"Paragon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the ministry was concerned. He would talk in this way when there were visitors in the house and when his son was in the room. He spoke so wisely and so well that his listening guests considered him a paragon of right-mindedness. He spoke, too, with such emphasis and his rosy gills and bald head looked so benevolent that it was difficult not to be carried away by his discourse. I believe two or three heads of families in the neighbourhood gave their sons absolute liberty of choice in the ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... a public examination and exhibition, (then common at the academies throughout the State,) our teacher, that paragon of good men, Dr. Alonzo Church, selected the tragedy of Julius Caesar for representation by the larger boys, and, by common consent, the character of Brutus was assigned to Lamar. Every one felt that the lofty patriotism and heroic virtues of the old Roman would find a fit representative ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... that, though I have said quite enough about myself and a certain groom, I have not said quite enough about my wife and daughter, I will add a little more about them. Of my wife I will merely say that she is a perfect paragon of wives—can make puddings and sweets and treacle posset, and is the best woman of business in Eastern Anglia—of my step-daughter—for such she is, though I generally call her daughter, and with good ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... sexton had taken the landlady aside, and with an air of profound importance imparted to her my errand. Dame Honeyball was a likely, plump, bustling little woman, and no bad substitute for that paragon of hostesses, Dame Quickly. She seemed delighted with an opportunity to oblige, and, hurrying upstairs to the archives of her house, where the precious vessels of the parish club were deposited, she returned, smiling and courtesying, with ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... Hartmann drily. "That's why I keep my mouth shut when he holds you up to me as a paragon of zeal and industry and asks me why I don't pattern myself after you. But, for all that, you're taking chances when you talk to me about him as ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... your shoes, and such a pearl and prize and paragon as Lynette Mildare had consented to marry me, I should want the whole world to envy me my colossal good luck. I should go about in sandwich-boards advertising it. I should buy a megaphone, and proclaim ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... Adela, Adela Chart, What have you done to my elderly heart? Of all the ladies of paper and ink I count you the paragon, call you the pink. The word of your brother depicts you in part: "You raving maniac!" Adela Chart; But in all the asylums that cumber the ground, So delightful a maniac was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... American telephone girl is that she has become so highly efficient that we now expect her to be a paragon of perfection. To give the young lady her due, we must acknowledge that she has done more than any other person to introduce courtesy into the business world. She has done most to abolish the old-time roughness and vulgarity. She has made big business to run more smoothly than little business ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... is the product of a paragon among timepieces, a most superior instrument, of unimpeachable construction and great cost. But it has one invincible peculiarity, the despair of the best consulting experts who have been called in to remedy it and, one and all, have failed for reasons which ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the free atmosphere, the grander Judaism he had yearned for. The town which boasted of the far-famed Moses Mendelssohn, of the paragon of wisdom and tolerance, was as petty as the Rabbi-ridden villages whose dust he had shaken off. A fierce anger against the Jews and this Mendelssohn shook him. This then was all he had gained by leaving his wife and children that he might follow ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... my shoulder, the gentleman was sure to hop off. My favourite mare, Pearl, the pretty docile creature which draws my little phaeton, has such a talent for leaping, that she is no sooner turned out in either of our meadows, than she disappears. And Dash himself, paragon of spaniels, pet of pets, beauty of beauties, has only one shade of imperfection—would be thoroughly faultless, if it were not for a slight tendency to run away. He is regularly lost four or five times every winter, and has been oftener cried through the ...
— The Lost Dahlia • Mary Russell Mitford
... the slave was a man. "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action{339} how like an angel! In apprehension how like a God! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!" ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... grows the mystery around my birth; and if knight errants yet live, rescuing maids, or he is a wandering god, and here is Arcadia, why should that make me grieve? It is true that he is handsome—and yet what of that?—most men are handsome in the eyes of maids. But he appears the paragon of men. Is he indeed not all a man should be? Where were the blemish, the exception; who shall challenge nature, saying, in his form, that here she has given too little, there too much?—Ah, me! I am not happy, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... paragon; they all are, mother. I'll be ready in half an hour. Let's go and get it done. We can come home early, ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... coast. He it was that had extended to us the ghost of a chance. He who so recently had been but one of forty in the groom's luxurious employ; a polisher of brass, a holy-stoner of decks, a wage-earning paragon who was not permitted to think, was now a thinker and a strategist, a wage-taker from no man, and the obvious master of ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... too, and thought himself a paragon of patience and easy good nature for so doing. A Roman Catholic clergyman, in a long black frock, with a low standing collar, and a little white muslin fillet round his neck—tall, sallow, with blue chin, and dark steady eyes—used to glide up and down the stairs, and through the passages; and ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... were wild over the new operatic star; for her talent, beauty, and fascination made her a paragon of attraction, and her capricious whims and coquetries riveted the chains in which she held her admirers. Catarina, however she may have felt pleased at lordly tributes of devotion, and willing to accept substantial proofs of their sincerity, lavished her friendship for the most part on her ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... blushing, and will gaze at you with assurance. She will begin to blame your least actions because they are at variance with her ideas, or her secret intentions. She will take no care of what pertains to you, she will not even know whether you have all you need. You are no longer her paragon. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... traditions of Elizabeth to the age of Victoria. It would not be possible to present a complete picture of Gordon's mother, and therefore none will be attempted here; but all the available evidence agrees in describing her as a paragon of women, and as having exercised an exceptional influence over her children. Gordon himself bore the most expressive testimony to her virtues and memory when, long years afterwards, he closed an exordium on the filial affection due to ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... said, her cousin was really only a big cadet in lieutenant's uniform. And she could not even love a cadet, to saying nothing of marrying one. Then she spoke of Innstetten, who suddenly became for her a paragon of ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... Mr. McElroy," she glared at him with straightening lips, "that I misunderstood you to say George Washington was not a paragon ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... "A positive paragon, my dear! Don't I know it? A pity he saw fit to throw himself away upon that very lethargic young woman! I should have made him a much more suitable wife—if he had only had the sense to wait a few years instead of snatching the first dark-eyed ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Hohenheim—effusions of 'gratitude', as it is called. The gratitude purports to come, in one of the poems, from the ecole des demoiselles, which Franziska had founded as a feminine pendant to the academy. Schiller's verses, truth to tell, sound like rank fustian. The duke's mistress is glorified as a paragon of virtue. 'Her sweet name flies high on the wings of glory, her very glance promises immortality. Her life is the loveliest harmony, irradiated by a thousand virtuous deeds.' And so on. As poetic spokesman of the girls he pours out those 'Elysian feelings' which he supposes them to cherish ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... years, the succession of carefully selected governesses since, the lessons, the food, the dentist, the doctors, the clothes, the amusements,—all had been scrupulously, almost religiously, provided according to the best modern theories. Nothing had been left to chance. Marian should be a paragon, physically and morally. Yet, her mother had to confess, the child bored her,—was a wooden doll! In the scientifically sterilized atmosphere in which she had lived, no vicious germ had been allowed to fasten ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... company of their father, while the latter, as we have seen, share the dull fate of the mother. The first thing a male child is taught is love, deep respect, and obedience to his governor, and in this he is, as a general rule, a paragon. If the father be ill, he will lie by his side day and night, nursing him, and giving him courage; and if any misfortune befalls him, the duty of a good son is to share it ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... Cross by the 5.40 p.m. train, reaching their destination a little before eleven. There they took rooms at the George, a quiet hotel in Baker Street, close to the Paragon Station. ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... in life: curious to see all sides of it. She's often asked me, but to-night, when she wired to say she'd a paragon coming to dinner, ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... comes, the Royal Bride! O loveliest Rose! our paragon and pride— Choice of the Prince whom England holds so dear— What homage shall we pay To one who has no peer? What can the bard or wildered minstrel say More than the peasant who on bended knee Breathes from his heart an earnest prayer for thee? Words are ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... man, the champion against the Evil One, the saint who walked with God, and daily lifted up his voice in prayer and defiance and thanksgiving—he was ever at hand, to cross-question, to insinuate, to surmise, to bluster, to interpret, to terrify, to perplex, to vociferate: surely, this paragon of learning and virtue must know more about the devil than any mere layman could pretend to know; and they must accept his assurance and guidance. "I stake my reputation," he shouted, "upon the truth of these accusations." And he pointedly prayed that ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... and affect you, even as I also am affected by him whose fair face here attracts me, (21) I swear by all the company of heaven I would not choose the great king's empire in exchange for what I am—the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals. (22) And at this instant I feast my eyes on Cleinias (23) gladlier than on all other sights which men deem fair. Joyfully will I welcome blindness to all else, if but these eyes may still behold him and him only. With sleep and night I am sore vexed, which rob me of his sight; but ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... tired man bent down and kissed his mother. "Mummy, I'm not God Almighty. But I'll do my damdest for anything you want. Show me the paragon." ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... courtly Fauquier, Small took his young friend Jefferson. Fauquier was often a master of the revels, but after his seasons of dissipation he turned to Small for absolution and comfort. At these times he seemed to Jefferson a paragon of excellence. To the grace of the French he added the earnestness of the English. He quoted Pope, and talked of Swift, Addison and Thomson. Fauquier and Jefferson became friends, although more than a score of years and a world of experience separated them. Jefferson ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... entered the employ of Stephen Steel, the New York banker. He is a man whom the people of the city and the country at large look upon as a paragon. His words are constantly quoted in the papers; his advice is sought ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... handsome build, noble, 27 years of age, desires a financial marriage. Please address, Count v. W. I., Post Office General Delivery, Dresden." In comparison with the fellow who makes so cynical an offer, the street-walker, who, out of bitter necessity, plies her trade, is a paragon of decency and virtue. Similar advertisements are found almost every day in the papers of all political parties—except the Social Democratic. A Social Democratic editor or manager, who would accept such or similar advertisements for his paper, would be expelled ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... I say, a careless answer, and turning upon her heel; and not coming to me at my first word, I flung a book which I had in my hand, at her head. And, this fine lady of your's, this paragon of meekness and humility, in so many words, bids me, or, which is worse, tells my own daughter to bid me, never to take a book into my hands again, if I won't make a better use of it:—and yet, what better use can an offended father make of the best books, than to correct ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... on the action of the Disposals Board in disposing of the accumulations at Slough, St. Omer and elsewhere was decidedly lively. Mr. HOPE led off by attacking the recent report of the Committee on National Expenditure, and declared that its Chairman, though a paragon of truth, was not necessarily a mirror of accuracy. The Chairman himself (Sir F. BANBURY), seated for the nonce upon the Opposition Bench, replied with appropriate vigour in a speech which caused Sir GORDON HEWART to remark ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... cup to one made up of loveliness alone; A woman, of her gentle sex the seeming paragon, To whom the better elements and kindly stars have given A form so fair, that, like the air, 'tis ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... the incomparable fair one of Hamburg, that prodigy of beauty, and paragon of good sense, who has enslaved your mind, and inflamed your heart. If she is as well 'etrennee' as you say she shall, you will be soon out of her chains; for I have, by long experience, found women to be like Telephus's spear, if one end ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... been expected of thee, my paragon of wisdom! Well, never mind. I'll tell her she was her aunt. That ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... is perverse," interrupted the duke. "She would raise a storm were the Dauphin a paragon of manliness. He is a poor, mean wretch, whom she may easily rule. His weakness will be her advantage. She is strong enough, God knows, and wilful enough to face down the devil himself. If there is a perverse wench on all the earth, who will always have her own way by hook or by crook, it ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... all overlooked what the author considers a very important object; namely, a systematick order of parsing."—Grammar, p. 9. And, in his "Hints to Teachers," presenting himself as a model, and his book as a paragon, he says: "By pursuing this system, he can, with less labour, advance a pupil farther in the practical knowledge of this abstruse science, in two months, than he could in one year, when he taught in the old way."—Grammar, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... so that, to his father's great joy, he recognised that it was his imperative duty to seek the hand of such a paragon of wisdom and learning. And I am empowered by him to prepare you for his arrival in the course of a day or two, in the character of the Princess Royal's suitor. So you see," she concluded, "I haven't been at Clairdelune all this time ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... rather prejudiced, Bertie. You're such a convinced Londoner yourself that you think every one who lives in the country must be a paragon of virtue, just as people who live in the country suppose their London friends to be given up to wickedness and frivolity. Lots of people have a very good time ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... except for a short automobile drive that afternoon the girls should rest and keep themselves fresh for dinner-time, when she expected the arrival of her paragon of a nephew. ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... into high-flown common-place of the most undisguised stamp, rendered, moreover, doubly inexcusable and out of place by being put into the mouth of one of the personages of the poem; It is Sir Reginald Mohun that speaks; and truly, though not thrust forward as a "wondrous paragon of praise," he must ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... himself being shown a photograph under a lamp. It represented an unsymmetrical face singularly void of expression, the upper part of an "art" dress, and a fringe of curls. He perceived he was being given to understand that this was a Paragon of Purity, and that she was the particular property of Parkson. Parkson was regarding him proudly, and ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... I said, with a kindly air of banter, "that the sight of Lilla Monti more than compensates you for that portion of the Neapolitan carnival which you lose by being here. But why you should wish me to behold this paragon of maidens I know not, unless you would have me regret my own ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... of the weather, and, when at rest, will stand up in dock and shift from berth to berth without ballast. There is a point of perfection in a ship as a worker when she is spoken of as being able to SAIL without ballast. I have never met that sort of paragon myself, but I have seen these paragons advertised amongst ships for sale. Such excess of virtue and good-nature on the part of a ship always provoked my mistrust. It is open to any man to say that his ship will sail without ballast; and he will say it, too, with every mark of profound ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... deity. All heroes, versed in holy lore, To all mankind great love they bore. Fair stores of wisdom all possessed, With princely graces all were blest. But mid those youths of high descent, With lordly light preeminent, Like the full moon unclouded shone Rama, the world's dear paragon. He best the elephant could guide, Urge the fleet car, the charger ride— A master he of bowman's skill, Joying to do his father's will. The world's delight and darling, he Loved Lakshman best from infancy; And Lakshman, lord of lofty fate, Upon his elder joyed to wait, Striving ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... daughter. If the father consents, he informs her, and if she consents, the suitor sends his affianced presents of clothes and jewelry, which remain in her hands as a pledge of his fidelity. She is pictured to him as the paragon of beauty and excellence, but he is never allowed to see her, speak to her, or write to her, should she know how to write. His mother or aunt may see her or bring reports, but he does not see her until the wedding contract is signed and the bride is ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... This paragon of valleys burst upon us as such scenes, to be witnessed with advantage, ought to do, without the slightest warning or expectation. The road by which we approached it, being completely shut in with wood, and winding considerably to aid the descent, brought us out nearly at the gorge of the ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... The paragon continued to progress in her studies. Also she continued, more and more, to take an interest in the housework and the affairs of her adopted uncles and Isaiah Chase. Little by little changes came ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... knight, for how can I tell who see not mine own eyes, and would therefore know of thee, of whom men say, some that thou speakest truly, other some that thou speakest naughtily. But be the truth as it may, every knight yet saith to his own mistress that in all things she is the paragon of the world." ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... more than suspected; and as the policy of depriving those friendly tribes of the means of defense was represented by the Boers as proof positive of the wish of the English that they should be subjugated, the conduct of a government which these tribes always thought the paragon of justice and friendship was rendered totally incomprehensible to them; they could neither defend themselves against their enemies, nor shoot the animals in the produce of which we wished them ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... human race was at stake, entered the breast of the leader of the more numerous party. He was aware, that if the ranks were thinned, no other recruits could fill them up; that each man was as a priceless gem in a kingly crown, which if destroyed, the earth's deep entrails could yield no paragon. He was a young man, and had been hurried on by presumption, and the notion of his high rank and superiority to all other pretenders; now he repented his work, he felt that all the blood about to be shed would be on his head; with sudden impulse therefore ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... was a vacation for a week. Nicholas expected to spend this with his mother, but for some reason Mrs. Kent gave him no invitation. Probably she thought that Nicholas, though a paragon in her eyes, was not likely to win favor in the eyes of Mr. Kent. His rough, brutal disposition would have repelled the sick man, who had become gentle ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... the paragon earnestly, "I'm quite sure there's no danger of that, don't you know? I believe there are no natives at all on the island, or else quite tame ones, I forget which, and here are four of us chaps, with no ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... lady—offended her by seeming to devote himself to another (see the poem in the Vita Nuova, beginning "Ballata io vo")—rendered himself the sport of her and her young friends by his adoring timidity (see the 5th and 6th sonnets in the same work)—in short, constituted her a paragon of perfection, and enabled her, by so doing, to shew that she was none. He says, that finding himself unexpectedly near her one day in company, he trembled so, and underwent such change of countenance, that many of the ladies present began to laugh with her about him—"si ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... communion. These certificates, or tickets of peace, were understood to entitle the parties in whose favour they were drawn up to be admitted forthwith to the Lord's Supper. But it sometimes happened that a confessor or a martyr was himself far from a paragon of excellence, [630:1] as mere obstinacy, or pride, or self-righteousness, may occasionally hold out as firmly as a higher principle; and a man may give his body to be burned who does not possess one atom of the grace of Christian charity. There were confessors and martyrs in the third century ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... curtain'd room, Where mournful glimmers of the mellow sun Lie dreaming on the walls! Dim-eyed and sad, And dumb with agony, two parents bend O'er a pale image, in the coffin laid,— Their infant once, the laughing, leaping boy, The paragon and nursling of their souls! Death touch'd him, and the life-glow fled away, Swift as a gay hour's fancy; fresh and cold As winter's shadow, with his eye-lids seal'd, Like violet-lips at eve, he lies enrobed An offering to the grave! but, pure as when It wing'd from heaven, his spirit hath ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... perfection; perfectness &c adj.; indefectibility^; impeccancy^, impeccability. pink, beau ideal, phenix, paragon; pink of perfection, acme of perfection; ne plus ultra [Lat.]; summit &c 210. cygne noir [Fr.]; philosopher's stone; chrysolite, Koh-i-noor. model, standard, pattern, mirror, admirable Crichton; trump, very prince of. masterpiece, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... were waiting for the heart of our paragon to reveal itself, life in Queen Street was diversified, in the Fall of 1773, by an ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... remember that once Mr. Fox was idolized by him as the paragon of political excellence; and Mr. Pitt depressed in ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... doubt the blissful ignorance of your great moralist. I incline to believe that the better you play any game—life amongst the rest—the higher the pleasure it yields. I can afford to marry, without believing my husband to be a paragon—could you ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Youghal, who was wrapped up in her servants, began talking at houses where she called of her paragon among saises—the man who was never too busy to get up in the morning and pick flowers for the breakfast-table, and who blacked—actually BLACKED—the hoofs of his horse like a London coachman! The turnout of Miss Youghal's Arab was a wonder and a delight. Strickland— Dulloo, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... hath of nose: Be her forehead and her eyes Full of incongruities: Be her cheeks so shallow too As to show her tongue wag through; Be her lips ill hung or set, And her grinders black as jet: Has she thin hair, hath she none, She's to me a paragon. ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... husband's death, or whether her extreme affection prevented her from refusing her only child anything she wished, the results were disastrous. It was fortunate for Balzac that he did not live to see the fate of this paragon, for this would have grieved him deeply, while he probably would not have been ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... chivalrous soldier, though a stern disciplinarian— an excellent husband—a persecuted and injured brother—a neglected son— the munificent patron of literary, educational and charitable institutions—a patriotic Prince—in short, a model of a man and a paragon of every virtue. But was he all that? we hear you say. No doubt of it. Have you not a clergyman's word for it—his biographer's? The Rev. Erskine Neale will tell you what His Royal Highness did at Kensington Palace, or Castlebar Hill. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... book, akin to the Characters of Theophrastus, on deportment for a Greek citizen. No wonder that successive generations of English undergraduates have failed to respond to the human excellence or social charm, of his hero or paragon, described as 'the big-souled' or 'magnificent man'. Similarly the Politics is a book in which it needs a trained reader, already familiar with Greek life, to pick out the universal from the particular and draw his ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... name of all that's forbearing, be considerate of my weak nerves! You, too, Beauchamp. Well, she must have been a paragon to make the conquest of two of the most inveterate bachelors in all Paris! But where is this marvel of excellence—pardon me, Beauchamp," perceiving that the journalist looked yet more grave, and seemed in no mood for bantering or being bantered—"where ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... stood stock still, and Jill frowned, for she was not a paragon of patience at any time, and the obstinacy of the man fretted her ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... home in April or May, and Mrs. Reynolds wonders will she flirt as she used to do. Just as if Bob would care for a widow. There is more danger from Will, who thinks Mrs. Grandon a perfect paragon, and who is very anxious that Katy may appear well before her, saying nothing and doing nothing which shall in any way approximate to Silverton and the shoes which Katy told Esther she used to bind when a girl. ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... an aptitude for family pedigrees will now understand that Reginald, Master of Hoppet Hall, was first cousin to the father of the Foreign Office paragon, and that he is therefore the paragon's first cousin once removed. The relationship is not very distant, but the two men, one of whom was a dozen years older than the other, had not seen each other for more than twenty years,—at a time when one of them was a big boy, and the other ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... at the advent of such a paragon, and horrified at Edith's choice of a name, Bruce had replied at once by ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... he'll see!— Eyes like the lakes of Killarney for clarity, Nose that turns up without any vulgarity, Smile like a cherub, and hair that is carroty,— Wow, you're a rarity, Barney McGee! Mellow as Tarragon, Prouder than Aragon— Hardly a paragon, You will agree— Here's all that's fine to you! Books and old wine to you! Girls be divine to you, ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... your enchantment broken, the knights discomfited, the dragon killed, the drawbridge broken down, and the ladies free—all without your help; and then, when you have gone forth, and in lieu of some rescued paragon of her sex, you have met but the squire's daughter, in her trim bonnet, tripping with her trumpery to set up her fancy-shop in Vanity-Fair, for fops to stare at through their glasses, your imagination has felt ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... manner. Her distress was the town talk; nevertheless, the fleet arrived in the autumn, and brought the youthful Maria to the provinces. This young lady, if the faithful historiographer of the Farnese house is to be credited, was the paragon of princesses. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the only two that had ever, apart from metropolitan conquests, not to be recited, touched his emotions. Susceptible to beauty, he had never seen so beautiful a girl as Constantia Durham. Equally susceptible to admiration of himself, he considered Laetitia Dale a paragon of cleverness. He stood between the queenly rose and the modest violet. One he bowed to; the other bowed to him. He could not have both; it is the law governing princes and pedestrians alike. But which could he forfeit? ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Miss Baker was going to spend the evening with an old friend. I trust that Miss Todd, umquhile of the valley of Jehoshaphat, and now of No. 7 Paragon, Littlebath, has not been forgotten; Miss Todd of the free heart ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... be recognized from the beginning that the work is slow; if it is forced on too fast either a breaking point comes and the child, too much teased into perfection, turns in reaction and becomes self-willed and rebellious; or if, unhappily, the forcing process succeeds, a little paragon is produced ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... welfare. For (as I heare say) suche your conditions are, That ye be worthie fauour of no liuing man, To be abhorred of euery honest man. To be taken for a woman enclined to vice. Nothing at all to Vertue gyuing hir due price. Whersore concerning mariage, ye are thought Suche a fine Paragon, as nere honest man bought. And nowe by these presentes I do you aduertise That I am minded to marrie you in no wise. For your goodes and substance, I coulde bee content To take you as ye are. If ye mynde to bee my wyfe, Ye shall be assured for the ...
— Roister Doister - Written, probably also represented, before 1553. Carefully - edited from the unique copy, now at Eton College • Nicholas Udall
... grateful appreciation of one to whom shillings and franc pieces come as the gifts of God. Many were the attempts to draw him into a conversation, but where the queries could not be answered by a laconic "Yes, sir," or "No, sir," this paragon of waiters maintained ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... marked a superiority over their own country. When the hero was once created and firmly established in his position, there was little difficulty in inventing a story about him which would portray him as a paragon and an ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... oaths that he would not release her from any part of her engagement with him, that he would give her no loophole of escape from him, that he intended to hold her so firmly that if she divided herself from him, she should be accounted among women a paragon of falseness. He was ready, he said, to marry her to-morrow. That was his wish, his idea of what would be best for both of them; and after that, if not to-morrow, then on the next day, and so on till the day should ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... thus commenced grew rapidly; though it encountered temporary interruptions. Earnshaw was not to be civilized with a wish, and my young lady was no philosopher, and no paragon of patience; but both their minds tending to the same point—one loving and desiring to esteem, and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed—they contrived in the end ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... working for my advantage, and paving the road to my promotion. The story had got abroad, and was in every one's mouth. I was looked upon as a paragon ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... North (my edition, pp. 118-22), where the crane becomes "a great Paragone of India (of those that live a hundredth yeares and never mue their feathers)." The crab, on hearing the ill news "called to Parliament all the Fishes of the Lake," and before all are devoured destroys the Paragon, as in the Jataka, and returned to the remaining fishes, who "all with one consent gave hir many ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... known her forty year or more. She was the widow Wasselby, and then She married Oliver, and Bishop next. She's had three husbands. I remember well My games of shovel-board at Bishop's tavern In the old merry days, and she so gay With her red paragon bodice and her ribbons! Ah, Bridget Bishop always ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... harsh treatment of him, he lay down naked on the frozen surface of the lake. The warmth of his body melted a hole in the ice, at which two carp came up to breathe. These he caught and set before his stepmother. Another paragon, though of tender years and having a delicate skin, insisted on sleeping uncovered at night, in order that the mosquitoes should fasten on him alone, and allow ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... Theo, what a pearl and paragon of a man my Castalio is; my Chamont, my—oh, dear me, child, what a pity it is that in your husband's tragedy he should have to take the horrid name ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... produce, as a rule, the large chestnuts of the market and are known under various names. Some are scions of named varieties and I will mention some of the more prominent. The first and best known, perhaps, is the Paragon chestnut. This is susceptible to the disease and takes it in almost as violent a form as does the American, and so it is with the Ridgely, a nut which originated near Dover, Delaware. The Dager and the Scott also take the disease, and so do many of the so-called ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... A paragon of all graciousness, A blossoming branch of youthfulness, A looking-glass to the world around, A stainless and priceless diamond, Of gallant 'haviour a beautiful wreath, A home when the tyrant menaceth, A buckler to the breast of his friend, And courteous without measure or ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... Panama and the Chagres River, had been through three fires in San Francisco and was ready for any change. He joined with a number of acquaintances on one of these ventures, acting as secretary of the company. They purchased the "Paragon," a Gloucester fishing-boat of 125 tons burden, and early in March, under the command of Captain March, with forty-two men in the party, sailed north. They hugged the coast and kept a careful lookout for a harbor, but passed the present Humboldt Bay in rather calm weather and in the daytime without ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... his broad chest, cried again and again, with rapturous delight, "A paragon of a woman!" and Seitz Siebenburg, in bitter disappointment, whispered, "The fourteen saintly helpers in time of need might learn from you how to draw from the clamps what is not worth rescue and probably despaired of escape," she was trying to give time to recover more ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... possibly more durable. This stabbed Charmian's pride. Of course her near-thoroughbred Maid, carrying the blood of "old" Lexington, Morella, and a streak of the super-enduring Morgan, could run, walk, and work my unregistered Outlaw into the ground; and that was the very precise reason why such a paragon of a saddle animal should ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... self-revelation, which brings out the pathos of the writer's position, while at the same time showing quite clearly the defects that explained it. Mr. LUCAS, in short, does not commit the error of making his hero merely a mute, misunderstood paragon, whom anyone with common penetration must have recognised as such. On the contrary, we sympathise with him, especially in the big tragedy of his life, while quite admitting that to any casual acquaintance he must have appeared only a dull and uninteresting egoist. This I call clever, because ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... ancient Tuscans, hung together like bobbins, without a hand to weave with them; therefore easily overcome by the Romans, though at that time, for number, a far less considerable people. If your liberty be not a root that grows, it will be a branch that withers, which consideration brings me to the paragon, the Commonwealth of Rome. ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... lady of illustrious race: Haste on an embassy to her, My kind white-bosomed messenger— Upon the waves thy course begin, And then at Cemaes take to shore; And there through all the land explore, For the bright maid of Talyllyn, The lady fair as the moon's flame, And call her "Paragon" by name; The chamber of the beauty seek, And mount with footsteps slow and meek; Salute her, and to her reveal The cares and agonies I feel— And in return bring to my ear Message of hope, my heart to cheer! Oh, may no danger hover near (Bird of majestic head) thy flight! ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... his head, and a word or two corroborative of the officer's estimate of the weather, Doctor James continued his somewhat rapid progress. Three times that night had a patrolman accepted his professional card and the sight of his paragon of a medicine case as vouchers for his honesty of person and purpose. Had any one of those officers seen fit, on the morrow, to test the evidence of that card he would have found it borne out by the doctor's name on ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry |
