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More "Excel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that I have eaten many sorts of biscuits, cakes, cheese, and excellent sweetmeats I have not here mentioned, especially manger- blanc; and they have olives, which are no where so good; and their perfumes of amber excel all the world in their kind, both for household stuff and fumes; and there is no such water ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... an example of the affection and love of a wife to her husband, and of a mother to her children. The only relic I possess of her handiwork is a sampler, dated 1743, the needlework of which is so delicate and neat, that to me it seems to excel everything of the ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... is well known to excel all others for making of Malts that produce those fine British Liquors, Beer and Ale, which no other Nation can equalize; But as this Excellency cannot be obtain'd unless the several Ingredients are in a ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... honourable emulation, the boy strove to excel. Using both hands for the elongation of his eyes, the extension of his mouth, and the depression of his ears, he turned upon the Haddock so horrible a mask that the stricken child burst into a howl, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... read so far, can think I am unduly prejudiced in favour of America and the Americans. I have tried to write fairly, and point out in what respects their institutions, habits, &c., excel ours; but, on the other hand, I have criticized in no sparing language what I consider are faults or peculiarities distasteful to outsiders, and possibly there is more blame than praise in the foregoing pages. If now, therefore, I ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... did the boy really excel, and that was in the matter of making rhymes. The Abbe Chateauneuf had taught him the trick before he could speak plainly, and Ninon had been so pleased with the wee poet that she left him two thousand francs in her will for the purchase of books. As Ninon insisted on living ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... said, with a sigh, "If a man had this quickness of wit, he would excel all the folk of his age and time." Then he called for a chess-board and said to me, "Wilt thou play with me?" I signed with my head as who should say, "Yes," and came forward and placed the men and played two games with him, each of which I won, much to his amazement. Then I took ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... had forfeited the regard of his equals, and with many of them he was at open feud. The only pleasure left to him was desperately hard work. Not only was he stimulated by a fiery ambition, a mad desire to excel in the half-year's competition, and show what he was yet capable of, and so to some extent redeem his unhappy position, but also his heart was fixed on getting, if possible, the chief scholarship of Saint Winifred's—a scholarship sufficiently valuable to pay the main ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... cultivated intellect easily accommodates itself to new occupations. The notion that individual genius can only excel in one thing is a vulgar error. A mind endued by nature with strong powers and quick sensibility, and by culture furnished in an uncommon degree with habits of attention and reflection, wherever it is placed will find itself employment, and whatever ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... as the most honourable testimony of their conduct, and are treasured up as valuable marks of distinction. This encouragement has great influence, and makes them vie with each other in endeavours to excel in sobriety, cleanliness, meekness and industry. She told me also that the young women bred up at the schools these ladies support are so much esteemed for many miles round that it is not uncommon for young farmers, who want sober, ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... Reuben occupies specially points to Gen. xlix. As the first-born, he ought to stand at the head; but here we find him occupying the second place. In Gen. xlix. Jacob says to him, on account of his guilt, "Thou shalt not excel;" and "the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power," which up to that time he had possessed, are transferred to Judah. Yet Moses has so much regard to his original dignity, that he places him immediately after Judah; the utterance of Jacob did ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... is a prejudice against inconsistent characters in books, yet the prejudice bears the other way, when what seemed at first their inconsistency, afterwards, by the skill of the writer, turns out to be their good keeping. The great masters excel in nothing so much as in this very particular. They challenge astonishment at the tangled web of some character, and then raise admiration still greater at their satisfactory unraveling of it; in this way throwing open, sometimes to the understanding even of school misses, the last complications ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... them of their mistake, saying: "This marvel that you see in me is a trance; when I pass into my deep sleep my spirit at once floats away in the upper air with the goddess, Poliahu. We are a numerous band of spirits, but I excel them in the distance of my flights. In one day I can compass this island of Hawaii, as well as Maui, Oahu, and Kauai, and return again. In my flights I have seen that Kauai is the richest of all the islands, for it is well supplied with food and fish, and it is abundantly watered. I intend to remain ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... of Assam it is said: "Of clothing there was not much to see; but in spite of this I doubt whether we could excel them in true decency and modesty. Ibn Muhammed Wali had already remarked in his history of the conquest of Assam (1662-63), that the Naga women only cover their breasts. They declare that it is absurd to cover those parts ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Hebrew of fine physique and rare endowment, who was, while but a youth, carried captive to Babylon, and trained for office in the court of the king; was found, after three years' discipline, to excel "in wisdom and understanding" all the magicians and enchanters of the realm, of which he gave such proof that he rose step by step to the highest official positions, first in the Babylonian and then in the Persian empire. He was a Hebrew prophet ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... be supposed, however, that the mob of cultivated Englishmen know how to dine in this elevated sense. The unpolishable ruggedness of the national character is still an impediment to them, even in that particular line where they are best qualified to excel. Though often present at good men's feasts, I remember only a single dinner, which, while lamentably conscious that many of its higher excellences were thrown away upon me, I yet could feel to be a perfect work of art. It could not, without unpardonable coarseness, be styled ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of any kind; he does not care for society; he very rarely goes to the club, and never touches a card when he does; and yet he is the sort of man one would think would throw himself into what is going on. He is a strong, active, healthy man, whom one would expect to excel in all sorts of sports; he is certainly good looking; he talks extremely well, and is, I should say, ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... so, Grettir? Which then will the chieftains do? But true it is that you excel all men in courage. See you not how they are ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... incurs another. But the principal point of judgement, is in discerning between the qualities of inconvenients, and not taking the bad for the good. Moreover a Prince ought to shew himself a lover of vertue, and that he honors those that excel in every Art. Afterwards ought he encourage his Citizens, whereby they may be enabled quickly to exercise their faculties as well in merchandise, and husbandry, as in any other kind of traffick, to the end that no man forbear to adorne and ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... means," he answered. "If we are to do anything at all we will do the thing in which I excel. It feeds my vanity, which is good for me, for ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... billiards well is like using a pencil, or a German flute, or a small-sword—you cannot master any one of these implements at first, and it is only by repeated study and perseverance, joined to a natural taste, that a man can excel in the handling of either. Now Crawley, from being only a brilliant amateur, had grown to be a consummate master of billiards. Like a great General, his genius used to rise with the danger, and when the luck had been unfavourable to him ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... equivalent, "terra japonica," is prepared from the areca in Ceylon; but the nuts are exported in large quantities to the Maldive Islands and to India, the produce of which they excel both in astringency and size. The fibrous wood of the areca being at once straight, firm, and elastic, is employed for making the pingoes (yokes for the shoulders), by means of which the Singhalese coolie, like the corresponding class among the ancient Egyptians and the Greeks, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... thee well, [5] Palliards all thou didst excel, [6] And thy jockum bore the Bell, [7] Glimmer on ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... regulars, but it must be confessed that a good many instances might be quoted in which the colonials, though second to none in gallantry, have been defective in that very quality in which they were expected to excel. ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the future; but the girl was sick of her dependence on George's father, and, in the revolt of her pride, she would have accepted any honest work which would have enabled her to escape from the insecurity of her position. Of her competence to earn a living, of her ability to excel in any work that she undertook, of the sufficiency and soundness of her resources, she was as absolutely assured as she had been when she entered the millinery department of Brandywine & Plummer. If Madame, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... than he would otherwise have considered safe. We find these people very different from the wild inhabitants of the coral islands we have visited. They have attained considerable proficiency in many arts—their cloth is fine, and beautifully ornamented, as are their mats, but they excel in feather work. The helmets, and mantles, and capes of their chiefs are very beautiful. The helmets are in the form of those of ancient Greece, and are covered with bright red feathers, worked in to look like velvet, with ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... no time, did I feel the impetus that the desire to excel brings with it. To be at the foot of the class always seemed to me the least of the ills that a school-boy ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... is a feeling inherent in most Englishmen, and whether in the chase, or with the rod or gun, they far excel all other nations. In fact, the definition of this feeling cannot be understood by many foreigners. We are frequently ridiculed for fox-hunting: 'What for all dis people, dis horses, dis many dog? dis leetle (how you call him?) dis "fox" for ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... his particular place in the universe where he will excel in some kind of activity, there being no two persons in all Creation exactly alike, the student on Mars is given an opportunity to obtain a broad and comprehensive knowledge relating to all subjects, both material ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... be truly great, it is necessary that nations should excel in the arts of peace as well ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... 'unfit alike for good or ill,' who try one thing, and fail because they are not strong enough, and another, because they have not energy enough, and a third, because they have no talent—inconsistent, unstable, and therefore never to excel, what shall we say of them? what use is there in them? what hope is there of them? what can we wish for them? [Greek: to mepot' einai pant' ariston]. It were better for them they had never been ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... his youth, his attitude, and his attire. The angelic life is vigorous, progressive, buoyant, and alien from decay. Immortal youth belongs to them who 'excel in strength' because they 'do his commandments.' That waiting minister shows us what the children of the Resurrection shall be, and so his presence as well as his speech expounds the blessed mystery of our life in the risen Lord. His serene attitude of sitting 'on the right side' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... ten minute dissertation on the treachery of friends; "never in all the years to come. The driveling fools! What do I pay them for? To let me lie there snoring so loud that I couldn't hear opportunity for the noise I was making? As in everything else I undertake, my dear Barnes, I excel at snoring. My lung capacity is something amazing. It has to have an outlet. They let me lie there like a log while the richest publicity material that ever fell to the lot of an actor went to waste,—utter waste. Why, damme, sir, I could have made that scene ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... wish to excel in working guipure d'art should practise each of the stitches until they attain perfect regularity and quickness in their execution. Two or three hours devoted to this in the first instance will not be time wasted, as the most elaborate pattern ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton
... rulest each melodious lay That floats along the gilded shell, Who the mute tenant of the watry way Canst teach, at pleasure, to excel The softest note harmonious Sorrow brings, When the expiring Swan her ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... anecdote or shaft of pictorial satire; only with great pains is any one induced to regard a picture as an independent creation of form. In so literary a society it seems paradoxical almost to believe in pure painting; and, in despair, we cry out that no country can be expected to excel, at one time, in two arts. We forget Athens and Tuscany; we also forget France. For more than two hundred years France has led the visual art of Europe; and if English painting were ever to become one-tenth part as good as French literature I, for my part, should be as pleased as surprised. ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... women are remarkable. The men, as a rule, attract attention by their height, fullness and symmetry of development, and the regularity and agreeableness of their features. In muscular power and constitutional ability to endure they excel. While these qualities distinguish, with a few exceptions, the men of the whole tribe, they are particularly characteristic of the two most widely spread of the families of which the tribe is composed. These are the Tiger and Otter clans, which, proud ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... prophylactic, is probably beneficial as a preventive of fever. The Khasis, like other people of Indo-Chinese origin, are much addicted to gambling. The people, and especially those who inhabit the War country, are fond of litigation. Col. Bivar remarks, "As regards truthfulness the people do not excel, for they rarely speak the truth unless to suit their own interests." Col. Bivar might have confined this observation to the people who live in the larger centres of population, or who have been much ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... been capable of seeing or imagining such things, they would never have fallen. There can be no question but that the glorious consolation of the faithful and obedient believers, will incomparably, not to say infinitely, excel that of the primitive state of man, or anything which could have been by man attained, if the blessed SON had not suffered. Let the most brilliant and soaring imagination exert its most strenuous and happy efforts in conceiving, arranging and ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... respects his influence on his successors is of no slight significance. As a satirist Pope acknowledged the master he was unable to excel, and so did many of the eighteenth century versemen, who appear to have looked upon satire as the beginning and the end of poetry. Moreover Dryden may be regarded, without much exaggeration, as the father of modern prose. Nothing can be more lucid than his style, which is at ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... horses which we saw before us on the road, pointing out in each of them some defect, and exclaiming: 'I shall excel them all, in sh' Allah! Does not your Honour also think ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... exercising, with the strictest care, The art bequeathed to his possession! Dost thou thy father honor, as a youth? Then may his teaching cheerfully impel thee: Dost thou, as man, increase the stores of truth? Then may thine own son afterwards excel thee. ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... red; others are of a straw colour, spotted with green; and others are worked with beautiful stripes, either in straight or waving lines of red and brown. In this article of manufacture, whether we regard the strength, fineness, or beauty, they certainly excel the whole world. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... the line to be drawn among the musical? Who are to earn their living by music and who are to be amateurs? Especially as fifty of our second hundred can with proper education easily excel fifty of the first hundred who have less education. Who is to decide whether it is prudent for a girl to spend all she has on a musical education with the hope of making herself independent in the end? No one can decide positively, ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... the patience to abide the post mortem publication of their memoirs. Sir Edward Goschen (former British Ambassador to Germany and Austria) or Jules Cambon (former French Ambassador to Germany, the United States and Spain) probably could excel Mr. Gerard in revelations of entertaining diplomatic history and gossip. Count von Bernstorff, former Ambassador to the United States, too, I imagine might startle us with a ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... mutability. Nor can your words for all their honey breath Outsing the speech of many an older rhyme, And though my ear deliver them from death One day or two, it is so little time. Nor does your beauty in its excellence Excel a thousand in the daily sun, Yet must I put a period to pretence, And with my logic's catalogue have done, For act and word and beauty are but keys To unlock the heart, and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... be the last accomplishment of civilization. To be idle gracefully and contentedly and picturesquely is an art. It is one in which the Americans, who do so many things well, do not excel. They have made the excuse that they have not time, or, if they have leisure, that their temperament and nervous organization do not permit it. This excuse will pass for a while, for we are a new people, and probably we are more highly and sensitively organized ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and coquetry, to folly and vice, only when it is extended to unworthy objects. The moment a woman's wish to please becomes discriminative, the moment she feels any attachment to a man superior to the vulgar herd, she not only ceases to be a coquette, but she exerts herself to excel in every thing that he approves, and, from her versatility of manners, she has the happy power of adapting herself to his taste, and of becoming all that his most sanguine wishes could desire." The proofs of this discriminative taste, and the first symptoms of this ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... as they emerge into the cool air, in accents which only Wieland could excel; "there goes a cat!" Upon the information a volley of hats follow the scared animal, none of which go within ten yards of it, except Mr. Rapp's, who, taking a bold aim, flings his own gossamer down the area, over ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... religious and political institutions occur in his contributions to the Edinburgh, but occasionally their perfunctory manner suggests the editorial pen of Jeffrey. Doubtless Hazlitt's discriminating judgment would have enabled him to excel in this field, had he been equipped ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... am aware of. He shows so little ambition to excel in any particular branch that I should say his choice of a profession may be best determined by his parents. I am, of course, ignorant whether his relatives possess influence likely to be of use to him. That is often the chief point to be considered, particularly ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... know a bottle-man Smiling and debonair, And he has promised me I can Choose of his precious ware! In age and shape and color, too, His dainty goods excel— Aha, my friends, if you but knew— But no! I will ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... laughter again broke forth, while the poet was thus announcing the quality of his wares. "And," he continued, "I have tried to excel everything that Boccaccio, Aretin, and other masters of their craft have ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... handle the ribbons." "My horses are all bloods, mayhap your lordship has noticed my team." "I pride myself on my seat in the saddle, mayhap your lordship has seen me ride." "If I am superlative in anything, 'its in my wines." "So please your ladyship, 'tis dress I most excel in ... 'tis walking I pride myself in." No matter what is mentioned, 'tis the one thing he did or had better than any one else. This conceited fool was duped into believing a parcel of men-servants to be lords ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... enabled the frequenters of the venta to indulge in the favourite juego de pelota, or a game at ball, to which the Navarrese and the northern Spaniards generally are much addicted, and at which most of them excel. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... life. Even to Raymond I attempted no extremities of confidence. Even to myself I tried to be the thing that was expected of me. I professed a modest desire for temperate and tolerable achievement in life, though deep in my lost depths I wanted passionately to excel; I worked hard, much harder than I allowed to appear, and I said I did it for the credit of the school; I affected a dignified loyalty to queen and country and church; I pretended a stoical disdain for appetites and delights and all the arts, though now and then a chance ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... the natural blossoms, which they excel in beauty, live ten hours only, but they so far differ from them that their ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... were spoken in a voice that startled the physician. To divert Massimilla from her bitter reflections, while the excitement of recalling la Tinti was at its height, he engaged her in one of the arguments in which the French excel. ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... rest, I'm glad to see you on dis sunny day.' Now think! here's a human who has no other cares Except to please the white man, serve him when he's starving, And who has as much fun when he sees you carving The sirloin as you do, does this black man. Just think for a minute, how the negroes excel, Can you beat them with a banjo or a broiling pan? There's music in their soul as original As any breed of people in the whole wide earth; They're elemental hope, heartiness, mirth. There are only two things real American: One is ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... her holy Dee; York many wonders of her Ouse can tell; The Peak, her Dove, whose banks so fertile be, And Kent will say her Medway doth excel: ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... word," said Howard, and a second battle began. As we do not delight in fields of battle, or hope to excel, like Homer, in describing variety of wounds, we shall content ourselves with relating, that after five pitched battles, in which Oliver's champion received bruises of all shapes and sizes, and of every shade of black, blue, green, and yellow, his unconquered ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... wherein they differ: Of their Extent, Action, Unities, Episodes, and the Nature of their Morals. Of Parody: Of the Style, Figures, and Wit proper to this Sort of Poem, and the superior Talents requisite to Excel ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... excel in too many matters, out of levity and vain glory, are ever envious. For they cannot want work; it being impossible, but many, in some one of those things, should surpass them. Which was the character of Adrian the Emperor; that mortally envied poets, and painters, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... expeditions, and in playing tennis. During winter he hunted. Hunting was a greater passion with him than poetry. Much of his poetry celebrated the loveliness of the field as seen by the huntsman in the early morning light. But few probably guessed that the youth known to excel in field sports excelled also in poetry. For, in its way, this early poetry does excel. It was characteristic of him that nearly every little book he then wrote was privately printed. Poetry was for him just something for private and particular enjoyment—like ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... games and sports in which girls may find both pleasure and profit. The ideal type of exercise for girls is found in swimming, walking and similar activities in which the exertion is not excessively violent, and which call for long-continued or repeated efforts. Girls excel in ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... Voltaire was powerful for evil in France. Wielland, a friend of Klopstock, and a romantic poet, might have been the German Ariosto had he not abandoned poetry for prose. He tried to copy the Greek, in which he failed to excel. During this conflict in Germany between the French and English school, German literature was much influenced by Macpherson's Ossian, and Scotch names are found in a great many German works of this period. The literature ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... induce the commonalty of Jerusalem to take from me the government over the Galileans, and to give their suffrages for conferring that authority upon him. This Simon was of the city of Jerusalem, and of a very noble family of the sect of the Pharisees, which are supposed to excel others in the accurate knowledge of the laws of their country. He was a man of great wisdom and reason, and capable of restoring public affairs by his prudence, when they were in an ill posture. He was also an old friend and companion of ...
— The Life of Flavius Josephus • Flavius Josephus
... or obstinacy is the cause of their tears, there is a sure way of stopping them by distracting their attention by some pleasant or conspicuous object which makes them forget that they want to cry. Most nurses excel in this art, and rightly used it is very useful; but it is of the utmost importance that the child should not perceive that you mean to distract his attention, and that he should be amused without suspecting you are thinking about him; now this is ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... backward learners. Some there are who excel in embroidery, crocheting, making ties and other fancy articles, but who have no aptitude for shaping and trimming hats. They plod on, and win at last. Then there is the girl whose parents wish her ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... materials which must be disguised or kept hidden; while its leading features are a delight in elaborate accessories and that very modern sentiment, a horror of anachronism. A few living artists, like Mr. Shorthouse and Mr. Stevenson, can still excel under these difficult conditions, which have driven a crowd of second-rate novelists into the extreme of minute realism. Into this retreat, however, they have been followed by a host of readers; for in ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... your books, you should set your mind on your books; and that you should think of home when not engaged in reading. Whatever you do, don't romp together with them, for were you to meet our master, your father, it will be no joke! Although it's asserted that a scholar must strain every nerve to excel, yet it's preferable that the tasks should be somewhat fewer, as, in the first place, when one eats too much, one cannot digest it; and, in the second place, good health must also be carefully attended to. This is my view on the subject, and you ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... most likely to excel in the lighter arts—to design (for furniture or fabrics), to embroider, to carve, to engrave, to etch, to model, to paint. Here also success depends largely upon that which was inborn, though girls of moderate talent in art, by patience, may become skilled in many kinds of art work. Schools for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... a year I will teach you to sing well," said an Italian music teacher to a pupil who wished to know what can be hoped for with study; "if two years, you may excel. If you will practice the scale constantly for three years, I will make you the best tenor in Italy; if for four years, you may have the world ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... who by Divine help learned in your Republic the art of governing Romans with equity. Our royalty is an imitation of yours, modelled on your good purpose, a copy of the only Empire; and in so far as we follow you do we excel all ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... the heart itself, and its tests are exceedingly delicate and subtle. Its counterfeits abound." Most true. And yet humility is not intended for experts in morals only, or for men of a rare religious genius only. The plainest of men, the least skilled and the most unlettered of men, may not only excel in humility, but may also be permitted to know that they are indeed planted, and are growing slowly but surely in that grace of all graces. No doubt our Lord had, so to describe it, the most delicate and the most subtle of human minds; and, no doubt whatever, He had the ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... daughter, the Princess." The youth rejoined, "What is the matter with her and what hath befallen her?" and the man retorted, "O my son, verily the Sultan hath a daughter so fair that she seemeth cast in the very mould of beauty and none in her day can excel her, but whoso is betrothed to her and marrieth her and goeth in unto her the dawn never cometh without his becoming a heap of poison, and no one wotteth the business what it may be." Hearing these words the youth said ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... describing a bit of England and calling it the antipodes." He could infuse life into the dry figures of a blue-book; but in the mere portraiture of ordinary conventional society manners, free from the sway of strong passions and emotions, he did not greatly excel writers of far inferior ability. He had the graphic simplicity and realism of De Foe in describing places he had never seen; and as the historian of a country or a period in which he felt interested he would have been unusually brilliant, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... have perished. In the first ages of the Roman republic, the children of the nobility were sent to Etru'ria for education, especially in divination and the art of soothsaying, in which the Tuscans were supposed to excel. The form of the Roman constitution, the religious ceremonies, and the ensigns of civil government, were borrowed ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... by what they tell us Show all in which their wits excel us; But the true Master we behold In what his art ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... continued she, "to see and be acquainted early in life with superior people. It enables one to form a standard of excellence, and raises that standard high and bright. In men, the enthusiasm becomes glorious ambition to excel in arts or arms; in women, it refines and elevates the taste, and is so far a preventive against frivolous, vulgar company, and all their train of follies and vices. I can speak from my own recollection, of the great happiness ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... the households! The good housewives of the Netherlands do not excel the Pueblo squaws in cleanliness. Floors are always carefully swept; all along the walls of the spacious rooms seats and couches are covered with finely variegated rugs; the walls are tastefully decorated with pictures and mirrors, and the large cupboards are filled with luxurious fruits, ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... now a deep antipathy! How often the side we take even in the most momentous matters is decided by the most unworthy motives and the most contemptible considerations! Unstable as water, Reuben shall not excel. Double-minded men, we, like Jacob's first-born, are unstable in all our ways. We have no anchor, or, what anchor we sometimes have soon slips. We have no fixed pole-star by which to steer our life. Any will-o'-the-wisp of pleasure, ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... grateful to the body. The whole science of Zooelogy has arisen, with its simple classifications and its vast details. The vivaria of the Jardin des Plantes rival those of the Colosseum in magnitude, and excel them in object. Nature is ransacked, explored, and hunted down in every field, only that she may add to the general knowledge. Museums collect and arrange all the types of creative wisdom, from the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... but ill prepared," was the reply, "for such desperate measures. I am not certain they do not outnumber us; even so, we probably excel them in discipline and skill, and have every chance of victory tomorrow, which we should lose by ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... were any of them wanting in those perfections which attract the heart beyond the pomp of blood or titles; but she who had influenced that of our Horatio, was likewise in the opinion of those, who felt not her charms in the same degree he did, allowed to excel her fair companions in every captivating grace, and to yield in beauty to none but the princess herself, who was esteemed a Prodigy. This amiable lady was called Charlotta de Palfoy, only daughter to the baron of that name; and having from her most early ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... advantages I could lay no claim, for my fingers were all thumbs. Some at least of the others I possessed; and finding much entertainment in our commerce, I did not suffer my advantages to rust. I have never despised the social arts, in which it is a national boast that every Frenchman should excel. For the approach of particular sorts of visitors, I had a particular manner of address, and even of appearance, which I could readily assume and change on the occasion rising. I never lost an opportunity to flatter either the person of my visitor, if ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rule, are more intelligent and better educated than the fighting races of northern India, and I therefore thought it could not be difficult to teach them the value of musketry, and make them excel in it. To this end, I encouraged rifle meetings and endeavoured to get General Officers to take an interest in musketry inspections, and to make those inspections instructive and entertaining to the men. I took to rifle-shooting myself, as did the officers on my personal ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... to strike terror, because the lion at the same time erects the hair of its mane, and the dog the hair along its back, and thus they make themselves appear as large and terrible as possible. Rival males try to excel and challenge each other by their voices, and this leads to deadly contests. Thus the use of the voice will have become associated with the emotion of anger, however it may be aroused. We have also seen that intense pain, like rage, leads to violent outcries, and ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... it enacted, that it shall be lawful for the protector of negroes to purchase the freedom of any negro who shall appear to him to excel in any mechanical art, or other knowledge or practice deemed liberal, and the value shall ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... emancipation is not quite complete even in America, and noblesse oblige! our code still reads: 'Zeus has unquestioned right to Io; but woe betide Io when she suns her heart in the smiles that belong to Hera!' Some women find exhilaration in the effort to excel, by flying closest to the flame without singeing their satin wings; by executing a pirouette on the extremest ledge of the abyss, yet escape toppling in; female Blondins skipping across the tight rope of Platonic friendship, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... uneasy under observation. One must pose in silence until his presence is forgotten or ignored. Then the delicious melody, the approving comments of the songster's companions, and the efforts of ambitious youngsters to imitate and excel, are all ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... prepared His throne in the heavens; and His kingdom ruleth over all." And, says the prophet, "I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne." In the presence-chamber of the King of kings they wait—"angels, that excel in strength," "ministers of His, that do His pleasure," "hearkening unto the voice of His word."(900) Ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, were the heavenly messengers beheld by the prophet Daniel. The apostle ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... product of three generations of heroic genius. He might have developed the frequent example of decadence; he might have sustained the excellence of his fathers' gift, but he could not surpass them in the methods of their school of sculpture and its results. There was one way in which he might excel, and he was born with his feet in that path. His genius was too large for the limits of his era. Therefore he was an artistic dissenter, ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... I can say for myself," observed Nechludoff, "that I have met a FEW people whom I believe to excel ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... processes are operated alike. This gives an individuality to each man's work, and an expert can easily tell one from another. For high-class illustrations, no other photographic process can compare with photogravure, and no doubt it will be many years before anything will be found to excel or even equal it. Much experimenting has been done with other methods, but the results have always been inferior, and I think it is safe to predict that the photogravure will always ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... who are naturally ambitious, would do well to observe how the greatest men of antiquity wade it their ambition to excel all their cotemporaries in knowledge. Julius Caesar and Alexander, the most celebrated instances of human greatness, took a particular care to distinguish themselves by their skill in the arts and sciences. We have ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... libera nos, Domine! Perhaps the piece itself was weak. At all events, "Masaniello" had but a brief run. A drunken man, a jealous man, a deaf man, a fool, a vagabond, a demon, a tyrant, Robson could marvellously depict: in the crazy Neapolitan fisherman he either failed or was unwilling to excel. I had been for a long period extremely solicitous to see Robson undertake the part of Sir Giles Overreach in "A New Way to pay Old Debts." You know that Sir Giles, after the discovery of the obliterated deed, goes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... an eminent degree is evident from a striking fact. There are three avocations to which the faculty of close reasoning is a first essential—law, politics and theology—and in each of these our countrymen excel. ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... encouragement flowed in from every quarter. A wealthy music patron, Karl von Fuernberg, who had recognised his genius, persuaded him to compose his first quartet, and thus turned his attention to the branch of composition in which he was later on to excel. At the instance of this patron Haydn, in 1759, received the appointment of music-director to a rich Bohemian nobleman named Count Ferdinand Morzin, who was an ardent lover of music, and maintained a small orchestra at his country seat. This was a great step in his ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... their manner of living became more and more expensive, as each endeavoured to excel the others in the splendour of his hospitality, and to procure for the next meeting at his house scarcer viands and more costly wines. In this manner they vied with each other, increasing their expenses with savoury spices and the ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... traveler declared, "are the politest people in the world. Every one acknowledges it. You Americans are a remarkable nation, but the French excel you in politeness. You admit it ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... vessels to be distributed among officers and men at rate calculated at $25 for each person aboard the enemy vessel at beginning of engagement; British spy system has been so perfected that it is said in some respects to excel the German; Embassy in Washington denies that women or children are interned ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... other states in the Union excel Washington in the great variety, abundance and value of the natural gifts prepared and ripe for the hand of man within its borders. Preceding races were content to leave its wealth to us, being themselves satisfied to subsist upon that which was at hand and ready for consumption with no effort ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell
... instructors, and by the most ample opportunities of cultivation and improvement. Such lessons and exhibitions, however, might have been thrown away upon many; but James had been born with those natural capacities which fitted him to excel in them. He possessed a fine and correct musical ear; a voice which was rich, flexible, and sufficiently powerful for chamber music; and an enthusiastic delight in the art, which, unless controlled by strong good sense, and a feeling of the higher destinies to which he was called, might have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... his who lacketh brain Bestows our ancient surname, ass! And, with abusive tongue portraying, Describes our laugh and talk as braying! These bipeds of their folly tell us, While thus pretending to excel us." "No, 'tis for you to speak, my friend, And let their orators attend. The braying is their own, but let them be: We understand each other, and agree, And that's enough. As for your song, Such wonders to its notes ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... full of gorgeous splendor—how much vital religion they contain, it is not, perhaps, my province to decide. But in beauty of architecture, in the solemnity and grandeur of interior, no city in the world, except Rome, can excel them. The church of the Madeleine is the most imposing of all; indeed, it seemed to me that in all Paris there was no other building so pretentious. But Notre Dame has that mellow quality which beautifies all ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... versification, music, and stage settings are the materials. It is in harmony with the romantic tendency of modern times that modern dramatists — Shakespeare as well as Moliere, Calderon, and the rest — excel in ethos rather than in plot; for it is the evident characteristic of modern genius to study and enjoy expression, — the suggestion of the not-given, — rather than form, the harmony ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... blame so unmerited never can be thy portion. Greater sins than thou canst commit have been committed by thousands far greater than thou, and these sins would plead as thy excuse, shouldst thou pursue that course which others have pursued—others who far excel thee. Thou wilt have sinned but a little, seeing that thou hadst far less power of resistance than those aforementioned. But if my words move thee not, and thou wouldst still wish to withstand ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... earth a shadowy floor far beneath. This gentle aerial support is distributed throughout hundreds of fine meshes, and the sole contact with the earth is through twin living boles, pulsing with swift running sap, whose lichened bark and moonlit foliage excel any tapestry ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... I excel in metaphysical discussion, and was about giving further elaboration to my favorite idea, when the door burst open. Master Billy came tumbling in with a torn jacket, a bloody nose, the traces of a few tears in his eyes, and the mangiest of ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... of the vascular system. Thus Plutarch cites Empedocles as believing "that the ruling part is not in the head or in the breast, but in the blood; wherefore in whatever part of the body the more of this is spread in that part men excel."(13) And Empedocles' own words, as preserved by Stobaeus, assert "(the heart) lies in seas of blood which dart in opposite directions, and there most of all intelligence centres for men; for blood about the heart is intelligence ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... if we dwell, Do they not speak of trust betray'd; Of merit rising to excel, On which ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... some complimental talk, Time met them, bowed, and joined their walk. 90 Their chat on various subjects ran, But most, what each had done for man. Plutus assumes a haughty air, Just like our purse-proud fellows here. 'Let kings,' says he, 'let cobblers tell, Whose gifts among mankind excel. Consider Courts: what draws their train? Think you 'tis loyalty or gain? That statesman hath the strongest hold, Whose tool of politics is gold. 100 By that, in former reigns, 'tis said, The knave in power hath senates led. By that alone he swayed debates, Enriched himself and beggared ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... maintenance of the three best scholars in Greek and Latin, who should reside at College at least nine months in a year, in each of the three years between their first and second degrees." President Clap further remarks, that "this premium has been a great incitement to a laudable ambition to excel in the knowledge of the classics." It was commonly known as the Dean's bounty.—Clap's Hist. of Yale ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... give him one, he would steal away after his master had retired, and run the risk of being taken up by the night-watch. Of course, the master never knew anything of the absence of the servant at night without permission. As the negroes at these parties tried to excel each other in the way of dress, Sam was often at a loss to make that appearance that his heart desired, but his ready wit ever helped him in this. When his master had retired to bed at night, it was the duty of Sam to put out the lights, and take out with him his master's clothes and boots, ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... well-deserved. He was laborious, pains-taking, and skilful; but, what was better, he was honest and upright. He was a most reliable man; and hence he came to be extensively trusted. Whatever he undertook, he endeavoured to excel in. He would be a first-rate hewer, and he became one. He was himself accustomed to attribute much of his success to the thorough way in which he had mastered the humble beginnings of this trade. He was even ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... galleys with brazen prows, whose oarsmen tore the white foam from the emerald seas as they swept towards the Irish coasts. But the lady had vowed she would wed with no one except a battle champion who could excel in music the chief bard of the High King of Erin; who could outstrip on his steed in the great race of Tara the white steed of the plains; and who could give her as a wedding robe a garment of all the colours of the rainbow, so ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... blood was the end of the beginning of many American industries. Ore was plentiful, wood was superabundant, methods were crude. They could easily excel the Virginia colonists in making iron in Persia and India at the same date. The orientals had certain processes, descended to them from remote times, discovered and practiced by the first metal-workers that ever lived. The difference in the situation ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... with large figures, but nothing specially interesting. There is a large pond in the midst of the garden, covered with duckweed, and full of beautiful gold and silver fish of many kinds. The Chinese certainly excel in producing gold and silver and red fish; they are the pets of every household, and are of all colours, some being striped and spotted, and boasting any number of ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... while others wore cloth caps and red worsted nightcaps. I observed that all their arms were sent below, the captain only retaining his cutlass and a single pistol in the folds of his shawl. Although the captain was the tallest and most powerful man in the ship, he did not strikingly excel many of his men in this respect; and the only difference that an ordinary observer would have noticed was a certain degree of open candour, straightforward daring, in the bold, ferocious expression of his face, which rendered him ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... others only imitations of each other in their strife after complications to confuse the public. We do not boast but quietly excel them all in staunch reliable, economical power. Beautiful pamphlet free. GEO. TALLCOT, 96 ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... temptations, which give you a distaste of your employment; and to meditate, more on that, than how to engage yourself in such laborious affairs, as are not commanded you. Let no man flatter himself; it is impossible to excel in great matters, before we arrive to excel in less: and it is a gross error, under the pretence of saving souls, to shake off the yoke of obedience, which is light and easy, and to take up a cross, which, without comparison, is ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... for but by a miracle. It was asserted and believed that the Holy Virgin, touched with his great desire to become learned and famous, took pity upon his incapacity, and appeared to him in the cloister where he sat, almost despairing, and asked him whether he wished to excel in philosophy or divinity. He chose philosophy, to the chagrin of the Virgin, who reproached him in mild and sorrowful accents that he had not made a better choice. She, however, granted his request ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... cope with her in physical greatness—America with her noble institutions, elements of power, facilities of improvement, promises of greatness and high hopes of immortality, was this day far, very far behind her in natural resources. Nothing can excel the value of her productions—sugar-cane grows rapidly, cotton is a native plant, corn and hemp flourish in great perfection; oranges, coffee, wild honey, lemons, limes, mahogany, cam-wood, satin-wood, rose-wood, &c., abound ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... matter to me, that I do more or do better in the course of the day? What shall I gain by it? Nothing. Well, then, little work for little wages. But now, on the contrary (he says), I have an interest in displaying zeal and economy. All is changed. I redouble my activity, and strive to excel the others. If a comrade is lazy, and likely to do harm to the factory, I have the right to say to him: 'Mate, we all suffer more or less from your laziness, and from the injury you are doing the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... five waited in silence among the thick woods on the crest of the hill, and Grosvenor prepared his mind for his first stalk. Full of courage, ambitious, eager to excel, he resolved to acquit himself with credit. But this was war, far different from that on the open fields of Europe for which his early training had fitted him. One must lie in the deep forest and depend upon the delicacy of eye and ear and an exceeding quickness of hand. It had not ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... fertile, and though only turned up by the hoe, yields pretty good crops of the small grain called gussub. Vast herds of cattle abound. The only manufacture in which the people can be said to excel, is that of cotton cloth died blue with indigo; pieces of which constitute the current coin. The natives have the negro features in their full deformity; they are simple, good-natured, ignorant, and fond of wrestling and gaming. The military force is almost entirely composed of ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... drudgery should somewhat soil him both in mind and health of body, or, if this be denied, surely it must let him and hinder him in running the race for unconsciousness. We do not feel that it increases the glory of a king or great nobleman that he should excel in what is commonly called science. Certainly he should not go further than Prince Rupert's drops. Nor should he excel in music, art, literature, or theology—all which things are more or less parts of science. He should be above them all, save in so far as he can without effort reap renown from ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... estimation, by contrast with the parliamentary learning and skill, the urbanity and accomplishments of my illustrious predecessor, but I shall strive to equal him in devotion to your service, and I shall endeavor, if that be possible, to excel him in grateful appreciation of the distinguished ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... complex for discussion here. Suffice it to say this: Lincoln's clear insight and openness of mind enabled him to see the universal truth, that, other things being equal, the trained and expert professional must excel the untrained and inexpert amateur. But other things are never precisely equal; and a war in which the whole mass-manhood is concerned brings in a host of amateurs. Lincoln was as devoid of prejudice against the regular officers as he was against any other class ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... Artistic as his temperament undoubtedly was, and conscientious as his writing appears down to its minutest detail, Gissing yet managed to turn out rather more than a novel per annum. The desire to excel acted as a spur which conquered his congenital inclination to dreamy historical reverie. The reward which he propounded to himself remained steadfast from boyhood; it was a kind of Childe Harold pilgrimage to the lands of ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... and broad-armed ports, Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; Not starred and spangled courts, Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride. No:—men, high-minded men, With powers as far above dull brutes endued In forest, brake, or den, As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude,— Men who their duties know, But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain, Prevent the long-aimed blow, And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain; These constitute a State; And sovereign law, that State's collected will, O'er thrones ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... a boy, I always had an ambition to excel all the other boys. I wanted to be the best baseball player on the block—and I was, too. I could pitch three curves when I was fifteen, and I find I am the same now that I am a man grown. When I do a thing, I want to do it better than any one else. From the very first I have always been ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... presents a scene of extraordinary animation. Bottle-washing apparatus, supplied by a steam-engine with 20,000 gallons of water per diem, are ranged in fifteen rows down the entire length of this hall, and nearly 200 women strive to excel each other in diligence and celerity in their management, a practised hand washing from 900 to 1,000 bottles in the course of the day. To the right of this salle de rinage, as it is styled, bottles are stacked in their tens ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... was interested in the intellectual reception of the Gospel is shown by the earnestness with which he prays that his converts may excel in mental grasp of the truth. "I pray," he says, "that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment." And again he says, "Making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... old England long lift her white crest o'er the wave, The birth-place of science, the home of the brave! In her cities may peace and prosperity dwell! May her daughters in beauty and virtue excel! May their beauty and worth Bless the land of their birth, While heroes keep guard o'er the altar ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... foes, instead of struggling with the meshes of perplexity, which beset all concerned with Queen Mary, and then he turned his horse's head towards Wingfield Manor, a grand old castellated mansion of the Talbots, considered by some to excel even Sheffield. It stood high, on ground falling very steeply from the walls on three sides, and on the south well fortified, court within court, and each with a deep-arched and portcullised gateway, with loopholed turrets on either side, a porter's ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and worship, with francs, at the shrine; whilst at Bayeux, as we have seen, the old work is handled with reverence and fear, and the nineteenth-century mason puts out all his power to imitate, if not to excel, ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... life to the curious make and frame of thy creation; and let the beauty of thy person teach thee to beautify thy mind with holiness, the ornament of the beloved of God. Remember that the King of Zion's daughter is all-glorious within; and if thy soul excel, thy body will only set off the lustre of thy mind. Let not the spirit of this world, its cares and its many vanities, its fashions and discourse, prevail over the civility of thy nature. Remember that sin brought the first coat, and thou ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... whatever disguise she takes up. And yet there is no reason women should take it amiss to be thus charged, for if they do but rightly consider, they will find to Folly they are beholden for those endowments wherein they so far surpass and excel Man; as first for their unparalleled beauty, by the charm whereof they tyrannize over the greatest of tyrants; for what is it but too great a smatch of wisdom that makes men so tawny and thick-skinned, so rough ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... long study and careful practice far ahead before they could hope to equal or excel the cool, modest young aviator who came down so gracefully after a series of side loops that made most of the spectators ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... honourable, nothing more splendid, than after excelling all others, at length to excel one's self; so in my judgment you have most happily attained to this praise in your version of these psalms. For in translating the other odes of this sacred poet, you have been Buchanan, that is, you have been as conspicuous among the other paraphrasists ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... Red Jacket was fitted by nature to excel in councils of peace, rather than in enterprises of war; to gain victories in a conflict of mind with mind rather than in physical strife, on the ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... obscure, The name of earth that bears, The Authors of that Universe Have, at thy call, descended oft, And pleasant converse with thy children had; And how, these foolish dreams reviving, e'en This age its insults heaps upon the wise, Although it seems all others to excel In learning, and in arts polite; What can I think of thee Thou wretched race of men? What thoughts discordant then my heart assail, In doubt, if scorn or ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... Shaftesbury, Dr. Mandeville, Mr. Hutchinson, Dr. Butler, etc.] in England, who have begun to put the science of man on a new footing, and have engaged the attention, and excited the curiosity of the public. So true it is, that however other nations may rival us in poetry, and excel us in some other agreeable arts, the improvements in reason and philosophy can only be owing to a land of toleration ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... had I possessed one—I should in no long course yield utterly to a certain resentfully admitted tendency to dream and drift and live for pure beauty; finally desert my own country with the comfortable reflection: Why all this bustle, this desire to excel, to keep in the front rank, to find pleasure in individual work, when so many artistic achievements are ready-made for all to enjoy without effort? For—here is the point—an American, the American of today—accustomed to high speed, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... compare with it. This enabled me to do as much work as men of much greater strength. In those days reapers were generally unknown in our country, and the grain was all "cradled." At this I was an adept, never meeting any one that could excel me. The same was true of jumping and running foot races. Hundreds of men could no doubt beat me, but I never happened to meet them. I kept up these exercises till I ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... to take a run over to Philadelphia and be amused. The good Quakers have all the hail-holes in their windows mended now, and they are as lively as ever. Among other things, they have two rival variety theatres, "Fox's" and the "Chestnut;" and the efforts of each of these to excel the other creates the greatest excitement among the young Broadbrims. Each establishment is continually adding something new and wonderful to its attractions. A week or so ago the weather was very warm, and the vegetable theatre ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... multitude begins to take an interest in the labors of the mind, it finds out that to excel in some of them is a powerful method of acquiring fame, power, or wealth. The restless ambition which equality begets instantly takes this direction as it does all others. The number of those who cultivate science, letters, and the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the Washingtonians greatly excel the temperance advocates of former times. Those whom they desire to convince and persuade are their old friends and companions. They know they are not demons, nor even the worst of men; they know that generally they are kind, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... disgrace; That they might teach to all mankind The way to honor's unconfined, That glory's due to rising worth, And not alone to pomp and birth. Since then another seized the post Lest I priority should boast, This pow'r and praise was yet my own, That he should not excel alone: Nor is this Envy's jealous ire, But Emulation's genuine fire. And if Rome should approve my piece, She'll soon have more to rival Greece. But should th' invidious town declare Against my plodding over-care, They cannot take away, nor hurt Th' internal conscience of desert. ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... in our family. I never saw a passionate face, never an anger that lasted till the morrow, never a look at all reproachful. My mother, grandmother, father, my brother and I, lived like those who understand each other's thoughts, and only strive to excel one another in the expression ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... content to satisfy; he desired to excel, and, therefore, always endeavoured to do his best: he did not court the candour, but dared the judgment of his reader, and, expecting no indulgence from others, he showed none to himself. He examined lines and words with minute and punctilious observation, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... way they would often lovingly salute each other of a morning. Lucas had infected George with the craze for physical exercises as a remedy for all ills and indiscretions, including even late nights and excessive smoking. The competition between them to excel in the quality of fitness was acute, and sometimes led to strange challenges. After a little discussion about springing from the toes, Lucas now accused George's toes of a lack of muscularity, and upon George denying the charge, he asserted that George ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... I venture to submit that such a "Towneries" might readily be arranged to excel in interest, and surpass in usefulness, the excellent "Fisheries," "Healtheries", and other successful exhibitions in the record and recent memory of London. The advantages of such an exhibition are indeed ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... Comply but criticise. Obey but beware of reverence. If I surrender my conscience to another man's keeping, I annihilate my individuality as a man, and become the ready tool of him among my neighbours who shall excel in imposture and artifice. I put an end moreover to the happy collision of understandings upon which the hopes of human improvement depend. Governments depend upon the unlimited confidence of their subjects, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... to be a much better pattern for that epistolary kind of writing which is generally called love-letters than any to be found in the academy of compliments, and which we challenge all the beaus of our time to excel either in ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... there's nothing un-American in making the most of one's opportunities. As I've said to you before, Selma, it's the way in which one rises that's the important thing in the individual equation, and every man must choose for himself what that shall be. My ambition is to excel in my profession, and to mould my life to that end without neglecting my duties as a citizen or a husband. If, in the end, I win fame and fortune, so much the better. But there's no use in worrying because other people ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... wisely remained faithful to his own first ideas. The restoration of the navy continued, and was accompanied and furthered by a spirit of professional ambition and of desire to excel, among the officers of the navy, which has been before mentioned, and which, in the peculiar condition of the United States navy at the present day, may be commended as a model. The building of ships-of-war continued with great activity and on a large scale. At the end of the war, thanks to ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... persuaded that this power was destroyed, by the ridiculous distinctions of rich and poor. Oh, mad world! Monstrous absurdity! Incomprehensible blindness! Look at the rich! In what are they happy? In what do they excel the poor? Not in their greater stores of wealth: which is but a source of vice, disease, and death; but in a little superiority of knowledge; a trifling advance toward truth. How may this advantage be made general? Not by the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... they went, he asked them what they wanted. And the eldest, who was an honest, simple man, and of but little account among his people, because he was a bad hunter, asked that he might excel in the killing and catching of game. Then the Master gave him a flute, or the magic pipe, which pleases every ear, and has the power of persuading every animal to follow him who plays it. And he thanked the ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... lands were extensive, and he had pursued a liberal system of cultivation, putting into the soil in rich manures more in strength than he took from it, until his farm became the model one of the county, and his profits were large and ever increasing. Particularly in orchards of choice fruit did he excel his neighbors, and his apples, pears, and quinces always commanded the best price in the market. So he amassed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... of Lincoln had no apprehension of a surprise, and were busy in those sports which hardy men enjoy even amid the rougher sport of war. The Countess of Chester and her sister-in-law, with a politeness that the ladies of the court of Louis le Grand could not excel, paid a visit to the wife of the knight who had the defence of the castle. While there, at this pleasant morning call, "talking and joking" with the unsuspecting matron, as Ordericus relates, the Earl of Chester came in, "without ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... competition, his resistance, and especially his impertinent and dogged interference with my purposes, were not more pointed than private. He appeared to be destitute alike of the ambition which urged, and of the passionate energy of mind which enabled me to excel. In his rivalry he might have been supposed actuated solely by a whimsical desire to thwart, astonish, or mortify myself; although there were times when I could not help observing, with a feeling made up of wonder, abasement, and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... much more like that in a small apartment back home than on a space-ship among the stars. This was not in any way such a journey of exploration as the writers of fiction had imagined. Jamison came down presently and offered to prepare some special dish in which he claimed to excel. There was no mention of Johnny Simms. Alicia, elaborately ignoring all that was past, told Jamison that Babs and Cochrane were now an acknowledged romance and actually had plans for marriage immediately the ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... there was not in me any desire to know or to excel. My first pursuits were football and then cricket; the first I did not long pursue, and in the second I never managed to rise above mediocrity and what was termed 'the twenty-two.' There was a barrister named Henry Hall Joy, a connection ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Mr. Butler took all ten wickets in one innings. He was fast, with a high delivery, and wickets were not so good then as they are now. Mr. Francis was also an excellent bowler, not so fast as Mr. Butler; and Mr. Belcher, who bowled with great energy, but did not excel as a bat, was a useful man. For Cambridge, Mr. Cobden bowled fast, Mr. Ward was an excellent medium pace bowler, Mr. Money's slows were sometimes fortunate, and Mr. Bourne bowled slow round. Cambridge went in first, and only got 147. Mr. Yardley fell for 2, being caught by Mr. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... points of comparison which may be remarked in the characters of the French and English. The French are great talkers, the English great thinkers; the former excel in vivacity, the latter in solidity of intellect. The French dress with splendour, the English with neatness; the French live almost exclusively on bread, the English on meat. Both are passionate; but it is the blood which rouses the passion of a Frenchman, and the bile which exasperates ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... fingers were all thumbs. Some at least of the others I possessed; and finding much entertainment in our commerce, I did not suffer my advantages to rust. I have never despised the social arts, in which it is a national boast that every Frenchman should excel. For the approach of particular sorts of visitors I had a particular manner of address, and even of appearance, which I could readily assume and change on the occasion rising. I never lost an opportunity to flatter either the person ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... after the dram, may be expected the breakfast, a meal in which the Scots, whether of the lowlands or mountains, must be confessed to excel us. The tea and coffee are accompanied not only with butter, but with honey, conserves, and marmalades. If an epicure could remove by a wish, in quest of sensual gratifications, wherever he had supped he ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... to attack The osprey, swan, and hern, And showed me, when he wished it back, The lure for its return. I thought it was a noble sport; I struggled to excel My gentle teacher, and, in short, ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... Hampstead's best horse. Even Vivian, who was not given to much outward enthusiasm, had had consultations with his groom as to which of two he had better ride first. Sometimes there does come a day on which rivalry seems to be especially keen, when a sense of striving to excel and going ahead of others seems to instigate minds which are not always ambitious. Watson and Walker were on this occasion very much exercised, and had in the sweet confidences of close friendship agreed with themselves ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... one necessarily implieth the other: Creation inferring Providence (for what father forsaketh the child that he hath begotten?) and Providence pre-supposing Creation: yet many of those that have seemed to excel in worldly wisdom, have gone about to disjoin this coherence; the epicure denying both Creation and Providence, but granting the world had a beginning; the Aristotelian granting Providence, but denying both the creation ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... were the ornament of the youth of his day, Smith did not, as great men do, excel his fellows. He couldn't ride worth a darn. He couldn't skate worth a darn. He couldn't swim worth a darn. He couldn't shoot worth a darn. He couldn't do anything worth a darn. He ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... work because they have to work to exist. But a great deal of the work is indifferently done. The woman who skims over her household duties in a disinterested and frequently slovenly way, will spend much thought and a great amount of time to excel in appearance and in attaining results at a church fair, for example; or she will work assiduously sewing every afternoon and evening on dresses, etc., to shine during a two weeks' vacation at the sea shore, while her husband is being indifferently fed and her home ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... a very large number of the students in college at the present time do as well in mathematics, geometry, trigonometry, mensuration, and conic sections as the white students of the same age; and some of them excel in mathematics. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... accomplishing with a certain dignity the movements so horribly burlesqued by clerk and chorus girl the country over. It seemed ironic that in this lone and discredited offspring of the arts Americans should excel, unquestionably. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... sweet smallage; the young shoots whereof, with a little of the head of the root cut off, they eat raw with oil and pepper.' And further he adds 'curled endive blanched is much used beyond seas; and, for a raw sallet, seemed to excel lettuce itself.' Now this journey was undertaken no longer ago than in the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... fairer ambition than to excel in talk; to be affable, gay, ready, clear and welcome; to have a fact, a thought, or an illustration, pat to every subject; and not only to cheer the flight of time among our intimates, but bear our part in that great international congress, always sitting, where public wrongs are first declared, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to excel in too many matters, out of levity and vain glory, are ever envious. For they cannot want work; it being impossible, but many, in some one of those things, should surpass them. Which was the character of Adrian the Emperor; that mortally envied poets, and painters, and artificers, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... virtuous love myself may boast alone, Since no suspect my service may attaint: For perfect fair she is the only one, Whom I esteem for my beloved saint. Thus, for my faith I only bear the bell, And for her fair she only doth excel. ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... beings, with all their vices, have a future life, assuredly animals, who in character so often equal, nay, excel human beings, ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... "Perhaps thou mayst be more than thou appearest to be. What are the feats that thou and thy fellows deem yourselves skilled in, for no one is permitted to remain here who does not, in some feat or other, excel ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... friends; "never in all the years to come. The driveling fools! What do I pay them for? To let me lie there snoring so loud that I couldn't hear opportunity for the noise I was making? As in everything else I undertake, my dear Barnes, I excel at snoring. My lung capacity is something amazing. It has to have an outlet. They let me lie there like a log while the richest publicity material that ever fell to the lot of an actor went to waste,—utter waste. Why, damme, sir, I could have made ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... occurred, is connected with the brief life of the Mirror of Parliament. It was not at any special desire of Mr. Stanley's, but for that new record of the debates, which had been started by one of the uncles of Dickens and professed to excel Hansard in giving verbatim reports, that the famous speech against O'Connell was taken as described. The young reporter went to the room in Carlton Terrace because the work of his uncle Barrow's ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... to men liking racing, hunting, and shooting. The first preserves the breed of horses, for which England is so justly celebrated, and hunting keeps up the skill in horsemanship in which our men excel. What I do object to is their making these pursuits the constant topics of conversation before women, instead of selecting those more suitable to the tastes and ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... act for themselves, knowing that they cannot count on the administrative patronage of the State, the Americans excel in bringing individual energies into action. There are few functionaries, few soldiers, and few taxes among them. They know nothing, like us, of that malady of public functions, the violence of which increases in proportion as we advance. They ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... Sailors do not excel as horsemen, but Young Glory was an exception to the rule. Before he had enlisted he had passed several years in the west, and the animal who tried to unseat him had a very difficult task ...
— Young Glory and the Spanish Cruiser - A Brave Fight Against Odds • Walter Fenton Mott
... Ralph, who may or may not have been circumstantial; who may or may not even have existed, a point unworthy of disputation. As for Miss Reid, we will take an affidavit that neither in miniature nor at large did she excel the celebrated Rosalba; and with regard to Mrs. Lennox, we consider her to be a mere figment, like Narcissa, Miss Tabitha Bramble, or any hero or heroine depicted by the historian ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Lord Shaftesbury, Dr. Mandeville, Mr. Hutchinson, Dr. Butler, etc.] in England, who have begun to put the science of man on a new footing, and have engaged the attention, and excited the curiosity of the public. So true it is, that however other nations may rival us in poetry, and excel us in some other agreeable arts, the improvements in reason and philosophy can only be owing to a land of toleration ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... Italian is deficient in the passion of the heart, in the longing to idealize what is human and to confer humanity on what is lifeless, which form the very essence of poetic art. His acuteness of perception and his graceful versatility enabled him to excel in irony and in the vein of tale-telling which we find in Horace and Boccaccio, in the humorous pleasantries of love and song which are presented in Catullus and in the good popular songs of Naples, above all in the lower comedy and in farce. Italian soil gave birth in ancient times ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Sheridan, Tecumseh Sherman, Hancock, and all of our noted Indian fighters. For cool judgment and thorough knowledge of all that pertains to military affairs, none of them, in my opinion, can be said to excel ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... other were fitful, and his views of life betray the influence of the same cerebral defect that led to so much domestic woe. The narrow-chested, round-shouldered person, whose lungs barely oxydize blood enough to maintain life, is not expected to walk a thousand miles in a thousand hours, or to excel as a performer on wind-instruments. We impute to him no fault for this sort of incompetence. We should rather charge him with consummate folly, if he undertook a line of exercises for which he is so clearly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... matter of necessity that they cannot give us even that little. I can only acknowledge that as we were the first [to enter here], our houses ought to be, at the end of sixty-six years very strong in this regard. But the fact is that there is no community in Manila that does [not] excel us in this; and we remain only with the name [of being well-to-do], which does us no little harm. For, with the title of powerful ones, no one remembers us, except to beg from us and take away our lands; and, as they say in Espana: "What matters it to me if my father is ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... be seen from this that the Indian was not a good target shot, but in field shooting and getting game, probably he could excel the ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... compositions of Moliere were interposed betwixt the date of the suspension which we have noticed, and the final permission to bring "Tartuffe" on the stage. These were, "Melicerte," a species of heroic pastoral, in which Moliere certainly did not excel, and "Le Sicilien, ou L'Amour Peintre," a few lively scenes linked together, so as to form a pleasing introduction to several of those dances in costume, or ballets, as they were called, in which Louis himself ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... had either dispersed or fallen asleep, Socrates only, together with Aristophanes and Agathon, remained awake, and that, while he continued to drink with them out of a large goblet, he compelled them, though most reluctantly, to admit that it was the business of one and the same genius to excel in tragic and comic poetry, or that the tragic poet ought, at the same time, to contain within himself the powers of comedy. Now, as this was directly repugnant to the entire theory of the ancient critics, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... a Man of Might, far exceeding in Strength and Beauty the common sons of men. Great in War, Invincible in Love, he did Excel in Deeds of Courage and of Conquest,—and for whatsoever Sins he did in the secret Weakness of humanity commit, the Gods must judge him. But in all that may befit a Warrior, Amenhotep The King doth give him honor,—and to the Spirits of Darkness and of Light ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... them. Indeed the love of nature uncultivated and unadorned is for the most part, of modern growth.] where we have made a long sojourn. But what is most remarkable in friendship is that it puts a man on an equality with his inferior. For there often are in a circle of friends those who excel the rest, as was the case with Scipio in our flock, if I may use the word. He never assumed superiority over Philus, never over Rupilius, never over Mummius, never over friends of an order lower than his own. Indeed he always reverenced as a superior, because older than himself, his brother Quintus ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... to make his own ideas of worth or value conform to the standard of such qualities; he will continue to give the preference to rank and riches, power and influence, which in his eyes seem to be the only genuine advantages in the world; and his wish will be to excel in them himself. All this is the consequence of his being a man without intellectual needs. The great affliction of all philistines is that they have no interest in ideas, and that, to escape ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... started. I incline to agree with Leslie Stephen in his Hours in a Library, that, if most of the critical articles of even Jeffrey and Mackintosh were submitted to a modern editor, he would reject them as inadequate; but I think that perhaps they excel our modern efforts in a certain reserve and dignity, and ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... Yes; as Venice was. She may excel other nations in commerce, but yet it is not that in which she most prides herself, in which she most excels. Merchants as such are not the first men among us; though it perhaps be open, barely open, to a merchant to become one of them. ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... by course of Nature's law, not force Of thunder, or of Jove ... ... on our heels a fresh perfection treads, A power more strong in beauty, born of us And fated to excel ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... is to poetry, that, of all the pleasurable arts, music is that which flourishes the most amongst us. Still, even in music the absence of stimulus in praise or fame has served to prevent any great superiority of one individual over another; and we rather excel in choral music, with the aid of our vast mechanical instruments, in which we make great use of the agency of ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to was Newman, then Vicar of St. Mary's; of Pusey's interminable and prosy harangues he could not bear even to think. Although unable to bend himself to the drudgery of Oxford, Burton was already forming vast ambitions. He longed to excel as a linguist, and particularly in Oriental languages. Hence he began to teach himself Arabic; and got a little assistance from the Spanish scholar Don Pascual de Gayangos. When he asked the Regius Professor of Arabic to teach him, he was rebuffed ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... the more dramatic works of Schumann or Schubert. Of course there will be cases where the two sexes will meet on common ground, and the exquisite beauty of a Franz may some day find its equal in the work of the other sex, but whether women will excel naturally in the more virile vein of Bruch's cantatas, for instance, is ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestick privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, where exteriour appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and by virtue. The account of Thuanus is with great propriety said by its authour to have been written, that it might lay open to posterity the private and familiar character of that man, cujus ingenium et candorem ex ipsius ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... we see it in the statue of Moses. Grecian sculpture was the realization in form of the conceptions of Homer; Italian painting the representation on canvass of the revelations of the gospel, which Dante clothed in the garb of poetry. Future ages should ever strive to equal, but can never hope to excel them. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... depth and fineness in the workings of the passions, in which last excellence, as likewise in the wild and imaginative character of the situations, his almost neglected romances appear to me greatly to excel his far famed 'Decameron'. To him, too, we owe the more doubtful merit of having introduced into the Italian prose, and by the authority of his name and the influence of his example, more or less throughout Europe, the long interwoven periods, and architectural structure which arose ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... years before the time of which we are speaking, he went to Boston to learn the art of daguerreotype-taking, in which he really did seem to excel, returning home with some money, a great deal of vanity, and a strong propensity to boast of what he had seen. Recollections of 'Lena, his early, and, as he sentimentally expressed it, "his undying, ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... then allow'd to be polite?" Yes, doubtless; but first set your notions right. Worth, of politeness, is the needful ground; Where that is wanting, this can ne'er be found. Triflers not e'en in trifles can excel; 'Tis solid bodies only polish well. Great, chosen prophet! For these latter days, To turn a willing world from righteous ways! Well, Heydegger, dost thou thy master serve; Well has he seen his servant should not starve. Thou to his name hast splendid temples rais'd; In various forms of worship ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... no Japanese wife dreams of receiving the loving care which is expected by her Western sister, is doubtless true of Old Japan, but that there has been a great change in this respect in recent decades; and especially among the Christian community. That Christians excel the others with whom I have come in contact, has been evident to me. But that even they are still very different from Occidentals in this respect, is also clear. Whatever be the affection lavished on the wife in the privacy ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... the same language: the laws were composed in that idiom [q]: no other tongue was used at court: it became the language of all fashionable company; and the English themselves, ashamed of their own country, affected to excel in that foreign dialect. From this attention of William, and from the extensive foreign dominions long annexed to the crown of England, proceeded that mixture of French which is at present to be found in the English tongue, and which composes the greatest and best part of ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... subject William F. Warren, in his book already cited, pages 297 and 298, says: "The Arctic rocks tell of a lost Atlantis more wonderful than Plato's. The fossil ivory beds of Siberia excel everything of the kind in the world. From the days of Pliny, at least, they have constantly been undergoing exploitation, and still they are the chief headquarters of supply. The remains of mammoths are so abundant that, ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... perseverance and ambition to excel are shown in the strenuous manner in which he overcame all these obstacles, and at the close of his college career at St. John's, Cambridge, became a wrangler in the Mathematical ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... effect become serious drawbacks. As a general thing, therefore, you must first get fast to a whale, before any pitchpoling comes into play. Look now at Stubb; a man who from his humorous, deliberate coolness and equanimity in the direst emergencies, was specially qualified to excel in pitchpoling. Look at him; he stands upright in the tossed bow of the flying boat; wrapt in fleecy foam, the towing whale is forty feet ahead. Handling the long lance lightly, glancing twice or thrice along its length to see if it be exactly straight, Stubb ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... intentions were quite serious, if slightly unsuitable. I tried to show him the impracticability of the course that he was following. He said he wanted to be understood, and he seemed to think that Florinda would excel in that requirement, but I pointed out that there were probably dozens of delicately nurtured, pure-hearted young English girls who would be capable of understanding him, while Florinda was the only person ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... together combines within its precincts, if you take the word of the inhabitants on the subject, as much of historical interest as of natural beauty. Our claims in behalf of the Canongate are not the slightest. The Castle may excel us in extent of prospect and sublimity of site; the Calton had always the superiority of its unrivalled panorama, and has of late added that of its towers, and triumphal arches, and the pillars of its Parthenon. The High Street, we acknowledge, had the distinguished honour of being defended ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... exercises was prescribed to the boy, but Dr Glennie had some difficulty in restraining his activity. He was quiet enough while in the house with the Doctor, but no sooner was he released to play, than he showed as much ambition to excel in violent exercises as the most robust youth of the school; an ambition common to young persons who have the misfortune to labour under ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... not help remembering that always this has been and still is Satan's favourite bait. To me it did not particularly appeal. I had been ambitious in my time—who is not that is worth his salt? I could have wished to excel in something, literature or art, or whatever it might be, and thus to ensure the memory of my name in ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... to hear colored children say, "I can't." The colored mother should put success in the child's thought and teach it to believe in himself and his race. It is the duty of every mother to preach success and one's duty to aim to excel ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... crowned; Not bays and broad-armed ports, Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; Not starred and spangled courts, Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride. No: MEN, high-minded MEN, With powers as far above dull brutes endued, In forest, brake, or den, As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude: Men who their duties know, But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain; Prevent the long-aimed blow, And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain: These constitute ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... hold among the best and most famous painters of Italy; and we being desirous, in imitation of our predecessors, to contribute, as much as lies in us, to the ornament and decoration of our royal houses, by fixing around us those who excel in the arts, and whose attainments in them have attracted notice in the places where those arts are most cherished, do therefore write you this letter, to acquaint you that we have chosen and appointed you to be one ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... this delightful tale will ever be, as Hafiz sings of something, "freshly fresh and newly new." I care not much though it never be found in an Arabic or any other Oriental dress—but that it is of Asiatic invention is self-evident; there is, in my poor opinion nothing to excel it, if indeed to equal it, for intense interest and graphic narrative power in ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... seeming to lie in their capacity for drinking to excess. From Armenia Minor he went to Turcomania, whose inhabitants, though somewhat of savages, are clever in cultivating pastures and breeding horses and mules; and the townspeople excel in the manufacture of carpets and silk. Armenia Proper, that Marco Polo next visited, affords a good camping-ground to the Tartar armies during the summer. There the traveller saw Mount Ararat, where Noah's Ark rested after the Deluge. He noticed that the lands bordering ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... with them if it was not for the inspector. For three months before his visit I didn't sleep soundly. And the Committee of Council are always changing the Code, so that you don't know what to teach, and what to leave untaught. I think father and mother are right. They say I shall never excel as a schoolmistress if I dislike the work so, and that therefore I ought to get settled by marrying Mr. Heddegan. Between us two, I like him better than school; but I don't like him quite so much as to wish to ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... catalogue we just naturally dream that what we shall raise will not only be as good but will excel the pictures. Alas, of such stuff are dreams made! We could not do our gardening without catalogues, but they are not true to life as we find it in our garden. We never got a catalogue that showed the striped bug on the cucumber, the slug on the rose bush, the louse ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... gave their time gratuitously. It was a source of much pleasure to me to know the provosts and leaders in council of so many towns in Scotland and England, not forgetting Ireland where my Freedom tour was equally attractive. Nothing could excel the reception accorded me in Cork, Waterford, and Limerick. It was surprising to see the welcome on flags expressed in the same Gaelic words, Cead mille failthe (meaning "a hundred thousand welcomes") as used ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... honoured in the gradation following,—in respect of learning, conduct, years, family, property. Even a Sudra, if he excel in these respects, is in old age worthy ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... and shyness. Birds naturally so impetuous are restless and uneasy under observation. One must pose in silence until his presence is forgotten or ignored. Then the delicious melody, the approving comments of the songster's companions, and the efforts of ambitious youngsters to imitate and excel, are all part of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... selfish. Though not definitely stated, the victim of the robbers was almost certainly a Jew; the point of the parable requires it to be so. That the merciful one was a Samaritan, showed that the people called heretic and despized by the Jews could excel in good works. To a Jew, none but Jews were neighbors. We are not justified in regarding priest, Levite, or Samaritan as the type of his class; doubtless there were many kind and charitable Jews, and many heartless Samaritans; but the Master's lesson was admirably illustrated by the characters ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... Parliament. Why should he ever be better than O'B——, or O'C——, or O'D——? And in what way should he begin to be better? He had an idea of the fashion after which it would be his duty to strive that he might excel those gentlemen. He did not give any of them credit for much earnestness in their country's behalf, and he was minded to be very earnest. He would go to his work honestly and conscientiously, determined to do his duty as best he might, let the results to himself be what they would. ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... this guilt with you; however, it is not the less for being divided; but if this were all, you might pass undistinguished in the general censure. There is one species of iniquity, for so I must call it, in which you so much excel, in which you have acquired a pre-eminence so conspicuous, that all other writers, when you appear, must hide their diminished heads, like stars before the sun: that consists in drawing characters ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... Dionysia in Notes] the said day being kept in his honour as the Dionysia. Mover of the Decree Demeas the pleader the said Timon's near relation and disciple the said Timon being as distinguished in pleading as in all else wherein it pleases him to excel.' ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... wanted to relieve us from our difficulties. What an unfathomable depth this building has reached. You must stay in England until the money is got. Use every effort, harden your face to flint, and give eloquence to your tongue. This is your calling. Excel in it! Be not discouraged with a dozen of refusals in succession. The money must be had, and it must be begged. My dear Brother, work for your life, and I pray God to give you success. Do not borrow, if possible. Beg, beg, beg it all. It must ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... years ago [Footnote: Circa, 1861.] at Carlsruhe, when old Capellmeister Strauss conducted "Lohengrin." This venerable and worthy man evidently looked at my score with some little shyness; but, he took good care of the orchestra, which he led with a degree of precision and firmness impossible to excel. He was, clearly, a man not to be trifled with, and his forces obeyed him to perfection. Singularly enough, this old gentleman was the only German conductor of repute I had met with, up to that time, who possessed true fire; his tempi were more often a trifle too quick than too slow; but they were ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... Philosophy is not a new invention, but as Adam after his fall hath received it and as Moses and Solomon used it, ... wherein Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, and others did hit the mark and wherein Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Solomon, did excel, but especially wherewith that ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... George Eliots. One of the most curious and instructive things in this regard is the use which the modern critic makes of Sir Walter Scott. Sir Walter is set up as a sort of first standard for the aspirant in the art of fiction to excel. Let the question be asked, with as much gravity as is possible: What is the use of a critic who gravely assures us that Mr. S. R. Crockett 'has rivalled, if not surpassed, Sir Walter'? The statement is, of course, most ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... written upon rolls of parchment, of the proceedings in those higher courts of law which are distinguished as "Courts of Record." It has been stated that "our stores of public records are justly reckoned to excel in age, beauty, correctness, and authority whatever the choicest archives abroad can boast ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... iron plates a foot thick, cannot be yet styled a perfected weapon. It may be in a very few years, thanks to the ardent anxiety, on the part of the several peoples composing "the parliament of man, the federation of the world," to excel each other in the "brain-spattering, windpipe-slitting art." At present it is maintained by very good American authority that for use under some conditions, at short or moderate range, the smooth gun of large calibre is more effective than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... they scorn to delight, so must they be content little to move: saving wrangling, whether virtue be the chief, or the only good: whether the contemplative, or the active life do excel: which Plato and Boethius well knew, and therefore made Mistress Philosophy very often borrow the masking raiment of poesy. For even those hard-hearted evil men, who think virtue a school name, and ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... debased, but that its good points still excel its bad! Just as you see but one real miser in a fixed proportion of men; so, are there, I believe, quite as small a representative set of absolutely heartless persons. I am certain that the "good Samaritans" outvie the "Levites" in our daily existence—opposed, though my theory may be, to the ruling ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... as a general rule, endure transplantation,—he cannot thrive in the country of the civilized man; whereas the latter, with time for training, can equal or excel him in strength and endurance on his own ground. As it is known that the human race generally can endure a greater variety of climate than the hardiest of the lower animals, so it is with the man of civilization, when ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... spoken in a voice that startled the physician. To divert Massimilla from her bitter reflections, while the excitement of recalling la Tinti was at its height, he engaged her in one of the arguments in which the French excel. ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... who loved to excel his fellow-man even in the smallest things. He not only felt a first-place prominence in the little society of the village, he strove to surpass the least person in it if there was any point of competition ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... would see nakedness in all. Where stands the palace and the cot, you would behold but mud huts and caves. As far as the peasant excels the king among savages, so far does the society exalted and enriched by the struggles of labour excel the state in which Poverty feels no disparity, and Toil sighs for no ease. On the other hand, if the rich were perfectly contented with their wealth, their hearts would become hardened in the sensual enjoyments ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... however, shifted the battle from the purely physical to the mental and psychic plane. But it is competition still, and the reason competition will remain is because it is beautiful, beneficent and right. It is the desire to excel. Lovers are always in competition with each other to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... observe the traditional silences nor have you the patience to abide the post mortem publication of their memoirs. Sir Edward Goschen (former British Ambassador to Germany and Austria) or Jules Cambon (former French Ambassador to Germany, the United States and Spain) probably could excel Mr. Gerard in revelations of entertaining diplomatic history and gossip. Count von Bernstorff, former Ambassador to the United States, too, I imagine might startle us with a diary of his ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... simpleton which he appeared, and was incapable of any constant and steady exertion. He had just so much solidity as kept on the windy side of insanity, so much wild wit as saved him from the imputation of idiocy, some dexterity in field-sports (in which we have known as great fools excel), great kindness and humanity in the treatment of animals entrusted to him, warm affections, a prodigious memory, and an ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the same period prove that this child, who was so unambitious, and devoid of the usual sort of emulation, did, however, desire to excel in great and virtuous things. In his adieu to the seat of his ancestors, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Bolt and Bar Of massie Iron or sollid Rock with ease Unfast'ns: on a sudden op'n flie With impetuous recoile and jarring sound 880 Th' infernal dores, and on thir hinges great Harsh Thunder, that the lowest bottom shook Of Erebus. She op'nd, but to shut Excel'd her power; the Gates wide op'n stood, That with extended wings a Bannerd Host Under spread Ensigns marching might pass through With Horse and Chariots rankt in loose array; So wide they stood, and like a Furnace mouth Cast forth redounding smoak and ruddy flame. Before thir eyes in sudden ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... themselves there is no harm in it. It is a very wrong way of behaviour; it is mean, it is dishonorable, and it is wicked; and the boy or girl who would ever permit themselves to act in so unjustifiable a manner, however they may excel in their learning, or exterior accomplishments, can never be deserving of esteem, confidence, or regard. What esteem or respect could I ever entertain of a person's sense or learning, who made no better use of it than to practise wickedness ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... Tungu-Steinn: "Think you so, Grettir? Which then will the chieftains do? But true it is that you excel all men in courage. See you not how they are ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... the steps of the Gonfalonier's palace, at the moment he was about to enter, in order to be present at a play to which all the nobility of Rome had been invited, and which represented the victories of the great Caesar, whom Borgia intended henceforward to imitate, if not excel. This latter personage shortly after marched out of Rome with his army; and, within the space of a few months, the Devil purloined from the Pope's pocket the following letter, which he ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... scattered here and there about the room. At a large desk, looking as if it might belong to a man with an immense business connection, sat Lady Margaret McAllister. She was adding accounts with a methodical accuracy and speed even a bank clerk could not hope to excel. She was a woman of about forty, though looking younger, her hair being of that tawny shade of yellow that rarely turns grey, and her complexion bright and fresh, bearing witness to ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... not excel as a cook. She was much more fond of reading than of housework and domestic duties, although at the farm she always did her share conscientiously. Ellen had a greater ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... and Dorcas was a son, now arrived at the age of fifteen years, beautiful in youth, and giving promise of a glorious manhood. He was peculiarly qualified for, and already began to excel in, the wild accomplishments of frontier life. His foot was fleet, his aim true, his apprehension quick, his heart glad and high; and all who anticipated the return of Indian war spoke of Cyrus Bourne as a future leader in the land. The boy was loved by his father with a deep ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have taught them a lesson of forbearance to each other. But it had no such effect. It would almost seem as if, true disciples in the school of the High Commission and Star Chamber, their ambition was to excel their former tyrants in the art of persecution. They imitated, with a pertinacious accuracy, the bad examples of their worst oppressors; and with far less to excuse them, repeated in America the self-same crimes from which they and their fathers had suffered ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... must be, and far be it from me to say that non-college women fail in that high office. There comes before me one mother of fourteen children who has never seen the inside of a college classroom, yet whom it would be hard to excel in her qualities of motherliness. But, other things being equal, it is to the Christian, educated mothers that we turn to find the life of the ideal home, with real comradeship between wife and husband, with intelligent understanding of the children, and the coveting for them of ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... prevail among them to a mournful extent. But I do not hesitate to assert, from an intimate acquaintance with their condition, that they are more temperate and more industrious than that class of whites who are in as indigent circumstances, but who have certainly far greater incentives to labor and excel; that they are superior in their habits to the hosts of foreign emigrants who are crowding to our shores, and poisoning our moral atmosphere; and that their advancement in intelligence, in wealth, and in morality, considering the numberless ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... be noted that some men are remarkably constituted in this matter of self-deception. They excel at deceiving themselves. They believe, and they help others to believe. It becomes their function in society, and some of them are paid large salaries for helping their fellow-men to believe, for instance, that they are not as other animals; for helping ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... the father: 'one word more will make me chide you, girl! What! an advocate for an impostor! You think there are no more such fine men, having seen only him and Caliban. I tell you, foolish girl, most men as far excel this, as he does Caliban.' This he said to prove his daughter's constancy; and she replied: 'My affections are most humble. I have no wish to see ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... OF SPORT is a feeling inherent in most Englishmen, and whether in the chase, or with the rod or gun, they far excel all other nations. In fact, the definition of this feeling cannot be understood by many foreigners. We are frequently ridiculed for fox-hunting: 'What for all dis people, dis horses, dis many dog? dis leetle (how you call him?) ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... be done in the way of electrical experiment without an electrical generator of some sort, and nothing at present known can excel a battery for this purpose. Although not the most desirable battery for all purposes, that shown in Fig. 1 is the most desirable for the amateur who desires a strong current for a short time. It is formed of two ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... down the chota hassri on a small table at his master's elbow without betraying his surprise and concern by so much as the flicker of an eyelash. For not even your immaculate family butler can excel, in dignity and true reserve, a bearer of the old school, whose Sahib stands only second to his God, and who would almost as soon think of defiling his caste as of entering another man's service. We have educated the grand old ideal ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... them, and she had the grace to see when she could help and cheer. Attentions that must be constantly asked for have little charm. A day rarely passed that did she not give one or more of its best hours to her music and drawing; for, while she never expected to excel in these arts, she had already learned that they would enable her to give much pleasure to others. Her pencil, also, was of great assistance in her study of out-door life, for the fixed attention which it required to draw a plant, tree, or bit of scenery revealed ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... arrived at was a prominent one, affording view of the whole valley of Mexico, that lay spread out like a picture at their feet. And such a picture! Nothing in all the panoramic world to excel—if ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... but Chinese and Japanese varieties were reported on. More of the Chinese seedlings have been planted than of the Japs. The latter excel in hardiness, yield, size of nuts, but the Chinese have a better percentage of filled nuts, have better husking quality and much better quality of kernel, according to growers. Of course, being seedlings, neither is entirely dependable in any of these qualities. The best ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... of the business-man; he serves (he thinks) a larger cause, and he is content with much less personal reward. Socialist assailants of our industrial system, much as they dislike war, would probably agree with him. It is not necessary to condemn all competition. The desire to excel others is not reprehensible, when the rivalry is in rendering useful social service. But it cannot be denied that the present condition of industry is such that a heavy premium is offered to mere cupidity; that the fraternal social life which Christianity enjoins is often literally impossible, ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... curious fact in the history of progress, that, by a kind of intuitive insight, the earlier observers seem to have had a wider, more comprehensive recognition of natural phenomena as a whole than their successors, who far excel them in their knowledge of special points, but often lose their grasp of broader relations in the more minute investigation of details. When geologists first turned their attention to the physical history ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... be desirable, did not rudely shock his conscience. He had no Puritan scruples in his dealings with men of another race and religion. But in many things he had a high sense of honour, and nothing roused his ire so readily as to question it. Unstable as water, however, he did not excel in tasks that took patience. He wanted to plough one day and hunt the next, so that in the long run he rarely did anything well. This spirit of independence was very pronounced. The habitant felt himself to be a free man. This is why he spurned the name 'censitaire.' As Charlevoix puts ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... still professed to be prostrated with horror at each fresh exhibition of feminine obtuseness, and would groan, and writhe, and push his fingers through his hair, until it stood up round his head like a halo. He was Dreda's special bete noire, for, like many girls who excel in literature and composition, she detested the sight of a sum and had never grown beyond the stage of counting on her fingers beneath the table. If it had not been for Susan's laboriously patient explanations, nothing could have saved her from the most hopeless humiliation; but Susan had a ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... trouble; he really didn't believe there was a single fellow among the whole lot who had the slightest appreciation of the dolce far niente". When, however, they found out that upon an emergency Harry could excel them all—whatever might be the nature of the feat to be performed—and that I could cross a country, pull an oar, or handle a bat with the best of them, they set us down as a pair of eccentric geniuses, and as such admitted us to a kind of honorary ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... brilliant orator. This figurative language signifies that in order to shine, the orator must be adorned with the lustre of flowers. And as one flower excels others and pleases us by the beauty of its colors, so the orator must excel, and please by the brilliant shades of his diction. It is as impossible to give renown to a monotonous and colorless orator as to a faded, discolored flower. Would you give to the phenomena of your organism this beautiful corolla of the flower ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... what I wanted—a fairly good instrument,—still I was not quite satisfied; as I had produced it by a fortunate chance, and not by skill alone. I therefore set to work again on the other disc of glass, to try if I could finish it in such a way as to excel the first one. After nearly a year's work I found that I could only succeed in equalling it. But then, during this time, I had removed the working of mirrors from mere chance to a fair amount of certainty. By bringing ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... efficient Minister, being very laborious in his work, and indeed "the only man of business about the Court."[338] Yet Thugut was rather a clever diplomat and ideal head-clerk than a statesman. In forethought he did not much excel his master. Indeed, his personality and his position alike condemned him to aim at cheap and easy gains. His features and figure were mean. Worse still, he was of low birth, a crime in the eyes of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the German court—officer in the Guards, ancient family, rich, darned clever—all the fixings. Kaiser liked him, and it's easy to see why. I guess a man who had as many personalities as the Graf was amusing after-dinner company. Specially among the Germans, who in my experience don't excel in the lighter vein. Anyway, he was William's white-headed boy, and there wasn't a mother with a daughter who wasn't out gunning for Otto von Schwabing. He was about as popular in London and Noo York—and in Paris, too. Ask Sir Walter about him, Dick. He says he had twice the ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... to destroy that false desire, and therefore our object should be to practise this true apprehension. Right apprehension once produced then there is deliverance from covetous desire, for a false estimate of excellency produces a covetous desire to excel, whilst a false view of demerit produces anger and regret; but the idea of excelling and also of inferiority (in the sense of demerit) both destroyed, the desire to excel and also anger (on account of inferiority) are destroyed. Anger! how it changes the comely face, how it destroys the ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... In this conflict four Portuguese were slain, and their heads brought to the Persian general. In this art of cutting off heads, the Persians are particularly cunning, insomuch, that I do not think there is an executioner in all Germany that can excel them. No sooner does a Persian lay hold of an enemy, than off goes his head at one blow of his scymitar.[308] He then makes a hole in the ear or cheek with his dagger, by which he will sometimes bring three or four heads at once to his general. When it is proposed to send ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... why Ephraim the younger son was preferred to the older, any more than why Jacob was preferred to Esau. After Jacob had blessed the sons of Joseph, he called his other sons around his dying bed to predict the future of their descendants. Reuben the oldest was told that he would not excel, because he had loved his father's concubine and committed a grievous sin. Simeon and Levi were the most active in seeking to compass the death of Joseph, and a curse was sent upon them. Judah was exalted above them all, for he had sought ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... advantage of the moment when a business appointment, which you cannot fail to keep, detains you, in order to obtain your tacit permission to some meditated expedition; if in order to obtain that permission she displays all the witcheries of those cajoleries in which women excel and whose powerful influence you ought already to have known, well, well, the professor implores you to allow her to win you over, while at the same time you sell dear the boon she asks; and above all convince this creature, whose soul is at once as changeable as water and as ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... The Harvest Moon (1916) are very fine; but sometimes I think her best work is found in a field where it is difficult to excel—I mean child poetry. Her Cradle Song is as good as anything of hers I know, though I could wish she had omitted the parenthetical refrain. I hope readers will forgive me—though I know they won't—for saying that Dormi, dormi tu sounds ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... abound in all parts; and the greater part of them are garrisoned in the same way by gangs of robbers. It is worth remarking, that the children in the villages hereabout play at fortification as a favourite amusement, each striving to excel the others in the ingenuity of his defences. They all seem to feel that they must some day have to take a part in defending such places against the King's troops; and their parents seem to encourage the feeling. ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... of this bird are very simple and melodious, and some individuals greatly excel others in their powers of song. It is generally believed that the young males are the best singers, and that age diminishes their vocal capacity. The greater number utter only a few strains, resembling the notes of the Warbling Fly-catcher, (Vireo gilvus,) and these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... is another name—'saints.' It has suffered perhaps more at the hands both of the world and of the Church than any other. It has been taken by the latter and restricted to the dead, and further restricted to those who excel, according to the fantastic, ascetic standard of mediaeval Christianity. It has suffered from the world in that it has been used with a certain bitter emphasis of resentment at the claim of superior purity supposed to be implied ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... looks from the romantic children to the uninspired and uninspiring monuments of 1914 Germany. What sort of a Germany will it be fifty years hence, one asks. Not the old set up again. But if a new Germany, what will it be like and wherein will it excel? ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... arts in which the New Zealanders most excel is that of carving in wood. Some of their performances in this way are, no doubt, grotesque enough; but they often display both a taste and ingenuity which, especially when we consider their miserably ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... both bankers that they are the bitterest enemies. Talk of the jealousies of women, of artists, of men of genius, of nations! Those are nothing to the jealousy of these rival capitalists, who are engaged in a perpetual strife to excel each other. If Mr. Gobert gives a ball that costs two thousand dollars, Mr. Gilmer gives one that costs four thousand. If Mr. Gobert builds a superb house, Mr. Gilmer builds a palace. It is a steeple-chase of vanity, in which the conqueror has for the only price of his victory ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Vest Pocket Safety Razor Realizing the enormous demand for a really first-class Safety Razor that will far excel all others now in use, at the popular price of $1.00, we have brought out the Leslie Junior Safety Razor which consists of the unequaled Leslie Holder and six regulation Leslie blades. In handsome leather lined and covered case. No. 5. Special Leslie ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... suspension from each other. And those indeed which are highest, connate with the one, and of a primary nature, are allotted a form of subsistence, characterized by unity, occult and simple; but such as are last are multiplied, are distributed into many parts, and excel in number, but are inferior in power to such as are of a higher order; and such as are middle, according to a convenient proportion, are more composite than their causes, but more simple than their proper progeny. And, in short, ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... dale, and confidently anticipated an easy victory over the thrall. But the unusual tumult of conflicting feelings in the young man's breast rendered him at the time incapable of exerting his powers to the utmost in a feat, to excel in which requires the union of skill with strength. At his first throw the stone ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... did—almost as well as the professor who instructed us both. I always was a great sportsman—it is my one passion—and every autumn we went away somewhere shooting or fishing, sometimes to Scotland, sometimes to Norway, once even to Russia. I am a good shot, but even in this he learnt to excel me. ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... of twenty-six millions of men with an arbitrariness, a heedlessness, a prodigality, a lack of skill, an absence of consistency that would scarcely be overlooked in the management of a private domain.—The king and the privileged excel in one direction, in manners, in good taste, in fashion, in the talent for representation and in entertaining and receiving, in the gift of graceful conversation, in finesse and in gaiety, in the art ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Regardless of the fact that we were the first possessors of the regions they now inhabit; regardless equally of the fact that we abandoned that region from the loftiest motives; regardless also of the self-evident fact that we excel them so far in mental ability as they excel us in stature, they look upon us as a degraded race and make a mockery of all our finer feelings. But, the time has almost arrived when—thanks to His Majesty's inventive genius—it will be in our power to take a thorough revenge upon ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... say that one of Gen. Garfield's striking characteristics while he was growing up, was, that when he saw a boy in the class excel him in anything, he never gave up till he reached the same standard, and even went beyond it. It got to be known that no scholar could be ahead of him. Our association as men has been almost as close as that of our boyhood, though not as constant. The General never forgot his neighbors ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... performers, than they were while blended and polluted with all the low habits, manners, and language, of ignorance and vulgar grossness. And besides, there is the consideration of the different degrees of merit in the performance itself; and who will be the persons most likely to excel, in the many branches of workmanship and business which admit of being better done in proportion to the degree of intelligence directed upon them? And again, who will be most in requisition for those offices of management and superintendence, where something must be confided to judgment and ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... integrity of his administration, as well as his success against the enemy, also belong to the history of his times. The latter he exaggerated from the desire, so often instanced in eminent men, of appearing to excel in those things for which nature has ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... into vituperations of the stupid sport. How could mortal man endure it? If it had been pistol or rifle-shooting now, it would have been tolerable, and he should have been sure to excel; but a great long, senseless, useless thing like an arrow was only fit for women or black fellows; the string hurt one's fingers too—always ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... blade, Sees its transported treasures torn away, To grace a fierce ambitious Tyrant's sway. Long in this isle, where Freedom finds repose, Whilst, raving round her, loud the tempest blows, Oh! long befriended, may the Arts excel, And bless the sacred spot they love ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... drawing. She could copy very exactly, and even make original sketches sometimes. Mr. Summers, the art master, thought well of her work, and had praised her study of a group of apples more highly than those of the other girls. It was quite a consolation to Patty to excel in something. She found the afternoon spent in the studio the pleasantest in the whole week, and wished the drawing lessons came oftener. She was not without a secret hope that some of her work might be considered ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... (Victoria River and Sturt Creek, F. Muller; Sweer's Island, Henne; Nickol Bay, Walcot.) Capsula usually beautifully pink, sometimes purple or white. Peduncles occasionally more than 6 inches long; the staminodia sometimes excel the anthers ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... devils, the other communing with angels, yet each serving as a channel of God's mercies to man, each (we may believe) offering Him service equally acceptable in His sight—even so shall we find it in art and with artists; few in whom the Dramatic power predominates will be found to excel in the expression of religious emotions of the more abstract and enthusiastic cast, even although men of indisputably pure and holy character themselves; and vice versa, few of the more Contemplative but will feel bewildered and at fault, if they descend ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... with motors that were constantly giving trouble, without serious accident. But after this, and very quickly, the number of airmen grew. New aviators appeared every day; contests were organised extensively; there were large sums of money to be won, provided that one pilot could excel another. And the spirit of caution was abandoned. Even while they were still using purely experimental machines—craft of which neither the stability nor the structural strength had been tested adequately—there grew a tendency among airmen to fly in higher winds, to subject their machines to ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... fifty degrees of northern latitude, so much must be derogated, as to count me not equal to any of those who had this privilege, I would obtain to be thought not so inferior, as yourselves are superior to the most of them who received their counsel: and how far you excel them, be assured, Lords and Commons, there can no greater testimony appear, than when your prudent spirit acknowledges and obeys the voice of reason from what quarter soever it be heard speaking; and renders ye as willing to repeal any Act of your own setting forth, ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... Sogdiana; to her aid He marches now in haste. See, though from far, His thousands, in what martial equipage They issue forth, steel bows and shafts their arms, Of equal dread in flight or in pursuit— All horsemen, in which fight they most excel; See how in warlike muster they appear, In rhombs, and wedges, and half-moons, and wings." He looked, and saw what numbers numberless 310 The city gates outpoured, light-armed troops In coats of mail and military pride. In mail their horses ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... him, then, came his love affair as a very present help in time of trouble. The emotions awakened by Sabina were real, and he fully believed that she was going to be essential to his life's happiness and completion. He knew nothing about women, for his athletic pursuits and ambitions to excel physically produced an indifference to them. But with the change in his existence, and the void thereby created, came love, and he had leisure to welcome it. He magnified Sabina, and since her intellect was as good as his own ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... out—some from Turin; some from Treviso; and some from other cities. But aside from the Majolica pottery, and Delia Robbia's terra-cottas, Italy has not made any distinctive contribution to the china-making art. Still she has done so much in almost every other art that she should rest content. One cannot excel in everything." ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... going to a schutzenfest and singing Ach du lieber Augustin! coming home. To Italy the rest of us are indebted for unparalleled skill in eating spaghetti with one tool—they use the putting iron all the way round. Our cousins, the English, excel at archery, tea-drinking and putting the fifty-six pound protest. Thus we lead the world at contesting Olympian games and winning them, and they lead the world at losing them first and then contesting them. In catch-as-catch-can wrestling between Suffragettes and ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... being formed, do, no doubt, tell upon the balance. For it was not long before I found myself indebted to him for the greatest benefit probably that any man, living or dead, can confer on another. In my school and college days I had been betrayed by an ambition to excel in themes and declamations into the study, admiration, and imitation of the rhetoricians. In the course of my last long vacation—the autumn of 1830—I was inspired with a new ambition, namely, to think justly about everything which I thought about at all, and to act accordingly; a conviction for ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... presenting arms; we may not always present an unbroken front on the parade-ground—but we can dig! Even the fact that we do not want to, cannot altogether eradicate a truly human desire to "show off." "Each man to his art," we say. We are quite content to excel in ours, the oldest in the world. We know enough now about the conditions of the present war to be aware that when we go out on service only three things will really count—to march; to dig; and to fire, upon occasion, fifteen rounds a minute. Our rapid fire is already fair; we can march more ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... Arts,' said the Owl, 'the modern English chiefly excel in painting. To-morrow, by the way, the shrine of Loveliness begins to open its gates. The successful worshippers, are admitted to varnish their offerings to Beauty, while the unsuccessful are sent away in disgrace, with ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... each melodious lay That floats along the gilded shell, Who the mute tenant of the watry way Canst teach, at pleasure, to excel The softest note harmonious Sorrow brings, When the expiring Swan her own sad ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... pervaded the throng, And each was requested to furnish a song, Which many comply'd with; but such as deny'd, Some whimsical laughable story supply'd. The Lion, "Britannia Rule," sung mighty well: The Tiger, "in English Roast Beef," did excel. While others made all the wide valley to ring, With "Nile's Glorious Battle," and "God Save the King." In such good amusements the evening they past, [p 16] Till Aurora appear'd to the eastward at last: When back to their homes, they return'd one and all, Well pleas'd with the ...
— The Elephant's Ball, and Grand Fete Champetre • W. B.
... reputation is so universally established as not to need any introduction. Her art is more French in the many tone gradations of atmosphere than that of her American colleagues who are more decorative. Among others Jean McLane, Mr. Johansen's wife, and Annie Lang excel in a certain breadth of style; while Mrs. Richardson charms by the sympathetic rendering of the pride and happiness of the young mother. The composition of this picture, while it is unusual, is successfully managed. The impression one gains from ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... Emulate, to strive to equal or excel, to rival. Wake, the track left by a vessel in the water; hence, figuratively, in the trail of. Bard, a poet. Martyr, one who scarifices what is of great value to him for the sake of principle. Sage, a ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... indecency; yet in judging the period as a whole he seems to discriminate sufficiently between indelicacy and dulness. "The talents of Otway," he says, "in his scenes of passionate affection rival, at least, and sometimes excel those of Shakspeare." Again: "The comedies of Congreve contain probably more wit than was ever before embodied upon the stage; each word was a jest, and yet so characteristic that the repartee of the servant is distinguished ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... could do it. Some of the strongest ever written by either were prepared without the assistance of the other, but most of their resolutions, memorials and speeches were the joint work of both. Miss Anthony always said, "Mrs. Stanton is my sentence maker, my pen artist." No one can excel Miss Anthony in logic of thought or vigor of expression; no one is so thoroughly supplied with facts, statistics and arguments, but she finds it difficult and distasteful to put them into written form. When, however, some ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... excellent; yet I can hardly call it a good novel. Reflective, truth-loving, and even elevated as is Alexander Harris's mind, I should say he scarcely possesses the creative faculty in sufficient vigour to excel as a writer of fiction. He creates nothing—he only copies. His characters are portraits—servilely accurate; whatever is at all ideal is not original. The Testimony to the Truth is a better book than any tale he can write will ever be. Am I ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... who excel in the art of the musician seem to be inferior to the southern in the arts of the painter and of the sculptor,—more particularly in the latter. The supreme sculptors are apparently two or three: Phidias and Michelangelo, beyond all question, ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... such as have a proper sense of the folly and dissipation of the Fashionable world; such in fact as will make good mothers and good wives. Now if a Quaker looks into his own society, he will generally find the female part of it of this description. Female Quakers excel in these points. But if he looks into the world at large, he will in general find a contrast in the females there. These, in general, are but badly educated. They are taught to place a portion of their happiness in ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... and education, which was general in Babylonia, was in the northern kingdom confined for the most part to a single class. In Babylonia it was of very old standing. There were libraries in most of the towns and temples; an old Sumerian proverb averred that "he who would excel in the school of the scribes must rise with the dawn." Women as well as men learned to read and write, and in Semitic times this involved a knowledge of the extinct Sumerian as well as of a most complicated and extensive syllabary. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... grunted. "To the contrary, what you should have done was try to excel Russian science, technology and industry. Had you done that you might have continued to be the world's leading nation, until, at least, some sort of world unity had been achieved. By deciding to combat Russian progress you ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... must crucify her pride by allowing them to blacken; yet so soon do I overwhelm you with culinary suggestions. I am distressed to remember them. But you must forgive and smile me into peacefulness again. And be not discouraged, little housewife! It may take years of attention to excel in bread-making, some skill even for boiling potatoes, and common-sense for everything; but stand steadily beside your servants, and watch their processes patiently. Take notes, experiment, amend, and if there be failure, discover the reason; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... good-nature. He was born with a smile on his face, and has never been able to change the expression. They are both masters of their art, and can load a mule with a speed and skill which I would defy any Santa Fe trader to excel. The animals are not less interesting than their masters. Our horses, to be sure, are slow, plodding beasts, with considerable endurance, but little spirit; but the two baggage mules deserve gold medals from the Society for the Promotion of Industry. I can overlook any amount of waywardness in ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... violated training rules, and used liquor. University teams and crews have proved substantially that drinking men are absolutely no good in sports, or upon the water. Football and baseball teams, anxious to excel, are beginning to have a cast-iron temperance pledge for their members. So practical experience of those competing in tests of strength and endurance teach eloquently that alcohol does not give strength, but rather weakens the body, by rendering the ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... turns Th' intricate wards, and every Bolt and Bar Of massie Iron or sollid Rock with ease Unfast'ns: on a sudden op'n flie With impetuous recoile and jarring sound 880 Th' infernal dores, and on thir hinges great Harsh Thunder, that the lowest bottom shook Of Erebus. She op'nd, but to shut Excel'd her power; the Gates wide op'n stood, That with extended wings a Bannerd Host Under spread Ensigns marching might pass through With Horse and Chariots rankt in loose array; So wide they stood, and like a Furnace mouth Cast forth redounding ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... his debts, and a perpetual pension of L4,000 a year annexed to the earldom of Chatham. Throughout his long career he was invariably courageous and self-reliant; his genius was bold, his conceptions magnificent, his political purity unsullied. His rhetoric was sublime. He did not excel in debate or in prepared speeches. His spirit burned like fire, and his speeches were the outpourings of his heart in words which, while they owed something to art, came spontaneously to his lips, and ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... boast, so that the city together combines within its precincts, if you take the word of the inhabitants on the subject, as much of historical interest as of natural beauty. Our claims in behalf of the Canongate are not the slightest. The Castle may excel us in extent of prospect and sublimity of site; the Calton had always the superiority of its unrivalled panorama, and has of late added that of its towers, and triumphal arches, and the pillars of its Parthenon. The High Street, we acknowledge, ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... was a natural gift, or merely a "way we have in the army," as the song says, I shall not pretend to say; but I venture to affirm that few men could excel me in the practice I speak of some five-and-twenty years ago. Fair reader, do pray, if I have the happiness of being known to you, deduct them from my age before you subtract ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... these are needless precautions; if the scum be attentively removed, meat will have a much more delicate colour and finer flavour than it has when muffled up. This may give rather more trouble—but those we wish to excel in their art must only consider how the processes of it can be most perfectly performed: a cook who has a proper pride and pleasure in her business will make this her maxim and rule ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... that just as the sick child may be found at the head of his class, so unhealthy men and women are often good business managers, good salesmen, good typewriters, successful capitalists. They excel, however, not because of their ill health, but in spite of it, excepting of course those instances where men and women, because of ill health, have devoted to business an attention that would have been given to recreation if ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... have gained great fame in repeating his third-rate stories at second hand; so in consequence of these messengers I am received with branches of palm. Here the younkers do nothing but play rackets, billiards, and cards, race and smoke. To govern men, you must either excel them in their accomplishments, or despise them. Clay does one, I do the other, and we are both equally popular. Affectation tells here even better than wit. Yesterday, at the racket court, sitting in the gallery among strangers, the ball entered, and lightly struck ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... which the New Zealanders most excel is that of carving in wood. Some of their performances in this way are, no doubt, grotesque enough; but they often display both a taste and ingenuity which, especially when we consider their miserably ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... many valuable women who excel as wives, that it is fair to infer there would be few extravagant ones, if they were consulted by their husbands on subjects that concern the mutual interest of both parties. Many families have been reduced to poverty by the want of openness in the man, on the subject of his affairs; and ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... genuine members of Parliament. Why should he ever be better than O'B——, or O'C——, or O'D——? And in what way should he begin to be better? He had an idea of the fashion after which it would be his duty to strive that he might excel those gentlemen. He did not give any of them credit for much earnestness in their country's behalf, and he was minded to be very earnest. He would go to his work honestly and conscientiously, determined to do his duty as best he might, let the results to ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... ever with their owners, not even thus should any man choose them before the gifts of Christ, and the good things that pass man's understanding. Soothly, as the sun surpasseth in radiance and brightness the dead of night, even so, and much more so, doth the happiness promised to those that love God excel in glory and magnificence all earthly kinship and glory; and there is utter need for a man to choose the more excellent before the more worthless. And forasmuch as everything here is fleeting and subject to decay, and passeth and ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... reclining on a sofa, and meanwhile smokes a cigar. After dinner she again makes visits, and the evening is spent in the theatre, on the plaza, or on the bridge. Some few ladies employ themselves in needle-work, in which they are often most accomplished adepts; they especially excel in embroidery and fancy work; but they never pursue these employments ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... wise enough not to attempt cat pictures, knowing that special study, for which she had not the time or the inclination, is necessary to fit an artist to excel with the feline character. Landseer, too, after trying twice, once in 1819 with "The Cat Disturbed" and once in 1824 with "The Cat's Paw," gave up all attempts at dealing with Grimalkin. Indeed, most ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... the boy really excel, and that was in the matter of making rhymes. The Abbe Chateauneuf had taught him the trick before he could speak plainly, and Ninon had been so pleased with the wee poet that she left him two thousand francs in her will for the purchase of books. As Ninon insisted on living to be ninety, Voltaire ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... worship, with francs, at the shrine; whilst at Bayeux, as we have seen, the old work is handled with reverence and fear, and the nineteenth-century mason puts out all his power to imitate, if not to excel, the ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... laboratory will ever rival the wheat field. The cornstalk will always be able to work cheaper than the chemist in the manufacture of starch. But in rarer and choicer products of nature the chemist has proved his ability to compete and even to excel. ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... personages were the buffoons: they mimicked and joked, and lampooned and lied, as if by inspiration. As the bottle circulated, and talk grew louder, the lampooning and the lying were not, however, confined to the buffoons. On the contrary, the best born and best bred people seemed to excel the most in those polite arts. Every person who boasted a fair name or a decent reputation at court was seized, condemned, and mangled in an instant. And how elaborately the good folks slandered! It was no hasty ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... great as was the number of his retinue, their presence was scarcely observed in the Castle, so vast was its extent. And the maidens rose up to wait on them, and the service of the maidens appeared to them all to excel any attendance they had ever met with; and even the pages who had charge of the horses were no worse served, that night, than Arthur himself would have ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... as they are called, make neat and strong baskets of the split roots of a certain tree, while others excel in pottery and iron. I can not find that they have ever been warlike. Indeed, the wars in the centre of the country, where no slave-trade existed, have seldom been about any thing else but cattle. So well known is this, that several tribes refuse to keep ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... dust lies mouldering here A Parish Clerk of voice most clear. None Joseph Rogers could excel In laying bricks or singing well; Though snapp'd his line, laid by his rod, We build for him ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... as a writer of verses, Mr Skinner did not conceal his ambition to excel in another department of literature. In 1746, in his twenty-fifth year, he published a pamphlet, in defence of the non-juring character of his Church, entitled "A Preservative against Presbytery." A performance of greater ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... that whatever schemes were forming here at home, in this juncture, by the enemies to the peace, the Dutch only designed to fall in with it as far as it would answer their own account; and, by a strain of the lower politics, wherein they must be allowed to excel every country in Christendom, lay upon the watch for a good bargain, by taking advantage of the distress they themselves had brought upon their ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... dozen in his own Kingdom; which, he said, purely out of Affection to the Word Dozen, because he knew full well the French King bestows Pensions on a Hundred Men in several Parts of Europe; and on a Thousand in his own Kingdom, who excel in Arts and Literature, which, including the whole, do not amount to half the Income of many a Private Commoner in England. Whereas I will engage to name Him a Hundred Pensions in France that have been given to Men of Letters, every one of which shall amount to more than half the ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... king of the wilderness, endowed with all the physical qualities, all the acute senses of a great, primitive age, was seen at his best. He was of one type and his comrade of another, but they were knitted together with threads of steel. It had fallen to his lot to do a duty in which he could excel, and he would ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... "to beseech you to ascend the throne of Mexico, to which you have been called by the voice of a people weary of anarchy and civil war. We are assured you have the secret of conquering the hearts of all men, and excel in the rare knowledge of the ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... have to dream other daydreams than that of business success and wealth wrung out of the ruin of competitors and the degradation of labor. In such a world, most of the nightmares that lurk in the background of men's minds will no longer exist; on the other hand, ambition and the desire to excel will have to take nobler forms than those that are encouraged by a commercial society. All those activities that really confer benefits upon mankind will be open, not only to the fortunate few, but to all who have sufficient ambition and native aptitude. Science, ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... age, to be accounted for but by a miracle. It was asserted and believed that the Holy Virgin, touched with his great desire to become learned and famous, took pity upon his incapacity, and appeared to him in the cloister where he sat, almost despairing, and asked him whether he wished to excel in philosophy or divinity. He chose philosophy, to the chagrin of the Virgin, who reproached him in mild and sorrowful accents that he had not made a better choice. She, however, granted his request that he should become the most ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... flatterer's honey'd phrases Are often but a wily snare, To catch her in love's mazes. Accomplishments she must possess, These make life worth the having; And taste, especially in dress Yet still inclined to saving. In cookery she must excel, To this there's no exception, And serve a frugal meal as well As manage a reception. Untidyness she must abhor, In every household matter; And resolutely close the door To any gossip's chatter. She must love ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... of the Acarnanians had not yet arrived, but contenting themselves with slinging at them from a distance, which distressed them greatly, as there was no stirring without their armour. The Acarnanians would seem to excel in this ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... my life was uniform: but not unhappy, because it was not inactive. I had the means of an excellent education placed within my reach; a fondness for some of my studies, and a desire to excel in all, together with a great delight in pleasing my teachers, especially such as I loved, urged me on: I availed myself fully of the advantages offered me. In time I rose to be the first girl of the first class; then I was invested with the office ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... will be too good for man; for not as he is man will he so live, but inasmuch as there is a divine element in his composition. As much as this element excels the compound into which it enters, so much does the act of the said element excel any act in any other line of virtue. If, then, the understanding is divine in comparison with man, the life of the understanding is divine in comparison with human life. We must not take the advice of those who tell us, that being man, one should cherish the thoughts of a man, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... any office, but remained a private throughout the whole four years. Then, as now, neatness in dress and form, with a strict conformity to the rules, were the qualifications required for office, and I suppose I was found not to excel in any of these. In studies I always held a respectable reputation with the professors, and generally ranked among the best, especially in drawing, chemistry, mathematics, and natural philosophy. My average demerits, per annum, were ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... received her with her usual kindness. Madame de Campvallon, whom M. de Camors had already warned, did not trouble herself much; for the best women, like the worst, excel in comedy, and everything passed off without the General having conceived the shadow ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... sober aplomb. Unknown irritations possessed him. Under his breath he muttered an Arabic cynicism about woman, from the fourth chapter of the Koran: "Men shall have the preeminence above women, because Allah hath caused the one of them to excel ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... choir of music can excel That which within this shade does dwell, To which we nothing pay, or give, They, like all other poets, live Without reward, or thanks for their obliging pains! 'Tis well if they ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... dear Orpah, loving Ruth, have ye To suckle or to dance upon your knee, No other sons have I your hearts to woo— Grandchildren can be none from me to you. Therefore, my daughters, O, consider well Since you are young, and fair and so excel In every homecraft, were it not more wise No longer to refuse to turn your eyes Towards the suitors brave who, now your days Of mourning are accomplished, fix their gaze Upon your goings? Verily now 'twere right That you should each a noble Moabite Espouse, till, with another's ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... frequent; Therein a club where the men read the news; Also a chamber where, lit from above, Balls white and crimson disport on green baize, That capital game which gentlemen love, Where Harry conquers whenever he plays. Billiards require grace, agility, skill; No one without them can hope to excel; But Harry never did anything ill That it is manly and right to do well. In my pretty turn-out with ponies gray, At a rattling pace to the club I come, And feel like a queen triumphantly gay, As I drive ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... all atrocities those committed in the prisons and prison ships of New York are the most execrable, and indeed there is nothing in history to excel the barbarities there inflicted. Twelve thousand suffered death by their inhuman, cruel, savage, and barbarous usage on board the filthy and malignant prison ships—adding those who died and were poisoned in the infected prisons in the city ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... those temptations, which give you a distaste of your employment; and to meditate, more on that, than how to engage yourself in such laborious affairs, as are not commanded you. Let no man flatter himself; it is impossible to excel in great matters, before we arrive to excel in less: and it is a gross error, under the pretence of saving souls, to shake off the yoke of obedience, which is light and easy, and to take up a cross, which, without comparison, is more hard ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... warmest Manner asserted the Cause of the Dunciad, might have seen a Publication of a Work, upon the Death of this Writer, in which no past Friendship could have screen'd them from Lampoon for any Pretences to excel in any Science whatever: It appears, therefore, that he was teaz'd into a Publication of these Cantos, which regarded the Writers of the Age, by some Attacks, that were made upon him about that Time: We must refer to a Miscellany ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... printed at Amsterdam in 1682, contains the following quaint description of the Labyrinth, or Maze: "Courteous Reader," it begins, "it is sufficiently known how eminently France and especially the Royal Court doth excel above other places with all manner of delights. The admirable faire Buildings and Gardens with all imaginable ornaments and delightful spectacles represent to the eye of the beholder such abundant and rich objects ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... avoided by the Cossack who preceded us. The stancia at Bete-Kul was kept by a more prosperous-looking Yakute than usual, and his wife was attired in bright silks and wore a profusion of massive gold jewellery. The Yakutes are expert goldsmiths, but chiefly excel in the manufacture of arms, especially a kind of yataghan, or huge dagger, which is stuck into the waistband. Yakute steel is much more flexible than Russian, although I have seen a knife made out of the former sever a copper coin as neatly as ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... Barbary, are of various kinds. They excel, in the city of Fas, in the manufacture of woollens, cottons, silks, and gold-thread. The wool and cotton are made into hayks, which are pieces of cloth five feet wide, and about three and a half, or four yards long, used to throw loosely ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... overcome the other. Thou knowest my generosity to my uncontending Rosebud—and sometimes do I qualify my ardent aspirations after even this very fine creature, by this reflection:—That the most charming woman on earth, were she an empress, can excel the meanest in the customary visibles only. Such is the equality of the dispensation, to the prince and the peasant, in this ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... cooked food is forbidden. It is also sold at railway stations and the fresh fruit is prescribed by village doctors as easy of digestion. The Dhimar grows melons, cucumbers and other vegetables on the sandy stretches along the banks of streams, but at agriculture proper he does not excel. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... should bring forth, Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance To feed my innocent people! Sebastian. No marrying 'mong his subjects? Antonio. None, man; all idle; whores and knaves. Gonzalo. I would with such perfection govern, sir, T' excel the golden age. ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... it is owing to the difference of their functions; that M. Baroche presides in the Council of State, and that M. Vidocq would be merely the chief of police. My answer is, that it is but chance; that probably M. Baroche might excel in directing the police, and that M. Vidocq might very well be President of the Council of State. ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... of narration, and the still greater merit of a depth and fineness in the workings of the passions, in which last excellence, as likewise in the wild and imaginative character of the situations, his almost neglected romances appear to me greatly to excel his far famed 'Decameron'. To him, too, we owe the more doubtful merit of having introduced into the Italian prose, and by the authority of his name and the influence of his example, more or less throughout Europe, the ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... going, Laelius, to ridicule a science in which, in the first place, I myself excel; and, secondly, without which no one can distinguish what is his own, and what is another's? But to return to the point. Let us now at present listen to Philus, who seems to me to have started a greater question than any of those that have engaged the attention of either ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... LEO. The abundance of people which you tell vs of seemeth very strange: whereupon I coniecture the soile to be fertile, the aire to be holesome, and the whole kingdom to be at peace. MICHAEL. You haue (friend Leo) ful iudicially coniectured those three: for they do all so excel that which of the three in this kingdom be more excellent, it is not easie to discerne. And hence it is that this common opinion hath been rife among the Portugals, namely, that the kingdom of China was neuer visited with those three ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... or feel, Joined with chiefs of rich Brazil; Western freemen, prompt to dare, Side by side with Bourbon's heir; Proving who could then excel, Came with succour long and well; But Jerome, in peril ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... subtle dialectician and brilliant orator, but without depth or earnestness,—whom he compares to a cup-bearer presenting a costly goblet, but without anything in it. And when it became clear that this high-priest of pretended wisdom was ignorant of the things in which he was supposed to excel, but which Augustine himself had already learned, his disappointment was so great that he lost faith both in the teacher and his doctrines. Thus this Faustus, "neither willing nor witting it," was the very man who loosened the net which had ensnared ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... Humour is odd, grotesque, and wild, Only by affectation spoil'd; 'Tis never by invention got, Men have it when they know it not. Our conversation to refine, True humour must with wit combine: From both we learn to rally well, Wherein French writers most excel; [2]Voiture, in various lights, displays That irony which turns to praise: His genius first found out the rule For an obliging ridicule: He flatters with peculiar air The brave, the witty, and the fair: And fools would fancy he intends A satire where he most commends. But as a poor pretending ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Terence, Aristophanes, and Machiavelli. Between the nature of the two poets there was a marked and characteristic difference as to their mode of labour and of acquiring knowledge. Both of them loved fame, and wrought for it; but Alfieri did so from a sense of pride and a determination to excel; while Goldoni loved the approbation of his fellows, sought their compliments, and basked in the sunshine of smiles. Alfieri wrote with labour. Each tragedy he composed went through a triple process of composition, and received frequent ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... was, which whylome did excel All living wightes in might of magicke spell: Both shield, and sword, and armour all he wrought For this young Prince, when first to armes ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... standard of such qualities; he will continue to give the preference to rank and riches, power and influence, which in his eyes seem to be the only genuine advantages in the world; and his wish will be to excel in them himself. All this is the consequence of his being a man without intellectual needs. The great affliction of all philistines is that they have no interest in ideas, and that, to escape being bored, they are in constant need ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... second order of angels of the Dionysian hierarchy, reputed to excel specially in knowledge (as the seraphim in love). See Bacon's Advancement of Learning, i. 28: 'The first place is given to the Angels of loue, which are tearmed Seraphim, the second to the Angels of light, which are tearmed Cherubim,'"-N. Eng. Dict., ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... on the fragrant lawn, though Matilda sat close by it, in her wonted place, the Vidame was hanging over the chair of the visitor, and later, played billiards with her, a game at which Matilda did not excel. At family prayers next morning (the service was conducted by Mrs. Malory) the Vidame appeared with a white rosebud in his buttonhole, Mrs. Brown-Smith wearing its twin sister. He took her to the ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... leads us, as we have seen, to aim at absolutely high attainments, and to measure ourselves less by what others are, than by our own ideal. It is only those of lower aims, who seek to supplant others on their career. Envy is the attempt, not to rise or excel, but to stand comparatively high by subverting those who hold or seek a higher position. No just man voted for the banishment of Aristides because he was always called the Just; but his ostracism was the decree of those who knew ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... prince, so he said to him: "Father, I think thou must be skilful in these games. Let us see thee try them. We will not delay thee long. Thy ship is ready for thee on the sea, and the crew is there, waiting. But there is no greater glory or pleasure for a man than to excel in swiftness of foot and strength ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... civilisation. "The Red Indian goes down before the white man, and the New Zealander vanishes in presence of the English settler." Nature, careless in this stage of evolution about the body, selects for survival those varieties of mankind which excel in mental qualities. Hence it has happened that the physical characteristics of the different races, once fixed in very early prehistoric times, have never greatly varied. They have passed out of the range of Natural Selection because ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... who has read so far, can think I am unduly prejudiced in favour of America and the Americans. I have tried to write fairly, and point out in what respects their institutions, habits, &c., excel ours; but, on the other hand, I have criticized in no sparing language what I consider are faults or peculiarities distasteful to outsiders, and possibly there is more blame than praise in the foregoing pages. If now, therefore, I write strongly in favour of the great capital of Western America, ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... classics, daily readings in the French and German tongues, conversation after the Socratic method—these were the pillars of Stair's temple of learning at the Bothy. And because the root of the matter had always been in him—which is the determination to excel—he progressed with a rapidity that astounded ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... was the first of the elaborate and fanciful Gothic which I had seen, and is said to excel in the delicacy of its carving any except Roslin Castle. As a specimen of the exactness of Scott's description, take this verse, where he speaks ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... is now preferred in California to any produced in the United States—the Chilian flour—might be carried on by the people of this most favored portion of God's legacy to man. The mineral productions excel all other parts of this continent; the rivers present the greatest internal advantages, and the commercial prospects, are without a parallel on the coast of ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... prayer to the Holy Virgin. Madly leaping on his fleetest horse, without saddle, and often without bridle, he wildly gallops down the wind, as the roaring, crackling fire gains upon him. In this mad race for life, men, horses, ostriches, deer, bullocks, etc., join, striving to excel each other in speed. Strange to say, the horse the native rides, cheered on by the touch of his master, is often the first to gain the lake or river, where, beneath its waters at least, refuge may be found. In their wild stampede, vast ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... their vices, have a future life, assuredly animals, who in character so often equal, nay, excel human beings, have ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... could write; and he went on to say that Burns owed much to Fergusson, and that he had taken the plan of many of his poems from Fergusson, and the measure also. He did not think this at all detracted from the merit of Burns, for he considered it a much higher effort of genius to excel in degree, than to strike out what may be called an original poem. He spoke highly of the purity of language of the Scotch poets of an earlier period, Gavin Douglass and others, and said that they greatly excelled the English poets, after Chaucer, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... insincere, John; but you cannot deceive me. You never spoke in that way about your ancestors until you learned that I had none. I know you are proud of them, and that the memory of the governor and the judge and the Harvard professor and the Mayflower pilgrim makes you strive to excel, in order to prove ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... which the civilization of antiquity culminated stand side by side, as different in development as they were in origin identical. The points in which the Hellenes excel the Italians are more universally intelligible and reflect a more brilliant lustre; but the deep feeling in each individual that he was only a part of the community, a rare devotedness and power of self-sacrifice for the common weal, an earnest faith in its own gods, form ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the others; applauded in the old way. "You are beyond my teaching, lads," he said—and they played exquisitely. "You excel your master now. Well, well, my mellow old fiddle is better here with you." But he would never once look at Vesty, so pale ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... job; there was a restlessness in his temperament which would not down. He would leave his fields unploughed in order to go hunting or to turn a few sous in some small trading adventure. Unstable as water, he did not excel in tasks that required patience. But he could do a great many things after a fashion, and some that could be done quickly he did ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... to discover some traces of infant effort—some rude specimens of the ages of Magog and Mizraim, in which we may admire the germ that has since developed into a wonderful art—breaks his shins against an article so perfect that it equals if it does not excel the supreme stretch of modern ability? How shall we support the theory if it come to our knowledge that, before Noah was cold in his grave, his descendants were adepts in construction and in the fine arts, and that their achievements were ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... in the Works of Creation, and Stackhouse's History of the Bible. It was about this time, too, that Robert became possessed of The Complete Letter-Writer, a book which Gilbert declared was to Robert of the greatest consequence, since it inspired him with a great desire to excel in letter-writing, and furnished him with models by some of the first writers in our language. Perhaps this book was a great gain. It is questionable. What would Robert Burns's letters have been had he never seen ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... Her ports, in everything which contributes to naval efficiency,—in size, in mechanical appliances, in concentration upon one spot of all the trades and all the resources necessary for the construction and repair of war-ships,—excel all other naval depots in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... of genius happen; and men cannot make it happen. They cannot discover what circumstances favour art, and therefore they cannot attempt to produce those circumstances. There are periods of course in which the arts, or some one particular art, progress. One generation may excel the last; through several generations an art may seem to be rushing to its consummation. This happened with Greek sculpture and the Greek drama in the sixth and fifth centuries; with architecture and all kindred ...
— Progress and History • Various
... studies for the priesthood, than he found himself overtaken and overpowered by an extraordinary religious fervour and by a desire for prayer and discipline. Never had a boy left home more zealous, more desirous to excel in piety and to strive for the honour ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... Excellency "lost his head" and got nervous. Suppose a thousand things. But Bob put it all resolutely behind him. He felt his strong young muscles, his vital fingers, his pliant wrists. Yes, it was a great thing to be a boy—a boy whose great pride had always been to excel in typical Canadian sports, to be the "crack" canoeist, and to handle a paddle with the ease of a professional. It was worth everything in the world to recall the time when someone had tauntingly said, "Oh, Bob Stuart's no good ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... her as she chastely lies Upon the linen white; Was ne'er to man's or angel's eyes So beautiful a sight! O, mark her bosom's fall and swell, (Profane it were of more to tell.) While hover round her rose-leaf mouth, Sweets that excel the Arabian South. ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... could teach us to build them well, surely we ought to excel in this matter. Never was there such a house-building people. In other countries the laws interfere,—or customs, traditions, and circumstances as strong as laws; either capital is wanting, or the possession of land, or there are already houses enough. If a man inherit a house, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... of the mountains takes great pride in her quilts; not only does she strive to excel her neighbor in the variety of patterns but in the number as well. On a bright summer day she brings them out of cupboard and presses, and hangs them on the picket fence to sun. She is pleased when a passerby stops to admire, and especially so ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... the country. As it is now, the library contains only some 100,000 volumes, many of which have no particular value. The American and Canadian department is confessedly inferior in many respects, although we ought to excel in that particular. Of late years, the annual grant has been extremely small, and chiefly devoted to the purchase of books for the law branch, for the especial benefit of lawyers engaged in the Supreme Court. But we have as yet no Free Libraries like ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... his meals, and each of them made him some little present. One gave him a box of sweetmeats; Another, an Agnus Dei; Some brought reliques of Saints, waxen Images, and consecrated Crosses; and Others presented him with pieces of those works in which the Religious excel, such as embroidery, artificial flowers, lace, and needlework. All these He was advised to sell, in order to put himself into better case; and He was assured that it would be easy to dispose of them, since the Spaniards hold the performances of the Nuns in high estimation. ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... sunset, and this was usually done by all the ships at the same moment, waiting the signal from the admiral to begin; in this exercise there was much foolish rivalry, and very serious accidents, as well as numerous punishments, took place, in consequence of one ship trying to excel another. On these occasions our captain would bellow and foam at the mouth like a mad bull, up and down ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... every act of her duty (as I cannot deserve it) be a condescension, and a triumph over me?—And must I owe it merely to her goodness that she does not despise me?—To have her condescend to bear with my follies!—To wound me with an eye of pity!—A daughter of the Harlowes thus to excel the last, and as I have heretofore said, not the meanest ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... OF SOUP.—Besides having an important place in the meal of which it forms a part, soup is very often an economy, for it affords the housewife a splendid opportunity to utilize many left-overs. With the French people, who excel in the art of soup making chiefly because of their clever adaptation of seasoning to foods, their pot-au-feu is a national institution and every kitchen has its stock pot. Persons who believe in the strictest food economy use a stock pot, since ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... defending or avenging ourselves, and by means of which we punish offences, attention to superiors, they call the feeling under the influence of which we feel reverence for and pay respect to those who excel us in wisdom or honour or in any dignity, truth, they style that habit by which we take care that nothing has been or shall be done in any other manner than what we state. And the laws of nature themselves are less inquired into in a controversy of this sort, ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... you must first get fast to a whale, before any pitchpoling comes into play. Look now at Stubb; a man who from his humorous, deliberate coolness and equanimity in the direst emergencies, was specially qualified to excel in pitchpoling. Look at him; he stands upright in the tossed bow of the flying boat; wrapt in fleecy foam, the towing whale is forty feet ahead. Handling the long lance lightly, glancing twice or thrice along its length to see if it be exactly straight, Stubb whistlingly gathers ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... fact in the history of progress, that, by a kind of intuitive insight, the earlier observers seem to have had a wider, more comprehensive recognition of natural phenomena as a whole than their successors, who far excel them in their knowledge of special points, but often lose their grasp of broader relations in the more minute investigation of details. When geologists first turned their attention to the physical history of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... be yet styled a perfected weapon. It may be in a very few years, thanks to the ardent anxiety, on the part of the several peoples composing "the parliament of man, the federation of the world," to excel each other in the "brain-spattering, windpipe-slitting art." At present it is maintained by very good American authority that for use under some conditions, at short or moderate range, the smooth gun ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... sort of susceptibility in one of its least agreeable forms. His sentiment was neither robustly and courageously animal, nor was it an intellectual demand for the bright and vivacious sympathies in which women sometimes excel. It had neither bold virility, nor that sociable energy which makes close emotional companionship an essential condition of freedom of faculty and completeness of work. There is a certain close and sickly ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... to illustrate some virtue. To thee they have given strength, courage, and magnanimity above all others; and to me, in small measure, the vision of justice, and the perception of her beautiful laws. A man can only excel in what he loves, and verily I love well the known ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... identical with that of the Bagobo, while the cloth from which it is made is procured by a like process. However, in the ornamentation of these garments there is wide variation. Beads are not used to any great extent, but in their place are intricate embroidered designs which excel, both in beauty and technique the work of any other wild tribe in the Islands, while on the more elaborate costumes hundreds of shell disks are used in artistic designs. The woman's skirt is of hemp and is made in exactly the same manner as ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... commercial country! Yes; as Venice was. She may excel other nations in commerce, but yet it is not that in which she most prides herself, in which she most excels. Merchants as such are not the first men among us; though it perhaps be open, barely open, to a merchant to become one of them. ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... my friends, no doubt excel This, the land wherein we're doomed to dwell, As the hardy travellers proclaim; But if Nature has denied us much, Art is yet responsive to our touch, And our hearts can kindle at her flame. If the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
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