"High-wrought" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of impressions generally depends on preconceived ideas, I may add, that mine were taken from the vivid descriptions in the Personal Narrative of Humboldt, which far exceed in merit anything else which I have read. Yet with these high-wrought ideas, my feelings were far from partaking of a tinge of disappointment on my first and final landing ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... of Civil government ever had an enunciation so candid and heroic, so sublime and comprehensive, so ennobling to man and honoring to God? These principles were not flashes of a high-wrought imagination; they were practical. The Covenanted fathers reduced them to practice. These nations embodied them. The time was short, yet ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... scene must have been one of deepest interest and high-wrought passion. A powerful king, conspicuous for a goodness which had heretofore made him meek, and now lofty in his admonitions, with alternate entreaty and reproof, besought his friend to attend to his real interests, resolutely to avoid those fascinations ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... meeting had seemed on the point of breaking up, a colossal work had at last been accomplished, the results of which were most powerfully to affect the whole future career of the human race so long as it shall dwell upon the earth. In spite of the high-wrought intensity of feeling which had been now and then displayed, grave decorum had ruled the proceedings; and now, though few were really satisfied, the approach to unanimity was remarkable. When all was over, it is said that many of the members seemed awe-struck. Washington sat with head bowed in solemn ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... claimed for itself rightful possession of the ground which it held. There was nothing effeminate about it, as there was nothing fanatical; there was nothing extreme or foolish about it; it was a manly school, distrustful of high-wrought feelings and professions, cultivating self-command and shy of display, and setting up as its mark, in contrast to what seemed to it sentimental weakness, a reasonable and serious idea of duty. The divinity ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... This would be especially the case with a man like Professor Valeyon, who was half a dreamer, and half a practical, common-sensible individual. With Sophie, however, whose whole life was necessarily a tissue of delicate and high-wrought theories, there was no safeguard of the kind to ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... during the brief period that intervenes between the years of the thoughtless boy and those of the confirmed man: and whilst his white brow beamed with intellect, it was easy to perceive that the fire of deep feeling and high-wrought enthusiasm broke out in timid flashes from his dark eye. His modesty, too, by tempering the full lustre of his beauty, gave to it a character of that graceful diffidence, which above all others makes the deepest ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... thou fallest to arraign the times, As if the sky was impious not to fall. The sophists are no enemies of his; I hear, Gorgias, their chief, speaks nobly of him, As of his gifted master, and once friend. He is too scornful, too high-wrought, too bitter. 'Tis not the times, 'tis not the sophists vex him; There is some root of suffering in himself, Some secret and unfollow'd vein of woe, Which makes the time look black and sad to him. Pester him not in this his sombre mood With questionings ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... strangers now among them as dictated by wisdom, philanthropy and beneficence, and to stigmatize its opposite as impelled by narrow-minded selfishness and only upheld by prejudice and ignorance. The French widow who appended to the high-wrought eulogium engraved on her husband's tombstone that "His disconsolate widow still keeps the shop No 16 Rue St. Denis," had not a keener eye to business than these apostles of the Economic faith. No consideration of time or place is regarded; in festive meetings, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... seek reconcilement with offended Heaven by the loss of all the happiness that earth ever yielded—and would rejoice to pour out their heart's blood if it could wipe away from the conscience the stain of one deep transgression! These are not the high-wrought and delusive states of mind of religious enthusiasts, passing away with the bodily agitation of the dreamer; but they are the feelings of the loftiest of men's sons—and when the troubled spirit has escaped from their burden, or found strength to support it, the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... glad you cannot dance: you are on the level of too much dignity and noble behavior to condescend to such petty things. And surely you do not want to run a foot-race!" she added with an intensity of disdain which made me laugh, high-wrought and painful although my mood was. Then her lip trembled, and I saw tears in her eyes as she went on. "If you were a cripple," she pursued in a low, eager voice, "really a helpless cripple, everybody would love you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... following day that we rode into the large plain before Ciudad Rodrigo, and in which the allied armies were now assembled to the number of twelve thousand men. The loud booming of the siege artillery had been heard by me for some hours before; but notwithstanding this prelude and my own high-wrought expectations, I was far from anticipating the magnificent spectacle which burst upon my astonished view. The air was calm and still; a clear, blue, wintry sky stretched overhead, but below, the dense blue smoke of the deafening guns ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... pleasure and the will of Heaven; if any one proof, I say, were wanting, it would be easy to discover it in the natural perverse and inconsistent heart of man. A voice louder than the preacher's—the voice of daily, hourly experience—proclaims the melancholy fact, that no amount of high-wrought feeling, no loftiness of speech, no intensity of expression, is a guarantee for purity of soul and conduct, when obedience, simple, childlike obedience, has ceased to be the spring of every motion and every ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various |
