dr. Johnson, it be the province of comedy to bring into view the customs, manners, vices, and the whole character of a people,—it is obvious that the Bible and the drama have some correspondence. If, in the somewhat heated language of Mrs. Jameson, "whatever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable and grave, whatever hath passion or admiration in the changes of fortune or the refluxes of feeling, whatever is pitiful in the weakness, grand in the strength, or terrible in the perversion of the human ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Saints, he published the Life of Mary of the Cross; a nun in the English convent of the Poor Clares at Rouen. It is rather a vehicle to convey instruction on various important duties of a religious life, and on sublime prayer, than a minute account of the life and actions of the nun. It was objected to this work, as it had been to the Saints' Lives, that it inculcated a spirit of mystic prayer, the excesses of which had been formally condemned, and the propriety of which, even ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... discharge in the face of the worst possible peril. Though war be the aggregation of all evils, yet, should the madness of the hour appeal to the arbitration of the sword, we will not shrink even from the baptism of fire.... The position of the South is at this moment sublime. If she has grace given her to know her hour, she will save herself, the country, and ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... patent to all is the sublime beginning of his Gospel which renders it distinct from the others. He does not lay stress upon the miraculous doings of Christ, but upon his preaching, wherein he reveals himself powerfully as true God, born of the Father from ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... its way, The world revolved from night to day A voice, a chime, A chant sublime Of peace on ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... with flakes of snow. Instead of feet, his body terminated in tails of serpents, which, as he flew along, lashed the air, writhing from under his robes. He was violent and impetuous in temper, rejoicing in the devastation of winter, and in all the sublime phenomena of tempests, cold, and snow. The Greek conception of Boreas made an impression upon the human mind that twenty centuries have not been able to efface. The north wind of winter is personified as Boreas to ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of religious faith. The tales were thus believed, and handed down traditionally from generation to generation, and admired and loved by all who heard and repeated them, partly on account of their romantic and poetical beauty, and partly on account of the sublime and sacred revelations which they contained, in respect to the divinities of the ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... appearance is a relief. As to Sir Leicester, he conceives it utterly impossible that anything can be wanting, in any direction, by any one who has the good fortune to be received under that roof; and in a state of sublime satisfaction, he moves among the company, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... great central nave. It was quite empty,—not even a weary silk-weaver, escaped from one of the ever-working looms of the city, had crept in to tell her beads. Broad, vacant, vast, and suggestive of a sublime desolation, the grand length and width of the Latin Cross which shapes the holy precincts, stretched into vague distance, one or two lamps were burning dimly at little shrines set in misty dark recesses,—a few votive candles, some lit, some smouldered out, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... give one slightly surprised glance at her, then he seemed to notice nothing different in her appearance. The man's sense of duty and honor was so strong that in reality his sense of externals was blunted. He had a sort of sublime short-sightedness to everything that was not of the spirit. He had been convinced the night previous that Maria was beginning to regard him with favor, and being convinced of that made him insensible to any mere outward change in her. She looked to him, on the whole, ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... noble and sublime aspect, and is particularly characteristical to what it ought to represent. It is built in a division of three fronts in the corinthic order: each of them consists in four raizing columns, resting upon a general basement, from the one end of the forefront to the other, and supporting a cornish, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 79, May 3, 1851 • Various
... spontaneously, as it were, in a rich soil. The muses, like vines, may be pruned, but not with a hatchet. The town, like a peevish child, knows not what it desires, and is always best pleased with a rattle. A farce-writer hath indeed some chance for success: but they have lost all taste for the sublime. Though I believe one reason of their depravity is the badness of the actors. If a man writes like an angel, sir, those fellows know not how to give a sentiment utterance."—"Not so fast," says the player: ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... was sublime, and with every movement and every gesture there was a something hidden, a suggestion of a personality and mysterious charm that we have always heretofore considered the exclusive property of just one woman in the world. But Desiree ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... which those organs can respond, and, if we aspire to gain a knowledge of what is behind the physical, it is clear that all our endeavours must be towards weaving these impulses into garments and then learning from them the sublime Truths which the Reality is ever trying to ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... to the condition of their country, in the contrast of the first and last day of that half century, how resplendent and sublime is the transition from gloom to glory! Then, glancing through the same lapse of time, in the condition of the individuals we see the first day marked with the fullness and vigor of youth, in the pledge of their lives, their fortunes, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams
... main design of this work is, to turn your thoughts a little off from the clamour of contending parties, which has so long surfeited you with their ill-timed politics, and restore your taste to things truly superior and sublime." ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... and we know no writings which so wholesomely at once exalt and humble the reader, make him feel what is in him, and what he can and may, as well as what he cannot, and need never hope to know. In this respect, Hamilton is as grand as Pascal, and more simple; he exemplifies everywhere his own sublime adaptation of Scripture—unless a man become a little child, he cannot enter into the kingdom; he enters the temple stooping, but he presses on, intrepid and alone, to the inmost adytum, worshipping ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... strength of those whose strength is exhausted, the hope of those who no longer believe, the sublime courage of the conquered! Yes, there is at least one door to this life we can always open and pass through to the other side. Nature had an impulse of pity; she did not shut us up in prison. Mercy ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... he, 'this is a sublime moment! To see you, the gay companion, the good fellow, the butterfly, I may say, of other days, a member of this great body is certainly soul-stirring! So you have realized your ambition? What next? The Senate? And then—then?' he pointed upward, 'higher yet? and still higher? Ha! The ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... simplicity, had raised himself to a purer belief than that of the sensuous Roman or the superstitious Gaul. He believed in a single, supreme, almighty God, All-Vater or All-father. This Divinity was too sublime to be incarnated or imaged, too infinite to be enclosed in temples built with hands. Such is the Roman's testimony to the lofty conception of the German. Certain forests were consecrated to the unseen ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... reigned the gladness, the rapture, the supreme joy which triumphs even over death. It seemed almost as if some angel choir had opened the gates of heaven and let the strains of celestial music flood the earth. It was inspiring, uplifting, sublime! ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... and harmonious and true. We shall understand how they made the later music possible; how they have made possible the fulfilment of the prediction of one of their own number: between Shakespeare in the cradle and Shakespeare in "Hamlet" there was needed but an interval of time, and the same sublime condition is all that lies between the America of toil and the America of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... form dramatic music can hardly reach. In the Italian version the performance usually closes at this point; but there is still another striking and powerful scene, that in which Raoul and Valentin are united by the dying Marcel. Then the three join in a sublime trio, and for the last time chant together the old Lutheran psalm, and await their fate amid the triumphant harpings that sound from the orchestra and the hosanna they sing ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... pleasure. The grey mist of flats on the south side glimmered delightful to their sight, coming from that drowsy crowd and press of habitations; but the solemn glory of the river, delaying not, heedless, impassioned-pouring on in some sublime conference between it and heaven to the great marriage of waters, deeply shook Farina's enamoured heart. The youth could not restrain his tears, as if a magic wand had touched him. He trembled with love; and that delicate bliss which maiden hope ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... there, which still go abroad free-footed, unfettered of science there, while we chain the lightning, and send it on our errands,—so long as these still slip through the ring of our airy 'words,' still riot in the freedom of our large generalizations, our sublime abstractions,— so long as a mere human word-ology is suffered to remain here, clogging all with its deadly impotence,—keeping out the true generalizations with their grappling-hooks on the particulars, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... discoursed freely to me of his triumphs in detection, his wide-spread system of spying upon spies, his long delayed "sport" with some, and his ruthless rapid trapping of others. Men are never so interesting as when they talk shop, and as a talker of shop Dawson was sublime. ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... become still. The poetry, the inspired prayer, these are mentally translatable. But a mantra is unique and untranslatable. Poetry is a great thing: it is often an inspirer of the soul, it gives gratification to the ear, and it may be sublime and beautiful, but it is ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... tells us that there was something sublime in that bold march of Lyon on the night of the 9th of August, with a force of five thousand men, to Wilson's Creek, to meet in the morning an army numbering anywhere between fifteen and twenty thousand. ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... blissful notes in unearthly contrast with the roar of the war engines; it seemed to me as if the present earth floated off through the sunlight, and the antique earth returned out of the past, and some majestic god sat on a hill, sculptured in stone, presiding over a terrible yet sublime ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... the "government" for every dollar received. He said that his "government," when it came in possession of all its territory, would hold him personally responsible for the claims he had surrendered to the provost-marshal. His impudence was so sublime that I was rather amused than indignant. I told him, however, that if he would remain in Memphis I did not believe the Confederate government would ever molest him. He left, no doubt, as much amazed at my assurance as I was at the brazenness ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... the place of hemp, and courage the place of caution. A Siberian merchant then chanced an outfit of supplies for half what the returns might be. The commander—officer or exile—then enlisted sailors among landsmen. Landsmen were preferable for this kind of voyaging. Either in the sublime courage of ignorance, or with the audacity of desperation, the poor landsmen dared dangers which no sailors would risk on such crazy craft, two thousand miles from a home port on an ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... in Christian America, one should have a knowledge of the English Bible. It is the fountain and conservator of pure English and the storehouse of the most inspiring thought. Its classic beauty and lofty speculations and sublime morality are essential to a liberal education. "Froude calls the Bible the best of all literatures. Daniel Webster read the Bible through every year for its effect upon his mind. Charles Sumner kept the Bible at his elbow on his desk, and could find any ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... for the night in the ruined Ambulam, as it is called; and here, thoroughly tired but sleepless, I lay for some hours and watched the innumerable stars creep out and crown that sublime head which rose at first into a fathomless blue that was almost black, and then as the moon swept up, flashed into unutterable radiance. Nothing, I am told, can compare with the moonlight of Ceylon, and I can well believe it. That night I read clearly once again by the ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Thus then it appears, that the corruption of human nature is proved by the same mode of reasoning, as has been deemed conclusive in establishing the existence, and ascertaining the laws of the principle of gravitation: that the doctrine rests on the same solid basis as the sublime philosophy of Newton: that it is not a mere speculation, and therefore an uncertain though perhaps an ingenious theory, but the sure result of large and actual experiment; deduced from incontestable facts, and still more fully approving its truth by ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... thought this passionate America, With its vast results of physical life, Its beautiful and sublime portraitures, Its far-sweeping prairies, rolling in grassy waves Like the green billows of an inland sea— Its blue-robed mountains Piercing the bluer heavens with their peaks— Its rivers, lakes, and forests— A roomy, and grand-enough earth to inhabit, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Pebbles. An innumerable population, coming and going, humming and buzzing, strikes her with no awe. On the tiles hanging from the walls of my porch I see her, with her red scarf round her body, stalking with sublime assurance over the ridged expanse of nests. Her black schemes leave the swarm profoundly indifferent; not one of the workers dreams of chasing her off, unless she should come bothering too closely. Even then, all that happens is a few signs of impatience on the part of the hustled ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... that she was always meditating on trussing, stuffing and roasting, to a degree that was calculated to inspire terror in any reflecting fowl living. Her corn-cake, in all its varieties of hoe-cake, dodgers, muffins, and other species too numerous to mention, was a sublime mystery to all less practised compounders; and she would shake her fat sides with honest pride and merriment, as she would narrate the fruitless efforts that one and another of her compeers had made ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was, no doubt, but Margaret was the part I liked better than any other—outside Shakespeare. I played it beautifully sometimes. The language was often very commonplace, not nearly as poetic or dramatic as that of "Charles I.," but the character was all right—simple, touching, sublime. The Garden Scene I know was a bourgeois affair. It was a bad, weak love-scene, but George Alexander as Faust played it admirably. Indeed, he always acted like an angel with me; he was so malleable, ready to do anything. He was launched ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... India tried to realise led her best men to the isolation of a contemplative life, and the treasures that she gained for mankind by penetrating into the mysteries of reality cost her dear in the sphere of worldly success. Yet, this also was a sublime achievement,—it was a supreme manifestation of that human aspiration which knows no limit, and which has for its object nothing less than the realisation of ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... twenty years, deliberately shaping them, and who gave them at last to the world in a form more severe than with such subjects had ever been so much as attempted? With him, as with all great men, there was no effort after sublime emotions. A plain, practical person, his object in philosophy was only to find a rule on which he could depend to govern his own actions and his own judgment: and his treatises contain no more than the conclusions at which he arrived in this purely personal search, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... capital many young fellows of our army declared they found infinitely greater diversion even than in London: and Mr. Henry Esmond remained in his sick-room, where he writ a fine comedy, that his mistress pronounced to be sublime, and that was acted no less than three successive nights in London ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... distant field stood a large tulip tree, apparently of a century's growth, and one of the most gigantic. It looked like the father of the surrounding forest. A single tree of huge dimensions, standing all alone, is a sublime object. ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... its total height, is clothed by dusky woods, and above this a field of snow extends to the summit. These vast piles of snow, which never melt, and seem destined to last as long as the world holds together, present a noble and even sublime spectacle. The outline of the mountain was admirably clear and defined. Owing to the abundance of light reflected from the white and glittering surface, no shadows were cast on any part; and those lines ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the blood who loves a little maid of honor, and wishes to marry her?" exclaimed von Manteuffel, laughing loudly. "How romantic! how sublime! what excellent materials for a sentimental romance! My dear baroness, I congratulate you! This discovery does all ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the masses. Nietzsche speaks of Kant: "With the aid of his concept of 'Practical Reason,' he produced a special kind of reason, for use on occasions when reason cannot function: namely, when the sublime command, 'Thou shalt,' resounds." In his old age Kant became more bold, and perhaps voiced his true views, for we find that in "Religion Within the Limits of Pure Reason," he is actively antagonistic to ecclesiasticism, so much so that, for publishing ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... the reason, but the tears came to her eyes with a smarting sting, and with them that feeling of overwhelming joy that was half-pain, the feeling that rushed over her so often when her father read some sublime ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... Lieutenant Kingsley concerning his religious experience, he said he was not satisfied with his attainments in the divine life, and very earnestly requested to be remembered at a throne of grace. The moon rose full and clear on the sparkling face of the deep, reminding us of David's sublime thoughts when he exclaims in the eighth Psalm: "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... the truffles in a pie," said the South American. "An entire day I had to remain with my nose touching the intestines of a Turk who had died two weeks before.... No, war is not chic, Captain, no matter how much they talk of heroism and sublime things ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... From month to month has the exhaustless flow Of thy original mind, its wealth revealing, With quaintest humour, and deep pathos healing The World's rude wounds, revived Life's early glow: And, mixt with this, at times, to earnest thought, Glimpses of truth, most simple and sublime, By thy imagination have been brought Over my spirit. From the olden time Of authorship thy patent should be dated, And thou with ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the majesty of the scene itself. The variety of the colours, the light, which as the sun rose gradually spread over the sky, and the clouds were alike of inimitable beauty. To our great regret this spectacle, like everything most sublime in nature, did not last long. As the atmosphere became flooded with light the huge masses of clouds seemed with one accord to plunge into the deep, and the sun, appearing above the horizon, removed ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... a tragedy. Lee goes to see her twice a week, and on Sunday afternoon takes her out in his new and rakish runabout, that is as modern as his behavior is obsolete. Caroline knows no better, and stands it with sublime patience and lack of character. That is a situation I won't be able to keep my hands ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... not a zealot, a promoter of cant. In short the self-appointed apostle of uplift, who disregarding individual character would make virtue a matter of statute law and ordain uniformity of conduct by act of conventicle or assembly, is likelier to produce moral chaos than to reach the sublime ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... as the Cartesian system was, in the strongholds of the human mind, and fortified by its most obstinate prejudices, it was not to be wondered at that the pure and sublime doctrines of the Principia, were distrustfully received and perseveringly resisted. The uninstructed mind could not readily admit the idea that the great masses of the planets were suspended in empty space and retained in their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... size, ill lighted; and he preferred giving full play to the powers of line-grouping, for which he could have found no nobler field. Let us not by unwise comparison mingle with our admiration of these two sublime works any sense of weakness in the naivete of the one, or of coldness in the science of the other. Each painter has his own sufficient dominion, and he who complains of the want of knowledge in Orcagna, or of the display ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the sole observer of the stupendous spectacle that spread out around and above me; the most sublime feature in this imposing scene appeared to be the silence which reigned supreme over all. The heavens were as mute as the sea. It looked as if the earth had been engulfed by a second deluge, and all living nature had perished utterly from the face ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... once the result and the means. This line of study, this peculiar taste, elevated his heart, purified, ennobled it, gave him an appetite for the divine nature, and suggested to him the almost womanly refinement of feeling which is instinctive in great men; perhaps their sublime superiority is no more than the desire to devote themselves which characterizes woman, only transferred to the ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... graded course of study to be prescribed, in order that studious boys might ripen their minds by diligent reading; balance their judgment by precepts of wisdom, correct their compositions with an unsparing pen, hear at length what they ought to imitate, and be convinced that nothing can be sublime when it is designed to catch the fancy of boys, then the grand style of oratory would immediately recover the weight and splendor of its majesty. Now the boys play in the schools, the young men are laughed at in the forum, and, a worse symptom than either, no one, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... gainsayers? Are these things false?" "No," they say; "What then? Is it false, that every nature already formed, or matter capable of form, is not, but from Him Who is supremely good, because He is supremely?" "Neither do we deny this," say they. "What then? do you deny this, that there is a certain sublime creature, with so chaste a love cleaving unto the true and truly eternal God, that although not coeternal with Him, yet is it not detached from Him, nor dissolved into the variety and vicissitude ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... accepted critic of the Restoration, declared "our poetry of the last age as rude as our architecture," and sneered at "that Paradise Lost of Milton's which some are pleased to call a poem," Dryden saw in it "one of the greatest, most noble and sublime poems which either this age or nation hath produced." But whether in mind or in life Dryden was as unlike the Elizabethans as he was in his earlier years unlike the men of the poetic school which followed ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... feasting his spirit on the splendid visions of that Promised Land which, Moses-like, it was permitted him to see prefigured in its earthly type? Throughout his adventures, too generally known to require more than passing allusion, one sees the same passionate devotion to the grand and sublime in sight and sensation, the same calm disregard of danger, whether exploding his balloon at an altitude of thirteen thousand feet and coolly noting the "fearful moaning noise caused by the air rushing through the network and the gas escaping ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... single to your grateful hearts his preeminent worth? Where shall I begin in opening to your view a character throughout sublime? Shall I speak of his warlike achievements, all springing from obedience to his country's will—all directed to his ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... association of prayer and incantation is due to the circumstance that both Babylonians and Assyrians addressed their deities only when something was desired of the latter,—the warding off of some evil or the expectation of some favor. Even in the penitential psalms, that merit the term 'sublime,' the penitent pours out his soul at the shrine of grace in order to be released from some misfortune that has come over him or that is impending. Mere praise of the gods without any ulterior motive finds no place in the Babylonian or Assyrian ritual. The ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... the same thing as beauty, but only a subdivision of it. There are many things in nature and in art, from the Matterhorn to "Samson Agonistes," that have no charm, but that appeal to a different range of emotions, the sublime, the majestic, the awe-inspiring, things in the presence of which we are hardly at ease; but charm is essentially a comfortable quality, something that one gathers to one's heart, and if there is a mystery about it, as there is about all beautiful ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the poet of psychic science, is profoundly the poet of practical, humanitarian progress, as was shown in his sublime ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... into account: the time—solemn twilight, just as the shades begin to fall around: the place—a noble and lofty hall where the terrors of Michel Angelo's Last Judgment are rendered more terrible by the gathering gloom, and his sublime Prophets frown dimly upon us from the walls above. The extinguishing of the tapers, the concealed choir, the angelic voices chosen from among the finest in the world, and blended by long practice ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... indeed, make a proper distinction between art as "technical dexterity" and art as related to the "sublime," the "beautiful," the "pathetic," the "humorous," the "melodious," and admits that it is possible to apply an "objective test" to technical skill—to decide that this line scans, that this rhyme is flawless, that these bars in music are in such-and-such a ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... favoured us for a few hours, and to-morrow I hope to be in sight of Syracuse. A vessel was yesterday spoken with, that had an ambassador on board from Constantinople, going to the different states in Barbary, to direct them to arm against the French. An English frigate had arrived at the Sublime Porte with the news of the defeat of their fleet at Alexandria; but I am at a loss to conjecture what the frigate was. The French officers "sont indignes de cette insulte offerte a ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... late To desolation swept, retired in pride, Exulting in the glory of his might, And seemed to mock the ruin he had wrought, As some fierce comet of tremendous size, To which the stars did reverence as it passed, So he, through learning and through fancy took His flight sublime, and on the loftiest top Of fame's dread mountain sat. Not soiled and worn As if he from the earth had labored up, But as some bird of heavenly plumage fair He looked, which down from higher regions came, And perched it there to ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... by Mr. Kemble, and prefixed as a motto to his alteration of one of Shakspeare's plays. Is Mr. Kemble not aware, how many drops of Shakspeare are lost, and how much false wine obtruded in their place, in this metamorphosis? It would be an endless task to point out all the beautiful and sublime passages omitted by Tate: but to point out all the absurdities he has introduced, would be more endless. As Mr. Kemble professes, however, such a wish, I will just remind him, before I conclude, of what ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... Through the action of our disloyal citizens, the workingmen of Europe have been subjected to severe trials, for the purpose of forcing their sanction to that attempt. Under the circumstances, I cannot but regard your decisive utterances upon the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country. It is indeed an energetic and reinspiring assurance of the inherent power of truth, and of the ultimate triumph of justice, humanity, and freedom. I do not doubt ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... was visiting the United States, in 1917, on an important governmental mission, had an almost sublime illustration of the extent to which the telephone had developed on the North American Continent. Sitting at a desk in a large office building in New York, Lord Northcliffe took up two telephone ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... this chapter is but a continuation of the preceding one, being a sublime description of the exaltation and office-work of Christ in his two-fold character as the Lion of the tribe of Juda and as a sacrificial offering for the sins of the world. The Apocalypse opens with the words, "The Revelation ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... been made during the past year to remove the hindrances to the proclamation of the treaty of naturalization with the Sublime Porte, signed in 1874, which has remained inoperative owing to a disagreement of interpretation of the clauses relative to the effects of the return to and sojourn of a naturalized citizen in the land of origin. I trust soon to be able to announce a favorable settlement of the differences ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... monopolised an easy chair; but in twenty minutes the whirl had ceased. At length Peacock Piggott gave a groan, which denoted returning energy, and raised a stretching leg in air, bringing up, though most unwittingly, upon his foot, one of the Bird's sublime ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... observer may be lost in that soul, which gathers itself up and retires with as much rapidity as it gushed for a second into those velvet eyes. In moments of passion the eyes of Camille Maupin are sublime; the gold of her glance illuminates them and they flame. But in repose they are dull; the torpor of meditation often lends them an appearance of stupidity[*]; in like manner, when the glow of the soul is absent the lines of the face ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... how of late our Acherontic shore Grew thin, and hell unpeopled of her store; Charon, for want of use, forgot his oar. The souls of bodies dead flew all sublime, And hither none returned to purge a crime: But now I see, since Albion is restored, Death has no business, nor the vengeful sword. 'Tis too, too much that here I lie From glorious empire hurled; By Jove excluded from the sky; By Albion ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... the manner or state of lout, to which our manufacturing prosperity has reduced its artisan, as represented in the first of these frescoes, I do not think it needful to speak here; neither of the level of sublime temperament and unselfish heroism to which the dangers of commercial enterprise have exalted Mr. Smith. But the five consecutive heads in the third fresco are a very notable piece of English history, representing the polished and more or less lustrous type of lout; which is indeed a ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... suffered, and the infamous crime by which it had been accomplished. Yet not a ripple of excitement could be seen anywhere in the army. The profound calm which pervades the atmosphere surrounding a great, disciplined, self-confident army is one of the most sublime exhibitions of human nature. ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... trailed in graceful curves a mimic ivy-vine, colored like nature. Upon this hung a few choice pictures,—proof-engravings of Correggio's Cherubs; a Christ blessing Little Children; a Madonna, with sad, soft eyes resting upon the Holy Child, whose fixed gaze seemed to read his own sublime destiny; and a Babes ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... opposite mirror as he did so. Then, with the elastic step of a man retiring from a festival, he left the chamber, while Elsie looked after him with wondering eyes and parted lips, astonished by an audacity which was absolutely sublime. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... justice which marked the course prescribed to me by two of my illustrious predecessors when acting under their direction in the discharge of the duties of superintendent and commissioner shall be strictly observed. I can conceive of no more sublime spectacle, none more likely to propitiate an impartial and common Creator, than a rigid adherence to the principles of justice on the part of a powerful nation in its transactions with a weaker and uncivilized people whom circumstances ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... to an alleged emigration of citizens of the United States to the dominions of the Sublime Porte for the purpose of settling and acquiring landed ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... Therefore, I shall enter into no statement of the reasons which lead me unhesitatingly to accept Mr. Congreve's challenge, and to refuse to recognise anything which deserves the name of grandeur of character in M. Comte, unless it be his arrogance, which is undoubtedly sublime. All I have to observe is, that if Mr. Congreve is justified in saying that I speak with a tinge of contempt for his spiritual father, the reason for such colouring of my language is to be found in the fact, that, when I wrote, I had but just arisen from the perusal ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... as I certainly do, about my castles in Spain. The sun always shines upon them. They stand lofty and fair in a luminous, golden atmosphere, a little hazy and dreamy, perhaps, like the Indian summer, but in which no gales blow and there are no tempests. All the sublime mountains, and beautiful valleys, and soft landscape, that I have not yet seen, are to be found in the grounds. They command a noble view of the Alps; so fine, indeed, that I should be quite content with the prospect of them from the highest tower ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... can't drop it till you have turned the last page."—Cleveland Leader. "Its very audacity of motive, of execution, of solution, almost takes one's breath away. The boldness of its denouement is sublime."—Boston Transcript. "The literary hit of a generation. The best of it is the story deserves all its success. A masterly story."—St. Louis Dispatch. "The story is ingeniously told, ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... matter,' said the lady in the wig, 'glide swift into the vortex of immensity. Howls the sublime, and softly sleeps the calm Ideal, in the whispering chambers of Imagination. To hear it, sweet it is. But then, outlaughs the stern philosopher, and saith to the Grotesque, "What ho! arrest for me that Agency. Go, bring it here!" ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... imagine Shakspeare tracing out his conception of Hamlet, or giving language to Lear or Miranda, without a soulful experience as far above mere intellectual assiduity as humanity is above mechanism; we cannot think of Milton elaborating his sublime epic, without, in fancy, taking in the studious years, the Italian nights of music, starlight, and high converse, the beautiful youth, the self-sacrificing prime, the blind old age, the religious patriotism, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... terrible misfortune to women, to whom beauty is more important than life, and the beauty of whom consists in the roundness and graceful contour of their forms. The most careful toilette, the most, sublime needle-work, cannot hide certain deficiencies. It has been said that whenever a pin is taken from a thin woman, beautiful as she may be, ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... energy than the Liberal leader, who, now in his eighty-third year, has more nerve and spring and go than any of his lieutenants, not excluding the youngest recruit. There is something imposing and even sublime in the long procession of years which bridge as with eighty-two arches the abyss of past time, and carry us back to the days of Canning, and of Castlereagh, of Napoleon, and of Wellington. His parliamentary career extends over ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... epithet which the world has justly attached to the name of Dante Alighieri is 'the Sublime'. I am almost afraid to say it, but we all know how proverbially short is the distance between the sublime and the ridiculous. And I venture to submit to the private personal thought of each of you whether it be not merely the horror of the subject and of the conception, and ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... solitudinem omnia redigentes. Hac itaque patrata eversione, locus, qui tauto honoris splendore diu viguerat, exturbatis omnibus ac subuersis domibus, cA"pit esse cubile ferarum et volucrum: maceriis in sua soliditate in sublime porrectis, arbustisque densissimis; et arborum virgultis per triginta ferme annorum curricula ubique ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... the drama of life is spun out so long instead of having the ends brought together," observed George. "The spectators lose the force of the contrasts because they forget the first part of every role before the latter part is reached. One fails in consequence to get a realizing sense of the sublime ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... to make the vulgar, contumacious and indisposed to hearken, you would not wonder at the paucity of converts. The number of thick skulls is infinite, and we need neither record their follies nor endeavour to interest them in subtle and sublime ideas. No ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... Unit-like, complete, brilliant, sublime, awful, the poem dazzles criticism, and belittles the critic. It is the grandest poem ever written. It almost sets up a competition with Scripture. Milton's Adam and Eve walk before us instead of the Adam ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the grandest things, and working for the most glorious ends, instructing the ignorant, consoling the sorrowing, winning the wayward back to duty and to peace, pointing the dying to Him who is the light and the life of men, animating the living to seek from the highest motives a holy life and a sublime destiny! O it is a life that might draw an angel from the skies! If there is a special hell for fools, it should be kept for the man who turns aside from a life like this, to trade, or dig the earth, or wrangle in a court of law, or ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... wondering what they have done that is wrong, for of course all depression is apt to take the form of a sense of wrongdoing. Further, at this period the religious sensibilities of many seem to suffer eclipse. They can no longer respond in feeling to any of the sublime religious truths. They find they cannot pray. Nothing seems to matter. The memory of earlier days when life seemed bright and religious faith was confident seems only to mock them. Many are beset by definite intellectual difficulties and so are tempted to a ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... Religion afforded by the Phenomena of Nature, and the Consistency of Science with Divine Revelation." We were much pleased. He is the most complete elocutionist I ever heard, and impressed a crowded audience with his sublime subject. What a melancholy loss to England by his one false step, that degraded him in moral society! Walked to the Astor, and took one cigar each, when Mr. B. told me he was collecting charity for the poor widow of H. W——s, who had left her without a shilling to support ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore
... the northwestern frontier to watch the petty Indian tribes, carrying the burden of others' sins into the wilderness. Mr. Lincoln's sacrifice of his sense of justice to what seemed the only expedient in the terrible crisis, was sublime. McClellan commanded the army, and Porter and Franklin each commanded a corps. If the country was to be saved, confidence and power could not be ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... of her poetical lover. Of the numerous imitations, the Pastor Fido of Guarini, which alone can vie with the fame and merit of the original, is the work of the Duke's secretary of state. It was exhibited in a private house in Ferrara.... The father of the Tuscan muses, the sublime but unequal Dante, had pronounced that Ferrara was never honoured with the name of a poet; he would have been astonished to behold the chorus of bards, of melodious swans (their own allusion), which now peopled the banks of the Po. In the court of Duke Borso and his successor, Boyardo ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... essential worth of things, and, as such, it lies at the very heart of real education. It must be so or civilization cannot be. Without appreciation there can be no distinction between the coarse and the fine, none between the high and the low, none between the beautiful and the ugly, none between the sublime and the commonplace, none between zenith and nadir. Hence, appreciation is inevitable in every course of study, whether the authorities have the courage to proclaim it or not. Just why it has not ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... glorious war in the noisy wrangling of politicians. The defeat of Douglas, the Navarre of the young Democracy of the North, amazed him: but all thought of Lincoln asserting the national authority, and reviving the splendor of Jackson and Madison, was looked upon as the step between the sublime and the ridiculous that reasoning men refuse ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... teeming with instances where the love of creatures, and even the holier and more sublime love of the Creator, have, in moments of enthusiasm, induced tender females to forget the weakness of their sex and successfully fulfil the spheres of manhood. These scenes, so censurable, are extraordinary more from the rarity ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... the interpretation of this knowledge is imperative and unsatiable—not from prurience nor from evil-mindedness, but in obedience to a law of our nature, the child demands this knowledge—and will get it. It is for fathers and mothers to say whether these sublime and beautiful mysteries shall be lovingly and reverently unveiled by themselves or whether the child's mind shall be poisoned and all beauty and reverence destroyed by depraved ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... effect produced by the melting melody in which they were conveyed to his ears, excited in him, and, he perceived, also in those opposite, the deepest emotion. The glorious pile was beginning to grow dusky with the stealing shadows of evening; and the solemn and sublime strains of the organ, during the playing of the anthem, filled those present, who had any pretensions to sensibility, with mingled feelings of tenderness and awe. Those in whom we are so deeply interested, felt at once subdued and elevated; and as they quitted the darkening fabric, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... devastation, the flowers and trees were making a brave fight to live. I could not but think, as I wandered through this place, how well the little flowers and the mighty oaks typified the spirit of France and Belgium. Sorely stricken they were—wounded unto death; but with that sublime courage and determination which have been the admiration of the world they were resolved that they should ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... true of the religious life is true also of the working life; the two are different aspects of the same vital experience. In the field of work he who would keep his life must lose it, and in losing his life a man secures it for immortality. The noble worker pours himself into his work with sublime indifference to its rewards, and by the very completeness of his self-surrender and self-forgetfulness touches degrees of excellence and attains a splendour of vision which are denied those whose ventures are less daring and complete. And ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... value of my own enthusiasm; now am I repaid in part for many pains and sorrows and errors it has cost me. Though the natural expression of that enthusiasm be now repressed and restrained, and my spirits subdued by long illness, what but enthusiasm could elevate my mind to a level with the sublime objects round me, and excite me to pour out my whole heart in admiration as I do now! How deeply they have penetrated into my imagination!—Beautiful nature! If I could but infuse into you a portion of my own existence as you have become a part of mine—If ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... a number of the finest of the photographic illustrations in the volume the author gratefully acknowledges his obligations to the Canada Pacific Railway Company, without whose assistance it would have been impossible to reach many of the sublime and romantic places here portrayed; until very recently known only to the adventurous red Indian hunter, but now brought within the ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... stronger in seeing the bravery with which he maintained his principles. He had a habit of going straight to the issue, and a rugged manner of presenting his opinions, coupled with a cool assurance, which, one of his unfriendly critics once declared, "sometimes rose almost to the sublime." He alone, of all the members of the Pennsylvania Convention, in 1836, refused to sign the new State Constitution, because it robbed the negro of his vote. It was a fitting reward that he, in 1866, should stand in the United States House ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... of his eyes; while on his lofty forehead glittered a star that threw a solemn radiance on the repose of his majestic forehead.' After explaining that he was the Angel of Arabia, this person told Tancred to 'announce the sublime and solacing doctrine of Theocratic Equality.' But when Tancred, after his startling adventures, got back to Jerusalem, he found his anxious parents, the Duke and Duchess of Bellamont, accompanied by the triumvirate of bear-leaders which their solicitude ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... both, and our passenger railway terminals, which partake of the nature of neither. These latter deserve especial consideration in this connection, by reason of their important function. The railway is of the very essence of the modern, even though (with what sublime unreason) Imperial Rome is written large over New ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... great texts in the Scripture in whose sublime phrases are contained the germs of all religion, whether natural or revealed. They lay hold on two eternities. One relates to Deity in his solitude—'Before Abraham was, I am.' The other is for the future. It sums up the whole duty ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... joke. To call on the Protestants was wondrous impudence, for Conde had left their faith, and had persecuted them; to call on the Catholics was not less impudent, for he had betrayed their cause scores of times; but to call on the whole people to rise in defence of their treasury was impudence sublime, for no man had besieged the treasury more persistently, no man had dipped into it more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... Papyra taught To paint in mystic colors sound and thought. With Wisdom's voice to print the page sublime, And mark in adamant ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... creation of my own brain, and is of course defective, and will disappoint. But if it is true that "Bacon, Butler, and Shakspeare have rendered it impossible for any one after them to be profound, witty, or sublime," it is equally true that Scott, Irving, and others have rendered it impossible for any one to be equally entertaining, interesting, or amusing. I hold, however, to another maxim, that "he is a benefactor to mankind who furnishes them with innocent materials ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... his "Inquiry into the Principles of Taste,"[111] when treating of the "sublime and pathetic," quotes the story of Ulysses and his dog, as follows:—"No Dutch painter ever exhibited an image less imposing, or less calculated to inspire awe and terror, or any other of Burke's symptoms or sources of the sublime (unless, indeed, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... the little boy who had stolen a passage with him, is a figure which tells us with new and noble force, that manhood is stronger than storm, and love mightier than death." And it is not only such sublime acts of self-sacrifice as this which are acceptable to God. To live for others is sometimes as hard as to die for them. The patient nurse, the gentle sister of mercy, the humble priest, unknown outside his own parish, these, and thank God there are many such, have a place ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... had disappeared, and, there was not a trace or a sound to guide him. He stopped, and considered that he was too much under the influence of passion to act with prudence against so powerful a rival. Then a sublime idea occurred to him; it was to climb back again over the wall, and carry off with his own the horse he had seen there. He retraced his steps to the wall and climbed up again; but on the other side no ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... freedom, that sacred principle was supposed to exist only in force and by force; they had not the faintest conception, and at first received with unbounded scorn the Christian doctrine of the unity of the human race, the privileges and duties annexed to Christian baptism, and the sublime ideal of the Christian republic. But they were very far from being so cruel or so faithless as their enemies represented them; they were even better than they cared to represent themselves. And they had amongst them men of the highest capacity and energy, well worthy to be the founders ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Officer just setting out for Louisiana; lived many years there as a thrifty soldier's wife; returned to Paris with her Officer reduced to half-pay; and told him—or told some select Official person after him, under seven-fold oath, being then a widow and necessitous—her sublime secret. Sublime secret, which came thus to be known to a supremely select circle at Paris; and was published in Books, where one still reads it. No vestige of truth in it,—except that perhaps a necessitous soldier's widow at Paris, considering ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the platform, some standing moveless as the pillars beside them, their long pipe in their hand—noble specimens of humanity, if intellect breathed within: some reclining against the rails, others seated in groups, or solitary as if buried in "lonely thoughts sublime"; while the rush of the falling waters is sweeter music than that of the pipe and the guitar, that faintly strive to be heard. The cataract in the plate is a very fine one; on its foam the moonlight was lovely: we passed many an hour here on such a night, the clear waters of the Pharpar, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... blindfolded, the following oath of allegiance: "You shall attend duly, vote impartially, and conform to our laws and orders obediently. You shall support our dignity, promote our welfare, and at all times behave as a worthy member of this sublime society. So Beef and Liberty be your reward." Although there is a Beef Steak Club in existence to-day, it must not be identified with either of ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... alternately bribed and bullied, cajoled and coerced, there persists, both among the simple peasants of the Trentino and Istria and the hard-headed business men of Trieste, a most sentimental and inextinguishable attachment for the Italian motherland. There is, indeed, something approaching the sublime in the fascination which Italy exercises across the centuries on ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... fate. One of the modes was by the inspection of the entrails of victims; another by the manner of the cracking of the shell of a turtle or armadillo by the action of fire, as among the Chinese. (In the Hong-fan or "the great and sublime doctrine," one of the books of the Chou-king, the ceremonies of Pou and Chi are described at length). The Mayas had also their astrologers and prophets. Several prophecies, purporting to have been made by their priests, concerning the preaching ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... the time she worked, although she had never liked Mr. Lloyd. There was something about her mistress which was fairly abnormal. She kept looking at her. This gentle, soft-natured woman had risen above her own pain and grief to a sublime strength of misery. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... ruled the waves - (In good Queen Bess's time) The House of Peers made no pretence To intellectual eminence, Or scholarship sublime; Yet Britain won her proudest bays In good Queen ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... found no refuge but Tadorn Marsh, save a few to which the plateau of Prospect Heights afforded asylum. But even this last retreat was now closed to them, and the lava-torrent, flowing over the edge of the granite wall, began to pour down upon the beach its cataracts of fire. The sublime horror of this spectacle passed all description. During the night it could only be compared to a Niagara of molten fluid, with its incandescent vapors above ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... of America, or the Alps, or the Desert, in my later years.... The pair, sitting alone amid the expanse of verdure, with islands of ruins behind them, grew more striking to us every day. To-day, for the first time, we looked up to them from their base. The impression of sublime tranquillity which they convey when seen from distant points, is confirmed by a nearer approach. There they sit, keeping watch—hands on knees, gazing straight forward; seeming, though so much of the face is gone, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... reach of vulgar enmities. 'Tis thus the eagle, with his pinions spread, Reposing o'er the tempest, from that height Sees the clouds reel and roll above our head, While he, rejoicing in his tranquil flight, More upward soars sublime in ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... profoundly philosophical suspicion, that a rose, or a violet, did actually smell, to a person occupying this sublime position, very much as it did to another; a suspicion which, in the mouth of a common man, would have been literally sufficient to 'make a star-chamber matter of'; and all that thorough-going analysis of the trick and pageant of majesty ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... gazed with tearless eyes at the woman he loved; an impulse of sublime resignation ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... our century has clomb its crest, And backward gazes o'er the plains of Time, And counts its harvest, yours is still the best, The richest garner in the field of rhyme (The metaphoric mixture, 'tis comfest, Is all my own, and is not quite sublime). But fame's not yours alone; you must divide all The plums and pudding with the Bard ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn Of miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge men's ...
— O May I Join the Choir Invisible! - and Other Favorite Poems • George Eliot |
