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Surpassing   /sərpˈæsɪŋ/   Listen
Surpassing

adjective
1.
Exceeding or surpassing usual limits especially in excellence.  Synonym: transcendent.
2.
Far beyond what is usual in magnitude or degree.  Synonyms: exceeding, exceptional, olympian, prodigious.  "An exceptional memory" , "Olympian efforts to save the city from bankruptcy" , "The young Mozart's prodigious talents"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Surpassing" Quotes from Famous Books



... forty years of quiet domestic life, watching his flocks amid the mountain solitudes, and in intercourse with the "priest of Midian," and taught of that God who chose him before all other men. As a familiar friend, he was daily learning lessons of mighty wisdom, and gaining that surpassing excellence of character which has made his name immortal. Was the wife whom he had chosen the worthy daughter of her father, and a fit companion for such a husband? Did they take sweet counsel together, and could she share his noble thoughts? Did she listen with tearful ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... ways, the path reaches the summit, a rock table crowned with a pyramid of loose boulders, heaped up in olden days as a memorial of golden-haired Maeve. From the dead queen's pyramid a view of surpassing grandeur and beauty opens over sea and land, mingled valley and hill. The Atlantic stretches in illimitable blue, curved round the rim of the sky, a darker mirror of the blue above. It is full of throbbing silence and peace. Across blue fields of ocean, and facing the noonday brightness ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston

... chamber was in the right side of the house; and they went up with winding stairs into the middle chamber, and out of the middle into the third." Out of this slender material has been constructed an allegory, which, if properly considered in its symbolical relations, will be found to be of surpassing beauty. But it is only as a symbol that we can regard this whole tradition; for the historical facts and the architectural details alike forbid us for a moment to suppose that the legend, as it is rehearsed in the second degree ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... And kindred anguish find in grief a voice, We will not mourn thy exit from this sphere, When angels in the heaven of heavens rejoice, When God's own hand hath wiped away each tear, And crowned with endless life thy happy choice. Oh blessed lot—oh change with rapture fraught, Surpassing ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie

... spoken of but in terms of admiration, as the chief works of architecture, and among the noblest and most stupendous examples of what man can do when aided by science; and yet when compared with the dome of this Temple, they sink into comparative insignificance. Such is the surpassing grandeur of ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt

... followed by a small man carrying a neat bag. He was of surpassing ugliness, and yet she liked him. His mouth had a curious twist. He had no chin to speak of, and his bright eyes protruded like those of a beetle. His voice, however, was surprisingly fine ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... participating in this war are what they are because of struggles that have lasted for centuries. They differ in language, in institutions, in race characteristics, and in national history, but together they constitute a great living bouquet that is of surpassing beauty. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... that some time a pure twisted race might arise. If chance should put such an accidental race in the hands of an experimenter, it could be protected and preserved, and having no straight atavistic branches, but being twisted in all its organs, might yield the most curious conceivable monstrosity, surpassing even the celebrated dwarf twisted shrubs of ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... of the dusty troops and the faint blue desert sky overhead went out in rolling smoke, and the little stones on the heated ground and the tinder-dry clumps of scrub became matters of surpassing interest, for men measured their agonised retreat and recovery by these things, counting mechanically and hewing their way back to chosen pebble and branch. There was no semblance of any concerted fighting. For aught the men knew, the enemy might be attempting all four sides ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... the deck of the Ajax was one of surpassing beauty and interest. The bright moonbeams rested on the waters, and left a silvery track upon the waves. Ahead and astern, the lofty masts of the squadron tapered darkly towards the sky, whilst the outline of every rope and ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly

... production of the emotions I allude to, beauty of landscape is scarcely necessary. We strain forward incited by curiosity, as eagerly over an untrodden heath, or untraversed desert, as through valleys of surpassing loveliness, and amid mountains of unexplored grandeur; or perhaps, I should say, more eagerly, for there is nothing on which the mind can repose, nothing to tempt it to linger, nothing to divert the current of its thoughts. Onward we move, with expectation at its highest, led by the irresistible ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... She was observant, alert, intent on asking questions, hungering for facts. And a charming young woman who seeks facts rather than attention will never lack either. But of all the facts Polly collected, the one of surpassing interest, and which gave her the greatest happiness, was that she could not live without Sam Lowell. She had suspected this, and it was partly to make sure that she had consented to the trip round the world. Now that she had made sure, she could not too soon make up for the days ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... to Malcolm's mind than such a surpassing opportunity of learning with assurance what sort of man Lenorme was; and the relation that arose between them extended the sittings far beyond the number necessary for the object proposed. How the first of them passed I must recount ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... writers, although surpassing them all in original talent, Feodor Sologoub is the most intellectual and subtle of the Russian modernists. His principal work consists in depicting the small provincial towns. His heroes are little bourgeois petty officials, school-teachers, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... a man of high type, perhaps not so brilliant as Roman Nose and Two Moon, but surpassing both in honesty and simplicity, as well as in his war record. (Two Moon, in fact, was never a leader of his people, and became distinguished only in wars with the whites during the period of revolt.) A story is told of an ancestor of ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... emotion) Then if they have children, how surpassing is the bliss, while their own gay prime is mellowly subsiding into age, to trace the features and the virtues they adored in youth, renewed before their eyes, and feel themselves the proud and grateful authors of each other's joy—Ah! trust me, uncle! such a destiny is beyond the reach ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... not approve. When Eustace apologised for touching on a professional subject (he had just been called to the Bar), Mrs. Jacks declared that nothing could interest her more. If he ventured a jest, she smiled with surpassing sweetness, and was all but moved to laugh. They, at all events, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... were too taken aback to reply. So, carefully modelling his rhetoric on King, Beetle followed up the attack, surpassing and surprising himself, "It—it isn't so much the cynical immorality of the biznai, as the blatant indecency of it, that's so awful. As far as we can see, it's impossible for us to go into Bideford without runnin' up against some prefect's unwholesome amours. There's nothing to snigger ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... way thus, for about ten miles, our toils were rewarded with a scene of surpassing beauty, that gradually opened to us. That long-lost tree, the graceful Acacia pendula, received us in the foreground, and open plains, blended with waving lines of wood, extended far into bluey distance, beyond which an azure coronet of mountains of romantic forms, terminated ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... so firm and graceful was their seat; the long lances were brandished as easily as if by the hands of footmen; the bows were managed and the arrows sent with dazzling dexterity. It was a show of brilliant equestrianism, surpassing the feats of circus riders. But a single effective shot into the centre of the column had cleft it as a rock divides a torrent. It was like the ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... "Die Griechen sind, wie das Genie, einfach; deshalb sind sie die unsterblichen Lehrer." Further, the translator has at times so to manipulate his material as to incorporate into his verse epithets and figures of speech of surpassing grace and expressiveness, which do not readily admit of transfiguration into any modern language; such, for instance, as the "much-wooed white-armed Maiden Muse" ([Greek: polymneste leukolene parthene Mousa]) of Empedocles; the "long countless Time" ([Greek: ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... has made paint a scarce commodity, and the houses, consequently, all wear a dingy, decayed look. Though situated on a magnificent bay, a little below the confluence of three noble rivers, which drain a country of surpassing richness, and though the centre of the finest rice-growing district in the world, the town is dead. Every thing about it wears an air of dilapidation. The few white men you meet in its streets, or see lounging lazily ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore

... Court. Not only were its central personages the patterns of propriety, but no breath of scandal, no shadow of indecorum, might approach its utmost boundaries. For Victoria, with all the zeal of a convert, upheld now the standard of moral purity with an inflexibility surpassing, if that were possible, Albert's own. She blushed to think how she had once believed—how she had once actually told HIM—that one might be too strict and particular in such matters, and that one ought to be indulgent towards other people's dreadful sins. But she was no longer Lord M's ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... young natives who had accompanied us for some days undertook to find water for a couple of journeys beyond this pond. The men caught in this friendly pool several good cod-perch (Gristes peelii) a fish surpassing, in my opinion, all others in Australia. As we crossed the plains this day I observed the natives eating a plant which grew in the hollows and we found it, when ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... steps they both gave an exclamation of delight. The house, hemmed in, in front, by its trees and underbrush, overlooked from its rear windows a valley of surpassing loveliness. For miles the eye could wander over orchards full of pink-and-white peach blossoms on leafless boughs, over farm-lands and woody spaces full of floating clouds of white dogwood. Through the paneless windows ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... Bali, which is an island two-thirds the size of Porto Rico, off the eastern extremity of Java, because I wished to see for myself if the accounts I had heard of the surpassing beauty of its women were really true. The Dutch officials whom I had met in Samarinda and Makassar had depicted the obscure little isle as a flaming, fragrant garden, overrun with flowers, a sort of unspoiled ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... excited a general and lively interest in its telluric relations since the beginning of the nineteenth century. The application of delicate optical and chronometrical instruments has rendered the measurement of this horizontal power susceptible of a degree of accuracy far surpassing that attained in any other magnetic determinations. The isogonic lines are the more important in their immediate application to navigation, while we find from the most recent views that isodynamic lines, especially those which indicate the horizontal ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... sometimes comes in unexpected manner. We find ourselves neglected for some new-comer, thin of stuff, to-morrow threadbare; we, who are conscious all the time of a newness too well hidden, alas! a newness utterly unsuspected by our friend, and far surpassing the newness of the new one! Poetic justice too lamentable to dwell upon. But short of it, far short, our old friendships, with their safe traditions and lazy habits, are ever tending to become ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... merely as works of art, were so remarkable that I make no apology for describing them rather fully. They struck me also as being of surpassing interest as representing, probably with studious accuracy, the last rites of the dead as practised among an utterly lost people, and even then I thought how envious some antiquarian friends of my own at Cambridge would be if ever I found an opportunity of describing these ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... is sufficient. Look into the business, study it at your leisure, and measure the results; and then if it suit you, you can sign a deed of partnership. Then in a few years you may possess a fortune surpassing all that you have ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Might I also cavil were it to serve any purpose here. But they do us wrong and falsify our teaching; for we do not conceive of the Trinity as in the nature of three men or of three angels. We regard it as one divine essence, an intimacy surpassing any earthly unity. The human body and soul are not so completely one as the Triune God. Further, we claim the Holy Scriptures teach that in the one divine essence, God the Father begot a son. Before any creature was made, before the world was created, as Paul says, "before the foundation ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... companion by some twenty-five feet. No more appropriate or convincing wording could be given of it than by quoting Fergusson's estimate, which sums it up as being "the most beautifully designed spire in Europe, surpassing ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... Hardie seated garbling his accounts with surpassing dignity. The great man handed him an envelope, and cooked majestic on. A wave of that imperial hand, and Skinner had mingled with ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... bright band, in liveliness Surpassing, who themselves did make the crown, And us their centre: yet more sweet in voice, Than in their visage beaming. Cinctur'd thus, Sometime Latona's daughter we behold, When the impregnate air retains the thread, That weaves ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... that winsome child of a dark and rugged line, And e'en mid Europe's daughters fair, surpassing might she shine: For ne'er had coral lips been wreathed by brighter, sunnier smile, Or dark eyes beamed with lustrous light, more ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... proceeded to entertain his hearers with a relation of divers romantic adventures in which he had been from time to time engaged, involving various interesting anecdotes of a thoroughbred horse, and a magnificent Jewess, both of surpassing beauty, and much coveted by the nobility and gentry of ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... course the word "excellent" is primarily a mere synonym with "surpassing," and when applied to persons, has the general meaning given by Johnson—"the state of abounding in any good quality." But when applied to things it has always reference to the power by which they are produced. We talk ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... and examine the dowry of the princess." The sultan, arising from his throne, came down the steps of the hall, and the camels being made to kneel, he examined the panniers, and was so astonished at the richness of their contents, being jewels far surpassing his own in size and lustre, that he exclaimed, "By Allah! if the treasuries of all the sultans of the world were brought together they could not afford gems equal to these." When somewhat recovered from his surprise, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... nourishing, a stimulant to the hunger which it appeases, 'tis the matured bloom and consummation of the mild little pig, spared by foresight for a nobler fate than juvenile roasting, and brought by art and man's device to a perfection surpassing nature. All the problems of woodland cookery are best saved by the baconian method. And when we say of one escaping great disaster that he has "saved his bacon," we say that the physical basis and the quintessential comfort of his life are ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... strange visitors, lay half hidden between the lofty walls. And so our way continued; valley lay bordered on valley, and the little river which ran bubbling by the roadside led us past gardens and villages, through a region of surpassing loveliness, to the great village of Zabdeni, where we at length halted, after an uninterrupted ride of ten hours ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... a scented bath," he said, "a richly embroidered habit, a horse surpassing the Sultan's, and twenty slaves to attend me. Besides this, six slaves, beautifully dressed, to wait on my mother; and lastly, ten thousand pieces of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.

... circumstances, the only large operation possible to him was the close watching of the port of Toulon, conducted on the same general plan that was afterwards more illustriously exhibited before Brest, between 1800 and 1805, under conditions of surpassing difficulty. All contemplated movements of the French fleet were thus dammed at the source, for it must first fight the British, after which there was little hope of being in a state to fulfil any further mission. For six months, from April to October, Jervis held his fleet close ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... of this kind is the report of the procedure in the Spanish auto-da-fe of Logrono, as furnished to us by Llorente. Lancre, while quoting him jealously and longing to disparage him, owns to the surpassing charm of the festival, the splendour of the sight, the moving power of the music. On one platform were the few condemned to the flames, on another a crowd of reprieved criminals. The confession of a repentant ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... [77] pastures below, the Alban mountains, stretched between the great walls of the ancient houses, seemed close at hand—a screen of vaporous dun purple against the setting sun—with those waves of surpassing softness in the boundary lines which indicate volcanic formation. The coolness of the little brown market-place, for profit of which even the working-people, in long file through the olive-gardens, were leaving the plain for the night, was grateful, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater

... communion with him desired. 'I will,' said David, 'behave myself wisely in a perfect way; O when wilt thou come unto me?' (Psa 101:2). The pleasures that such a soul finds in God that has communion with him are surpassing all pleasures and delights, yea, infinitely surpassing them. 'In thy presence is fulness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore' (Psa 16:11). Upon this account he is called the desire of all nations—of all in all nations ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... of Kate's repeated reference to her own rebellions of taste—that he should "mind" so much how an independent lady might decorate her house. It was the language of the house itself that spoke to him, writing out for him, with surpassing breadth and freedom, the associations and conceptions, the ideals and possibilities of the mistress. Never, he flattered himself, had he seen anything so gregariously ugly—operatively, ominously so cruel. He was glad to have ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James

... astonishment that, last night, he had found that he was loved, loved, too, by this beautiful and haughty girl, who had treated the advances of the most distinguished nobles with ill-concealed scorn, and who had so presumed upon her dubious relationship to the bourgeois Minister that nothing but her own surpassing loveliness and her parent's all-engrossing influence could have excused ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... day, but missed the fisher-fleet as before. The bay on which St. Ives is situated is the most beautiful on the Cornish coast, and on the day of our visit the bright stretch of water, sleeping placidly under the June skies and dotted with glistening sails, well maintained its reputation for surpassing loveliness. Before we entered the town a man of whom we inquired the way advised us to leave our car and walk down the sharp descent to the coast, where the village mostly lies. The idea of the return trip was not ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy

... progress. The coach stopped: music, bell-ringing, and cannonading were heard; a loud acclamation rent the air, and a chorus of singularly beautiful maidens in white robes appeared at the door of the carriage, one of whom, surpassing the rest as the sun surpasses in brightness the stars of evening, stepped forward, and with graceful and modest blushes knelt before me, and presented to me on a silken cushion a wreath of laurel, olive, and rose branches, garlanded ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso

... testimony to the evil characters of Antony and Catiline. But Cicero relied more on his eloquence than on the arts of canvassing. It was at this juncture that he defended the ex-tribune Cornelius, [17] who had been accused of maiestas, with such surpassing skill as to draw forth from Quintilian a special tribute of praise. This speech is unfortunately lost. His speech in the white gown, [18] of which a few fragments are preserved by Asconius, was delivered the following year, only ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... of visitors began to find their way to the general favorite. The first was a fair young lady of surpassing beauty. She strolled pensively down the green turf, cast a hasty glance in at the workshop, and not seeing Hope, concluded he was a little tired after his journey, and had not yet arrived. She strolled slowly down then, and seated herself in a large garden chair, stuffed, that ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... cranes flew about. From the distance could be heard the sound of flutes and of stringed instruments. Crystal-clear tones rose to the clouds. A messenger in a purple robe received the guest at the gate and led him into a hall of surpassing splendor. Strange fragrances filled the air, and there was a ringing of little bells of pearl. Two maid-servants came forth to greet him, followed by two rows of beautiful girls in a long processional. After them a man in a flowing ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various

... found means to resist the same alliance, joined with England, yet was she then obliged to make such violent efforts as quite exhausted her; and it was the utmost necessity which pushed her to find resources far surpassing her own expectations. Charles was sensible, that, so long as the war continued abroad, he should never enjoy ease at home, from the impatience and importunity of his subjects; yet could he not resolve to impose a peace by openly joining himself with either ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... slovenly; and when her fingers wandered among the keys in obedience to her own impulses he was even more charmed, although the melody was usually without much meaning. She was also endowed with the rudiments of a fine voice, and would often strike notes of surpassing sweetness and power; but her tones would soon quaver and break, and she complained that it tired her to sing. That ended the matter, for anything that wearied her was not ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... to the Houndsditch ground to watch Clarence perform there appeared week after week a little, grey, dried-up man, insignificant except for a certain happy choice of language in moments of emotion and an enthusiasm far surpassing that of the ordinary spectator. To the trained eye there are subtle distinctions between football enthusiasts. This man belonged to the comparatively small class of those who have ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... of misery at Ruhleben! He who ventures to give a full narrative of the deeds done during those months, of the varying fortunes of the combatants, of the warfare waged by land and sea and in the air, would needs have a task far, far beyond him, seeing that every day has been so full of incidents of surpassing importance to the world that a mere summary of them would be an undertaking. Yet to realize the situation, as it was at the moment when Henri and his two friends clambered from the truck in which they had escaped from the heart of Germany, ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton

... Easter-ball; and 'keeps up the hospitalities of his high office.'" Not, however, that life is without its graver duties—its religious observations. Oh, no! it is the duty of well-to-do Life to punish starving men for forgetting its surpassing loveliness—it is a high obligation of Life to go to church in a carriage, and confess itself a miserable sinner—it is the duty of Life to read its bible; and then the Alderman, to show that he is well versed in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... all their cures, as ours also in Iapon, are atchieued by fasting, decoctions of herbes, and light or gentle potions. But in this behalfe let euery nation please themselues with their owne customes. Now, in fruitfulnes of soile this kingdom certes doth excel, far surpassing all other kingdoms of the East: yet it is nothing comparable vnto the plentie and abundance of Europe, as I haue declared at large in the former treatises. But the kingdom of China is, in this regard, so ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt

... of the sandy desert. Her inquiring mind was never weary of exploring the deep mysteries of science or poring over the pages of ancient lore. Music, painting and poetry seemed to form the etherial essence of her mind. She played with exquisite skill and taste, and sang with surpassing sweetness and melody. ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... from his pocket a richly cased daguerreotype, and handed it to Mr. Miller. It was a face of uncommon beauty which met Mr. Miller's eye, and he gazed enraptured on the surpassing loveliness of the picture. At last he passed it to Fanny, who was eagerly waiting for it, and then turning to Wilmot, he said, "Yes, Richard, she has the ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... had found the very woman. How, then, fathom Jenny's mood for delaying? Dr. Shrapnel's exhortations were so worded as to induce her to comport herself like a Scriptural woman, humbly wakeful to the surpassing splendour of the high fortune which had befallen her in being so selected, and obedient at a sign. But she was, it appeared that she was, a maid of scaly vision, not perceptive of the blessedness of her lot. She could have been very little perceptive, for she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... may have been preserved from the influence of times so unfavourable to it by his infirmity. Be this as it may, his works at first enjoyed a very small share of popularity. To be neglected by his contemporaries was the penalty which he paid for surpassing them. His great poem was not generally studied or admired till writers far inferior to him had, by obsequiously cringing to the public taste, acquired sufficient favour to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... amazingly complicated and startling evolutions were exhibited; and also his two daughters, who figured largely in these evolutions, and whose wonderful performances to us, who had not seen Miss Taglioni or Miss Elssler, were something quite bewildering, in fact, surpassing the natural possibilities of human beings. Their extraordinary powers were, however, accounted for by the following explanation, which was accepted in the school as entirely satisfactory. A certain little bone in the ankles of each of these young girls had been broken ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... tiresome to sailors, but considered most fortunate by Lieutenant Morris, succeeded the events just narrated. He was constantly in the society of the beautiful Julia Williams, and the impression first made upon him by her surpassing beauty rapidly deepened into a devoted love. Wholly absorbed in his passion, he cared not how long his little brig lay with flapping sails upon the water waiting for the wind. Julia was by no means indifferent to his addresses, so ardent and yet so respectful. She already ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... brave Fridthjof's worth, Heroic power surpassing all royal birth; And much was said by Thorstein, how graces cluster Round ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner

... the castle from top to bottom until he had glanced into every room and opened every door. And still he knew that there was something more to see, for nowhere had he come across the sleeping Princess. Many maidens he had seen of surpassing beauty, but his heart told him that none of them all was the maiden whom he had come ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans

... Shepherd of the People, was great on the Husbandry side also; and we are to conceive him as a man of excellent practical sense, doing unweariedly his best in that kind, all his life long. Alone among modern Kings; his late Father the one exception; and even his Father hardly surpassing ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... shall be the most unhappy of mortals. If your heart is still free—if no promise to another has passed your lips, let me urge my suit by all the tenderest, holiest, and purest, considerations. No one can love you with a fervour and devotion surpassing mine; no heart can beat responsive to your own more surely than mine; no one can cherish you in his heart of hearts, until life shall cease, more tenderly than I will cherish you. But I will write no more. Why need I? I shall count the days and ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur

... landscapes. It impressed me as peculiar, that everything appeared to rise as it gained in distance. At last the pleasure boat halted at a flight of marble steps that touched the water. Ascending these, I gained an eminence where a scene of surpassing beauty and grandeur lay spread before me. Far, far as the eye could follow it, stretched the stately splendor of a mighty city. But all the buildings were detached and surrounded by lawns and shade trees, their white marble and gray granite walls ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... surprising effects with a certain pearl-grey silken stuff of his predilection; and it must be confessed that he paints hands—which a draughtsman, of course, should understand at least twice as well other people—with surpassing expression. ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater

... vessels lie in the river Elbe, and both receive and discharge their cargoes there. Madame Pfeiffer, however, is mistaken in supposing that only London could show a picture of so many ships and so much commercial activity surpassing that of Hamburgh. Such a picture, more impressive even than that seen in the Elbe, is exhibited every day in the Mersey or ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer

... goodly matter upon the philosophy and art of locomotion, and those who are wise and have a lively faith may be admitted to great and surpassing delights if they will here and now make memorandum to buy his book, which will ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... He "was famed for his judgment and wisdom.... For nearly forty years he was the patron and protector of the nobles and distinguished of the Dekhan. He lived in the highest respect and esteem, with a magnificence and grandeur surpassing all his contemporary nobility. The sovereigns of Beejanuggur and every country observing a respect to his great abilities, frequently honoured him with letters and valuable presents. His household ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... tempt thee by gain effect? Whereas, if covetousness be found in thee, thou takest fire at the sight of gain, and art taken by the bait of this corrupt food. But if we find no covetousness in thee, the trap remains spread in vain. Or should the tempter set before thee some woman of surpassing beauty; if chastity be within, iniquity from without is overcome. Therefore, that he may not take thee with the bait of a strange woman's beauty, fight with thine own lust within; thou hast no sensible perception of thine enemy, but of thine own concupiscence ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... continually descending, along the wilderness of Destruction, through innumerable torments, eternal and not to be described—from cell to cell, from cellar to cellar, and the last always surpassing the others in horror and ghastliness; at last we arrived at a vast porch, more cheerless than any thing we had seen before. It was a very spacious porch, and the pathway through it, which was frightfully steep, led to a kind of dusky nook of incredible ugliness ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... and literal translation of this long sentence? "This exceeding trifling witling, considering ranting criticising concerning adopting fitting wording being exhibiting transcending learning, was displaying, notwithstanding ridiculing, surpassing boasting swelling reasoning, respecting correcting erring writing, and touching detecting deceiving arguing during debating." Here are not all the uses to which our writers apply the participle in ing, but there would seem to be enough, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... he leased the old manor and manor-house of the Knights-Hospitallers of Jerusalem, to whom it then belonged, for the purpose of building a palace suitable to his rank and splendor. He erected a structure so magnificent, and so far surpassing any of the royal residences, that he quite overshot his mark, and roused the jealousy of the king, who bluntly asked him what he, a priest, and a butcher's son, meant by building for himself a palace handsomer ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood

... Legionaries on the other. Between them stretched a clear green space of turf. Behind loomed the vast bulk of Nissr, scarred, battle-worn, but powerful. Away in the distance, the glinting golden walls shimmered across the plain; and over all the Arabian sun glowed down as if a-wonder at this scene surpassing strange. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... sovereignty, "with which," to use the words of a British statesman, "there is nothing on this earth that can at all compare," was crowned with surpassing glory. Doctrines which, hitherto, had been open to theological discussion, were ascertained and pronounced to be in accordance with the belief of all preceding Christian ages. The Church was enabled, through the labors of her Chief and the zeal of her Priesthood, to extend ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... the Normans became our masters, they found cathedrals, churches, and palaces which almost vied with their own; likewise sculptures, illuminated books, embroidered hangings, and vestments of surpassing beauty. ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... small piece not privately overseen, not at all not a slice, not at all crestfallen and open, not at all mounting and chaining and evenly surpassing, all the bidding ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein

... at Ghent, I went to see an English Nun initiated, where I beheld the pretty Innocent, deliver'd up a Victim to foolish Chastity; but among the Relations, then attending the Sacrifice, was a fair Sister of the young Votress, but so surpassing all I'ad seen before, that I neglecting the dull holy Business, paid my ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... into this country was the incarnata of Linnaeus, a native of Virginia, and figured by Parkinson in his Paradisus Terrestris, who there styles it the surpassing delight of all flowers: the present species, which, from its great beauty and superior hardiness, is now by far the most common, is of more modern introduction; and, though a native of the Brasils, seldom suffers ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. I - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis

... Berkeley; and, altogether, no expedition ever yielded a more solid result to the scientific naturalist, while furnishing a delightful narrative to the general reader, and laying the foundation for generalisations of surpassing importance ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... great valley, deep and long and broadening fan-like from below her to the far distance, where the evening mists were beginning to gather the white light of the moon, while the great mountains of the southeast were still red with the last blood of the dying day—a view of matchless peace and surpassing beauty, such as she had never yet seen. Just then, she looked down, and there, at her feet, were the brown roofs of Muro. Her dream seemed to be suddenly realized, and she had found the room of which she had so often made the picture in her imagination. ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... constable of Chester, raised the chief vassal of the palatinate to comital rank. None of these heirs of a divided inheritance were true successors to Randolph. With him died the last of the great Norman houses, tenacious beyond its fellows, and surpassing in its two centuries of unbroken male descent the usual duration of the medieval baronial family. Its collapse made easier the alien invasion which threatened to ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... was visible at the very outset is one of the miracles of literary art. Simplicity, swiftness, precision, all the qualities which were conspicuously absent, we will not say wanting, in the Portraits,—these are the characteristics, and that in a surpassing degree, of the Causeries. The whole arrangement, too, is different. There is no preluding, there are no intricate harmonies: the key-note is struck in the opening chord, and the theme is kept conspicuously in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... former proposition should have gained general acceptance is not surprising—indeed, at first sight, appearances are much in its favour: but, as for the second, one can only admire the surpassing courage of its enunciator, seeing that it is an innovation which is not only opposed to generally and justly accepted doctrines, but which is directly negatived by the testimony of all original inquirers, who have specially investigated the matter: and that it neither has been, nor can be, ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley

... Time FOR practicing the art, of living the art of living. Thoreau has been criticized for practicing his policy of expansion by living in a vacuum—but he peopled that vacuum with a race of beings and established a social order there, surpassing any of the precepts in social or political history. "...for he put some things behind and passed an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws were around and within him, the old laws were expanded and interpreted ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... that overlooks the city you enter the Court of Myrtles—a long pool of water with goldfish swimming to and fro, enclosed by myrtle hedges. At the ends are arcades, borne by marble columns with capitals of surpassing beauty. It is very quiet and very restful; the placid water gives an indescribable sensation of delight, and at the end mirrors the slender columns and the decorated arches so that in reflection you see ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... the present state of which it is converted to a quite contrary use; for instead of fish and flesh sold there before the Fire, are now sold fruits, roots and herbs; for which it is very considerable and much resorted unto, being of note for having the choicest in their kind of all sorts, surpassing all other markets in London." "All these things have we at London," says Shadwell, in his "Bury Fair," 1689; "the produce of the best corn-fields at Greenhithe; hay, straw, and cattle at Smithfield, with horses too. Where ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... plantation, and my slaves treated as in general they are here, never could I rest in peace; my sleep would be perpetually disturbed by a retrospect of the frauds committed in Africa, in order to entrap them; frauds surpassing in enormity everything which a common mind can possibly conceive. I should be thinking of the barbarous treatment they meet with on ship-board; of their anguish, of the despair necessarily inspired by their situation, when torn from their friends and relations; ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... who despise and repudiate the figures, phantasies, harmonies, and roulades of the fair muse of drollery, will you not pare your claws, so that you may never again scratch her white skin, all azure with veins, her amorous reins, her flanks of surpassing elegance, her feet that stay modestly in bed, her satin face, her lustrous features, her heart devoid of bitterness? Ah! wooden-heads, what will you say when you find that this merry lass springs from the heart of France, agrees with all ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... these discoveries were rich enough—from one tomb alone they took over a hundred and thirty ounces of gold—to say nothing of their surpassing archaeological interest. Still they were not what they sought: all that gathered wealth of Monomotapa which the fleeing Portuguese had brought with them and buried in this, their ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... all over the world and in critical situations in many lands, diplomatic secrets revealing crises seriously threatening European wars, and how these had been averted, alliances made and territories acquired, adventures of thrilling interest and personal episodes surpassing fiction. The company reluctantly separated when the rising sun admonished them that the night ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew

... mondaine, the Maidonovo routine would have seemed monotonous to a verge of imbecility. Ivan, ghost-haunted, found each minute of each day pregnant with its own suggestion: saw his life as a tapestry, the design of which was woven upon a background of surpassing natural beauty—the climax and gradual decrescendo of the year. He had emerged from that long period of semi-idleness in which he had been able to do no more than refine a mass of half-finished work; and was now feeling a fresh joy in a renewed and strong-flowing power; an excitement in ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... principles of English law, by giving a series of costly banquets. From the days of the Tudors to the rise of Oliver Cromwell, the Reader's feasts had been amongst the most sumptuous and ostentatious entertainments of the town—the Sergeant's feasts scarcely surpassing them in splendor, the inaugural dinners of lord mayors often lagging behind them in expense. But Heneage Finch's lavish hospitality outstripped the doings of all previous Readers. His revel was protracted throughout six days, and on each of these days he received at his table ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... weary you with more of these facts than are absolutely necessary for the understanding of this story, surpassing strange, which I judge it to be as much my duty as my privilege to write. Let us go back to the Gare du Nord, and the compartment wherein Mary and Roderick slept, while the Perfect Fool and I faced each other, surfeited with meteorological ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... Star, whose wife was O'weenee. In the Northland there were once ten sisters of surpassing beauty; nine married beautiful young husbands, but the youngest, named Oweenee, fixed her affections on Osseo, who was "old, poor and ugly," but "most beautiful within." All being invited to a feast, the nine set upon their youngest sister, taunting her ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... this as a new English variety of large size, firm, and surpassing in excellence the Walcheren. There was, however, a variety named Alma, probably the same, growing at Paris in 1857 (see Jour. Cent. Soc. Hort. France, 1857, p. 422). In 1865 Waite's Alma was considered by some to be merely the Early London, and by others to be ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier

... city of light and health. But unfortunately on the banks of the Tiber there was neither any preconcerted general plan nor any clear-seeing man, master of the situation, supported by powerful financial organisations. And the work, begun by pride, prompted by the ambition of surpassing the Rome of the Caesars and the Popes, the determination to make the eternal, predestined city the queen and centre of the world once more, was completed by speculation, one of those extraordinary gambling frenzies, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... laughed outright and were ineffectively rebuked by Miss Bird. That they were to be seen and not heard at table was a maxim she had diligently instilled into them. But they were quite right to laugh. Aunt Grace was surpassing herself. She always kept the Squire in a good humour, by her ready little jokes and the well-disguised deference she paid him. The deference was not offered to him alone, but to all men with whom she came ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... men from the chimney-corner" to look upon Nelson ere they died. The victory of Trafalgar was celebrated, indeed, with the usual forms of rejoicing, but they were without joy; for such already was the glory of the British navy, through Nelson's surpassing genius, that it scarcely seemed to receive any addition from the most signal victory that ever was achieved upon the seas; and the destruction of this mighty fleet, by which all the maritime schemes of France were totally frustrated, hardly appeared to add to our security or strength; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... became the Goddess of Mercy; thus she entered into that glad abode, surpassing all earthly kings and queens. And ever since that time, on account of her exceeding goodness, thousands of poor people breathe out to her each year their prayers for mercy. There is no fear in their gaze as they look at her beautiful image, for their eyes are ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman

... imposing towers of Fame and Victory. Throughout the state one is struck by the great number of wild pea-fowl picking their way through the stubble just as pheasants do. The flesh of pea-fowl, which I have tasted, is excellent eating, surpassing that of the pheasant. One also sees numbers of a large grey, long-tailed monkey, which seem to preferably attach themselves to old and ruined temples or tombs. From here, Chitorgarh, I next took train ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson

... severely blamed his mother for the vast sums she lavished upon her court, these complaints did not prevent him from surpassing her in extravagance. The innumerable palaces she had reared and embellished with more than oriental splendor, were not sufficient for him. Neither the Winter palace, nor the Summer palace, nor the palace of Anitschkoff, nor the Marble palace, nor the Hermitage, whose fairy-like ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... not speak—she could not; but she looked up into his face, with a sweet, modest, affectionate smile; and her dark, soft, beautiful eyes, suffused with tears, wherein a soul of love lay mirrored, gave answer, with a heart-felt eloquence surpassing words. ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett

... and more popular than the entertainments of the theatre were the various games, especially the chariot races, of the circus. But surpassing in their terrible fascination all other public amusements were the animal-baitings and the gladiatorial combats ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... that this surpassing unselfishness and love for humanity showed themselves in his renouncing the bliss of Nirvana countless ages ago, when he was born as the Brahmana Sumedha, in the time of Dipankara Buddha: he had then reached the stage where he might have entered Nirvana, had he not loved mankind ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott

... is a clock surpassing all others. I call it God's clock. It is the Sun. Since time began God's clock has kept time. It is the central clock of our universe. It regulates all others. It does not have to be wound. God has seen ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright

... inactive throughout the day, while the enemy's dead within our lines were being buried by their own men under flag of truce. On the night which followed, as the two armies lay under arms, confronting each other, a display of the aurora borealis, of surpassing splendor and beauty, was witnessed. At such times, from time immemorial, "shooting-stars", comets, and the movements of the heavenly bodies have been observed with profoundest interest as presaging good or evil. On this occasion, with the deep impress of what had just been experienced ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore

... abroad, and Buckle, Cap. Kennedy, Bird and Boden at home, whilst the great International Chess Tournament of that year witnessed the triumph of the great Anderssen, and introduced us to Szen and Kiezeritzky, then followed a lull in first class chess amongst us from 1851 to 7, succeeded by a year of surpassing interest, for 1858 welcomed the invincible Paul Morphy of New Orleans, considered by some superior even to La Bourdonnais, Staunton and Anderssen the three greatest players ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird

... saloon, at the head of which sat, well pleased, the benevolent old King Paterflor and his modest and still lovely queen Sweetbine, all were noble and accomplished and beautiful and gay; but the charms of the Princess Dewbell, just bursting into the richness of full-grown fairyhood, were so surpassing that none had ever been found to question, even in their own hearts, her supremacy. This, perhaps, may appear strange to many of my pretty readers, but they must remember that mine is a faithful chronicle of fairies—not of women. The princess was standing lightly touching—it ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... chromoscope. I can only point to the fact that the revelation of the intense beauty of the sea has in recent years fallen rather to the naturalist than the poet, the accurate and scientific prose of the former surpassing the idealization of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... true subjects of His Majesty, and then they looked skyward to see what changes the Master's witchery had wrought. In supreme intoxication of the senses, breathing that dry air which was like cool wine coming in long sips to the palate, they rode down the winding trail, till, after a surpassing outburst, the Eternal Painter dropped his brush ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer



Words linked to "Surpassing" :   superior, extraordinary, olympian



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