"Excel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... excel us in this feature of their school work. No class of German children are ever sent to their seats with the simple direction to take so many pages in advance. Teacher and class together go over the next lesson, the teacher calling the attention of the class to the points of the lesson, asking ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... 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
... 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
... 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
... excel the boys in dancing had aroused much gaiety in the parish, and for some time past there had been dancing in every house where there was a floor fit to dance upon; and if the cottager had no money to pay for a barrel of beer, James Bryden, who had money, sent him ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... 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 |
