"To the highest degree" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... countenance bore considerable resemblance to that of a man. There was something in his face that sent a shiver through the soul of the beholder. One could feel in looking upon it that here was intellect, intelligence developed to the highest degree, but in the direction ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... rapidly increasing—the people everywhere struggling against the encroachments of the crown. From all parts of the kingdom the cry arose for the assembling of the States-General. The Duke of Orleans, maddened by his banishment, and exasperated to the highest degree against Maria Antoinette, whom he considered as the author of his exile, was intensely engaged in plotting measures of revenge. During his banishment he won the affections of the peasantry by the kindly interest he ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... out for Rome the day after I was arrested, found Pope Innocent incensed to the highest degree, and ready to throw his thunder upon the heads of the authors of it. He spoke of it to the French Ambassador with great resentment, and sent the Archbishop of Avignon, with the title of Nuncio Extraordinary, on purpose to solicit my release. The King was in a fury, and forebade the Nuncio to pass ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... poems included under the heading Battle (1914-15). These verses afford one more bit of evidence that in order to write unconventional thoughts, it is not necessary to use unconventional forms. The ideas expressed here can be found in no other war-poet; they are idiosyncratic to the highest degree; yet the verse-forms in which they are written are stanzaic, as traditional as the most conservative critic could desire. There is, of course, no reason why any poet should not compose in new and strange rhythms if he prefers to do so; but I have never believed that originality in ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... loyal assent, she continued rapidly: "And he's just rolling in wealth! and educated, papa says, to the highest degree!" ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... fix, and was so, in truth, until the day on which Ben Brace thrashed the French bully; but from that time forward my condition was sensibly better. I felt grateful, therefore, to my protector, but another incident occurred shortly after, that not only increased my gratitude to the highest degree possible, but seemed also to make the man's friendship for me still stronger ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... accompanies it from the fact of failure in lessons, and a naturally good and well-organized nervous system is sure to fail. Worry, from whatever cause, should be avoided as one would avoid poison, if we would bring ourselves to the highest degree of efficiency. Not only does worry temporarily unfit the mind for its best work, but its evil results are permanent, since the mind is left with a poorly developed or undone nervous system through which to work, ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... could boast of a Superior Woman, long misprized indeed, but now, about 1836, enjoying a pretty extensive local reputation. This, too, was the period at which two Sancerrois in Paris were attaining, each in his own line, to the highest degree of glory for one, and of fashion for the other. Etienne Lousteau, a writer in reviews, signed his name to contributions to a paper that had eight thousand subscribers; and Bianchon, already chief physician to a hospital, Officer of the Legion of Honor, and ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... youth and such the man—gay, debonair, and popular to the highest degree, but always uncontrollable and reckless. As a sportsman he was the chief of popular heroes, his appearance on a race-course being the invariable signal for an ovation, such as the King might have envied. And, indeed, his Turf transactions were all conducted on a scale ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... Of the favourite subject of my reflections I shall speak in the next chapter. The scene where I indulged in them was, for preference, the maidservants' room, where a plot suitable for a novel was in progress—a plot which touched and engrossed me to the highest degree. The heroine of the romance was, of course, Masha. She was in love with Basil, who had known her before she had become a servant in our house, and who had promised to marry her some day. Unfortunately, fate, which had separated them five years ago, ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... influence Christianity has raised the once savage tribes of Europe to the highest degree of culture, and made them leaders and rulers of the world; but Hinduism has so weakened and humbled the once conquering Aryans that they have long been an easy prey to every invading race. Christianity shows in its sacred Book a manifest progress from lower to higher moral standards—from ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... felt that so important a railway center as Rheims should not have been a strongly fortified place. It had been so once, though the fortifications were old-fashioned. But, instead of bringing these points of natural defense up to the highest degree of modern efficiency, the French had dismantled them entirely, so as to make Rheims with its glorious cathedral an open town, safe from bombardment. It was, according to the rules of war, safe from bombardment, but only in the event of its not being defended. General ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... capability in a greater or smaller degree in different bodies, makes them better or worse conductors, worse or better insulators; and both induction and conduction appear to be the same in their principle and action (1320.), except that in the latter an effect common to both is raised to the highest degree, whereas in the former it occurs in the best cases, in only ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... that if more speed was not exhibited on this down grade, he would be forced to resort to extreme measures. At the mention of a whip, the tall male mule who led the team dashed gallantly off, and the diligence was soon enveloped in a cloud of dust. This seemed to excite our gay charioteer to the highest degree. He screamed lustily at his mules, addressing each personally by its name. "Andaluza, arre! Thou of Arragon, go! Beware the scourge, Manchega!" and every animal acknowledged the special attention by shaking its ears and bells ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... recently passed through a Presidential contest in which the passions of our fellow-citizens were excited to the highest degree by questions of deep and vital importance; but when the people proclaimed their will the tempest at once ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... The War Department decided to attempt a change in the bore of the Enfield so that it would use Springfield cartridges, and to make other minor simplifications and improvements. The experiment proved successful to the highest degree. The modified Enfields were reported to be only slightly inferior to the Springfields and by the end of December, 1917, five thousand a day were being turned out. Altogether American manufactories produced during the war about two and a half million rifles, ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... churches and halls, its quarries of marble, and its treasure-houses of gold, the imperial founder must himself have learned, that although he could employ all these rich materials in obedience to his own wish, it was the mind of man itself, those intellectual faculties refined by the ancients to the highest degree, which had produced the specimens of talent at which men paused and wondered, whether as subjects of art or of moral labour. The power of the Emperor might indeed strip other cities of their statues and their shrines, in order to decorate that which he had fixed upon as his new capital; but ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... sexes together, and so to maintain the species, have been evolved in the males into means for exciting the female. And we can hardly doubt, that the females are most readily enticed to yield to the butterfly that sends out the strongest fragrance,—that is to say, that excites them to the highest degree. It is a pity that our organs of smell are not fine enough to examine the fragrance of male Lepidoptera in general, and to compare it with other perfumes which attract these insects. (See Poulton, "Essays on Evolution", 1908, pages 316, 317.) As far as we can perceive them they resemble the ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... moment or two, looked at his friend with glistening eyes, but said not a word. For the first two and a half drills Cameron exerted to the highest degree his conversational powers with the two-fold purpose of holding back Perkins and Webster and also of so occupying Tim's mind that he might forget for a time the approaching conflict, the strain of waiting for which he knew would be exhausting for the lad. But when the middle of the second last ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... another style of crossing which when practicable, may, it is believed, be made a means to the highest degree of improvement attainable, and especially in the breeding of horses. The word "breed" is often used with varying signification. In order to be understood, let me premise that I use it here simply to designate a class of animals possessing ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... for use without caulking. As the platting soon rots in the water, it is renewed at least once a-year; in order to which, the vessel is taken entirely to pieces. The head and stern are rude with respect to the design; but very neatly finished, and polished to the highest degree. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... flashes of lightning took various forms. Some darted down perpendicularly from the sky five or six times in the same place in succession. Others would have excited the interest of a SAVANT to the highest degree, for though Arago, in his curious statistics, only cites two examples of forked lightning, it was visible here hundreds of times. Some of the flashes branched out in a thousand different directions, making ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... the good man is the godly man. And as is wisdom, so its opposite, folly, is not only intellectual feebleness—the bad man is a fool, and the godless is a bad man. The greatest amount of brain-power cultivated to the highest degree does not make a man wise, and about many a student and thinker God ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... L3000 his minimum of needful return—to live in the insane style which his wife and he demanded, an enormous nervous strain was required. Edward Bulwer-Lytton's temper had always been warm and eager; it now grew irritable to the highest degree. His mother continued to exasperate him; his wife suddenly failed to please him; his health waned; and he became the most miserable of men; yet without ceasing for a moment to be the most indefatigable of authors. The reader will follow the evolution of the tragedy, which is of poignant ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... quantities at Shiraz. It is pretty and effective, though some of the illustrations on the backs of mirrors, etc., are hardly fit for a drawing-room table. Caligraphy, or the art of writing, is also carried by the Shirazis to the highest degree of perfection, and they are said to be the best penmen in the East. To write really well is considered as great an accomplishment in Persia as to be a successful musician, painter, or sculptor in Europe; and a famous writer of the last century, living in Shiraz, was paid as much as ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... of this tendency to modification are found in Pueblo art. Much of the ornament applied to pottery is derived from the sister art, basketry. In the latter art the forms of decorative figures are geometric and symmetrical to the highest degree, as I have frequently pointed out. The rays of a radiating ornament, worked with the texture of a shallow basket, spring from the center and take uniform directions toward the margin, as shown in Fig. 485. But when a similar idea ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes
... Francisco retired to Manila. With that the village was completely abandoned and no more thought was expended on its rebuilding. Such harm do dissensions cause, when, because there is no strength to attack them, they increase to the highest degree ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... Manners were corrupted to the highest degree; there was neither public nor private virtue; intrigue, cabal, and ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... valueless. Occasionally this arises from an entire bouleversement of the veracious sense—similar to certain perversions of the insane mind, and then other faculties of his nature are liable to share in the alteration. If the man was previously to the highest degree merciful and sympathizing, he may become stolid to human suffering as any infant who laughs at its mother's funeral, not from wickedness of disposition but absence of the faculty which appreciates woe, and I doubt not that this change goes ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... de Hautefort, de Sable, de Longueville, de Chevreuse, etc.—were exceedingly talented talkers, they were poor writers: but in Mme. de Sevigne, Mme. de La Fayette, and Mlle. de Scudery both arts were developed to the highest degree. ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... Colvill tells me, from Oxford, that the King in person hath justified my Lord Sandwich to the highest degree; and is right in his favour to ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... raised to the highest degree, when I beheld the sudden effects of that poison, for in about five minutes after they were lanced, they were taken with a tremor, attended with a subsultus tendinum, after which they died in the greatest agonies, crying out to God and ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... carried on board the schooner; but the rest of the men were left on board the brig to work her, so that I hope that their lives may have been preserved. She was a privateer out of Saint Malo. Your determined attempt to escape excited their anger to the highest degree; and at the very moment that the vessel was struck by lightning, from the effects of which she foundered, they were swearing vengeance against you, wherever you might be. Their terrific shrieks and cries, as one ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... keen and sharp, but perfectly calm, and I felt myself awakened to the highest degree, almost as if my senses were volatilised by the still and ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... real dangers and Hardships they underwent, or that the real ones did not happen often enough to give the mind sufficient anxiety. Thus Posterity are taught to look upon these Voyages as hazardous to the highest degree." ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... Continually in danger, they were never without their muskets in their hands, and they and their descendants became an athletic, powerful, and bulky race, courageous, and skilled in the use of fire-arms, but at the same time cruel and avaricious to the highest degree. The absolute power they possessed over the slaves and Hottentots demoralised them, and made them tyrannical and bloodthirsty. At too great a distance from the seat of government for its power to reach them, they defied it, and knew no law but their own imperious wills, acknowledging ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... told, she was very gentle. Her gestures, with the expression of her countenance, and the sound of her voice, produced the most perfect music. But her peculiar charm consisted in a graceful ease—a languor, as all her contemporaries expressed it—which would quickly change to the highest degree of animation when stirred by emotion, but which usually gave her an air of indolence and aristocratic nonchalance, sometimes mistaken for ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the metropolis of a people who carry the art of agriculture to the highest degree of efficiency, a people frugal, industrious, and of domestic virtue. We have seen with gratification that you are becoming also the metropolis of a people capable of winning from your mountains the inexhaustible wealth they contain, the metropolis of ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... heads ornamented with wheat ears, interwoven with the hair. Embroidering is the occupation of the Grecian women; to the Greeks we owe this art, which is exceedingly ancient among them, and has been carried to the highest degree of perfection. Enter the chamber of a Grecian girl, and you will see blinds at the window, and no other furniture than a sofa, and a chest inlaid with ivory, in which are kept silk, needles, and articles for embroidery. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... day, this of my coronation, odd to pass through, to the highest degree illuminating in retrospect. I did not live to bastinado Krak; nor would I now had I the power. What they did was perhaps a little cruel, a little Styrian, as Victoria and I used covertly to say of such harsh measures; but how valuable a lesson on ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... finished type, the representative par excellence of this class of men. He had their intellectual and moral qualities carried to the highest degree of superiority. But he underwent evolution after 1871, and his caste with him, under ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was anything but amiable. She could brook no opposition to her will, and she was piqued to the highest degree that Marguerite did not break forth with the wildest terms of extravagant congratulation. But it matters not. Marguerite is not a hypocrite. She pities from the bottom of her heart the woman who will wed an unprincipled man ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... efficiency, a high degree of skill and intelligence is required. Nor are skill and intelligence alone applicable to labor-saving devices themselves, because drilling and blasting rock and executing other works underground are matters in which experience and judgment in the individual workman count to the highest degree. ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... of the strangers given by his Grand Chamberlain inflamed the curiosity of Selim to the highest degree, and the next morning early he seated himself on his throne in the great audience-chamber of his palace, and commanded that the two strangers should be brought ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... born, having generally to defend themselves from hardship and poverty, and being forced in consequence to undertake any sort of work, however mean, are not able to exercise their intellect, or to attain to the highest degree of excellence. Wherefore it was well said by the learned Alciato—when speaking of men of beautiful genius, born in poverty, who are not able to raise themselves, because, in proportion as they are impelled upwards by ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... them to the edge of the water, and they were seen to take the track over which Leon had just passed. They were following by the scent—sometimes pausing—sometimes one passing the other—and their waving tails and quick energetic movements showed that they were furious and excited to the highest degree. Now they disappeared behind the palm-trunks, and the next moment their shining bodies shot out again like ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... were alone) for his not having received a due reward for his services. His lordship enraged at his presumption, and giving way to his passion, reprimanded him very severely for his insolence; for which the villain being now wrought up to the highest degree of fury, took an opportunity to stab him with his dagger through the back into the vitals, of which wound he instantly died, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... to the highest degree over Florine's loss. Florine only told her about it yesterday; she seemed to lay the blame of it on you, and was so vexed, that she was ready ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... stranger relapsed into silence, broken only by sobs. The other, who had been listening attentively, inferred from what he had heard that the speaker was a woman. The curiosity he had before felt was now excited to the highest degree: he was several times on the point of approaching the lady's bed; and he would have done so at last, but just then he heard her open the door, call to the landlord, and bid him saddle the nag, for she wanted to go. It was a pretty long time before ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... documents contained in her archives. The Republic maintained ambassadors and residents at every Court. These men were among the most subtle and accomplished diplomatists of their time, and the government they served was exacting and critical to the highest degree. The result is that the dispatches, newsletters and reports of the Venetian diplomatic agents, form the most varied, brilliant, and singular gallery of portraits, whether of persons or of peoples, that exists. There is hardly a nation in Europe that will not find its ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... presently brought up to the highest degree of polish, and our garments cleansed of every disfiguring speck, we paid a few sous apiece and turned out again into the streets. Happily, we had not far to go. A short cut brought us into the midst of the Rue de Faubourg St. ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... cotton crop in and around these stockades. There are thousands who know how this soil has been ensanguined and enriched. I had frequently walked over these grounds, and seen evidences of what is both too indelicate and too horrible to be described. I confess that my indignation was roused to the highest degree. I sat down immediately and wrote a statement of these facts to Hon. J. M. Ashley, and begged him to call on General Grant, and see if there was any power in the Government to prevent ...
— A Letter to Hon. Charles Sumner, with 'Statements' of Outrages upon Freedmen in Georgia • Hamilton Wilcox Pierson
... inveighing against the licentiousness of the secular clergy, and the interested spirit of his partisans, in bestowing such eulogies on his piety, than the usual tenour of his conduct, which was licentious to the highest degree, and violated every law, human and divine. Yet those very monks who, as we are told by Ingulf, a very ancient historian, had no idea of any moral or religious merit, except chastity and obedience, not only connived at his enormities, but loaded him with the greatest praises. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... reading a book, or lying in bed, or driving away in a hansom, or walking about Heaven alone knew where or why. Even Mrs. Leadbatter, whose experience of life was wider than Mary Ann's, considered his vagaries almost unchristian, though to the highest degree gentlemanly. Sometimes, too, he sported the swallow-tail and the starched breast-plate, which was a wonder to Mary Ann, who knew that waiters were connected only with the most stylish establishments. Baker's Terrace did not wear ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... his position on the rail when his brother the major came up the gangway steps, which had been put over for him. As the latter went up, he could not help seeing him; and his astonishment evidently mounted to the highest degree, as manifested in his expression. The owner and the commander stood near the rail, to give the visitor a ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... consider the example set by the government as most injurious: as I shall hereafter prove, it is insatiable in its ambition, regardless of its faith, and corrupt to the highest degree. This example I consider as the first cause of the demoralisation of the Americans. The errors incident to the voluntary system of religion are the second: the power of the clergy is destroyed, and ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... develop to the highest degree, it naturally follows that the patient wastes away to a ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... she would look back on it as a temple of comfort, civilization, and civility, and this place is the last attempt at social habitation for 200 and odd miles. It stands on a lake of its own, with an Indian name, "which no man can speak and no man can spell." It is colonial to the highest degree, and inhabited by all denominations, chiefly agreed in worshipping us as priests of the G. O. and S. Line, which is to make their fortune; and for their manners, least said soonest mended, though there are some happy exceptions, French Canadian, Lowland Scots, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the highest degree, and leave the mass wholly uncultivated, as you did, made the gap between them almost like that between different natural species, which have no means of communication. What could be more inhuman than this consequence of a partial enjoyment of education! Its universal ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy |
