"Unattempted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed Fast by the oracle of God, I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above th' Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all temples th' upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for thou know'st; thou from the first Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread, Dove-like sat'st brooding ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... Lady Susan to sink the latter lower than ever in her opinion, she was proportionably more anxious to get Frederica removed from such a mother, and placed under her own care; and, though with little hope of success, was resolved to leave nothing unattempted that might offer a chance of obtaining her sister-in-law's consent to it. Her anxiety on the subject made her press for an early visit to London; and Mr. Vernon, who, as it must already have appeared, lived only to do whatever he was desired, soon found ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... past to the future. The work attempted and done is great, the work unattempted and not done is far greater. Should every church and individual in the land double last year's contribution this year, we would be compelled still to leave greatly needed work undone. In view of boundless ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 11, November, 1889 • Various
... period when poems on the subject of paradise lost were being scattered broadcast in Italy and elsewhere—when, in short, all Europe was ringing with the doleful history of Adam and Eve—Milton could have ventured to speak of his work as 'Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyma'—an amazing verse which, by the way, is literally transcribed out of Ariosto ('Cosa, non detta in prosa mai, ne in rima'). But even now the acquaintance of the British public with the productions of continental writers is superficial ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... he was able presently to begin cannonading the walls, to make a breach for an assault. The officer in the Irish army whom we have already quoted, gives this account of the siege: "Never was a town better attacked and better defended than the city of Limerick. William left nothing unattempted that the art of war, the skill of a great captain and the valor of veteran soldiers could put in execution to gain the place; and the Irish omitted nothing that courage and constancy could practice to defend it. The continual assaults of the one and the frequent sallies of the other consumed a ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... men of thirty thousand pounds—twenty thousand to one, ten thousand to the other through his wife. They had that interest, as well as other interests, in ensuring their impunity from exposure, and they would leave no stone unturned, no sacrifice unattempted, no treachery untried, to discover the place in which their victim was concealed, and to part her from the only friends she had in ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... of dress only: you must preserve a certain aesthetical tournure, or else set yourself down among the frampy multitude for ever. This must be our apology, dear reader, for thus detaining your attention, and for setting before you "things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme," which may tend, if properly applied, to the inappreciable beautification of your own valuable person. Descend we therefore from the head and trunk of man—a curious bathos—to his understandings and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... such an agency can only be loss of time in completing the recovery of the balance of 6,55,000, for which your regiment was sent to Fyzabad. I must therefore desire you will leave no efforts, gentle or harsh, unattempted to complete this, before you move from Fyzabad; and I am very anxious that this should be as soon as possible, as I want to employ your regiment upon other emergent service, now suffering ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... books which have found their birth in the campaign against the Boers, this one stands out, not merely on account of the author's literary merits, keen power of observation, and attractive phraseology, but in its unprejudiced sentiments and clever handling of battle impressions hitherto unattempted by contemporary writers. It is the work of ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... on here, and enter more at length into details of his personal character, but the task is too difficult a one, and is perhaps, after all, better left unattempted. A most intimate and highly-valued friend of my father's, whom I wished to have supplied me with some passages on these points, remarks very justly, that "any portraiture of him, by the pen as by the pencil, will fall so far short both of the truth ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... convincingly proved to you by the coin represented in Plate VI. You need only look at two or three vases of the best time to assure yourselves that beauty of feature was, in popular art, not only unattained, but unattempted; and, finally,—and this you may accept as a conclusive proof of the Greek insensitiveness to the most subtle beauty,—there is little evidence even in their literature, and none in their art, of their having ever perceived any beauty in infancy, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... Walpole, but also to turn his thoughts toward the Church again, as the second-best means of rising in the world. On the accession of George the Second, Young found the same transcendent merits in him as in his predecessor, and celebrated them in a style of poetry previously unattempted by him—the Pindaric ode, a poetic form which helped him to surpass himself in furious bombast. "Ocean, an Ode: concluding with a Wish," was the title of this piece. He afterward pruned it, and cut off, among other things, the concluding Wish, expressing the yearning for humble retirement, ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... time, it must be confessed, in going round to see Cleer than in perfecting himself in the knowledge of his chosen art. Not that he failed to try every chance that lay open to him—he had far too much energy to sit idle in his chair and let the stream of promotion flow by unattempted; but chances were few and applicants were many, and month after month passed away to his chagrin without the clever young engineer finding an appointment anywhere. Meanwhile, his little nest-egg of South-American savings was rapidly disappearing; and though Tyrrel, ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... being thus found out to the East Indies, the countries to that part of the earth became more accurately and extensively known. Another world was discovered by Columbus; and, at length, Magalhaens accomplished the arduous and hitherto unattempted task of sailing round the globe. At different periods he was succeeded by other circumnavigators, of whom it is no part of the present narrative to ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... risks involved. For it was on the cards that the utmost it could achieve at the Conference toward the restoration of peace might be outweighed and nullified by the consequences of what it was leaving undone and unattempted at home. At no time during the armistice was any constructive policy elaborated in any of the Allied countries. Rhetorical exhortations to keep down expenditure marked the high-water level of ministerial ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... In the same strain of Roland will I tell Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme, On whom strange madness and rank fury fell, A man esteemed so wise in former time; If she, who to like cruel pass has well Nigh brought my feeble wit which fain would climb And hourly wastes ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... in the sentence shall be plainly seen through the words of the sentence. Perspicuity is an indispensable quality of style; if the thought is not understood, or it is misunderstood, its expression might better have been left unattempted. Perspicuity depends mainly upon ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... smaller than that of reflecting minds. Very few persons at any period are able to find out anything whatever. There are few observers, few discoverers, few who even wish to discover truth. In how many societies the problems of philology which face every person who speaks English are left unattempted! And if the inquiring or the successfully inquiring class of minds is small, much smaller, of course, is the class of those possessing the scientific aptitude in an eminent degree. During the last age this most distinguished class was to a very great extent absorbed in ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... at all events, in the sum, whatever might be the order or occasion of discovery, were Van Eyck's improvements in the vehicle of color, and to these, applied by singular ingenuity and affection to the imitation of nature, with a fidelity hitherto unattempted, Mr. Eastlake attributes the influence which his works obtained ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill 10 Delight thee more, and Siloa's Brook that flow'd Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime. And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread 20 Dove-like satst brooding on the vast ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... would be pain. My retrospect of life recalls to my view many opportunities of good neglected, much time squandered upon trifles, and more lost in idleness and vacancy. I leave many great designs unattempted, and ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... requires to be examined and understood. And neither can the teacher nor the student feel himself adequate to the services before him while any valuable authority, on the broad field of his inquiries, is not accessible, or any means of illustration are unattempted. But these facilities are clearly beyond the resources of individuals, and however voluntary associations of students may, to some extent, compensate for private inability, there is a point beyond which ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... the unattempted task, Above the Golden Ocean of my dream I clomb and saw in splendid pageant pass The wild adventures and heroic deeds Of England's epic age, a vision lit With mighty prophecies, fraught with a doom Worthy the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... he satisfies himself by the result of his labours; and he wrote from Rome, 'My "Prometheus Unbound" is just finished, and in a month or two I shall send it. It is a drama, with characters and mechanism of a kind yet unattempted; and I think the execution is better than any of my ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... to the end. That is, a profession, steadily, seriously, and laboriously kept to, in order to provide the means of living; and beyond that, as the ultimate and real end of his life, the pursuit, in a way unattempted before, of all possible human knowledge, and of the methods to improve it and make it sure and fruitful. And so his life was carried out. On the one hand it was a continual and pertinacious seeking after government employment, which could give credit to his name and put money ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... of vice and virtue, or sound the depths of the heart for the motives of action. All those inquiries, which from that time that human nature became the fashionable study, have been made sometimes with nice discernment, but often with idle subtilty, were yet unattempted. The tales, with which the infancy of learning was satisfied, exhibited only the superficial appearances of action, related the events, but omitted the causes, and were formed for such as delighted in wonders ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... death of Stafford was too important a stroke of party to be left unattempted by any expedient, however extraordinary. Besides the great genius and authority of that minister, he had threatened some of the popular leaders with an impeachment; and, had he not himself been suddenly prevented by the impeachment of the commons, he had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... of skinning a hard shelled turtle (soft shelled species are best unattempted) the belly plate is sawed open as shown in Fig. 26. A piece of hacksaw blade may be shaped and set into a firm handle with cross pegs of metal, for this purpose, or the small saw found in a hollow handle tool kit may serve. Four corner holes must ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... relic of family pride; yet I am assured—nay, have good reason to know, that he has refused a very liberal offer on the part of Mr Sparks. Malicious people do say, by the way, that it was by the advice of Sparks's favourite attorneys the execution was enforced, and that no means have been left unattempted to disgust him with the place. Yet he is firm, you see, and persists in disappointing his creditors, and depriving himself of the comforts of life, merely in order that he may die, as his fathers did before him—the lord of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... the garden, beneath budded myrtle and Petisporum. In this wilderness the birds were busy; the two main songsters being the mocking-bird and the cardinal-grosbeak, which monopolized all the parts of our more varied Northern orchestra save the tender and liquid notes, which in South Carolina seemed unattempted except by some stray blue-bird. Jays were as loud and busy as at the North in autumn; there were sparrows and wrens; and sometimes I noticed the shy ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Vieta, a Frenchman, a most distinguished man, and on account of his remarkable skill in Mathematical Science the honour of the French nation, first of all with singular genius and with industry hitherto unattempted undertook the restoration of the analytic art, of which subject we are here treating, which after the learned age of the Greeks for a long time had become antiquated and remained uncultivated : and by various treatises which he eloquently and ingeniously wrote in the working ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... with what incredible labour and perseverance his Majesty, Charles Emanuel the Second of Sardinia, Cyprus, and Jerusalem, King, had cut this road through the mountain; which great enterprise, though unattempted by the Romans, and despaired of by other nations, was executed under his auspices. I very sincerely wished him joy, and, as the evening was growing rather cool, was not sorry to perceive, through an opening in the rocks, a wide-extended ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... be filled called for over a million pieces of glass, and for a year the services of thirty of the most skilled artisans would be required. The work had to be done from a series of bromide photographs enlarged to a size hitherto unattempted. But at last the decoration was completed; the finished art piece was placed on exhibition in New York and over seven thousand persons came to see it. The leading art critics pronounced the result to be the most amazing instance of the tone capacity of glass-work ever achieved. It was a veritable ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... most of the articles the names of the particular donors were attached, as if to make Jeanie sensible not only of the general, but of the individual interest she had excited in the noble family. To name the various articles by their appropriate names, would be to attempt things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme; besides that the old-fashioned terms of manteaus, sacques, kissing-strings, and so forth, would convey but little information even to the milliners of the present day. I shall deposit, however, an accurate inventory ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... enjoyment. The streets look as if they were never cleaned from January to December, although there is an abundant supply of water. Sanitation is for the most part woefully disregarded, and the little that is needed to make the place wholesome and attractive is left unattempted. What distressed my companion more than the neglected aspect of the streets was the sight of so many apparently uncared-for, ill-fed cats and dogs. As a rule, French people are kind to their domestic pets, but the bare- ribbed cats ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... columns. While associated with that journal, his attention was attracted to the mine of wealth offered to the investigator by the early history of Cecil county. Prompted by a love of historical investigation, he was led to make researches into this mine—a task hitherto largely unattempted or ineffectually prosecuted. The results of these studies enriched the columns of The Cecil Whig during a period of three years, and attracted wide attention. In 1881 he published the "History of Cecil County, Md., and the Early Settlements Around the Head of ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... third volumes of the Positive Polity. The Comtist maintains that even if these five volumes together fail in laying down correctly and finally the lines of the new science, still they are the first solution of a great problem hitherto unattempted. 'Modern biology has got beyond Aristotle's conception; but in the construction of the biological science, not even the most unphilosophical biologist would fail to recognise the value of Aristotle's attempt. So for sociology. Subsequent sociologists may have conceivably ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... Paradise Lost is not a copy of any master; it is a development and a consummation of two influences, the slow maturity of Milton's mind, deepened and broadened by the Commonwealth controversies "not without dust and heat," and the exalted sublimity of the yet unattempted theme of justifying God's management of human and divine affairs. His maturity brought him his great familiarity both in matter and in style with nearly all that was best in European literature, and his peculiar subject, with only gods and angels (Adam and Eve are ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... little party were so weak-handed that to construct such a fortified habitation as Blyth had suggested would be, if not an absolute impossibility, a work of such time and labour that for all practical purposes it might as well be unattempted. This was no case of ordinary difficulty; it was not a difficulty which could be overcome by the skilful and judicious application of a practically unlimited supply of manual labour. And almost for the first time in his life the engineer found himself confronted with a question ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... I have often look'd for in your Papers, and have as often wondered to find my self disappointed; the rather, because I think it a Subject every way agreeable to your Design, and by being left unattempted by others, seems reserved as a proper Employment for you; I mean a Disquisition, from whence it proceeds, that Men of the brightest Parts, and most comprehensive Genius, compleatly furnished with Talents for any Province in humane Affairs; such as by their wise Lessons of Oeconomy ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... emotion towards modern life cannot be simple; and, moreover, it must before all things embody not only that living tangle which is felt by the Futurists as so real, but it must purge and order it, by complexities of tone and rhythm hitherto unattempted. One art, beyond all others, has blossomed into real, spontaneous, unconscious life to-day, and that is Music; the other arts stand round arrayed, half paralyzed, with drooping, empty hands. The nineteenth ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... prove to the satisfaction of the authorities that he was competent in his craft; and unless he submitted as a matter of course to their supervision. The legislature had undertaken not to let that indispensable task go wholly unattempted, of distributing the various functions of society by the rule of capacity; of compelling every man to do his duty in an honest following of his proper calling, securing to him that he in his turn should not be injured by ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... the great Robert Bruce's heart. The writer shrunk, however, from filling up, in this particular, the sketch as it was originally traced; nor did he venture to resume, in continuation, the subject which he had left unattempted in the original work. Thus, the incident of the discovery of the heart, which occupies the greater part of the Introduction to the Monastery, is a mystery unnecessarily introduced, and which remains ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott |
