"Greatness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... afore God, your honors, pardon me: Men of your place and greatness are to blame. I tell ye true, my lords, in that his majesty Is not informed of this base abuse And daily wrongs are offered to his subjects; For, if he were, I know his gracious wisdom Would ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... naivete of the inquiry, 'Muse of my native land, am I inspired?' The faculty of the very greatest among the great lies in the existence of this inrush of emotion, in strict subordination to the intellectual powers. To be without it precludes greatness; to be wholly subject to its influence is to be insane. Miss Corelli experiences the inrush of emotion in great force, but, unfortunately for her work, and for herself, the sense of power which it inspires is not co-ordinate ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... it would be delightful to linger, is well described by Miss Meteyard in words which might be precisely applied to Charles Darwin, as "patient, stedfast, humble, simple, unconscious of half his own greatness, and yet by this very simplicity, patience, and stedfastness displaying the high quality of his moral and intellectual characteristics, even whilst insuring that each step was in the right direction, and firmly planted." A truly experimental genius in artistic manufacture, Wedgwood ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... other culture by the elastic power of the thought of God as One who was free from the control of nature. The Jews have a patriotism in common with the Romans. The Maccabees, for example, were not inferior to the Romans in greatness. ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... budget for the year on the 15th of April; and in doing so he congratulated the house upon the prosperous state of the finances. He regarded the increase of revenue as progressive, and spoke with triumph of the growing greatness of England. Like Dundas, he spoke of the continuance of peace as certain; and he concluded his speech with an encomium upon the British constitution, to which, under Providence, the prosperity ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... was a very great sight!" said Dolly. "I wish you had been along. I think it has given me the best notion of the greatness of England that I have got ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... its head in the senate." Its chief, the Grand-Master, unique of his species, less restricted, with freer hands than the ministers themselves, is to be one of the principal personages of the empire; his greatness will exalt the condition and feeling of his subordinates. In the provinces, on every festive occasion or at every public ceremony, people will take pride in seeing their rector or principal in official costume seated alongside of the general or ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and the clank of chains might be heard breaking through the walls of this charnel-house. These narrow confines were filled with living beings-beings with souls, souls sold according to the privileges of a free and happy country,—a country that fills us with admiration of its greatness. It is here, O man, the tyrant sways his hand most! it is here the flesh and blood of the same Maker, in chains of death, yearns ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... and the world was most receptive of its teaching; hence it spread itself far and wide, and at the same time reached its greatest spiritual intensity. Hillel and Philo show the splendid expansion of the Hebrew mind. In the history of most races national greatness and national genius appear together. The two grandest expressions of Jewish genius immediately preceded the national downfall. For the genius of Judaism is religious, and temporal power is not one of ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... out into darkness. This, he says, is the burden of the mystery which Wordsworth felt and endeavoured to explore; and he thinks that Wordsworth is deeper than Milton, though he attributes this, justly, more to 'the general and gregarious advance of intellect, than individual greatness of mind.' So far as spontaneity and the free unguarded play of sportive and serious ideas, taken as they came uppermost, are tests and conditions of excellence in this kind of writing, Keats's letters must rank high. Nevertheless ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... surprise to you to know that there is a book entitled The Thirteenth, the Greatest of Centuries by Dr. James J. Walsh, in its fifth edition with a sale of 70,000 copies. He indeed is not the only man of letters who signalizes that century for its greatness. To confine the quotations to two writers well known in our day, I find that Fiske in his Beginnings of New England says of the thirteenth century: "It was a wonderful time but after all less memorable as the culmination of medieval empire and medieval church than as the dawning ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... is a right good book and a right true biography.... There is a very fine sense of Hugh Miller's greatness as a man and a Scotsman; there is also a fine choice of language in ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... looking into his eyes and pondering every light and shadow of the severe young face that to her seemed so imperially unlike all others. "He's great," she said in her heart. "And he loves with his greatness. Loves even his father that way; not as I love mine or love anybody, or ever shall or can, or could wish to, unless I were a man and as great as him—he. I never could have dreamt of any one loving ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... Satisfied and filled to begin with, we have the SATISFIER, the FILLER, with us and in us. When He says, "Whom shall We send and who will go for Us?" He means to send us on no lonely errand, but on one which will give to Him a better opportunity of revealing Himself, and to us of "finding out the greatness of His loving heart." Who will not answer Him, "Here am I, send me;" or, "Here are ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... part of Gulliver is only a consequence of what has gone before; and the worthlessness of all mankind, the pettiness, cruelty, pride, imbecility, the general vanity, the foolish pretension, the mock greatness, the pompous dullness, the mean aims, the base successes—all these were present to him; it was with the din of these curses of the world, blasphemies against Heaven, shrieking in his ears, that he began to write his dreadful allegory—of which the meaning is that man is utterly wicked, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... up before me, Friend; and I'm damnably hungry; 'tis strange how a man's Appetite increases with his Greatness; I'll swinge it away now I'm a Lord,—then I will wench without Mercy; I'm resolv'd to spare neither Man, Woman, nor Child, not I; hey, Rogues, Rascals, Boys, my Breakfast, quickly, Dogs—let me see, what shall ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... great deal of care and attention. As he gradually advanced in the years of his boyhood, it was observed by all who knew him that he was endued with extraordinary qualities of mind and of character, which seemed to indicate, at a very early age, his future greatness. ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the many nations, Honor from the scattered people, Honor much had King Nimaera. King Nimaera on his throne sat In his ancient power and greatness, In his modern pomp and splendor, With adornments full about him, With musicians ever by him, With advisers sitting round him, Till he needed of their wisdom; They were counted by the thousands, By the hundreds and the thousands. Sage-like was this King Nimaera; Furrowed was ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... sentimental storm swept down upon him, before an evening's tea-table talk in Massachusetts became a tornado of iron in Virginia. When ragged and heart-sore he returned from the army, from as brave a fight as man ever engaged in, he sat down to dream over his vanished greatness. But his dream was short. He went to work, not to re-establish his former condition of ease—for that hope was beyond him—but to make a ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... half-unconscious moan Of one apart and mateless, The weariness of unshared power, The loneliness of greatness? ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the cause of his grief, and how he lost his horn. To which question the river-god replied as follows: "Who likes to tell of his defeats? Yet I will not hesitate to relate mine, comforting myself with the thought of the greatness of my conqueror, for it was Hercules. Perhaps you have heard of the fame of Dejanira, the fairest of maidens, whom a host of suitors strove to win. Hercules and myself were of the number, and the rest yielded ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... easy man, I looked around me, and said that full surely my greatness was a-ripening. Who thinks of winter and its frosts in the glow of such a summer as ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... waters were gathered in heaps on either side; things, she thought, could not be better, or worse. God was with her still, and her children—her dear children—were with her still, but she could not disguise the greatness of the loss. Her single wish, as far as she dared have a wish, had been to benefit Robert and to win his confidence. She had seen his mind working in various directions, and although she was not, in the faintest sense, his fit companion ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... "forgive me, if I have other thoughts than hate and vengeance for that house which builds its greatness over her slandered name?" He groaned:—and that grave had ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... in Mr. Torrington's hands. That would be a big moment. He could imagine Cranbourne's unbridled enthusiasm, Lord Almont's congratulations in the style of P. G. Wodehouse, and Cassis, that person of dry ashes and parchment, unbending to the greatness of the occasion. He, Barraclough, was a made man, every newspaper in the country would send its reporters to clamour at his doors, every charity seek his aid when the story and the magnitude of his find became known. From an ordinary ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... or train, or by the more primitive method of stage-coach or afoot, he travels until he joins the surging crowd that swarms in the streets. He feels himself thrilling with the consciousness that he is moving toward success and possibly greatness. He does not stop to think that hundreds of those who seek their fortune in the city have failed, and have found themselves far worse off than the contented folk back in the home village. The newcomer establishes himself in a boarding-house ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... meant to be represented as possessing some estimable qualities, the expression of the Duke in his anxiety to have him reconciled, almost infers: "Pursue him, and intreat him to a peace." Even in his abused state of chains and darkness, a sort of greatness seems never to desert him. He argues highly and well with the supposed Sir Topas,[4] and philosophizes gallantly upon his straw. There must have been some shadow of worth about the man; he must have been something more than a mere vapour—a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... commercial Republic which monopolized the carrying trade of the old world? It never seems to have occurred to Livy that the political organization of Carthage could be worth his notice. His business was to glorify Rome, and to tell how Rome grew to greatness—grew by war and conquest and pillage, and the ferocious might of her relentless soldiery. The 'Germania' of Tacitus stands alone—unique in ancient literature; but what would we not give for such a monograph upon the Britain which Caesar ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... Missourians. And from his earliest years Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior, had been trained to believe in the importance of the Magsworth family. At every meal he absorbed a sense of Magsworth greatness, and yet, in his infrequent meetings with persons of his own age and sex, he was treated as negligible. Now, dimly, he perceived that there was a Magsworth claim of some sort which was impressive, even to boys. Magsworth blood was the essential of ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... how slippery places all courtiers stand in Bewailing the vanity and disorders of the age Charles Barkeley's greatness is only his being pimp to the King Fanatiques do say that the end of the world is at hand Goldsmiths in supplying the King with money at dear rates He made but a poor sermon, but long Joyne the lion's skin to the fox's tail Lady Castlemaine's interest at ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... had again broken out, and England was making every effort to renew the struggle with the numerous foes which her prosperity and greatness had won for her. A difficulty existed then, as now, in manning the navy, and the pressgangs were always hard at work endeavouring to secure by force or stratagem the necessary crew for ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... advise or argue. She was not called upon to decide or to plead. The situation was far beyond that. But she was worn out with watching the passionate conflict within the man who was both so desperately reckless and so rigidly restrained in the very ardour of his heart and the greatness of his soul. It was a spectacle that made her forget the actual questions at issue. This was no stage play; and yet she had caught herself looking at him with bated breath as at a great actor on a darkened ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... frighten the living? No, Smith, I do not. It is an insult to the greatness of nature and ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... to her aunt, I had so arranged matters that I was certain of being alone with her all the time my friend was engaged. Thereupon I began to cover her pretty face with kisses, and as I allowed myself no other liberties she received my caresses as a proof of the greatness of my love and the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... rejected by the Moderns with much indignation, who still insisted upon one of the two expedients; and so this difference broke out into a long and obstinate war, maintained on the one part by resolution, and by the courage of certain leaders and allies; but, on the other, by the greatness of their number, upon all defeats affording continual recruits. In this quarrel whole rivulets of ink have been exhausted, and the virulence of both parties enormously augmented. Now, it must be here understood, that ink ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... has expressed himself in a way to facilitate, if not to invite, such a mistake. Emerson, it is said, was the most important writer of this century, yet was not a great writer. How should this be, unless, indeed, the century as a whole is inferior, and prominence in it is no token of greatness? In truth, Mr. Arnold has used the term 'writer' in two widely different senses. In the one use it refers to the content of the writing, to its intellectual and moral import, its spiritual significance; in the ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... bending, which is succeeded by a shout of loud applause. Here drops the curtain on the first great act of this great drama, in which Bourbon gives freedom. His courtiers seem to feel what he seems to be insensible of, the pang of greatness ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... advantage of his back to give way to her own feelings of utter amazement and incredulity. She certainly was not dreaming. And the man gazing out at the window was certainly flesh and blood—a great man, if voluble and eccentric. Perhaps to act and speak as one pleased was one of the signs of greatness, one of its perquisites. Was he amusing himself with her? Was he perchance taken with her physically and employing these extraordinary methods as ways of approach? She had seen many peculiarities of sex-approach ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... India Company were greatly alarmed, but found means to calm his resentment, by promising to search for the robbers, and deliver them into his hands. The noise which this made over all Europe, gave birth to the rumors that were circulated concerning Avery's greatness. ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... observers seemed to be vanity. He probably thought it important, at the commencement of a new era in the relations between the two great kingdoms of the West, to hold high the dignity of the Crown which he wore. He well knew, indeed, that the greatness of a prince does not depend on piles of silver bowls and chargers, trains of gilded coaches, and multitudes of running footmen in brocade, and led horses in velvet housings. But he knew also that the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... terrible as you think," she said. "Many men who have risen and taken a high place in the world were married to kind, good women unable to share their greatness. There was Shakespeare, you know, who married Anne Hathaway and had a clever daughter. She was just a nice, homely body a few years older than himself. And he seems to have been very fond of her; and was always running down to Stratford to ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... idea it would have seemed to him that a passing stranger might remember him and his fire three months afterward, and think them worth talking about in print! But then, as was long ago said, it is the fate of some men to have greatness ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... strength, he defeated all antagonists at boxing, but Burton mastered him with the foil and the broad-sword. Richards, who, like Burton, became a voluminous author [47] wrote long after, "I am sure, though Burton was brilliant, rather wild, and very popular, none of us foresaw his future greatness." ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... New Mexican valley of the Chaco, one degree or more north of Zuni, are ruins of what some suppose to have been the famous "Seven Cities of Cevola." In 1540, Spanish cupidity having been strongly incited by tales of the greatness and vast wealth of Cevola, Coronado, then governor of New Galicia, set out with an army to conquer and rob its cities. The report in which he tells the story of this conquest and of his disappointment is still in existence. The Cevolans defended themselves with arrows and spears, and hurled stones ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... the Princess Victoria, and says: 'The calm full look of her eyes affected me. Those eyes were very blue, serene, still, looking at you with a tranquil breadth of expression which, somehow, conveyed to your mind a feeling of unquestioned power and greatness, quite poetical in its serious simplicity.' While on a visit to Malvern she climbed walls and trees, and rode on a donkey. One day she had climbed an apple tree, and could not get down till relieved by the gardener, ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... century. The scene is laid at Amsterdam, which is captured by a ruse like that of the Greeks at Troy. The play appealed strongly to the patriotic instincts of the Dutch by its prophecy of the future greatness of Amsterdam. Vondel's 'Lucifer' (1654) has been often compared to 'Paradise Lost'. It also bears some affinities to 'Cain'. In it the Archangel Lucifer rebels against God on learning the Divine intention to take on Himself the nature, not of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... a waste of time to point out that ancient distinction,—between mere change and improvement. Yet there is a class of mind that is prone to confuse them. We have had political leaders whose conception of greatness was to be forever frantically doing something,—it mattered little what; restless, vociferous men, without sense of the energy of concentration, knowing only the energy of succession. Now, life does not consist ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... said Daniel, "it is thou, O king, that art grown and become strong; for thy greatness is grown and reacheth unto heaven, and thy dominion to the end of ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... Revolution,—and as always happens when the object is to cast stones at the people and arouse horror against them—have enormously exaggerated these to the end of all the more readily extenuating the shameful transgressions of the ruling class. As a rule, these historians have belittled the heroism and greatness of soul, displayed also by many women in both camps. So long as the vanquishers remain the historians of the vanquished, it ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... pass over a variety of "loud" costumes, more or less uncouth, in the midst of which might here and there be seen some authentic relics of royalty or greatness, dragged by the revolution of time from palaces and noble halls, to figure on the ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... chorus of those to come whose lives were to be made safe because these had died. As if the flag would waft back to the Homeland, and the stricken mothers and fathers, sisters and sweethearts, some idea of the greatness of the cause in which they died to comfort them in ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... and my Rest, those graces ought to have been enough which Thou hadst given me hitherto, seeing that Thy compassion and greatness had drawn me through so many windings to a state so secure, to a house where there are so many servants of God, from whom I might learn how I may advance in Thy service. I know not how to go on, when I call to mind the circumstances ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... of friends, like kings in progress, are Still in their own, though from the palace far: Thus her friend's heart her country dwelling was A sweet retirement to a coarser place; 260 Where pomp and ceremonies enter'd not, Where greatness was shut ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... are vulgar and unwise, it does seem to be a fact that while the English fool is generally a shy and negative fool anxious to hide the fact, the American fool is a loud and positive fool, who swamps much of the greatness of his country to many a casual observer from Europe altogether. American books, American papers, American manners and customs seem all for the ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... O what a greatness she makes ours? her past is all our own, And such a past as she can boast, and brothers, she alone; Her mighty ones the night of time triumphant shining through, Of them our sons shall proudly say, "They were our fathers too;" For us her living glory shines that has through ages ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... religiously cultivated and zealously defended by the Wittenberg Philippists. With a good deal of animosity they emphasized that the Gospel in its most proper sense is also a preaching of repentance (praedicatio poenitentiae, Busspredigt), inasmuch as it revealed the baseness of sin and the greatness of its offense against God, and, in particular, inasmuch as the Gospel alone uncovered, rebuked, and condemned the hidden sin (arcanum peccatum) and the chief sin of all, the sin of unbelief (incredulitas et neglectio Filii), which alone condemns a man. These ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... should be realized, and it should be found to empty itself into the ocean, on the north-west coast, which is the only part of this vast island that has not been accurately surveyed, in what mighty conceptions of the future greatness and power of this colony, may we not reasonably indulge? The nearest distance from the point at which Mr. Oxley left off, to any part of the western coast, is very little short of two thousand miles. If this river, therefore, be already of the size of ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... and the roof corrugated iron. Besides the bed, washhand-stand, and a chair or two, there was a chest of drawers which had belonged to her mother, and in which was found all that was needed for the last service. Her greatness was never in her surroundings, for she paid little attention to these, but in the hidden life which we caught glimpses of now and then when she forgot herself and revealed what was in her mind with regard ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... do not always appear to accumulate the elements of greatness to such a degree that there is an increasing and almost irresistible impetus of force and genius. Successive generations are not necessarily born to a richer dower of mind and morals. Too often it would seem that the great qualities that in the ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... the Ghost in a performance of his own "Hamlet" and the part of old Adam in "As You Like It." These very brief glimpses into his life as an actor are the more unsatisfactory because he remained a player long after he had achieved greatness as a playwright. When he left the boards it was to return to Stratford-on-Avon and live the retired life. It may be taken for granted, then, that his talents as an actor were not in any way extraordinary, or those who witnessed his rising fame as a dramatist would have left some record ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... survivors of a race doomed—doomed from the day that Roggewein in his clumsy, high-pooped frigate first saw their land, and marvelled at the imperishable relics of a dead greatness. With smiling faces they welcomed him—a stranger from an unknown, outside world, with cutlass at waist and pistol in hand—as a god; he left them a legacy of civilisation—a hideous and cruel disease that swept through the amiable and unsuspicious race as an epidemic, and slew its thousands, ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... Austrian Empire, Italy dreams of bringing within her political and commercial sphere of influence a considerable portion of the Balkan Peninsula, from which she is separated by only forty-seven miles of salt water. But that is only the beginning of her vision of commercial greatness. Look at the map and you will see that with its continuation, the island of Sicily, Italy forms a great wharf which reaches out into the Mediterranean, nearly to the shores of Africa. Her peculiarly fortunate ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... excepting Beethoven alone from the list of "uninteresting" composers preceding Chopin, he implicitly condemns Mozart; but he does not dare to do so explicitly, although such a confession would not have affected Mozart's greatness in other departments of music, which is undeniable. Indeed, if Professor Ehlert had been perfectly sincere I am not quite sure that he would have excepted Beethoven's sonatas. Although they teem with great and beautiful ideas, ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... coating of ice, that the buffaloes dare trust themselves upon it. When it is new-fallen and soft they flounder about helplessly until they die of starvation, and the wolves pull them down, or the Indians come and kill them. But the old bull had the privilege which belongs to greatness, of not being obliged to answer impertinent things that were said to him. He went on just as if nothing had interrupted, telling how the buffalo trails had found the mountain passes and how they were rutted deep into the earth by ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... of a great organization animated from the lowest worker to the President by so lively and extraordinarily human a spirit of loyalty that each worker finds delight in improving on instructions, one must admit that it has the elements of greatness in it. ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... Sleepiness, he is propos'd as the most exquisite Pattern of Heroic Writing, by the Greatest of Philosophers, and the Best of Judges. Nor is Longinus behind hand with Aristotle in his Character of the same Author, when he tells us that the Greatness of Homer's Soul look'd above little Trifles (which are Faults in meaner Capacities) and hurry'd on to his Subject with a Freedom of Spirit peculiar to himself. A Racer at New-market or the Downs, which has been fed and drest, and with the nicest Caution prepared for the Course, will stumble ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... have been engaged upon a work of indescribable greatness. I do not know yet whether I shall carry it through. It has assumed the aspect of some mighty dream. But days and weeks have passed since it has filled me utterly, it has overflown into my unconscious self, it accompanies me wherever I go, it broods above all my commonplace conversation, it peeps ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... pricked deeply to his heartstrings and thrilled him to a tempest of pity and love. He yearned to do deeds of valor, violent, grandiose feats which would redound to her credit and make the name of Irishmen synonymous with either greatness or singularity: for, as yet, the distinction between these words was no more clear to him than it is to any other young man who reads violence as heroism and eccentricity as genius. Of England he spoke with something ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... pastoral people, whose fanaticism had suddenly made them masters of half of the world, having once founded their empire, immediately set themselves to acquire that knowledge of the sciences which alone was lacking to their greatness. Of all the invaders who competed for the last remains of the Roman Empire they alone pursued such studies; while the Germanic hordes, glorying in their brutality and ignorance, took a thousand years to re-unite ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... HISS'D: or, a Word to the Wise, giving an Account of the Rise, Progress, Greatness, and Downfal of Mr Pillage, ... with the dreadful Consequence and Catastrophe of ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... is singular among the great works with which it ranks, for its strong stamp of personal character and history. In general we associate little more than the name—not the life—of a great poet with his works; personal interest belongs more usually to greatness in its active than its creative forms. But the whole idea and purpose of the Commedia, as well as its filling up and coloring, are determined by Dante's peculiar history. The loftiest, perhaps, in its aim and flight ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... at the verge of that catastrophe which closes for ever the singular greatness of Anglia. Charles brought learning to France by drawing from Anglia and from Italy the best plants for his new field; he inherited the civilising labours of the Saxon missionaries in his dominions beyond the Rhine; he founded a centre of power and a centre of education ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... know why it is that women are so ready to take up with any chance stranger who comes along, when they cannot see the true greatness of their own nearest and dearest. Mabel pronounces Hartman a perfect gentleman and a safe companion for me; as if it were I, not he, that needed looking after. Jane seems to regard him as the rock which withstands ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... was performed, and to Osborne and his successor Wake, was only rendered possible by the constant aid of Sir George Carteret. Most of all, however, did that energetic officer enrich himself, laying in fact the foundation of that greatness which afterwards culminated in his descendant, the famous Lord Granville, the rival of Walpole. He obtained from Charles a grant of Crown lands, including the escheated manor of Meleches. And he further appropriated to his own use the revenues of his personal enemies, the chief of whom were ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... that of mere cousinship to Jesus; and that their own names will be remembered only because John was their son. Only God sees in the boy playing on the seashore, and in the fisherman of Gennesaret, the true greatness and honor into which He will ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... small spot, not less than fifty fathom in depth; that on that spot there was thirty fathom, though not above half a mile from the shore; and that the bank was steep, and could not be depended on: They farther told us, that they had landed on the island, but with some difficulty, on account of the greatness of the swell; that they found the ground was every where covered with a kind of cane, or rush; but that they met with no water, and did not believe the place to be inhabited; though the soil was good, and abounded with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... world's weakness? Thus the immediate child of the hero, he whose blood is certain, who bears the image of the father in his face, who has listened to his counsels, and may be supposed to have derived, at least, some portion of his greatness from the nearness of his origin, is less a prince than he who has imbibed the current through a hundred vulgar streams, and, were truth but known, may have no natural claim at all upon the much-prized blood! This comes of artfully leading the mind to prejudices, and of a ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... Leidensgeschichte to the end of the Forty Days. Taking the word "passion" in the strict sense, I have commenced at the point where, by falling into the hands of His enemies, our Lord was deprived of voluntary activity; and I have finished with the Burial. No doubt the same unique greatness belongs to the scenes of the previous evening; and I should like to write of Christ among His Friends as I have here written of Him among His Foes; but for this purpose a volume at least as large as the present one would be requisite; and the ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... of the continent in being independent is a point as clearly right as the former. America, by her own internal industry, and unknown to all the powers of Europe, was, at the beginning of the dispute, arrived at a pitch of greatness, trade and population, beyond which it was the interest of Britain not to suffer her to pass, lest she should grow too powerful to be kept subordinate. She began to view this country with the same uneasy malicious eye, with which a covetous guardian would view his ward, whose ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... of conquerors, And when like semi-gods they have been drawn In ivory chariots to the Capitol, Circled about with wonder of all eyes, The shouts of every tongue, love of all hearts, Being swoln with their own greatness, I have pricked The bladder of their pride, and made them die As water-bubbles (without memory): Whilst the true-spirited soldier stands by Bareheaded, and all bare, whilst at his scars They scoff, that ne'er durst view the face of wars. I set an idiot's cap on virtue's head, Turn learning out of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... epitomist of Church History has a task of no ordinary greatness.... He must combine the rich faculties of condensation and analysis, of judgment in the selection of materials, and calmness in the expression of opinions, with that most excellent gift of faith, so especially precious to Church historians, which implies a love for the Catholic cause, a reverence ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... done decently and in order. We set off together; and on the way Suddhoo told me that he had paid the seal-cutter between one hundred and two hundred rupees already; and the jadoo of that night would cost two hundred more. Which was cheap, he said, considering the greatness of his son's danger; but I do not think ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... of an ambitious and unprincipled Army could accumulate from the spoils of the nations whom they had subdued, were there presented to the eye of the stranger with a profusion which obliterated every former prejudice, and stifled the feelings of national emulation in exultation at the greatness of ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... well to see that God's present actual powers in full play about us are vastly beyond all the dreams of Arabian imagination. It leads us to expect greater things of him hereafter. That human imagination could so dream is proof of the greatness of its Creator. But that he has actually surpassed those dreams is prophecy of ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... stood must have been occupied by the actors, far back in the past perhaps a couple of thousand years ago; and these remains were all that was left to tell of the greatness of the people who once ruled in the land—great indeed, since they left ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... Gladstone's action in the Home Rule question to an overwhelming personal affection for Mr. Healy. And in thus basing Strafford's action upon personal and private reasons, Browning certainly does some injustice to the political greatness, of Strafford. To attribute Mr. Gladstone's conversion to Home Rule to an infatuation such as that suggested above, would certainly have the air of implying that the writer thought the Home Rule doctrine ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... between seer and warrior must be held fast and regarded as historical if Samuel is to mean anything at all. Similar instances are those of Deborah and Barak in earlier times, and later, that of Elisha and Hazael, and still more, that of Elisha and Jehu. Samuel's greatness consists in this, that he rouses to activity the man who comes after him, and is greater than he: after kindling the light which now burns in its full brightness, he himself disappears. But his meteoric appearance and disappearance excited wonder, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... stop between Charleston and Augusta, was a little kingdom of itself in the years of its greatness when William Gilmore Simms was monarch of the fair domain. It was far from being a monastery, though its master was known as "Father Abbot." The title had clung to him from the pseudonym under which he had written a series of letters to a New York paper, upholding the view that Charlestonians ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... universal truth. Pococurante, in Candide, was admired for despising Homer and Michel Angelo; he would have gained little distinction by praising them. The judicious application of this rule to society, is the origin of fashion. In despair of attaining greatness of quality, it founds ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... glorious vision, talking with him as friend to friend. He fell on his face in the dust, as did the exile of Patmos ages after, while a voice of affection and hope carne from the bending sky: "I am the Almighty God; walk before me and be thou perfect." The solemn covenant involving the greatness and splendor of the people and commonwealth that should spring from the solitary pair, was renewed; and as an outward seal, he was named Abraham, The father of a great multitude—and his wife Sarah, The princess. Still he laughed at the absurdity that Sarah would ever be a mother, ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... road, they must sink or follow him still, For his is the bulkiest strength, the proud and paramount will! —Thou wast great, O King! (for we grudge not the style thou didst yearn- for in vain, But a river of blood was between and an ineffaceable stain), Great with an earth-born greatness; a Titan of awe, not of love; 'Twas strength and subtlety balanced; the wisdom not from above. For he leant o'er his own deep soul, oracular; over the pit As the Pythia throned her of old, where the rock in Delphi was split; And the vapour ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... spiritual life, and the jewel may glitter on the Ethiop's brow in meaning more sublime than all in the poet's imagery. Brethren, let them go; and, when they are gone,—ay, before they go away,—rear a monument; let it grow in greatness, if not on your highest mountain, in your hearts,—in lasting memory of the South,—in memory of your wrong to the South,—in memory of the self-denial of the South, and her philanthropy in training the slave to be free, enlightened, ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... thee This comfort, youth, that there a calm abode, And peaceful, waits thy father and his house. Nor let the glory of a little span Disturb thy boding heart: the hour shall come When all the chiefs shall meet. Shrink not from death, But glowing in the greatness of your souls, E'en from your humble sepulchres descend, And tread beneath your feet, in pride of place, The wandering phantoms of the gods of Rome. (43) Which of the chiefs by Tiber's yellow stream, And which ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... these slender beginnings the industry spread until it spanned continents and circled the globe, you can easily read elsewhere. Yet mighty as this factor has become in the business world, it is not from this angle of its greatness that I like best to view it. I would rather think of the lives it has saved; the good news it has often borne; the misunderstandings it has prevented; the better unity it has promoted among all peoples. Just as the railroad was a gigantic ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... onlie to abolishe idolatrie, the places and monumentis thareof: in which thei wer so busye, and so laborious, that within two dayis, these three great places, monumentis of idolatrie, to witt, the Gray and Blak theves,[774] and Charter-housse monkis, (a buylding of a wonderouse coast and greatness,[775]) was so destroyed, that the walles onlie did remane of ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... obvious from the beginning. Here was a great deal of land which was destined to be inhabited by a great many people. It didn't matter very much what kind of people they were so that they were healthy and industrious. The greatness of the country was assured if only ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... "when life is carried in one's hand. Man is a natural gambler, and life is the biggest stake he can lay. The greater the odds, the greater the thrill. Why should I deny myself the joy of exciting Leach's soul to fever-pitch? For that matter, I do him a kindness. The greatness of sensation is mutual. He is living more royally than any man for'ard, though he does not know it. For he has what they have not—purpose, something to do and be done, an all-absorbing end to strive to attain, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... of the miraculous power of the child-saint from the lives of St. Genevieve (423-512, A.D.), St. Vitus, who at the age of twelve caused the arms and legs of the Emperor Aurelian to wither, but on the Emperor owning the greatness of God, the "child-magician," as the monarch had termed him, made Aurelian whole again; St. Sampson (565 A.D.), who cured a fellow schoolboy of a deadly serpent's bite; Marianne de Quito (1618-1645 A.D.), who cured herself of ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... wild song across the sea. They would keep wide of the dangerous currents of Corryvreckan, and by and by they would sail into the harbor of Oban, the beautiful sea-town where Sheila first got a notion of the greatness of the world lying outside of her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... the case of New England at this period. For the ill wind which carried ruin to her commerce and want to hundreds of thousands of people, carried also the seeds and small beginnings of all her subsequent manufacturing greatness and prosperity. With the development of manufactures, which now followed, and the diversifying of American industries in the northern section of the Union, modern industrialism as a tremendously aggressive social factor and system of free labor was thereupon ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... gods were, therefore, worshipped by the Chaldeans, and the only difference among them in this respect arose from the fact that some exalted one special deity above the others. The gods of the richest and most ancient principalities naturally enjoyed the greatest popularity. The greatness of Uru had been the source of Sin's prestige, and Merodach owed his prosperity to the supremacy which Babylon had acquired over the districts of the north. Merodach was regarded as the son of Ba, as the star ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... flushed at the memory of it. Bill Burton had also flunked his lesson; but Burton had been able to say that he had at least prepared it, and the whole proceeding had been dignified and everybody loved and admired Burton all the more because with all his greatness he was just like other boys about lessons. But he, Dick Harrington, had been disgraced. And in the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... excited his pity. He was lying on his bed, with his eyes closed; but when the jeweller saluted him, and exhorted him to take courage, he recollected him, opened his eyes, and gave him a look that sufficiently declared the greatness of his affliction, infinitely beyond what he felt after he first saw Schemselnihar. He grasped him by the hand, to testify his friendship, and told him, in a feeble voice, that he was extremely obliged to him for coming so far to visit ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... relatives. If the family were poor and the lover rich, these things might have a bearing. We hear of alliances in those days, not dishonorable, where the husband was complacent and looked upon it as a distinction to have worthy scions of greatness pay court to his wife. Such men were referred to as "fribblers" or "tame-cats." The woman was often much older than the alleged student, and this seems to have been no disadvantage, for charms o'erripe are oft alluring to a certain ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... faintest glimmering of affection. She was engaged and safe; yes, of course she was safe. No fear now of her ghastly secret being discovered! As long as Bertha lived the stories could be conveyed to her, and the stories would mean fame, and she would go on adding fame to fame and greatness to greatness until she was known, not only in England, but in America, and in the Colonies, as a new writer of great promise, and Franks would be rich. Oh, yes, he would manage her financial affairs in the future. He would not ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... not go to bed. He was anxious for the day, and the evening that was to follow. A woman had unsettled his world. His mica mountain became an unimportant reality. Barrow's greatness no longer loomed up for him. He walked until he was tired, and it was dawn when he went to his hotel. He was like a boy living in the anticipation of a great promise—restless, excited, even feverishly ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... patriarchal and of monarchical forms of government; exposed the warrings and bickerings among men; told of the manner in which a people escaped from bondage and raised themselves on the wreck of thrones, principalities, and powers, to greatness; published the laws by which that most chosen people were governed; and dwelt upon the perversity of human nature; and as other men, divinely inspired, have sublimely represented the highest stages of Jewish civilisation, so did I propose to myself to exhibit the rise of Canada from a primitive ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... in the favor of the king, or being confined in my chateau du Lucienne. The horrible ideas of murder, poison, or assassination by any means, had never presented themselves to me. All at once I recollected the young man in the garden of the Tuileries; his predictions of my future greatness had been accomplished. He had also announced to me fearful vicissitudes, and had threatened to appear to me when these catastrophes were about to occur. Doubtless he would keep his word; now was the time for so doing, and I timidly glanced ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... in spirit, Although a child of Greatness; he is one Who would become a throne, or overthrow one— One who has done great deeds, and seen great changes; No tyrant, though bred up to tyranny; Valiant in war, and sage in council; noble In nature, although haughty; quick, yet wary: ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... English children's and students' work suffices to dispose of this too convenient hypothesis. In no country, perhaps, except France, is there more of that raw material from which good art is made. More plausible is the theory that the vast and towering greatness of English literature overhangs and starves all other forms of expression. In such a land as this it seems natural that any sense of art or power of creation should drift towards literature, and almost inevitable that the painters themselves ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the troops of Suyodhana. Listen to me as I tell thee what Mahadeva having the bovine bull for the device on his standard had recited unto the ascetics on the breast of the Himavat. His utterances constitute a Purana. The advancement of greatness, energy, strength, prowess, puissance, humility, and lineage that are in Arjuna can come up to only a third part of the measure in which those attributes reside in Krishna. Who is there that can transcend Krishna in these attributes? Whether that is possible or not, listen (and judge). There where ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... 'since the late fire had ruined in great part the Ducal habitation (not only his own private palace, but all the places used for public business) this occasion was to be taken for an admonishment sent from God, that they ought to rebuild the palace more nobly, and in a way more befitting the greatness to which, by God's grace, their dominions had reached; and that his motive in proposing this was neither ambition, nor selfish interest: that, as for ambition, they might have seen in the whole course of his life, through so many years, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... be something remarkable in the fact that these predictions were uttered at the birth of Genghis Khan, since they were afterward so completely fulfilled, were it not that similar prognostications of greatness and glory were almost always offered to the fathers and mothers of young princes in those days by the astrologers and soothsayers of their courts. Such promises were, of course, very flattering to these parents at the time, and brought those who made them into great favor. Then, ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott |
