"Loftiness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... widen, more abstract and sublime. On one great point the mind of Epicurus was at peace. He neither sought nor expected, here or hereafter, any personal profit from his relation to the gods. And it is assuredly a fact, that loftiness and serenity of thought may be promoted by conceptions which involve no idea of profit of this kind. 'Did I not believe,' said a great man. [Footnote: Carlyle.] to me once, 'that an Intelligence is at the heart of things, my life on earth would be intolerable.' ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... ask that?" Fritz was hurt. "May I not also send that symbol to a lady whose purity and loftiness of soul I reverence. I suppose ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn; The first in loftiness of thought surpassed, The next in majesty, in both the last. The force of nature could no further go; To make a third she joined the ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... this meant to such a man as Randolph. He was a high-bred, high-spirited man of thirty, descended from a long line of proud and chivalrous men; educated, refined, sensitive, generous, and brave. His fine talents, his dash, his polished manner, his industry, his integrity, his loftiness of character, had lifted him upon the shoulders of popularity and prosperity; so that, in the city of his home, there was not another man of his age, a member of his profession, the law, who was so well known, so well liked, or wielded such ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... respect, so that to do the highest, wisest, loveliest thing is not the least effort to him, any more than it is to a baby to be innocent. It is his spontaneous act, and a baby is not more unconscious in its innocence. I never knew such loftiness, so simply borne. I have never known him to stoop from it in the most trivial household matter, any more than in a larger or more public one." [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... like these could make Job angry. Bildad follows them up with an attempt to frighten him by a picture of the power of that God whom he was blaspheming; but Job cuts short his harangue, and ends it for him in a spirit of loftiness which Bildad could not have approached; and then proudly and calmly rebukes them all, no longer in scorn and irony, but in high, tranquil self-possession. 'God forbid that I should justify you,' he says; 'till I die I will not remove my integrity from me. My righteousness I hold fast, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... you in stopping the effusion of human blood: but I dare not indulge this hope. However, I will give M. de Metternich an account of the energy, with which you have pleaded the cause of humanity: and, if he can accept the office of a mediator, I know so well the loftiness of his soul, to pledge myself to you, that he will ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... great reason to believe that Mademoiselle looked upon him with an eye of peculiar favour, his disposition was happily tempered with an ingredient of caution, that hindered him from acting with precipitation; and he had discerned in the young lady's deportment certain indications of loftiness and pride, which kept him in the utmost vigilance and circumspection; for he knew, that, by a premature declaration, he should run the risk of forfeiting all the advantages he had gained, and blasting those expectations that now blossomed ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... of this murderer and villain! We alone must avenge the blood of the just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely on?... England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot understand the Emperor Alexander's loftiness of soul. She has refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some secret motive in our actions. What answer did Novosiltsev get? None. The English have not understood and cannot understand the self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... provokes the just resentment of every man who recollects that their poor and invincible ancestors were not distinguished from the meanest of the soldiers by the delicacy of their food or the splendor of their apparel. But the modern nobles measure their rank and consequence according to the loftiness of their chariots and the weighty magnificence of their dress. Their long robes of silk and purple float in the wind; and as they are agitated, by art or accident, they occasionally discover the under-garments, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... in three different ages born. Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of soul surpassed, The next in majesty, in both the last. The force of nature could no further go; To make a third she joined ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... the master now, head-farmer, and chief yeoman, it irked me much that any one should take advantage of me; yet everybody did so as soon as ever it was known that my wits were gone moon-raking. For that was the way they looked at it, not being able to comprehend the greatness and the loftiness. Neither do I blame them much; for the wisest thing is to laugh at people when we cannot understand them. I, for my part, took no notice; but in my heart despised them as beings of a lesser nature, who never had seen Lorna. Yet I was vexed, and rubbed myself, when John Fry spread all over the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... presented itself to her imagination; she had never calculated on the possibility that her alliance should be declined by any individual of a family less than sovereign. She possessed, however, pride of character superior to her pride of rank, and strength of mind suited to the loftiness of her ambition. With dignity in her air and countenance, after a pause of reflection, she replied, "Count Albert Altenberg is, I find, equal to the high character I have heard of him: deserving of my esteem and ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... showing so little generosity and charity, must have distressed Rashi profoundly. For, when consulted in regard to the repulsed converts, he displayed a loftiness of view and a breadth of tolerance which Maimonides himself could not equal. In similar circumstances Maimonides, it seems, in intervening, yielded a little to personal prepossession. "Let us beware," wrote Rashi, "let us beware of alienating those who have ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... to its nature. To cite only one striking example, let me recall that Job Ben Salomon, the African, who in the last century was carried to America and thence to England, and was admired by all who knew him for the loftiness of his character, the energy of his religious fanaticism, and the extent of his intelligence,—this Ben Salomon, who has been cited as a model of that which the negro race could produce, did not belong to that race; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... heart-to-heart friendships and affections, and they were merry hours that sped so swiftly at the Literary Club. The great are never greater than in the hearts of their homes and the simplicities of their friendships. At this club the gods forgot their power and high beings laid aside their loftiness. In the midst we find the man they teased the man most welcome; that one that all affected to despise, each in his inmost heart unfeignedly respected. The man most laughed at was most loved. Oliver Goldsmith made the mirth of things. He was always forbearing, and ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... loftiness, as who should say: "What an extraordinary thing that a reasonable creature can have such fancies! Now to me this room is exactly like any other room." And he added aloud, glancing away from the glass, where he was unfastening his necktie: "It's not a ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the two there in the shadow of the great oak, although unwitting that others were so near, and neither man dared to move. The moonlight, in softened silver, fell upon the faces of the lovers, disclosing all the beauty of the woman's and all the loftiness of the man's. Harley thought he had never seen a ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Paris, being narrow, are favourable for defence, and the loftiness of the houses, consisting of many stories, from which great annoyance might be given, secured them against nocturnal enterprises; and the night was spent in providing themselves with every sort of weapon they could make or procure: guns, swords, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... and the first phrase she read was Fuji no yama (the Mountain of Fuji), which she interpreted as signifying loftiness of rank. And then she met with ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... be owned that, at his first glimpse of the countenance which was bowing and smiling from the barouche, Ernest did fancy that there was a resemblance between it and the old familiar face upon the mountain-side. The brow, with its massive depth and loftiness, and all the other features, indeed, were boldly and strongly hewn, as if in emulation of a more than heroic, of a Titanic model. But the sublimity and stateliness, the grand expression of a divine sympathy, ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... though apparently fervent and prayerful, is impure, and therefore insincere, what must be the comment upon him? If he had reached the loftiness of his prayer, there would be no occasion for such comment. If we feel the aspiration, humility, gratitude, and love which our words express—this God accepts; and it is wise not to try to deceive ourselves or others, for "there ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... seize the tottering government with a strong hand, and bring order out of chaos on the instant. But this is a woeful misunderstanding of the man. To put aside a crown for love of country is noble, but to look down upon such an opportunity indicates a much greater loftiness and strength of mind. Washington was wholly free from the vulgar ambition of the usurper, and the desire of mere personal aggrandizement found no place in his nature. His ruling passion was the passion for success, and for ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... simpler, and had generally been his wont; but subjugation had reached another stage in him. He summoned all possible pleadings on the girl's behalf: her talents, her youth, her grievous trials. Devotion to classical music cannot but argue a certain loftiness of mind; it might, in truth, be somehow akin to 'religion'. Remembering his own follies and vices at the age of four-and-twenty, was it not reason, no less than charity, to see in Alma the hope of ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... cross between a rich farmer and a poor gentleman, would go into the lodging-house business." I couldn't help agreeing with Jone, and I didn't like it a bit. The gentleman hadn't said anything or done anything that was out of the way, but there was a benignant loftiness about him which grated on the inmost fibres of ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... to restore her to her throne. The legions which Caesar had sent for into Syria had not yet arrived, and his situation in Alexandria was still very defenseless and very precarious. He did not, however, on this account, abate in the least degree the loftiness and self confidence of the position which he had assumed, but he commenced immediately the work of securing Cleopatra's restoration. This quiet assumption of the right and power to arbitrate and decide such a question as that of the ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... mechanism was introduced upon the stage. New figures were invented for the dancers of the chorus. Sophocles still further improved tragedy by adding the third actor, and snatched from AEschylus the tragic prize. He was not equal to AEschylus in the boldness and originality of his characters, or the loftiness of his sentiments, or the colossal grandeur of his figures; but in the harmony of his composition, and the grace and vigor displayed in all the parts—the severe unity, the classic elegance of his style, and the charm of his expressions he is his superior. These two men carried tragedy to ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... of revolt ran through Julie's mind. The loftiness of his mood chilled her. An attitude more weakly, passionately human, a more selfish pity for himself would, in truth, have served him better. Had the pain of the living man escaped his control, avenging itself on the supremacy that death had now given to the lover, Delafield ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... about five feet six inches in height. He was well formed, and erect in his attitude. In all his movements there was a military air. Although of small stature, yet there was about him a loftiness of mien that could not pass unnoticed by a stranger. His deportment was polished and courtly. His features were regular, and generally considered handsome. His eye was jet black, with a brilliancy never surpassed. The appropriate civilities of the drawing-room were performed with a grace ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... of democratic writers; and of a truth Monsieur Maxime du Camp and Monsieur Laurent Pichat, his two leaders, had none of those smoking-cafe vulgarities which have procured so many subscribers to the "Siecle" newspaper. Both poets, Laurent Pichat with remarkable loftiness, Maxime du Camp with bizarre energy, intent upon an ideal which democracy has a right to pursue, since it has not yet found it, men of the world, capable of discussing in full dress the most perplexed questions of Socialism, they accept none of those party-chains which so ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... departed. Through the interview he, no doubt, conducted himself in a way that did him peculiar credit. Yet the warmth of his temper could not be entirely suppressed: and even when he was most exemplary, there was an apparent loftiness in his manner that was calculated to irritate; and the very grandeur with which he suppressed his passions, operated indirectly as a taunt to his opponent. The interview was prompted by the noblest sentiments; but it unquestionably ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... and enterprise enough to address themselves to this supreme and all-essential subject. Fourteen years after the publication of Dr. Owen's epoch-making book, John Bunyan's Holy War first saw the light. Equal in scriptural and in experimental depth, as also in their spiritual loftiness and intensity, those two books are as different as any two books, written in the same language, and written on the same subject, could by any possibility be. John Owen's book is the book of a great scholar who has read the Fathers and the Schoolmen ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... speaking in the broad sense," explained Dora, with the loftiness of one who addresses a throng from a pulpit. Then shaking a finger, "'The wicked flee when no man pursueth'—Proverbs, ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... sends by me to say may it please your highness to give him leave that, with your permission, approbation, and consent, he may come and carry out his wishes, which are, as he says and I believe, to serve your exalted loftiness and beauty; and if you give it, your ladyship will do a thing which will redound to your honour, and he will receive a most ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... motives and his life. The gay, impassioned, fascinating man of the world became an austere and fervent Christian. The rich sensibility he had formerly spent in amours and display, henceforward ennobled by wisdom and sanctified by religion, lent a singular charm of tenderness and loftiness to his friendships. The memory of his own errors gave a gracious charitableness to his judgments; his sorrow imparted an incomparable refinement to his air; his grave and devout demeanor inspired veneration; his sweet magnanimity drew every unprejudiced heart. He had long ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... loved her husband passionately, but she feared the loftiness and roughness of his character; and as she felt herself not to be his match in intellect, was not much pleased to see that he would often talk with Edith Plantagenet in preference to herself, simply because he found more ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... gesture of the broom. But the janitor's first assistant attended to that; and Evans's regular duties were more humble, not unconnected with such things as cuspidors. There was no man so poor to do him honor; yet he had always a certain loftiness of bearing. He was tall, rather above the average height, with a long, thin, bony face like a horse, and an aristocratic stoop about his neck and shoulders. His hands were slender; he walked in a fashion that you might have called a shuffle, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... me, but all that vehemence and loftiness of spirit which had so lately characterized his features, were flown. Fallen muscles, a forehead contracted into folds, eyes dim with unbidden drops, and a ruefulness of aspect which no words ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... are required in the higher spheres of statesmanship [are not] those of a hero or a saint. Passionate earnestness and self-devotion, complete concentration of every faculty on an unselfish aim, uncalculating daring, a delicacy of conscience and a loftiness of aim far exceeding those of the average of men, are here likely to prove rather a hindrance than an assistance. The politician deals very largely with the superficial and the commonplace; his art is in a great measure that of ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd; The next, in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go; To make a third, she ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... ones, exposed to the shafts of calumny and scorn because of your fidelity to your God; encountering, it may be, the coldness and estrangement of those dear to you, who can not, perhaps, sympathize in the holiness of your walk and the loftiness of your aims, "consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest ye be weary and faint in your minds!" What is your "contradiction" to His? Soon your cross, whatever it be, will have an end. "The seat of the scorner" has no place in yonder glorious heaven, ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... and she becomes morose, discontented, sad and cheerless. Let her do this for love. Let her feel that she is contributing to some one's joy, or that she is to use the money earned for some worthy purpose, and at once the loftiness of her purpose sanctifies her deed, and renders that which would have been unbecoming, if done without a motive, right and noble when performed under the pressure of a great and noble aspiration, for "'tis sweet to labor for ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... Nicholas! Since when have you gone into melodrama?" The voice was pettish, but the listener was not slow to catch a tremor of discomfort under its attempted loftiness. "As if I cared!—or need to fear such stuff as Gregoriev's!—Go to Zaremba, if you like, and tell him I sent you for the manuscript.—Much good may it do you!—Oh, yes, take the thing! Have it played! Hear the fools howl over it and praise ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... two of earth immediately ahead of me. So I progressed, I should say, for some twenty or thirty yards when, to my inexpressible relief, I came out, still on all fours, onto a spreading floor; then, standing up, I perceived that I was in a cave of considerable loftiness, and some forty feet or so across. It was good to breathe again such comparatively free air; yet, as I looked about and made the circuit of the walls, I saw that I had but exchanged one prison for another. ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... is truly free, not in the degree only in which he governs himself, but in the degree that he governs himself according to the central truth and right of things, or according to the loftiness of the standard by which he regulates ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... is of a high order: in brightness of expression and unsolicited ease and natural vehemence of language, he stands in the first rank of poets: in choice of subjects, in happiness of conception, and loftiness of imagination, he recedes into the second. He owes little of his fame to his objects, for, saving the beauty of a few ladies, they were all of an ordinary kind: he sought neither in romance nor in history for themes to the muse; he took up topics from life around which were familiar to ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... darkness, not because one flees the company of others and can endure only one's own, but because of their quality of loftiness and religion. Strange how all things pass distantly, yet all is near; we sit in an omnipresence. It must be God. It must be ourselves as a ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... Colony of Massachusetts Bay. The effigies expressed a countenance, features, and a tone of character in beautiful harmony with all that we know of the man, all that he was and did. Gravity and loftiness of soul, tempered by a mild and tender delicacy, depth of experience, resolution of purpose, native dignity, acquired wisdom, and an harmonious equipoise of the robust virtues and the winning graces have set their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... heroic tendencies of the clan or epoch to which he belongs. He would have recoiled in disgust from this timid, cunning evasion of a natural and sacred revenge, from this odious traffic in friendship, fidelity, and love. Nor is it conceivable, on the other hand, that he should have attained sufficient loftiness of spirit to be able to let his gaze travel beyond the noblest and most incontestable duties of the moment, and to behold only the superior interest of the tribe or the race: that mysterious desire for life, which the wisest of the wise among us to-day are generally unable to perceive ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... on her deathbed the care of her spiritual family. This intimate little letter dates from an early period in their friendship. In its homely, practical wisdom, as in the gentle loftiness of its tone, it shows the watchful and loving care with which Catherine entered into the details of the daily life of those whom she sought to lead with her in the way of salvation. The tests she proposes are as penetrating to-day ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... in, and sustains the fallible conjectures of our unassisted reason. The Holy Scriptures speak of us as fallen creatures: in almost every page we shall find something that is calculated to abate the loftiness and silence the pretensions of man. "The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth." "What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous[5]." "How much more abominable and filthy is ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... of the tall building, with which his predecessors dealt always with trepidation and equivocation, Mr. Sullivan approached with confidence and joy. "What," he asked himself, "is the chief characteristic of the tall office building? It is lofty. This loftiness is to the artist-nature its thrilling aspect. It must be tall. The force of altitude must be in it. It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation that from bottom to top ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Piccadilly mansion (I wish somebody would!); but for thinking in let me have an attic up ten flights of stairs in the densest quarter of the city. I have all Herr Teufelsdrockh's affection for attics. There is a sublimity about their loftiness. I love to "sit at ease and look down upon the wasps' nest beneath;" to listen to the dull murmur of the human tide ebbing and flowing ceaselessly through the narrow streets and lanes below. How small ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... victuals, neglectful also of his customary jokes. He disliked the worse side of a bargain as much as in his most happy moments; and the meditation (which is generally supposed to be going on where speech is scarce) was not of such loftiness as to overlook the time a man stopped round the corner. As a horse settles down to strong collar-work better when the gloss of the stable takes the ruffle of the air, so this man worked at his business all the harder, with the brightness of the home ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... habit; and to that his death may, in some sort, and was then entirely ascribed. But circumstances appeared after his death which led to a conclusion that concealed sorrow, might have had some share in it. From refined motives of tenderness for a beloved wife's feelings, and that loftiness of spirit which clings to the perfect gentleman, he concealed the state of his affairs in England, which had for some time been in a rapid decline, and of the complete ruin of which he had a short time before been fully ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... high one; to find satisfaction in different explanations of the purpose and significance of life and the universe, and yet the same satisfaction. It is certainly not less possible to disbelieve religiously than to believe religiously. This accord of mind, this emulation in freedom and loftiness of soul, this kindred sense of the awful depth of the enigma which the one believes to be answered, and the other suspects to be for ever unanswerable—here, and not in a degrading and hypocritical conformity, is the true gratification of those spiritual ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... on a larger scale than we had hitherto suspected. And while on a broader scale, we feel that things are always working upward and converging towards some lofty but distinct, defined summit. This also do we feel, as we look upon the view, that with all the bigness and massiveness and loftiness there is the very finest tenderness as well—such delicacy as we had never ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... Troy and Iceland, so also in the Nibelungen-lied, the story centres on a young hero glowing with beauty and victory, and possessed of loftiness of character; but who meets with an early and untimely death. Such is Baldur the Beautiful of Iceland, and such, also, are Hector and Achilles of Troy. These songs mark the greatness and the waning of the heroic world ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... Monsieur de Garnache," said he with a fine loftiness, and in his heart he pondered what he would say and how he should say it; how he should stand, how move, and how look. His roving eye caught sight of his secretary. He remembered something—the cherished pose of being a man plunged fathoms-deep in business. Sharply he ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... were now seen at the turn of the staircase. The one in advance had a thoughtful, anxious and somewhat crafty expression of face, and in spite of his loftiness of manner, which was evidently the result both of an ambitious spirit and of long continuance in high stations, he seemed not incapable of cringing to a greater than himself. A few steps behind came an officer in a scarlet and embroidered uniform cut in a fashion ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... The interior loftiness of Notre Dame, moreover, gives it a sublimity which would swallow up anything that might look gewgawy in its ornamentation, were we to consider it window by window, or pillar by pillar. It is an advantage of these vast edifices, rising over us ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... filled with these and duly watered will give a winter-garden to the smallest lodging. Sun and light are, as Mr. Toots says, of "no consequence" to the moss family. But if one be above such trifles as mosses, and with Young American loftiness aspire to full-grown trees, there is still plenty to do in the most ordinary woodlands. After a chapter of Mr. Ruskin upon Claude and Poussin and Turner, there is nothing like going to the original documents. In default of the National Gallery from London and the Pitti Palace from the other side ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... reform by the centralisation of the different kingdoms of Spain—The Duke of Orleans heads a faction inimical to the Princess—She demands and obtains his recall—Her bold resolution to act in opposition to the timid policy of Versailles—The loftiness of her past conduct and character—The victory of Villaviciosa definitely seats the House of Bourbon on the ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... in her kingdom, she remained equally mistress: the force of the tender passions was great over her, but the force of her mind was still superior; and the combat which her victory visibly cost her, serves only to display the firmness of her resolution, and the loftiness ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... reproduced. He had the same heavy, hanging lip, with a vast mouth, and monstrously protruding lower jaw. His complexion was fair, his hair light and thin, his beard yellow, short, and pointed. He had the aspect of a Fleming, but the loftiness of a Spaniard. His demeanor in public was still, silent, almost sepulchral. He looked habitually on the ground when he conversed, was chary of speech, embarrassed, and even suffering in manner. This was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... without dread of frost, and perhaps God will allow my efforts to fulfil themselves in the future. My very various attempts at work all have an indescribable immaturity about them still, a halting execution, which consorts badly with the real loftiness of the intention. It seems to me that my art will not quite expand until my life is further advanced. Let us pray that God will allow me ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... sordid and base in the acts of that man's villainous tools, struck me with astonishment. I beheld, as an inseparable whole, the contemptible result, the childishness of his imagination, the danger of his recklessness, and something like loftiness in his pitiful illusion. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... to do with our castle," said the lady wonderingly. "Look- -the keep is no higher than your roof-tree. My lord chose not the site for its loftiness but for the ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... imposed itself to an overwhelming extent on the Parish Churches and Cathedrals of the country, and to it he added a Dome. There is one feature that these two apparent opposites have in common. Gothic Churches vary greatly, but many of them are notable for their appearance of loftiness. The clustered columns seem to lead the eye upwards to the roof, as if men naturally went about the world cramped and confined, and were now bidden turn their gaze to the heights. A dome has a somewhat similar effect: it carries on the gaze and it gives an increased and unexpected ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... itself so austere conduces to the development of an austere character. Deep study, especially deep study which haunts and rules the imagination, necessarily removes men from life, absorbs them in themselves; purifies their conduct, with some risk of isolating their sympathies; develops that loftiness of mood which is gifted with deep inspirations and indulged with great ideas, but which tends in its excess to engender a contempt for others, and a self-appreciation which is even more displeasing ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... conditions, love could have no pain. Equal in their feebleness, strong in their union, if the noble had some superiority of knowledge and some conventional grandeur, the daughter of the physician eclipsed all that by her beauty, by the loftiness of her sentiments, by the delicacy she gave to their enjoyments. Thus these two white doves flew with one wing beneath their pure blue heaven; Etienne loved, he was loved, the present was serene, the future cloudless; he was sovereign lord; the ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... centuries has given the nave piers mere small, plain bands as capitals, and for churchly decoration has allowed only a moulding of acanthus leaves placed high and unnoticed at the vaulting's base. There is no pleasing detail and no charming fancy; but a fine, exquisite loftiness, a faultless balance of proportion, are in this severe interior, and its solemn and majestic beauty is not surpassed in ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... his sense of form. We have just seen the essential cause of this insufficiency to lie in the nonesthetical attitude of his mind, and we have tried to show one of the roots of such an attitude in the very loftiness and earnestness of his purpose. Yet, there are others, for living nature is many-rooted as it is many-branched. It cannot be doubted that a certain refractoriness to form is a typical feature of the Basque character. The sense of form is closely in sympathy with the feminine ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... Range are seen swelling calmly into the cool sky without any marked character, excepting only their snow crowns, and a few weedy-looking patches of spruce and fir, the simplicity of their slopes preventing their real loftiness from being appreciated. Gray, sagey plains circle around their bases, and up to a height of a thousand feet or more their sides are tinged with purple, which I afterwards found is produced by a close growth of dwarf oak just ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... the last kings of Babylon, Nebuchadrezzar, recorded a prayer which reveals the loftiness of religious thought and feeling attained by men to whom graven images were no longer worthy of adoration and reverence—men whose god was not ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... the floor of the church a few minutes longer, though they found but little to interest them in what they saw except the vastness of the enclosed interior and the loftiness of the columns and walls. There were several colossal monuments standing here and there; but in general the church had a somewhat empty and naked appearance. The immense magnitude, however, of the spaces which the party traversed, and the ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... however, at all times ready to give assistance to his friends, and others, in revising their works, and in writing for them, or greatly improving their Dedications. In that courtly species of composition no man excelled Dr. Johnson. Though the loftiness of his mind prevented him from ever dedicating in his own person[2], he wrote a very great number of Dedications for others. Some of these, the persons who were favoured with them are unwilling should be mentioned, from a too anxious apprehension, as I think, that they might be suspected ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Ellis, "you talk of lofty views; but this is a pinnacle of loftiness to which I, for one, could never aspire. Positively, to rejoice in the extinction of the individual with his faculties undeveloped, his opportunities unrealized, his ambitions unfulfilled—why it's sublime! its Kiplingese—there's ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... to diminish the force of this moral spring; he would cripple at a blow all the virtues. I do not, however, place this noblest of sentiments on the somewhat isolated height where it is put by the exclusive adorers of liberty. Let us not confound dignity with mere loftiness. Moreover, by the side of dignity let us never forget that other inspiring sentiment, which is at least its equal in value, humanity; that is to say, the remembrance, the care, of that great number who are condemned to a life of poverty and suffering, and whose precarious condition ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... from the west one was impressed by the unusual height of some of its buildings, most of which were two-storied and had domed roofs, the domes being of much larger proportions than usual. A quadrangular tower of considerable loftiness stood prominent above the height of all the other buildings. For a Persian village Iskil had quite a clean, fresh appearance, even from a short distance. On getting near we entered the main road—one might more accurately ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... God,' and who has said it, should ever by anything be brought to cease to say it. Death cannot kill love to God; and the only end of the religious life of earth is its perfecting in heaven. The experiences that we have here, in their loftiness and in their incompleteness, equally witness for us, of the rest and the perfectness that remain ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... and afterwards of Warsaw, whom we have named above as one of the most eloquent preachers, is equally celebrated as a poet. His productions all have a character of dignity and loftiness; and, with the exception of some religious hymns, are devoted to the historical fame of his country. His "Sybil," in which he conjures up in succession the ancient Polish kings from their graves to behold the cruel state of their once triumphant country, and the ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... astonished to find themselves in each other's company, and created a language of his own, a language rich and impressive, that might sometimes infringe established rules, but compensated this happy fault, by giving more loftiness and ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... business. Work I must for the welfare of all, and the root of the matter is in effort." He controls a highly trained bureaucracy not unlike that of British India to-day, and his system of government is wonderfully effective so long as it is informed by his untiring energy and singular loftiness ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... touched on the necessity of his presenting himself at the door of Dr. Shrapnel's house. That, and the disgust belonging to it, was a secondary consideration with Lord Romfrey, after he had once resolved on it as the right thing to do: and his wife admired and respected him for so supreme a loftiness. And fervently she prayed that it might not be her evil fate to disappoint his hopes. Never had she experienced so strong a sense of devotedness to him as when she saw the carriage winding past the middle oak-wood of the park, under a wet sky brightened from ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... five leagues distant from Bolbec. In ancient periods this miserable town was once the capital of a separate kingdom. In our dining room were three beds, or rather we dined in the bed room. I use the former expression out of compliment to the pride of our little host, who replied with some loftiness to one of our companions, who, upon entering the room, and seeing so many accommodations for repose, exclaimed, with the sharpness of appetite, "my good host, we want to eat, and not to sleep;" "gentlemen," said our mortified little ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... name, of which the author is unknown; Molire seems to have partly followed an Italian comedy, written by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini, under the name of Le Gelosie fortunata del principe Rodrigo; the style, loftiness and delicacy of expression are peculiar to the ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... those mid-way things, 'Twixt bird and beast, that by mistake have wings; A mongrel Stateman, 'twixt two factions nurst, Who, of the faults of each, combines the worst— The Tory's loftiness, the Whigling's sneer, The leveller's rashness, and the bigot's fear: The thirst for meddling, restless still to show How Freedom's clock, repaired by Whigs, will go; The alarm when others, more sincere than they, Advance the hands to the true time ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... he detected a straightening of the figure and the now familiar loftiness of manner which he knew to be unfailing signs ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... with native American myths, this one bears undeniable marks of its aboriginal origin. Its frequent puerilities and inanities, its generally low and coarse range of thought and expression, its occasional loftiness of both, its strange metaphors and the prominence of strictly heathen names and potencies, bring it into unmistakable relationship ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... yesterday. Mackenzie's cold and flinty face is quivering like a leaf, Whilst with quick and throbbing finger he turns o'er and o'er his brief; And the misnamed judges vainly try their rankling thoughts to hide Beneath an outward painted mask of loftiness and pride. Even she, the sweet heroic one! aye watchful at his side, Whose courage ne'er hath blanch'd as yet, though sorely, sharply tried— Even she is crush'd beneath the weight of this last and deadly blow, And sinks upon ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... ship's spars. It seems impossible but that those gilt trucks which one had to tilt one's head back to see, now falling into the lower plane of vision, must perforce hit the very edge of the horizon. Such an experience gives you a better impression of the loftiness of your spars than any amount of running aloft could do. And yet in my time the royal yards of an average profitable ship were a good way up above ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... poetry of Thomas Campbell, "The Pleasures of Hope" is one of the most finished epics in the language; it is alike faultless in respect of conception and versification. His lyrics are equally sustained in power of thought and loftiness of diction; they have been more frequently quoted than the poems of any other modern author, and are translated into various European languages. Few men evinced more jealousy in regard to their reputation; ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... some too high-toned, too punctilious, to recognize me. I attribute this not to the loftiness of their highnesses nor to prejudice, but to the depth of their ignorance, and of course I forgive and forget. Others again are so "reckless," so "don't care" disposed, that they treat me as fancy ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... of narrowin' the Lord down to ministers,' said Mrs. Fleming, with a certain loftiness. 'We all know He can do ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was in distress, in real distress. "Assez, mon enfant, I beseech you, nous avons notre argent—et apres, le bon Dieu. And I am surprised that, with the loftiness of your ideas, you... Assez, assez, vous me tourmentez," he articulated hysterically, "we have all our future before us, and you... you fill me with alarm ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... unwilling that his daughter should press even for the payment of the debt due for the publication of her pamphlets and campaign documents, though published at the request of the War Department on the understanding that she was to be repaid. His loftiness of feeling and unbounded generosity ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... that indicate these qualities. What admirable characteristics does the whole selection exhibit? Simplicity, directness, and eloquence of language, noble emotion, loftiness of character, and ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... extraordinary impetus to ideas, but in times of peace. There is then, he says, 'a small and uncomfortable agitation, a sort of incessant attrition of man against man, which troubles and distracts the mind without imparting to it either loftiness or animation.' It rests with you to prove whether these things are necessarily so—whether scientific genius cannot find, in the midst of you, a ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... everywhere. Gibbon quotes the architect Vitruvius, who lived in the Augustan age, as complaining of "the common though inconvenient practice of raising houses to a considerable height in the air. But the loftiness of the buildings, which often consisted of hasty work and insufficient material, was the cause of frequent and fatal accidents, and it was repeatedly enacted by Augustus as well as by Nero that the height of private dwellings should not exceed the measure of seventy feet above ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... basest and vilest of the human race,—in servitude to those who in no respect were superior in dignity or could aspire to a better place than that of hangmen to the tyrants to whose sceptred pride they had opposed an elevation of soul that surmounted and overpowered the loftiness of Castile, the haughtiness of Austria, and the overbearing arrogance ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... noted for its excellent literary style, he wrote Primera parte de los anales de Aragon (Zaragoza, 1630) the continuation of the Anales of Zurita. He was also a poet, whose poems are remarkable for their purity of style and loftiness of sentiment; they are published, with those of his elder brother, under the title Rimas de Lupercio i del doctor Bartolome Leonardo de Argensola (Zaragoza, 1634). One of the chief poems is an ode in honor of the church after ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... A certain loftiness, likewise, took possession of Mr Wegg; a condescending sense of being in request as an official expounder of mysteries. It did not move him to commercial greatness, but rather to littleness, insomuch that if it had been within the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... The loftiness of the Moor's nature, and his conscious pride were by the peculiar delivery of the second line, as perfectly unfolded as they could ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... the four species of pride, "when," to wit, "a man boasts of having what he has not." Hence it is written (Jer. 48:29, 30): "We have heard the pride of Moab, he is exceeding proud: his haughtiness, and his arrogancy, and his pride, and the loftiness of his heart. I know, saith the Lord, his boasting, and that the strength thereof is not according to it." Moreover, Gregory says (Moral. xxxi, 7) that boasting arises from vainglory. Now pride and vainglory are opposed to the virtue ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... life; whatever else a Roughborough man might be, he was sure to make everyone feel that he was a God-fearing earnest Christian and a Liberal, if not a Radical, in politics. Some boys, of course, were incapable of appreciating the beauty and loftiness of Dr Skinner's nature. Some such boys, alas! there will be in every school; upon them Dr Skinner's hand was very properly a heavy one. His hand was against them, and theirs against him during the whole time of the connection between them. They not ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... clasped, she was claimed by her two little sisters, who gave her no peace till her desk was opened, and a manuscript drawn forth, that they might hear the two new pages of her morning's work. It was a Fouque-like tale, relieving and giving expression to the yearnings for holiness and loftiness that had grown up within Isabel Conway in the cramped round of her existence. The story went back to the troubadour days of Provence, where a knight, the heir of a line of shattered fortunes, was betrothed to the heiress of the oppressors, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... modern life? The bankruptcy, the proven fatuity, of everything that is bound up under the name of Western civilization. Men are perceiving, I think, the baseness of mercantile and military ideals, the loftiness of those older ones. They will band together, the elect of every nation, in god-favoured regions round the Inland Sea, thee to lead serener lives. To those how have hitherto preached indecorous maxims of conduct they will say: 'What is all this ferocious ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Apology—to be woven into the plan of a treatise in defence of the Christian religion—seems beyond doubt. He had himself, according to the statement of his nephew, unfolded such a plan to his friends, in a lengthened conversation about the year 1657 or 1659. They were charmed with the loftiness of his design, and listened to his exposition of it for two or three hours with unabated interest. He was to commence with an analysis of human nature, and to advance from the contemplation of its mysteries, obscurities, and ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... that I was blameless in her trials, at length calmed me. I felt, that to protect her had been wholly out of my power, from the day when she left Valenciennes; and, while I honoured the decision and loftiness of spirit which had led to that self-denying step, I could lay nothing to my charge but the misfortune of being unable to convince her mind of the wisdom of disdaining the opinion of the world. I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... While the masterly ability and soldierly vigor and decision of General Johnson must excite the profoundest admiration, those who remember him may be pardoned for dwelling quite as much upon the grandeur, the loftiness, the heroism of his character. In this we may look in vain for his peer, except to the great Virginian, his immortal comrade, the man whom every former Southern soldier must feel it is his religious duty to venerate. Through all that period of ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... there is a gain, for the expectation of total transformations and millenniums on earth is a very crude illusion, while the relation of the soul to nature is an open question in philosophy, and there will always be a great loftiness and poetic sincerity in the feeling that the soul is a stranger in this world and has ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... otherwise, was not such that thou shouldst crave, or I give, pardon thereof; for 'twas not in malice but in that thou wouldst fain have been reputed better than I that thou ensuedst it. Doubt then no more of me; nay, rest assured that none that lives bears thee such love as I, who know the loftiness of thy spirit, bent not to heap up wealth, as do the caitiffs, but to dispense in bounty thine accumulated store. Think it no shame that to enhance thy reputation thou wouldst have slain me; nor deem that I marvel thereat. To slay not one man, as thou wast ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the restitution of Placidia as an indispensable condition of the treaty of peace. But the daughter of Theodosius submitted, without reluctance, to the desires of the conqueror, a young and valiant prince, who yielded to Alaric in loftiness of stature, but who excelled in the more attractive qualities of grace and beauty. The marriage of Adolphus and Placidia was consummated before the Goths retired from Italy; and the solemn, perhaps the anniversary, day of their nuptials was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... Brighton, beheld such an English-like looking cathedral—as a whole; and particularly the tower. It is broad, bold, and lofty; but, like all edifices, seen from a neighbouring and perhaps loftier height, it loses, at first view, very much of the loftiness of its character. However, I looked with admiration, and longed to approach it. This object was accomplished in twenty minutes. We entered Ulm about two o'clock: drove to an excellent inn (the White Stag—which I strongly recommend ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... stages I would urge the telling of Bible stories, as far as is allowed by the special circumstances of the school. These are stories from a source unsurpassed in our literature for purity of style and loftiness of subject. More especially I urge the telling of the Christ-story, in such parts as seem likely to be within the grasp of the several classes. In all Bible stories it is well to keep as near as possible to the original unimprovable text.[1] Some amplification can be made, but no excessive ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... or opinions; and he would sometimes pronounce a judgment in a tone of superiority justly offensive. But he possessed the uncommon virtue of sincerity: he thoroughly believed in the infallibility of his own conclusions; and for this the loftiness of his tone ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... of egotism Lamb shares with other writers of the time, with De Quincey, for instance, who left buried in work which is extensive and unequal, much that lives by virtue of the singular elaborateness and loftiness of the style which he could on occasion command. For the revival of enthusiasm one must turn to Hazlitt, who brought his passionate and combative disposition to the service of criticism, and produced a series of studies remarkable for their earnestness and their vigour, and for the essential justness ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... sufficiently lament the continuance of that spirit of delusion, by which, for a long time past, we have thought fit to measure our necessities by our inclinations. Moderation, prudence, and equity are far more suitable to our condition than loftiness, and confidence, and rigor. We are threatened by enemies of no small magnitude, whom, if we think fit, we may despise, as we have despised others; but they are enemies who can only cease to be truly formidable by our entertaining a due respect for their power. Our danger will ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... with that stilted loftiness which dignitaries are wont to assume on great occasions. All the same, there were tears of joy in Jan's eyes and he had hard work to ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... hour later the door of the gaol opened and Commander Mattei came in: he found Murat standing with head proudly erect and folded arms. There was an expression of indefinable loftiness in this half-naked man whose face was stained with blood and bespattered with ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... lights glimmer one by one; and one by one, like breaking hopes, they fade away from the houses. The full-risen moon, that dapples the ground beneath the trees, touches the tall church-spires with silver, and slants their loftiness—as memory slants grief—in long, dark, tapering lines ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... many and such tangled controversies! But King's College had a professor of a very different order in F. D. Maurice. His personal charm was remarkable, and if Fitzjames did not become exactly a disciple he was fully sensible of Maurice's kindness of nature and loftiness of purpose. He held, I imagine, in a vague kind of way, that here might perhaps be the prophet who was to guide him across the deserts of infidelity into the promised land where philosophy and religion will be ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... way. Let me stay." She said the last words, in spite of all her pride, appealingly. But still, there was a note of high pride in all this—in all she said and did, in her attitude and movement, in the tones of her voice, in the loftiness of her carriage and the steadfast look of her open, starlit eyes. Altogether, there was something so rarely lofty in herself and all that clad her that, face to face with it and with her, my feeble attempt at moral precaution ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... refinement that is directly endangered by contact with the realities of life, for instance by participation in local politics and other social contests, and by such practice of charity as must be accompanied by physical exertion and bad smells. Culture is, to them, the name for that serenity and loftiness of mind that can be attained and preserved only by keeping a safe distance from the madding crowd; and the cultured man is pictured by them as sitting in a comfortable chair, preferably with a book in his hand, and rapt in meditation ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... apparently fervent and prayerful, is impure and therefore insincere, what must be the 8:12 comment upon him? If he reached the loftiness of his prayer, there would be no occasion for comment. If we feel the aspiration, hu- 8:15 mility, gratitude, and love which our words express,- this God accepts; and it is wise not to try to deceive ourselves ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... promptly denied by the person whom it most immediately concerned. It served a second purpose in showing that Miss Mapp was too high above the mire of scandal, however interesting, to know or care who might happen to be wallowing in it, and for this reason she asked everybody who had done so. Such loftiness of soul had earned her an amazing bonus, for it had induced those who sat in the seat of the scoffers before to come hastily off, and join the thin but unwavering ranks of the true believers, who up till then had consisted only of Susan and Mr. Wyse. Frankly, so ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... gold browsing done so thoroughly? Or sinks a singed wing to narrow nest in me?" (Thus she might say: for not this lowly vein Out-deprecates her deprecating strain.) Oh, you mistake, dear lady, quite; nor know Ether was strict as you, its loftiness as low! ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... and loftiness of the place wrought upon her by and by with a strange effect. Wandering along among pillars and galleries and arcades, where saints and apostles and martyrs looked down upon her as out of past ages, ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... of an adventurous traveller. Travellers are in general constitutionally gifted with high animal spirits: they are talkative, eager, imperious. Mr Richards was calm and subdued in tone, with manners which were made distant by the loftiness of punctilious courtesy—the manners of a former age. I observed that the English he spoke was not exactly of our day. I should even have said that the accent was slightly foreign. But then Mr Richards remarked that he had been little in the habit for many years of speaking in his native tongue. ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... leave no doubt. If Mahler is not a great man, he is at least the silhouette of one. The need of expression that drove him to composition was indubitably mighty. The passion with which he addressed himself to his labor despite all discouragement and lack of success, the loftiness and nobleness of the task which he set for himself, the splendor of the intentions, reveal how fierce a fire burnt in the man. He was not one of those who come to music to form little jewels. On the contrary, in gesture he was ever one of the eminently faithful. He came to music to create ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... to forget," still feeling that convincing loftiness was not easy, "that when a man leaves his wife, or she deserts him, it is she who is likely to be called upon to bear the ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and altogether charming this woman can be! Again I can only compare her to the sun's rays, so warm and comfortable she makes one feel. There is a nobleness and a loftiness about her which causes even ordinary things she says to sound like fine sentiments. No wonder Mr. Budge ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... full of that undefined discomfort experienced by generous young spirits when their elders, more worldly-wise (or foolish), fail even to comprehend the purity or loftiness of motive which they themselves thoroughly believe. Yet, though she had infinitely more faith in Humfrey's affection than she had in that of Babington, she had not by any means the same dread of being used to bait the hook for him, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in Stanley Park that leads to what I always love to call the "Cathedral Trees"—that group of some half-dozen forest giants that arch overhead with such superb loftiness. But in all the world there is no cathedral whose marble or onyx columns can vie with those straight, clean, brown tree-boles that teem with the sap and blood of life. There is no fresco that can rival the delicacy of lace-work they have festooned ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... even more than this? The character of John was strong, grand in its wild magnificence—like some Alpine crag, with the pines on its slopes and the deep dark lake at its foot; he had courage, resolution, an iron will, a loftiness of soul that could hold commerce with the unseen and eternal. He was a man capable of vast heights and depths. He could hold fellowship with the eternal God as a man speaks with his friend, and could suffer unutterable agonies in self-questioning and depression. ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... the impressions on the gazer's mind, partake of none of that involuntary admiration and religious awe, which the sight of an old English cathedral, or the splendid churches of Italy, never fails to produce. One of its greatest defects arises from want of loftiness in the dome, the diameter of which is one hundred and fifteen, while its height does not exceed twenty feet. There is an immense number of columns, the spoils of various heathen temples. Of these, eight, ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... she said, with a loftiness that was not less puzzling, though far more intelligible than the agitation which a moment before had embarrassed her manner, "that I am the last of a line eminent for centuries in ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of the internal arrangements of the ancient town beyond the fact of the closeness and loftiness of the houses. Externally Aradus depended on her possessions upon the mainland both for water and for food. The barren rock could grow nothing, and was moreover covered with houses. Such rainwater as fell on the island was carefully collected ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... I cried at last, in anger, and rushed into the street, leaving him still writhing in the loftiness of ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... made by labour; and the leaping light of blazing logs, reflected on the black oak panelling, gave a transient air of cheerfulness to the spacious dining-parlour where Sir John and his daughter took their first meal in the old home. And if to Angela's eye, accustomed to the Italian loftiness of the noble mansions on the Thames, the broad oak crossbeams seemed coming down upon her head, there was at least an air of homely snugness in the low ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... all men were not fitted for the work. It needed a beefy person with fat legs and a large amount of inexplicable dignity, a regular God-knows-why loftiness. Truth, in those days, real talent was usually engaged in some form of rascality, barring the making of books and sermons. When one remembers the impenetrable dulness of the great mass of the people, the frivolity of the gentry, ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... with his friendship, and who must always bear to his memory the affectionate veneration of sons, may yet feel their pain at the thought that they will see him no more, raised into a higher mood as they meditate on the loftiness of his task and the steadfastness and success with which he achieved it. If it is grievous to think that such richness of culture, such full maturity of wisdom, such passion for truth and justice, are now by a single stroke extinguished, at ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... elected to love none but magnanimous souls, and to live only in an atmosphere of magnanimity. You ask me whether Mme. Verdurin is really intelligent. I can assure you that she has given me proofs of a nobility of heart, of a loftiness of soul, to which no one could possibly attain—how could they?—without a corresponding loftiness of mind. Without question, she has a profound understanding of art. But it is not, perhaps, in that that she is ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... his great books. Had the summons come to pack his effects to-morrow and, saying good-by to everything else, start on a journey to the congenial places where his mighty masters lived and wrought, he would have wished her alone to go with him, sharer of life's loftiness. Her companionship wherever he might be—to have just that; to feel that she was always with him, and always one with him; to be able to turn his eyes to hers before some vanishing firelight at an hour like this, with deep rest near them ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... five hundred pages contains all that Aleardi has written. Yet he is one of the chief minor Italian poets of this century, because of his loftiness of purpose and felicity of expression, his tenderness of feeling, and his deep sympathies with his ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... I don't suppose you will know these people, anyway," she added with an unconscious touch of loftiness in her voice. "The ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... appears that in the time of Horace learning was considered to be the characteristic feature of Pacuvius and loftiness of thought that of Accius; and Quintilian speaks of both in the following terms. "Those splendid writers combined sublimity of conception with vigorous style in their tragedies; and on the whole if they have not diffused through their compositions ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... sister through the drawing-rooms first; and she admired the unusual loftiness of the rooms, the blaze of white and gold, and of ce'ladon and gold, and the great Russian lusters, and the mighty mirrors. But when they got to the dining-room she was enchanted. That lofty and magnificent ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... absent from his religious theory. Now, Dr. Cumming invariably assumes that, in fulminating against those who differ from him, he is standing on a moral elevation to which they are compelled reluctantly to look up; that his theory of motives and conduct is in its loftiness and purity a perpetual rebuke to their low and vicious desires and practice. It is time he should be told that the reverse is the fact; that there are men who do not merely cast a superficial glance at his doctrine, and fail to see its beauty or justice, but who, after a close consideration of ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... man is a bad bargain-driver. David's nature was of the sensitive and affectionate type that shrinks from a dispute, and gives way at once if an opponent touches his feelings. His loftiness of feeling, and the fact that the old toper had himself well in hand, put him still further at a disadvantage in a dispute about money matters with his own father, especially as he credited that father with the best ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac |
