"High-sounding" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... years ago—to be precise, it was during the summer of 1903—I was paying what must have seemed like an interminable visit to my old friend John Saunders, who at that time filled with becoming dignity the high-sounding office of Secretary to the Treasury of His Majesty's Government, in the quaint little town of Nassau, in the island of New Providence, one of those Bahama Islands that lie half lost to the world to the southeast of the Caribbean ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... Massachusetts. "It is not possible to guess," writes Gage, "what a body composed of such heterogeneous matter will determine; but the members from hence, I am assured, will promote the most haughty and insolent resolves; for their plan has ever been, by threats and high-sounding sedition, to terrify ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... western banlieue. Houses half built and deserted in the middle, perhaps by some bankrupt builder; small traders, bakers, charcutiers, fried-fish sellers, lodged in structures of lath and plaster, just run up and already crumbling; cabarets of the roughest and meanest kind, adorned with high-sounding devices,—David mechanically noticed one which had blazoned on its stained and peeling front, A la renaissance du Phenix;—heaps of rubbish and garbage with sickly children playing among them; here and there some small, ill-smelling factory; a few melancholy ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the future, Elsie and her editor announced their intention of living "the higher life"—a high-sounding phrase which was not a little impressive, until one heard the details thereof, which scarcely appealed to the ordinary imagination. They were going to subsist on a diet of bread and nuts, a regime which did away at one fell swoop with ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... deputation from the Senate, in the presence of the Diplomatic Body, whose audience had been appointed for that day in order that the ambassadors might be enabled to make known to their respective Courts that Europe reckoned one King more. In his reply he did not fail to introduce the high-sounding words "liberty and equality." He commenced thus: "A citizen's life belongs to his country. The French people wish that mine should be entirely devoted to their service. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... conscience—by evangelical abstractions, believe that they have solved the difficulty by these fine maxims: "Inequality of capacities proves the inequality of duties"; "You have received more from nature, give more to your brothers," and other high-sounding and touching phrases, which never fail of their effect on empty heads, but which nevertheless are as simple as anything that it is possible to imagine. The practical formula deduced from these marvellous adages is that each laborer owes all his time to society, and that society should give back ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... the sake of a whim, of some silly fustian about patriotism, some fool's rubbish of high-sounding words! Me, you balance against a crazy notion! Very well, sir! How I shall hate you for it! Don't come near me—not a step! Cling to your notion; see if it will fill my place! From this moment, you're not my husband, I'm not your wife—unless ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... this it?" said I, quite disappointed at the lame and impotent conclusion to all the high-sounding ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... to solve the problem of sorrow. Indeed there is no solution of it, unless the individual soul works out its own solution. Most attempts at a philosophy of sorrow just end in high-sounding words. Explanations, which profess to cover all the ground, are as futile as the ordinary blundering attempts at comfort, which only charm ache with sound and patch grief with proverbs. The sorrow of our hearts is not appreciably lessened by argument. Any kind of philosophy—any ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... in close relations with a group of unbalanced people operating under the high-sounding name League of Freedom. These people, led by a man, J., eagerly welcomed L., largely because his wife was still financing his ventures. Here comes a curious fact, and one prominent in the history of man, for this group, led by two unbalanced men, actually engineered a real reform, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... his glass violently upon the counter. "Thunder! how that fellow provokes me! He does not know the A B C of his profession. When he can't discover anything, he invents wonderful stories, and then misleads the magistrates with his high-sounding phrases, in the hope of gaining promotion. I'll give him advancement with a vengeance! I'll teach him to set himself ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... where, in my babyhood, like the kings of Bagdad, I had a hundred bay horses in their stables, each bridled with a coloured woollen string, and stalled in the palings of the garden, and each with his high-sounding name, and princely lineage, and his thrilling history, and where I had a thousand black cattle at ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... as goes into the average magazine article is not likely to merit much high-sounding praise. In our familiar shop talk we are prone to laugh about it. But even the most commercial-minded of our brotherhood cherishes deep in his heart a craftsman's pride in work well done. So your deponent testifies in his own defense that his copybook exercises in fiction, ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... B. Parte or N. Bona Parte, and the public hates a man who parts his name in the middle. Parte is a good name in its way, but it's too short and abrupt. Few men with short, sharp, decisive names like that ever make their mark. Let it be Buonaparte, which is sort of high-sounding—it makes ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... what quarters travellers may stumble upon even with the best recommendations. A large party of us had started, particularly recommended by letter from the consular agent of a place that shall be nameless, to no less a person than the Demarch of a high-sounding Greek town, who was to do every thing for us in the way of billeting. By great exertion, and with aching bones, we managed to reach this place after night-fall, prolonging, for its hope's sake, our course through a most break-neck road, and through unseen but clamorous numbers of their wolf-like ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... take advantage of general public ignorance of the true inwardness of affairs. Basing their operations on this lack of knowledge, and upon the tendency of human nature to give credence to widely advertised and high-sounding descriptions and specious promises of vast profits, these men find little difficulty in conjuring money out of the pockets of the unsophisticated and gullible, who rush to become stockholders in concerns that have "airy nothings" for a foundation, and ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... to make but a brief reply to M. Bonnier's long speech," she said, proudly and calmly. "This is my answer: I shall obtain those papers in spite of you, and I shall revenge myself for this hour! To your last high-sounding sentences, I answer by another sentence: there is nothing more dangerous than an irritated and insulted woman, for she will revenge herself and imbrue her hands in the blood of those who have insulted her. Roberjot, Bonnier, and Debry, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... Marie, "she won't see the humor of it. Good God, what a thing to happen! You know well enough what she'll think of me. At five o'clock this afternoon," he said, bitterly, "I left her with a great many fine, high-sounding words about the quest I was to give my days and nights to—for her sake. I went away from her like a—knight going into battle—consecrated. I tell you, there were tears in her eyes when I went. And now—now, at ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... the president of the Directory responded in pompous and high-sounding words. "Minister plenipotentiary of the United States," he said, "by presenting this day to the executive Directory your letter of recall, you offer a very strange spectacle to Europe. Rich in her freedom, surrounded ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... this, when he is talking loudly of the rights of the bedesmen, whom he has taken under his protection; but he quiets the suggestion within his breast with the high-sounding name of justice: "Fiat justitia, ruat coelum." These old men should, by rights, have one hundred pounds a year instead of one shilling and sixpence a day, and the warden should have two hundred or three hundred pounds instead of eight hundred ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... ought to," he said; "there isn't a man in this western country that understands the business better or has got it down any finer than my uncle. He may not be able to talk so glibly or use such high-sounding names for things as you fellows, but he can come pretty near telling whether a mine will pay for the handling, and if it has any value he generally knows how to go ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... Jansoulet's, what made the work still more difficult for me was the number of foreigners—Turks, Egyptians, Persians, Tunisians. I say nothing of the Corsicans, who were very numerous that day, because during my four years at the Territorial I have become accustomed to the pronunciation of those high-sounding, interminable names, always followed by that of the locality: "Paganetti de Porto Vecchio, Bastelica di ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... She had indeed been brought up in palaces and the men whom she had known had been reckoned the salt of the earth. Yet, at that crisis, she was most profoundly conscious that not all the glamour of those high-sounding names, the picturesque interest of those gorgeous uniforms, nor the men themselves, magnificent in their way, were able to make the slightest appeal to her. She remembered some of her own bitter words when an alliance with one of them had been suggested ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sardonic inner voice with which there is no arguing, tells me that I am a hypocrite; that an interest in Carlotta's spiritual development is a nice, comforting, high-sounding phrase which has deluded philosophic guardians of female youth ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... dreamers—whose ideas were those of the majority of intelligent men in France and Italy—Alfieri's high-sounding tirades embodied the noblest of political creeds; and even the soberer judgment of statesmen and men of affairs was captivated by the grandeur of his verse and the heroic audacity of his theme. For the first ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... by a high-sounding prophecy, and it has come to little." The Vicar shook his head in ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... transmigrated prince or warrior, it often happens that prince or warrior has, in the medlied mask of metempsychosis, assumed a female form. Such, in fact, was the case with the stately occupant of the stable-palace at the court of Maha Mongkut; and she was distinguished by the high-sounding appellation of Maa Phya Seri Wongsah Ditsarah Krasaat,—"August and Glorious Mother, Descendant ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... appellation in the newspapers. Our heroine lived in the most gossiping of all ages, herself its greatest gossip; yet her own name, patronymic or baptismal, never was talked about. It was not that she sank that name beneath high-sounding titles; she only elevated the most commonplace of all titles till she monopolized it, and it monopolized her. Anne Marie Louise d'Orleans, Souveraine de Dombes, Princesse Dauphine d'Auvergne, Duchesse de Montpensier, is forgotten, or rather was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... these were not sufficient advantages, they had possession of all the large cities and places of importance for many miles outside the thirty-miles radius around Shanghai. The army Gordon was called upon to command possessed a high-sounding name, justly earned by a former commander, but with his death had passed away all that made the title justifiable. It was a relic of greatness that had departed, and to one like Gordon, who had a keen sense ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... 'He is a cynical old fool; and yet, I assure you, my dear M. Lesec, that I had Leonidas got up expressly for him, thinking to tickle his old republican fancies, for to my mind it is as stupid a play as Germanicus, though I contrive to produce an effect with some of its high-sounding patriotic passages; and I thought the worthy David would have recognised his own picture vivified. But he will not come: he positively refused, you tell me. I might have known it. Age, exile, the memory of the past—all this has cut him up terribly: ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... and Manchegan author, relates in this most grave, high-sounding, minute, delightful, and original history that after the discussion between the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha and his squire Sancho Panza which is set down at the end of chapter twenty-one, Don Quixote raised his eyes and saw coming along the road he was following some dozen men on foot strung ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... then prevalent in some parts of the country where the storm happened. They said, that two giants were seen peeping out of the clouds, and threatening, with terrible countenances, gigantic frowns, and high-sounding words, that they would return next year on the same thirteenth day of July, with a greater scourge than they then felt. Terrified either at the imagined report, or at the fancied sight of the giants (which terror and a weak brain will often produce), many of the unhappy sufferers ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... Consequently, as a high-sounding name cost no more than a simple one, Kalimann chose the most imposing he could find, and, his country's hero in mind, called himself Sandor Hunyadi. This historic title revived, as it were, his latent patriotism, and, digging his gun and cartridge-box from their hiding-place in the garden ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... Sir Stamford Raffles, and often express a wish that the country again belonged to Great Britain. In the centre of the south side of the island is a tract of country nominally ruled by two native princes, with the high-sounding titles of Emperor or Sunan of Surakerta, and the Sultan of Yugyakerta. Madura is also divided between the Sultan of Bankalang and the Panambehan of Sumanap. But these princes, potent as from their titles ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... evils inflicted upon this country by the McClellan infatuation, must be added the fact that many young men, with otherwise sound intellects, have been taken in, stultified, poisoned beyond cure, by high-sounding words, as strategy, all-embracing scientific combinations, &c.—words identified with ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... let us come to the idle and lazy common people, among whom some, who have not even got shoes boast of high-sounding names; calling themselves Cimessores, Statarii, Semicupae, Serapina, or Cicimbricus, or Gluturiorus, Trulla, Lucanicus, Pordaca, or Salsula,[174] with numbers of other similar appellations. These men spend their whole lives in drinking, and gambling, and brothels, and pleasures, and ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... doors, before we could find any abode that would receive us. There were indeed lodgings left vacant by the gentlemen who had attended the King to Scotland, but perforce, so many scores had been left unpaid that there was great reluctance to receive any cavalier family, and the more high-sounding the name, the less trust there was in it. Nothing but paying down a month beforehand sufficed to obtain accommodation for us in a house belonging to a portly widow, and even there Nan and I would have to eat with the family ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... above all skilful in developing moral arguments oratorically under the three terms of the syllogism. Their mania was an excessive simplification of argument; they put high-sounding words in the place of reason, and made too much of a few ideas, always the same, lifeless for lack of colour or shading. They had unearthed these weapons of a so-called classic antiquity, the key ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... States, Canada, Europe, and Asia was divided into factions over this affair, and very nearly went to pieces. But it was ridiculous to arrest him in the first place, for he could not incite a feather to riot. He is one of those flamboyant wind-bags, with a terrific command of high-sounding phrases, eloquent gestures, and fine eyes—the kind sixteen-year-old girls admire—to think I once loved him, or thought I did! He is a big little physical coward and prides himself on being ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... but to Quixada's brain it appeared a mettlesome charger and he was quite sure that his new steed would prove equal to any fatigue or danger that might come its way in the course of his adventures. And remembering that all the horses of famous warriors had possessed high-sounding names he called his horse Rocinante and adopted for himself the title of Don Quixote of La Mancha, under which name he will be known through the rest of the ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Moslem lands; but in Barbary where it is pronounced "Moolee" Europeans have converted it to "Muley" as if it had some connection with the mule. Even in Robinson Crusoe we find "muly" or "Moly Ismael" (chaps. ii.); and we hear the high-sounding name Maul-i-Idrs, the patron saint of the Sunset Land, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... gives utterance to high-sounding thoughts, to sentimental dreams, and melancholy subtleties, it has been assumed that his character is one nourished with the poet's own heart's blood. A thousand times the noble sentiment of duty has been dwelt upon, which it is alleged he is inspired with; and on account of his fine words he ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... heart of the mountains, about four hours' ride from Podgorica, and is the capital (if one can apply such a high-sounding name to a ruined fortress and two or three houses) of the Kuc. The Kuc is a large province inhabited by one of the most warlike tribes of Montenegro, and only recently came under its rule, though their sympathies were never with their Turkish ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... elements have lately changed their arrangements and operations, the largest of those fields of snow which, even in the heat of summer, dispute with the heath and turf the pre-eminence on the upper ranges of Ben Muich Dhui. If we were desirous of using high-sounding expressions, we would call this field a glacier, but it must be at once admitted that it does not possess the qualities that have lately made these frigid regions a matter of ardent scientific inquiry. There are no icebergs ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... mother! how beautiful you look! Please to give me some little spectacles, all my own!" She could not resist this entreaty,—(who could?)—and little "Squire Specs" does not mind the shouts of his companions or the high-sounding nicknames they give him, he so rejoices in what seems to him a new ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... did not realize that the Japanese language abounds in such ceremonious words and high-sounding phrases and, in order to keep the spirit of the ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... himself of any such high-sounding speech he was always rewarded by signs of a deep impression made upon his hearers. He had come to look for such results; but he was totally unprepared for the expression of aghast wonder that his words produced in ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... her timbers or risk of her stability; and this roominess, besides, allowed good accommodation aft for a large number of passengers, although in this instance I was the single solitary "landsman" aboard—that is, if a young shaver of thirteen can be dignified with such a high-sounding title! ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... my herald says much, Yet he only says such As by heralds was said in those days; Though their trumpets they blew, It is none the less true That they blew them in other folks' praise. If my herald verbose is And gives us large doses Of high-sounding rodomontade, You'll find they spoke so In the long, long ago, So blame not—O, blame not the bard. But while we are prating Our herald stands waiting In a perfectly terrible fume, So, my dear, here and now, The poor chap we'll allow His long-winded ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... Swarms of fighting men, Ostrogoths as well as Visigoths, overran the provinces south of the Danube. The great ruler, Theodosius, [5] saved the empire for a time by granting lands to the Germans and by enrolling them in the army under the high-sounding title of "allies." Until his death the Goths remained quiet—but it was only the lull before ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words were, "high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who does not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached liberty and equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier? On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Van Buren's party took his rejection as the friends of DeWitt Clinton had taken his removal as canal commissioner. Indignation meetings were held and addresses voted. In stately words and high-sounding sentences, the Legislature addressed the President, promising to avenge the indignity offered to their most distinguished fellow citizen; to which Jackson replied with equal warmth and skill, assuming entire responsibility for the instructions given the American minister at ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... that this arrangement works well in their own case, it is passed on to the next generation. There are no more Toms and Bills in these aspiring days. The little boys are all Cadwalladers or Carrolls. Their school-fellows, however, work sad havoc with these high-sounding titles and quickly abbreviate them into ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... he had to contend with the enmity of the natives, stirred against him by jealous Arabian merchants; in 1499 he returned to Lisbon, was received with great honour, and had conferred on him an array of high-sounding titles; three years later he was appointed to the command of an expedition to Calicut to avenge the massacre of a small Portuguese settlement founded there a year previous by Cabrat; in connection with this expedition he founded the colonies of Mozambique and Sofala, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... should be established to settle all disputes between states within the empire. These efforts at reform, like many before and after, were largely unfruitful, and, despite occasional protests, practical disunion prevailed in the Germanies of the sixteenth century, albeit under the high-sounding title of ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... or even delay the draft, they yet managed to enlist the sympathies and secure the adhesion of many uneducated and unthinking men by means of secret societies, known as "Knights of the Golden Circle," "The Order of American Knights," "Order of the Star," "Sons of Liberty," and by other equally high-sounding names, which they adopted and discarded in turn, as one after the other was discovered and brought into undesired prominence. The titles and grips and passwords of these secret military organizations, the turgid eloquence of their ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... institution, high-sounding as it was, not only truthfully expressed the objects and purposes of its founders, but was wofully exact in the sense of its being national; for outside the bare walls of these rooms there was hardly a student's easel to be found the ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of Glastonbury and Lady Ethelrida Montfitchet entertained at dinner last night a small party at Glastonbury House, among the guests being—" and here he skipped some high-sounding titles and let his eye feast upon his own name, ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... possible that such lofty personages would talk the same language as ordinary people, he picked out from a dictionary, which he managed somehow to get hold of, French words, German words, English words, and high-sounding Danish words, and strung them all together to make up the conversation of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Surely you have seen my name in the papers. Every morning you may read a full description of what Princess Kalora of Morovenia wore the night before. For a simple and democratic people you are rather fond of high-sounding titles, don't you think?" ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... friend now dropped their high-sounding style of speech, and spoke for some minutes rapidly in an undertone. It was finally arranged that on a given day, at a certain hour, the woman should take the four horses down the shores of the lake to its lower end, as if she were going for firewood, there cross the creek at ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... there can be no doubt. When the point of time whereon we stand and play our separate parts has receded, and those who follow us look back into the grey mist which veils the past; when that mist has hidden the glitter of the decorations and deadened the echoes of the high-sounding titles of to-day; when our political tumults, our town-bred excitements, and many of the very names that are household words to us, are forgotten, or discoverable only in the pages of history; when, perhaps, the Salvation Army itself has fulfilled its ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... Calvin truly says, that to call this external freedom from co-action or natural necessity a freedom of the will, is to decorate a most diminutive thing with a superb title; but the philosopher of Malmsbury, and his ingenious disciple, seem disposed to confer the high-sounding title and empty name on us, in order to reconcile us to the servitude and chains in which they have been pleased ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... guarding against the discovery of friends or employers, and enhancing the interest of an assumed character, by attaching a high-sounding name to its representative, these geniuses assume fictitious names, which are not the least amusing part of the play-bill of a private theatre. Belville, Melville, Treville, Berkeley, Randolph, Byron, St. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the fondness for Italian names shown by vocalists and pianists humorously parodied in such self-evident forms as Jacksonini, Signora Marra Boni, and Billsmethi. Banjo Bones is a self-evident nom d'occasion, and the high-sounding name of Rinaldo di Velasco ill befits the giant Pickleson (Dr. M.), who had a little head and less in it. As it was essential that the Miss Crumptons of Minerva House should have an Italian master for their pupils, ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... upon the world. Such minds—confronting him with a genuine and logical anarchist, such as Max Stirner—would find him far more dangerous. For Rousseau's anarchy is of an emotional, psychological, feminine kind; a kind that carries along upon the surface of its eloquence every sort of high-sounding abstraction; while, all the time, the sinuous waters of its world-sapping current filter through all ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... "truly Ancient Noble Order of the Gormogons," alleged to have been instituted by Chin-Quaw Ky-Po, the first Emperor of China, many thousand years before Adam. Notice of a meeting of the order appeared in the Daily Post, September 3, 1723, in which it was stated, among other high-sounding declarations, that "no Mason will be received as a Member till he has renounced his noble order and been properly degraded." Obviously, from this notice and others of like kind—all hinting at the secrets of the Lodges—the order was aping Masonry by way of parody with intent to destroy ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... of individual property, the free disposal of land, and the free purchase of gin may be the handiest method for the expropriator. In all relations with weaker peoples we move in an atmosphere vitiated by the insincere use of high-sounding words. If men say equality, they mean oppression by forms of justice. If they say tutelage, they appear to mean the kind of tutelage extended to the fattened goose. In such an atmosphere, perhaps, our safest course, so far as principles and deductions avail at all, is to fix our eyes on ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... distributed at the same time as the money. At first they were all dazzled by their new ranks—the only thing Theodore could distribute with a liberal hand; but they soon found out what these were worth, and, ragged, hungry, and cold, they were the first to joke about their high-sounding but empty titles. ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... But there were high-sounding names in the history of Chelsea besides those of More and Turner. Not names of people! Cremorne and Ranelagh! Cremorne to the west and Ranelagh to the east. The legend of these vanished resorts of pleasure and vice stirred his longings and his sense of romantic ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... hundred years ago the wealth of our Spanish fathers was a serious object to the rest of Europe—as represented by the bold buccaneers. There is a curse of futility upon our character: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, chivalry and materialism, high-sounding sentiments and a supine morality, violent efforts for an idea and a sullen acquiescence in every form of corruption. We convulsed a continent for our independence only to become the passive prey of a democratic parody, the helpless victims of scoundrels ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... island: but the powers attached to the office have gradually declined, and at present it is a mere title, unaccompanied by duty or, we believe, emolument.—It is an amusing circumstance in the history of this little spot, that it had once the high-sounding honor of having a King of its own!—for the Duke of Warwick was so crowned by the hands of Henry VI, in the year 1444,—but it would seem that the glory of the name was all which his Vectis Majesty ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... did not approve of marriage and the artistic temperament. He said the artist belonged to his Art, and to posterity through his Art. The essay fairly bristled with many-lettered words and high-sounding phrases, few of which Billy really understood. She did understand enough, however, to feel, guiltily, when the thing was finished, that already she had married Bertram, and by so doing had committed a Crime. She had slain Art, stifled Ambition, destroyed Inspiration, and been a nuisance generally. ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... was a clergyman, who, notwithstanding he could reckon up some twenty or thirty first, second, and third cousins with high-sounding titles, officiated as curate in a district not far from that part of the country where Forster at present was located. He was one of the bees of the Church, who are constantly toiling, while the drones are eating up the honey. He preached three sermons, and read three services, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... not sympathize with those Union generals who were prone to indulge in high-sounding promises, but whose performances did not by any means come up to their predictions as to what they would do if they ever met the enemy face to face. He said one day, just after one of these braggarts had been soundly thrashed ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... Even the blank-verse reads like that of one accustomed to rhyme, and unable to get out of his wonted rut. And the versification runs, throughout, in a stilted monotony, the style being made thick and turgid with high-sounding epithets; while we have a perfect flux of learned impertinence. As for truth, nature, character, poetry, we look for them in vain; though there is much, in the stage noise and parade, that might keep the multitude from ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... The great capital of his extensive empire was filled to overflowing with exulting thousands, to welcome the victorious monarch from a brilliant campaign. Proud banners floated in triumph on the high turrets, while a thousand minstrels filled the air with their high-sounding melody. ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... had planned for war. She was approximately ready for it. Under the shelter of such high-sounding phrases as "We demand our place in the sun," and "The seas must be free," the German people were educated into the belief that the hour of Germany's ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... in barter. Cartier's heirs ask for a monopoly of the fur trade in Canada, but the grant is so furiously opposed by the merchants of the coast towns that it is revoked until the Marquis de la Roche, who had been a page at the French court, again obtains monopoly, with many high-sounding titles as Governor, and the added obligation that he must colonize the new land. What with wars and court intrigue, it is 1598 before the Governor of Canada is ready to sail. Of his two hundred people taken from jails, all but ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... up and the whole field tearing after the quarry. But Racine, on other occasions, has another way of writing. He can be roundabout, artificial, and vague; he can involve a simple statement in a mist of high-sounding words ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... his hand on the butt of his revolver at his hip, meaning to whip out the weapon and fire before the miscreant had finished his high-sounding tomfoolery. His daughter had also grasped hers, intending to obey to the letter the command of her parent, when the Ghoojur chieftain abruptly paused in his speech, staggered for a moment, and then sank to the ground like a bundle of rags, with the breath of life ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... pitiful remnant of a division cut down in a great battle; somber artillerymen, side by side with nondescript foot-soldiers; and, here and there, the gleaming helmet of a heavy-footed dragoon who had difficulty in keeping up with the quicker pace of the soldiers of the line. Legions of irregulars with high-sounding names "Avengers of Defeat," "Citizens of the Tomb," "Brethren in Death"—passed in their turn, looking like banditti. Their leaders, former drapers or grain merchants, or tallow or soap chandlers—warriors ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... sometimes called the Marryat of Germany, was a prolific spinner of yarns, which were interesting, though of a low quality. He employed, however, many of the same motives that Fontane later put to better use. Hesekiel was a voluminous writer of light fiction. From him Fontane learned to discard high-sounding phrases and to cultivate the true-to-life tone of spoken speech. Scherenberg, enthusiastically heralded as the founder of a new epic style, confined himself largely ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... corruption had grown intolerable, and would never cease until power passed into their own immaculate hands. They alone possessed the secret for turning France into a terrestrial Paradise, by applying in all SINCERITY the great and high-sounding principles, liberty, equality and fraternity. This SINCERITY of application, which has been so frequently announced, dallies somewhat in its coming, especially as regards equality, which to so many people ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... On the restoration of the Chaldaean power he is again in high repute. Nebuchadnezzar mentions him with respect; and Nabonidus, the last native monarch, restores his shrine at Ur, and accumulates upon him the most high-sounding titles. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... the gods, with a high-sounding paean, Applauded; but Jove hushed the many-voiced tide; "For now with the lord of the briny AEge'an Athe'na shall strive for the city," he cried. "See where she comes!" and she came, like Apollo, Serene with the beauty ripe wisdom confers; The ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... peremptorily to deny me the right of passing judgment upon Darwin's doctrine, because I am not a naturalist by profession. Here we see an example of the confusion of ideas that results from confusion of language. Darwinism is a high-sounding, but hollow and unreal word, like most of the names that end in ism. What do such words as Puseyism, Jesuitism, Buddhism, and now even Pre-Darwinism and Pre-Lamarckism signify? Everything and nothing, and no one is more on his guard against these ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... of exasperation. "Are men and women nothing more than names? Do the souls of them count for nothing? Is there no joy in life, no happiness, that wealth and pleasure and empty, high-sounding titles are to be its only aims? I had set you high—so high, Aline—a thing scarce earthly. There is joy in your heart, intelligence in your mind; and, as I thought, the vision that pierces husks and shams ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... the judge immediately engaged a schooner, known by the high-sounding name of the Great Alexander. Her skipper's name was Ebenezer Crump. The craft was not unlike an Irish "hooker;" her great beam showed that she was likely to carry her canvas well. That very evening the judge and his family, my father, Tim, and I, accompanied by Rochford and ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... With high-sounding phrases of the equality of man, the lower orders are kept in a state almost approaching to serfdom. The poor Indians toil and spin, and cultivate the ground, being almost the only producers. Yet in the revolutionary outbreaks ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... woollen robe—may read the Liturgy in no dress but linen, it is because linen was the clothing of the Egyptians. Two thousand years before the Bishop of Rome pretended to hold the keys of heaven and earth, there was an Egyptian priest with the high-sounding title of Appointed keeper of the two doors of heaven, in the city of Thebes" ("Egyptian Mythology," S. Sharpe, preface, p. xi.). The white robes of modern priests are remnants of the same old faith; the more gorgeous vestments are the ancient ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... other southern Romance languages a fondness for diminutives, augmentatives, and pejoratives, and is far richer than French in terminations of these classes. Long suffixes abound, and the style becomes, in consequence, frequently high-sounding and exaggerated. ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... in all cases guided by views of the narrowest self-interest, and that those who advance the highest claims to philanthropy, patriotism, generosity and self-sacrifice, are all the time deceiving others, or deceiving themselves, and use a plausible and high-sounding language merely, that serves no other purpose than to veil from observation "that hideous sight, a naked ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... that I should drag the city as with a net and destroy all the captives, I was commanding the fugitives to press on still more in their flight, in order that they might save themselves as quickly as possible. For to trample upon captives is not holy." Such high-sounding and airy words did Chosroes speak to the ambassadors, but nevertheless it did not escape them why he gave time to the Romans in ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... Helena. "Barere," said he to Barry O'Meara, "had the reputation of being a man of talent: but I did not find him so. I employed him to write; but he did not display ability, he used many flowers of rhetoric, but no solid argument; nothing but coglionerie wrapped up in high-sounding language." ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to step down out of your frame, change your velvets and laces for trousers and coat, leave off your great peruke, and wear a derby hat instead of that picturesque, floppy affair, and try your fortune with some Twentieth Century damsel, your high-sounding gallantries, and flattering phrases, would fall singularly flat, and you ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... opposition petitions. For the first time, Legendre, a butcher of Paris, appeared at the bar of the Assembly, where he vociferated in oratorical strain the imprecations of the people against the enemies of the nation and crowned traitors. Legendre decked his trivial ideas in high-sounding language. From this junction of vulgar ideas with the ambitious expressions of the tribune sprung that strange language in which the fragments of thought are mingled with the tinsel of words, and thus the popular eloquence of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... said the Judge, "is to be the organizer of a lodge without flub-dub, gold tassel uniforms, red tape ritual, a regiment of officers with high-sounding titles, a calisthenic drill of idiotic signs and grips, a goat, and members who call each other 'brother.' I would name the presiding officer 'it,' and its first by-law would provide for the expulsion of the member who advocated the wearing ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... 24th, 1554. This commendator was Alexander Gordon (brother of George, fourth Earl of Huntly), who was defeated in his hopes of the Archbishopric of Glasgow on the death of Gavin Dunbar, and imperfectly consoled by the high-sounding title of Archbishop of Athens in partibus fidelium, the poor See of the Isles, with, on November 26th, 1553, the Abbacy of Inchaffray in commendam, which last he held till 1564. In 1558 he was promoted to the See of Galloway. Nine years later ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... when the Mayor of the city made an official address. Mr. Lincoln's reply was so modest, firm, patriotic, and pertinent, that my fears of the day before began to subside, and I saw in this new man a promise of great things to come. It was not boldness or dash, or high-sounding pledges; nor did he while in office, with the mighty armies of a roused nation at his command, ever assume to be more than he promised in that little upper chamber in New York, on his journey to the seat of Government, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... said my father, pouring himself a second glass of port, and turned over my high-sounding phrase with a faint hint of distaste; "Constructive Statesmanship. No. Once a barrister always a barrister. You'll only be a party politician.... Vulgar men.... Vulgar.... If ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... necessitas and debitum. And the Court-preacher [Agricola] at that time juggled with the word must: 'das Muss ist versalzen.' He understood necessarium and debitum as meaning, coerced by fear of punishment, extortum coactione (extorted by coercion), and spoke high-sounding words, such as, how good works came without the Law. Yet the first meaning of necessarium and debitum is not extortum coactione, but the eternal and immutable order of divine wisdom; and the Lord Christ and Paul themselves employ ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... language and style in the "Genius of Christianity" and the "Martyrs." Some of the characteristics of Chateaubriand, however, have produced a seriously injurious effect on French literature, and of these the most contagious and corrupting is his passion for the glitter of words and the pageantry of high-sounding phrases. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... "crashes a sturdy box of stout John Bull;" and Russia, Tunis and Canada roll into close neighborhood with him and each other. A queer and not, let us hope, altogether transitory show of international comity is this. Many a high-sounding, much-heralded and more-debating Peace Congress has been held with less effect than that conducted by these humble porters, carpenters and decorators. This one has solidity. Its elements are palpable. The peoples not only bring their choicest possessions, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... about in a purple robe with a gold wreath about his head and gold clasps on his sandals; he painted his own portrait, and called it the god Hermes, or Mercury; he wrote praises of himself in which he called himself by many high-sounding names, for all of which he was much ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... conversationalist, but on paper he could put his meaning so plainly that there could be no mistaking it. He knew how to express what he wanted to say in the fewest well-chosen words, but would not sacrifice meaning to the construction of high-sounding sentences. But with their opposite characteristics both were great and successful soldiers; both were true, patriotic and upright in all their dealings. Both were pleasant to serve under—Taylor was ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... issued high-sounding phrases about liberty, rights of man, and the right of the people to govern. But they meant rights of man independent of God, and the right of the people to be absolute; and they continued the system of centralism, or government by bureaucracy, without God. The French have learned ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... given their first children, Esdras and Maria, fine, high-sounding, sonorous names; but they had apparently wearied of these solemnities, for the next two children never beard their real names pronounced; always had they been called by the affectionate diminutives ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... in Paris has a high-sounding name, For instance, that spot which has been the theater of so much tragedy, upon which so much human blood has been poured, is called the Place de la Concorde. It much more appropriately might be called the Place of Blood. So ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... my noble hostess received at the moment of departure: 'Everybody has been invited expressly to meet the Wild Irish Girl; so she must bring her Irish harp. M.C.O.' I arrived at New Burlington street without my harp and with a beating heart, and I heard the high-sounding titles of princes and ambassadors and dukes and duchesses announced long before my poor plebeian name puzzled the porter and was bandied from footman to footman. As I ascended the marble stairs with their gilt balustrade, I was agitated ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... in 1872, made an excursion to the westward, starting from Chambers' Pillar. His progress was stopped by a large, dry, salt lake, to which he gave the high-sounding name of Lake Amadens, and which unhappily figures on maps of Australia in a rather misleading way, as a large, permanent, BONA FIDE lake. Not being able with his small party to ascertain the exact limits ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... observation which I have since frequently made—that the French, with all their parade of science and ostentation of institutions, are still a century behind England in real practical knowledge. My Tour in France has at least taught me one lesson—never to be deceived by high-sounding names and pompous designations. I have not visited their schools for nothing. The French talk; the English act. A steady plodding Englishman will build an house, while a Frenchman is laying down rules for it. There is more of this idle pedantry ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... legation: for Appius had named him legatus to Caesar. Servilius ordered his attendance in an edict. His jurors are to be from the tribes Pomptina, Velina, and Maecia. It is a sharp fight: however, it is going fairly well. After that I have to prepare myself for Drusus, then for Scaurus. Very high-sounding title-slips are being prepared for my speeches! Perhaps even the consuls-designate will be added to the list of my clients: and if Scaurus is not one of them, he will find himself in serious difficulties in this trial. Judging from my brother Quintus's letter, I suspect ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Manilla along with them, having forty-six brass guns and as many swivels, but they had parted company with her about three months before, and supposed she had got to Acapulco by this time, as she sailed better than this ship. Our prize had the following high-sounding name Nostra Senoria de la Incarnacion Disenganio, commanded by the Chevalier Jean Pichberty, a Frenchman. She had twenty guns and twenty pattereroes, with 193 men, of whom nine were killed, ten wounded, and several sore scorched ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... of the intelligent manner with which he had transformed his twenty-five pounds into two solid millions had, early in his career, invested some of his capital in one of these mines. Its only merit was its high-sounding name. He tried for some time without success to dispose of it. At last he happened to meet a Frenchman, newly arrived in Johannesburg, who wanted to acquire some mining property there with the view of forming a ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... idea of reforming chivalry. Now the way he found most feasible in accomplishing his object, in arriving at such a difficult and complex reform, was to found a new order of chivalry himself, to which he gave the high-sounding title of "the Chivalry ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... Fame! if I e'er took delight in thy praises, 'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases Than to see the bright eyes of those dear ones discover They thought that I was ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... theories and his convictions regarding the service of humanity. He holds it to be a duty,—a privilege. He believes that it is through entering into this service that he may even co-operate with God in the onward progress. To "help humanity" is a very attractive and high-sounding term. But what is humanity? Is it not, after all, composed of individuals? And here are individuals to be helped; here they are, with their several individual requests, and the injunction of the apostle suggests itself, "As ye have therefore opportunity, ... do good unto ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... ancient habitat of these worthies, and the torture chamber, still extant, is a hall almost as big as the Dresden throne-room. In an inscription hewn in the basalt, the sovereign bishop, Johannes VI, poses as builder and seems proud of the damnable fact. Other princes of the Church let us know in high-sounding Latin script that they created the "Monk hole" and ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... with the tedious irony of ennui, "is one indebted for this unexpected honour on the part of the First Under-Secretary of the British Secret Service? Or whatever your high-sounding official title is..." ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... would try to heal every suffering brute was accustomed to see those whom he loved best grieve on his account. Marriage, he would say, ought not to hinder a man in following his soul's vocation; and he was fond of using this high-sounding name to justify himself in his own and his wife's eyes, in doing things to which he was prompted only by restlessness and unsatisfied energy. Without this he would, no doubt, have done his best for the imperilled sisterhood, but it added ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a spade a spade. One of the most frequent violations of good taste consists in the effort to dress a common subject in high-sounding language. The ass in the fable ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... Canada just now, on lumbering business. He is Neale Crittenden, a Williams man, who in his youth had thoughts of exploring the world but who has turned out head of the 'Crittenden Manufacturing Company,' which is the high-sounding name of a smallish wood-working business on the other side of the field next our house. You can see the buildings and probably hear the saws from your garden. Properly speaking, you know, you don't live in Ashley but in 'Crittenden's' and your house constitutes one quarter of all the residences ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... that on his tombstone Lady Tintagel should have had inscribed an impressive and high-sounding misquotation from ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... have left much of youthful folly to be ashamed of, besmirching the pages of the Bharati; and this shames me not for its literary defects alone but for its atrocious impudence, its extravagant excesses and its high-sounding artificiality. At the same time I am free to recognise that the writings of that period were pervaded with an enthusiasm the value of which cannot be small. It was a period to which, if error was natural, so was the boyish ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... best New England stock, and although she had been named Sarah and her husband's name was Nathaniel, we have seen that the son had been endowed with the rather high-sounding name of Quincy Adams, which his schoolmates had shortened to Quince, and his college friends had still further abbreviated to Quinn. Quincy had two sisters and they had been equally honored with high-sounding ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... Outside of Christ and the Apostles the New Testament does not recognize any authority higher than that vested in the local churches. General ecclesiastical organizations and church dignitaries with high-sounding titles are human inventions that were added later. Where there is no organized church to act, individual Christians have authority to administer the affairs of the church or kingdom (Acts 8: 4; 9: 10-18; ii: 19-21). The only apostolic succession endorsed in ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... seeking for glory and honours, not by the sword, but by learning. This Vanini was a somewhat vain and ridiculous person. Not content with his Christian name Lucilio, he assumed the grandiloquent and high-sounding cognomen of Julius Caesar, wishing to attach to himself some of the glory of the illustrious founder of the Roman empire. As the proud Roman declared Veni, Vidi, Vici, so would he carry on the same victorious career, subduing all rival ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... but made no further protest. To think of Darsie chuckling in secret was not agreeable, but it was as nothing compared with the humiliation of meeting Dan's grave stare, and seeing the curl of his lip at the repetition of her high-sounding phrase. As the quickest way of changing the conversation she suggested an adjournment to the morning-room, where mother sat busy over the eternal mending- basket, to broach the ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... organise a complaisant Senate, a mute legislative body, and a Tribunals which was to have the semblance of being independent, by the aid of some fine speeches and high-sounding phrases. He easily appointed the Senators, but it was different with the Tribunats. He hesitated long before he fixed upon the candidates for that body, which inspired him with an anticipatory fear. However, on arriving at power he dared not oppose himself to the exigencies of the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... very first banquet, (for the splendor of their repasts merited that high-sounding title,) I was requested to bring from the cellar a decanter of their favorite wine. You may be sure I did not mistake the cask, comrades. I drew from the cask which contained the corpse of Lagrange, a quantity of the wine, and holding it to the light, observed ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... story of his past life was gone over with him on a number of occasions, but on each occasion he gave a different, highly fantastic recital of his past adventures, always using high-sounding words and phrases and high-sounding names, many of which he mispronounced. Many of the words used by him were of his own coinage, if one were to judge by the sound of them. He was always very pleasant and agreeable, and enjoyed reciting his past immensely. In all these bizarre and marvelous ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck |
