"Superlatively" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meddle with. It has often been said that his art was an art of evasion. But the reason of the evasion was reverence. He kept himself reverently at a distance. He knew how much he could not do, nor was he ever confident even of the things that he could do; and these things, therefore, he did superlatively well, having to grope for the means in the recesses of his soul. The particular quality of exquisiteness and freshness that gives to all his work, whether on canvas or on stone or on copper, a distinction from and above any contemporary work, and makes it dearer ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... in which leisure is very generally misspent in school—and alas, outside, too!—not in managing one's own affairs, but in managing and discussing the affairs of others. At such times the remarks may be superlatively pleasant, but they are more often superlatively disagreeable. It may be said with truthfulness that they are almost never moderate or just. Everything is all black or all white, with no gray. It makes one think of the little girl with a curl in the ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... flattered by this allusion to the fame of his celebrated ancestor, replied by professing himself only a distant relation of the preux chevalier, and added, 'that in his opinion the wine was superlatively good.' ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that conclusion: and, no doubt (though, with an audacity that wants chastising out of you, you seem to question it), they will be a superlatively happy pair. He must love such a handsome, noble, witty, accomplished lady; and probably she loves him, or, if not his person, at least his purse. I know she considers the Rochester estate eligible to the last degree; though (God ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... on the piano beautifully." In how much better taste it is to say simply, "She plays the piano well," or, more superlatively, "exceedingly well," or "admirably"! If we talk about performing on musical instruments, to be consistent, we should call those who perform, piano-performers, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... How superlatively presumptuous appeared Elliott Roscoe's avowed admiration and preference! How dared that humble impecunious divinity student now sojourning in the "Land of the Veda," lift his eyes toward this priceless treasure, which Erle Palma wanted to ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... trainer to bring together and educate a group that will go through a fine performance in public. However, some exhibitions of trained horses are halting, ragged and poor. I have seen only one that stands out in my records as superlatively fine,—for horses. That was known to the public when I saw it as Bartholomew's "Equine Paradox," and it contained twelve wonderfully trained horses. My record of this fine performance fills seven pages of a good-sized notebook. While it is too long to reproduce ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... considerable amusement and a cordiality in which there was some mixture of the quizzical. He was the taller; and the robust manliness of his appearance, his splendid health and boxer's figure offered a sharp contrast to the superlatively lean tippler. Corliss was humorously aware of his advantage: his greeting seemed really to say, "Hello, my funny bug, here you are again!" though the words of his salutation were entirely courteous; and he followed it with ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... discretion to carry out the conceptions of others. The sires had been persons whom it had been possible for the commonalty to respect. The sons were persons whom it was impossible not to despise. Surely a more superlatively commonplace and contemptible race of human beings has seldom been seen on the earth than four-fifths of the second generation of this bastard aristocracy of Upper Canada. It bore no resemblance to any other aristocracy whereof history has preserved any record. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... portrait of one of our great, great grandmother Percys, I suppose," said Miss Georgiana, "done in her youth—in a fancy piece, you know, according to the taste of those times—she must have been superlatively lovely." ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... Zorzi,' to distinguish it perhaps from the more important example he had sold to one of our dilettante iron-masters. The little unfinished portrait I heard of, from those whose opinion is sought, as a superlatively lovely thing. It was mentioned with a certain awe; to have seen it was a distinction. For years I hoped my time would come, but the opportunity was provokingly delayed. How should you feel if Mrs. Warrener should show you all ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... went, that hurried from him, stumbling in her haste, like a hunted thing. He could see no more of her that night, so with a shrug turned to his quiet amusement. There were women there pleasant enough. It was true that he wanted but one woman superlatively; but it was eminently Grifone's maxim that, failing that which you need, you should take ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... written in his own scrawling handwriting, and well-filled copybooks found in his trunk showed that he had burnt the midnight oil, and was desirous of improving himself intellectually in order that he might conquer the hated white race. Much of the literature found among his chattels was of a superlatively vituperative character, and attacked the white race in unstinted language and asserted the equal rights ...
— Mob Rule in New Orleans • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... called "impersonality"; third, that it is not a matter of inherent race nature, of brain structure, or of mind differentiation, but wholly a matter of social evolution; and, fourth, that if there is such a trait as they describe, it is not due to a deficiently developed but on the contrary to a superlatively developed personality, which might better be called super-personality. To state the position here advocated in a nutshell, it is maintained that the asserted "impersonality" of the Japanese is the result of the communalistic nature of the social order which has ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... one's personal habits! And, after all, the Rev. Amos never came near the borders of a vice. His very faults were middling—he was not very ungrammatical. It was not in his nature to be superlative in anything; unless, indeed, he was superlatively middling, the quintessential extract of mediocrity. If there was any one point on which he showed an inclination to be excessive, it was confidence in his own shrewdness and ability in practical matters, so that he was very full of plans which were ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... it from the housetops!" As she spoke she swept aside her veil and he saw her face, a superlatively pretty face with scarlet smiling lips and dark luminous eyes ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... now in prospect is high, but not superlatively heroic. The hamlet we seek is stowed away upon the mountain-side across the ravine from Eaux Chaudes, 3000 feet above the sea, and will require a climb of perhaps three-quarters of an hour. We cross the ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... be "the Son of God." And what a sense of responsibility he must at the time of writing this letter have experienced to cause him to declare, "I am in the garden of Gethsemane now, and my cup of bitterness is full and overflowing!" Only a superlatively good man, only a man of genuine piety, could use honestly such language as this. These words do not indicate unbelief or agnosticism. If ever a man in public life in these United States was removed the distance of the antipodes ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... Dangle were not superlatively clever boys; but, whether by chance or design, they certainly hit upon an admirable method for bringing the matter to ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... and drying them in the sun before the flesh has time to go bad—a capital plan in a torrid country, where decomposition is rapid and salt none too plentiful; but it has its drawbacks, and is best suited to the taste of those who appreciate the chewing of leather with a superlatively high flavour ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... exemplification of the potent influence which party spirit exercises over those journals. In the latter, one or two of her works have been criticised with overwhelming power, and in a tone and spirit superlatively bitter. In the former, on the contrary, she is spoken of with studied lenity, although the Reviewer is obliged to confess that he is not one of her particular admirers, and seems to be perpetually restraining himself ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... not without a frequent consciousness that there was some charm in this life he led, he stood still after looking at the sky as a useful instrument, and regarded it in an appreciative spirit, as a work of art superlatively beautiful. For a moment he seemed impressed with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with the complete abstraction from all its compass of the sights and sounds of man. Human shapes, interferences, troubles, and joys were all as ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... Lufton; I can understand that. But after such sacrifice on her part—a sacrifice made entirely to you—how can you talk of 'not blaming her'? Is that the language in which you speak of those whose conduct from first to last has been superlatively excellent? If she is open to blame at all, it is—it is—" But here Mrs. Robarts stopped herself. In defending her sister she had worked herself almost into a passion; but such a state of feeling was not customary to her, and now that she ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... and whatever he did. The public knew he had a superlative fortune which he spent magnificently as a prince, and that he had a superlative gift which for all they were aware he had flung wantonly away as soon as the money came into his hands. Moreover he was even more interesting because of his superlatively bad reputation which still followed him. The public would have found it hard to believe that at last Alan Massey was leading the most temperate and arduous of lives and devoting himself exclusively to one woman whom ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... of Chicksey, Veneering, and Stobbles had ever been shut up by three happier people, glad as most people were to shut it up, they must have been superlatively happy indeed. But first Bella mounted upon Rumty's Perch, and said, 'Show me what you do here all day long, dear Pa. Do you write like this?' laying her round cheek upon her plump left arm, and losing sight of her pen in waves of hair, in a highly unbusiness-like manner. Though John Rokesmith ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Jack-in-the-box, from a fat red stick; and even that was a dollar and twenty-five cents when I thought it would be sixpence. On the way to meet Mrs. Ess Kay and Sally at the notion counter, I enquired the price of a good many other superlatively beautiful things, but they were all superlatively high, as well; and by the time a very dashing young man, who said he was a "floor-walker," had steered me to the notions, I felt as if I were the only cheap thing in the whole shop. To be sure, there were some embroidered ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... One superlatively important effect of wide reading is the enlargement of vocabulary which always accompanies it. The average student is gravely impeded by the narrow range of words from which he must choose, and he soon discovers that in long compositions he cannot avoid monotony. In ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Lincoln as a kind, amiable and intelligent gentleman, a good citizen and an honorable opponent." As a speaker he was ready, precise, fluent and his manner before a popular assembly was just as he pleased to make it; being either superlatively ludicrous or very impressive. He employed but little gesticulation but when he desired to make a point produced a shrug of the shoulders, an elevation of the eyebrows, a depression of his mouth and a general malformation of countenance so comically ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... harmonious adjustment, of being used to her clothes. She is never afraid to crumple them, to trail them over floors, to use them, and yet she is always dainty, delicate, never rough or prodigal. She is superlatively lovely to-night. As she sits in the carriage, with just the right poise of languor, just the faint tints of enthusiasm that seem a part of twilight, she is a very dangerous siren, in that, without the definite purpose being at all tangible, she impresses herself upon him with ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... inconsequence in one of the other shops, that of a small antiquarian, a queer little foreign man, who had shown her a number of things, shown her finally something that, struck with it as rather a rarity and thinking it would, compared to some of her ventures, quite superlatively do, she had bought—bought really, when it came to that, for a price. "It appears now it won't do at all," said Maggie, "something has happened since that puts it quite out of the question. I had only my day of satisfaction in it, but I feel, at the same time, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... I must inform them, that in my estimation all country towns, from the elegant Bath, down to the laborious Bristol, are (whatever their respective polite or mercantile inhabitants may say to the contrary), positively, comparatively, and superlatively, manufacturing towns! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various
... into both the smile and the straight-gazing eyes a hypocrisy which superlatively embittered ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... maw of the fish called the "Sea Devil;" eyes like dark emeralds, of which the pupils, when she was angry or when she was scheming, retreated upward towards the temples, emitting a luminous green ray that shot through space like the gleam that escapes from a dark-lantern; complexion superlatively feminine (call it not pale but white, as if she lived on blanched almonds, peach-stones, and arsenic); hands so fine and so bloodless, with fingers so pointedly taper there seemed stings at their tips; manners of one who had ranged all ranks of society from highest to lowest, and duped the ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... supply not only the camp, but his own cook-rooms and those of his friends for the next six months. The men so employed commonly get nothing; but the native officer receives credit for all manner of superlatively good qualities, which are enumerated in a certificate. Many a fine tree, dear to the affections of families and village communities, has been cut down in spite, or redeemed from the axe by a handsome present to this officer or his myrmidons. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... a superlatively great and beautiful artist, yet we must not forget that Velazquez, only eighteen years his senior, and like himself a native of Seville, lived during the greater part of Murillo's lifetime and divided honors with ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... the really difficult part of my negotiation with the savages; for, being themselves superlatively unscrupulous and deceitful, they naturally suspected us of being the same, and would not come alongside, or render up possession of the jollyboat and the three wounded seamen whom she carried, until we on our part had released Oahika. And this I flatly refused to do, feeling that, ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... any thing he may find particularly good; and above all things to load my wretched 'Principal' with the blame of every thing that is wrong. If he comes to any passage which he is disposed to think superlatively bad, let him be assured that it is not mine. If he changes his opinion about it, I may be disposed to reconsider whether I had not some hand in it. This will be the more reasonable in him, as the critics will "feel it their duty" to take the very opposite course. However, ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... London an old man sat in a large paneled room in one of the streets near Soho-square. Every thing in the apartment was brown with age and neglect. Nothing more superlatively dingy could well be imagined. The leathern covers of the chairs were white and glossy at the edges; the carpet was almost of a uniform tint, notwithstanding its original gaudy contrasts; there were absurd old engravings ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... with timidity, he turns towards the blossoming bower from which the voice had come. The branches part, and reveal Kundry, youthful, gorgeously apparelled and superlatively beautiful, lying upon a flowery bank. "Did you mean the name you spoke for me, who have no name?" Parsifal ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... the best pieces of work Miss Howard has yet done, but it is one of the very best short stories of the year. Tony herself is an original creation. There is no maid like Tony in all fiction; and she is, moreover, the only good thing, which is neither superlatively beautiful nor emphatically a bore, or both, that has come out of the Canton of Lucerne since the days of William Tell. Even the insatiate archer, when he is not mythical, is a trifle wearing to the average mind, but Tony is never tiresome ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... James's son,' too. I always loved to play, but was hardly ever chosen because I was so fat and ungainly. I remember once, though, when I went to a children's party in a pale blue silk dress that made me look like a young mountain. I thought myself superlatively beautiful, however, and the rest of the little girls were so impressed that I was a great social triumph, and made up for the times when I had been passed by," ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... primping, mincing, affected conglomeration of masculine inanity and asininity beget world-compellers. How can women who care much what is on the outside and little what is on the inside of their heads, and whom a box of lily-white, a French novel, a poodle-dog and another dude will make superlatively happy, suckle aught ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... countenance, floods of tears, an insult which his conscience obliges him to swallow, he is brought round to knowledge which no syllogism would have conveyed to him. His own experience is so vivid, he is so superlatively conscious of himself, that if, day after day, he is allowed to hector and hear nothing but approving echoes, he will lose his hold on the soberness of things and take himself in earnest for a god. Talk might be to such an one the very way of moral ruin; the school where he might learn ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... idea; such an one, could he be found, would seem the very man to dart his iron and lift his lance against the most appalling of all brutes. Or, if for any reason thought to be corporeally incapacitated for that, yet such an one would seem superlatively competent to cheer and howl on his underlings to the attack. But be all this as it may, certain it is, that with the mad secret of his unabated rage bolted up and keyed in him, Ahab had purposely sailed upon the present ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... shrewd-eyed old gentleman; at the next—at the mention of real sin—his brows contract, his eyes flash, and his tongue hisses out such hatred and contempt and detestation as no sybarite could find on the tip of his tongue for anything superlatively ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... so popular as Singapore ever entered these gates. Every afternoon three boys who have been perfect in deportment are allowed to brush and comb him, while three other good boys may serve him with food and drink. But every Saturday morning the climax of the week is reached, when three superlatively good boys give him a nice lathery bath with hot water and flea soap. The privilege of serving as Singapore's valet is going to be the only incentive I shall need ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... with the infantry, who themselves retired a very short distance. It was no question of a sudden, urgent retreat to avoid capture, for the Turks had had far too severe a gruelling to attempt pursuit. It was the reluctant withdrawal of stubborn, angry, and above all, superlatively brave men from positions too strong and well-organised to be taken by the means that had ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... is placed within us as a friend, warning us of danger and pressaging good. If we would listen to her dictates, we must be happy, for she never argues wrong. And superlatively happy are they who can lay calmly down on the bed of death cheered by her approving smiles, for a "death bed is a detector of the heart;" here tired dissimulation drops the mark that through life's grimace has kept ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... interpret a fact are there to misinterpret it; that phrases which seem intended to forestall prejudice are there to create it; that phrases which seem antidotes are poisons in disguise. The naked facts arrayed in the book establish Shelley's guilt in that one episode which disfigures his otherwise superlatively lofty and beautiful life; but the historian's careful and methodical misinterpretation of them transfers the responsibility to the wife's shoulders as he persuades himself. The few meagre facts of Harriet Shelley's life, as furnished by the book, acquit her of offense; but by calling in the forbidden ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... grand sympathy in 'words,' superlatively impotent even to move for the restitution of ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... those two parts in London the sum of critical opinion seemed to be that her performance of Perdita was better than her performance of Hermione; but beneath that judgment there was, apparently, the impression that Hermione is a character fraught with superlatively great passions, powers, and qualities, such as are only to be apprehended by gigantic sagacity and conveyed by herculean talents and skill. Those vast attributes were not specified, but there was a mysterious intimation ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... half of the sixteenth century, something near its former perfection. Again it can go no further; and since then it has changed but has not progressed. In Phidias, by which name I would signify the sculptor of the pediments of the Parthenon, we have the coincidence of a superlatively great artist with the moment of technical and scientific perfection in the art, and a similar coincidence crowns the work of Michelangelo with a peculiar glory. But, apart from the work of these two men, a the essential value of a work of sculpture ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... caused by nervousness and excitement. He is conscious, self-conscious in the artistic sense, unless he has been trained to appear otherwise. For, in the final analysis, that lack of self-consciousness, that ease and spontaneity which we associate with the highest art, is, save in the case of a few superlatively gifted individuals, the result of method and training. Therefore, the direction to breathe naturally is begging the question. It states a result, without explaining how it is to be acquired. Once acquired, method is merged into habit and habit into ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... not believe it, or rather she believed that he was inordinately, tenderly, superlatively human, and that he had gone many steps farther in that direction than the rest of his generation. He was dowered with instincts and perceptions belonging to some kinder, nobler ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... room, near the balcony, stood a divan covered with a bearskin rug. Upon this divan I spent many of my hours in Paris, occupied in the smoking of my friend's excellent cigars, and the sampling of his superlatively good whisky. At the same time I could lie staring up at the tops of the trees in the Luxembourg Gardens, while Lucien worked at his desk. For, unlike most writers, he could work best when he ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... Skelton explains of his humanity. At all events 1 consider 'the first-born of every creature' as a false version of the words, which (as the argument and following verse prove) should be rendered 'begotten before', (or rather 'superlatively before'), 'all that was created or made; for by him' ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... physical grace. With her dark hair and dark eyes, her Greek features and ivory skin faintly tinted with a tea-rose hue, she looked very lovely and very sad. Why she should be, was a puzzle to many women, as being the wife of a superlatively rich man, she had all the joys that money could bring her. Still it was hinted on good authority—but no one ever heard the name of the authority—that Garvington being poor had forced her into marrying Sir Hubert, for whom she did ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... and (when they were purified) bidding them stand up and say, 'The ill is done, the good begun,' priding yourself upon raising the shout of joy more loudly than any one had ever done before—and I can believe it, for, when his voice is so loud, you dare not imagine that his shout is anything but superlatively fine. {260} But by day you used to lead those noble companies through the streets, men crowned with fennel and white poplar,[n] throttling the puff-adders and waving them over your head, crying out 'Euoe, Saboe,'[n] ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... at best be very good, he purposely put the audience on a false scent, made it expect an absolutely commonplace ending (the marriage of Flora to Charles Haslam), and then substituted one which, if not very brilliant, was at least ingenious and unforeseen. Thus, by defeating the expectation of a superlatively bad act, he made a positively insignificant act seem comparatively good. Such feats of craftsmanship are entertaining, but too dangerous to be commended ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... making the war-balance vibrate at a great rate, now this scale now that kicking the beam. For he holds the door of the Alps, Bully Bourbon on one side of it, Bully Hapsburg on the other; and inquires sharply, "You, what will you give me? And you?" To Maria Theresa's affairs he has been superlatively useful, for these Two Years past; and truly she is not too punctual in the returns covenanted for. It appears to Charles Emanuel that the Queen of Hungary, elated in her high thought, under-rates his services, of late; that she practically ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... experience of holding that thrilled and thrilling body close to his, seemed to him to be a marvellous piece of sheer luck and overwhelming good fortune. She was so sensuous and yet so serious. Her gaze stimulated not only love but conscience. In him ambition was superlatively vigorous. Nevertheless he felt then as though he had never really known ambition till that moment. He thought of the new century and of a new life. He perceived the childishness and folly of his favourite idea that an artist ought to pass ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... the rocks, too, and on some beaches a strange kind of lobsterish delicacy called in Tahiti varo, a kind of mantis-shrimp that looks like a superlatively villainous centipede. They grow from six to twelve inches long and a couple of inches wide, with legs or feelers all along their sides, like the teeth of a pocket-comb. Their shells are translucent yellow with black markings; the female wears a red stripe down her back and carries ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... latter half of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries, and which exhibits a kind of simple baroque style, with Corinthian pillars in two storeys. But Arras Cathedral is the most majestic and striking ruin at the Front. It is superlatively well placed on an eminence by itself, and its dimensions are tremendous. It towers over the city far more imposingly than Chartres Cathedral towers over Chartres. The pale simplicity of its enormous lines and surfaces renders it better suited for the martyrdom of bombardment than ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... little instruments, resembling sheep-bells, which kept up a continual tinkling to the tune of Betty Martin. But still worse. Suspended by blue ribbons to the end of this fantastic machine, there hung, by way of car, an enormous drab beaver hat, with a brim superlatively broad, and a hemispherical crown with a black band and a silver buckle. It is, however, somewhat remarkable that many citizens of Rotterdam swore to having seen the same hat repeatedly before; and indeed the whole assembly seemed to regard it with eyes of familiarity; while the vrow ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... collision never took place. And those who met in this affectionate manner were, as I was told, for the most part perfect strangers to each other, which to me was incomprehensible! Several ladies asked me to dance with them, but I excused myself by saying that their dancing was so superlatively beautiful that it was sufficient to admire it, and that I was afraid to try—'besides,' said I, 'it is contrary to our customs in Hindustan.' To which they replied that India was far off, and no one could see me. 'But,' said I 'there are people who put every thing in the newspapers, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... many of the most poisonous so closely resemble the edible species that they can with difficulty be distinguished. There is one kind of fungus that I have met with in the forests which, from its offensive odor and disgusting appearance, should be something superlatively bad. It grows about four inches high; the top is round, with a fleshy and inflamed appearance; the stalk is out of all proportion in its thickness, being about two inches in diameter and of a livid white color; this, when broken, is full of a transparent gelatinous fluid, which smells ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... must be always more than doubtful to a young man with a small salary and no capital except capacity and hope. But Fleeming was not the lad to lose any good thing for the lack of trial; and at length, in the autumn of 1857, this boyish-sized, boyish-mannered, and superlatively ill-dressed young engineer, entered the house of the Austins, with such sinkings as we may fancy, and asked leave to pay his addresses to the daughter. Mrs. Austin already loved him like a son, she was but too glad to give him her consent; ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Superlatively dainty as to his fopperies of orthodoxy, Asirvadam is continually dying of Pariah roses in aromatic pains of caste. If in his goings and comings one of the "lilies of Nilufar" should chance to stumble upon a bit of bone or rag, a fragment of a dish, or a leaf from which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... out of fashion. Will you also remember that modern styles, modes, fashions, inventions,—call them what you will,—are the mere average product of human thought and labor during a few years; the old that abides is drawn from the superlatively good of former countless generations, culled over and over again till that alone remains which has stood the test of your critics and reformers all along down from Adam, or up from the last monkey who wept to find his first-born without a tail and ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... were moderate church-goers. But they have the instinct of civility and a talent for conversation; they know how to play the host and the entertainer. By "he," just now, I meant she quite as much; it is rare that, in speaking superlatively of the French, in any connection, one does not think of the women even more than of the men. They constantly strike the foreigner as a stronger expression of the qualities of the race. On the occasion I speak of the first room in the very humble cabins I successively visited—in some cases, evidently, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... these operations, in the strictest sense scientific, we will first look to the existing so-called "science" of Political Economy; we will ask it to define for us the comparatively and superlatively rich, and the comparatively and superlatively poor; and on its own terms—if any terms it can pronounce—examine, in our prosperous England, how many rich and how many poor people there are; and whether the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... fight; or one may set all that matter aside for a space, and having regard chiefly to the continually more potent appliances physical science offers the soldier, we may try to develop a general impression of theoretically thorough war, go from that to the nature of the State most likely to be superlatively efficient in such warfare, and so arrive at the conditions of survival under which these present governments of confusion will struggle one against the other. The latter course will be taken here. We will deal first of all with war conducted for its own sake, with a model ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... with the Mexican birds. Their plumage is superlatively splendid. They beat ours in show, but to my mind do not equal them in harmony. I have written this letter with my sword fastened to my side, my pistols within reach, not knowing but that the next moment I may be called ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... to in worship, a girl who, as he had seen her last, was a fairylike creature born of music and soft laughter and starlight, a maid indescribably sweet. In the harshness of the mood which gripped him, she seemed to him superlatively adorable; the softness of her eyes at the moment before he had kissed her haunted him. As he strode on seeking Quinnion, who had spoken evil of her, he carried her ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... the growth of the germ that starts from the buried acorn, and moves on to its full development in the great oak. Science records with unerring certainty the progress of the earth, and of animal life, from the lowest existences in the mollusca and polypi, up to the superlatively complicated, and delicate structure of man, tracing it step by step, until it is finished in the noblest work of God, a human body coupled with an ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... sufferance of her lover, who, from night to night, frequently continues his exercises for many hours, heaving the deepest sighs, and casting the most piteous looks towards the window; at which if his goddess at last deigns to appear, and drops him a curtsey, he is superlatively paid for all his watching; but if she blesses him with a smile, he is ready to ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... greatest pleasure in making the arrangements for setting up his daughter's establishment. Her happiness—or, what to him was the same thing, her greatness—meant much to him. He loved her passionately, superlatively, as the Ferrarese ambassador wrote his master.[26] On the ambassador's suggestion the Duke of Ferrara sent as a wedding gift a pair of large silver hand basins with the accompanying vessels, all of the finest workmanship. Two residences were proposed for ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... Lit. "Not even the most blessed of mankind can abstain from." See Plat. "Rep." 344 B, "The superlatively best and well-to-do." ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... education, this lesson was to be crucial; it would decide the law of life. All these gentlemen were superlatively honorable; if one could not believe them, Truth in politics might be ignored as a delusion. Therefore the student felt compelled to reach some sort of idea that should serve to bring the case within a general law. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... story has been great, it is difficult rather than obvious to trace particular instances. It is felt in the advance of the general level of short story art. There is nothing personal about structure—there is everything personal about style. Poe's style is both too much his own and too superlatively good to be successfully imitated—whom have we had who, even if he were a master of structural effects, could be a second Poe? Looking at the matter in another way, Poe's style is not his own at all. There is nothing "personal" about it in the petty sense of ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... the Great." Once we have read it we feel as though the great commoner had stood before us for a while under a searching light; his figure is imprinted on the very nerves, and no man who has read carefully can ever shake off an impression that seems burnt into the fibre of the mind. This superlatively fine historic portrait was painted by Carlyle solely from Walpole's material—for we cannot reckon chance newspaper scraps as counting for much—and thus the gossip of Strawberry Hill conferred immortality on himself and on our own Titanic ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... I yet might be, and commanded imperatively a return to a healthier and more active life. But I had allowed myself to be enervated by this baneful languor, this insidious far niente, and my moral torpor was such that the mere thought of reappearing before a polished audience struck me as superlatively absurd. "Where was the object?" I would ask myself. Moreover, it was too late; and I went on dreaming with open eyes, careering on horseback through the savannas, listening at break of day to the prattle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... Mr. Pathurst, that I would prefer is that you will not mention that little matter to anybody. I suppose" (he smiled, and his voice was superlatively suave) "it is vanity on my part—you understand, I ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... share of fighting during an adventurous lifetime, but his opponents had always been men. Somehow Phillips did not seem to him like a man. A creature so very ornamental, with so much flourish, so superlatively elegant, so overwhelmingly correct, so altogether and all the time the teacher of singing school or dancing school—how could one seriously set about fighting such a bundle of fluff? A feather-duster seemed a more fitting ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... photoplays or slap-stick, as it is generally called—exclude the work of the outside writer. Such firms as do accept outside scripts of this kind are prepared to "go the limit" in the matter of expense in order to make their pictures superlatively funny and unusual in the matter of staging. The Pathe comedy, "Cleopatsy," featuring the famous clown Toto, was a striking example of how a slap-stick comedy today is unhesitatingly given as elaborate and sumptuous ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... sea was fine. No fear or anxious moments were ours. We sped swiftly over the peaceful water that glittered with a dazzling metallic luster. In the level rays of the morning sun we beheld a gradation of rare tints 'infinitely harmonious and yet superlatively rich.' A short distance away from us the ocean was deep blue; nearer it was light green, while far out toward the horizon it attained that iridescence which is indescribable. Everyone on board was supremely happy. All ten mine layers with the flagship ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... essentially the same task and appears to have conditioned largely their prosperity upon the way in which they do it. That task is to develop into full-orbed free men a vast number of citizens who have been dwarfed and twisted by slavery. How to do this most thoroughly and speedily is the superlatively important question for each nation to decide. In Russia, there is no more acute observer than Count Tolstoi: and Count Tolstoi has said to his countrymen, "What we in Russia need supremely is three things; they are schools and schools ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... am, at present, in superlatively ecclesiastical health, Miss Norah. I hope all your family ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... much-desired voyage to New Guinea had realized none of my expectations. Instead of being far better than the Aru Islands, it was in almost everything much worse. Instead of producing several of the rarer Paradise birds, I had not even seen one of them, and had not obtained any one superlatively fine bird or insect. I cannot deny, however, that Dorey was very rich in ants. One small black kind was excessively abundant. Almost every shrub and tree was more or less infested with it, and its large ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... part of your dress. Take care to have your stockings well gartered up, and your shoes well buckled; for nothing gives a more slovenly air to a man than ill-dressed legs. In your person you must be accurately clean; and your teeth, hands, and nails, should be superlatively so; a dirty mouth has real ill consequences to the owner, for it infallibly causes the decay, as well as the intolerable pain of the teeth, and it is very offensive to his acquaintance, for it will most inevitably stink. I insist, therefore, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... declaring, with many "whews" and "ughs," that it was by all odds the coldest night yet. Undeniably we all felt proud of it, too. A spirited man rather welcomes ten or fifteen degrees extra, if so be they make the temperature superlatively low; while he would very likely grumble at a much less positive chilliness coupled with the disheartening feeling that he was enduring nothing extraordinary. The general exaltation of spirit and suspension of the conventionalities for the time ...
— The Cold Snap - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... relentless law of compensation, which rules that unusual growth in one direction must always be counterbalanced by deficient growth in another direction, is the saving principle of human society. That a man should be superlatively good in one single line of effort is the demand of modern life. It is a platitude to say that this is the age of the specialist. But specialism, while it always means a gain to society, also always means a loss ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... Prohack was not now a man,—he was a grievance; he was the most deadly kind of grievance, the irrational kind. A superlatively fine cigar did a little—not much—to solace him. He smoked it with scientific slowness, and watched the restaurant empty itself.... He was the last survivor in the restaurant; and fifteen waiters and two hundred and fifty electric lamps were keeping ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... arrived, he thought it time to remove from Mellanauir, and took the Prince about two miles further into Benalder, to a little sheil called Uiskchibra, where the hut or bothie was superlatively bad and smoky; yet His Royal Highness put up with everything. Here he remained for two or three nights; and then removed to a very romantic habitation, made for him by Clunie, two miles further into Benalder, called the Cage; which was a great curiosity, ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... his prodigious failure, he was superlatively great in all that pertains to government, the quickening of human energies, and the art of war. His greatness lies, not only in the abiding importance of his best undertakings, but still more in the Titanic force that he threw into ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... as fine as tinsel and tawdry can make it, and the ankle is bandaged round with party-coloured clothes, ornamented with fringe and tassels; and such a leg and foot, thus dressed out, are considered in China as superlatively beautiful. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... amethysts among these, and had it indeed been "bright jewels of the mine" which the voyagers sought they might have been pardoned for thinking they had found them there. And all ashore under this alluring blue haze lay a country that was superlatively lovely even under frozen skies and on the shortest day of the year. Southerly toward it the shallop sailed in 1620, under flocks of whirling white gulls, through flocks of black and white Labrador ducks that then wintered ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... corn, and some roots upon the leaves, put it before me. My appetite was tremendous, seeing that I had tasted nothing since the morning. I therefore immediately fell to on the roasted monkey, which I found superlatively delicious: the flesh of the parrot was far from being so ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... of them found men who, preferring fortune to honour, disgraced themselves by such alliances. Some of these ladies, if handsome, were not unfrequently taken by a man of fortune, and kept from mere ostentation, just as he would sport a superlatively elegant carriage, or ride a very capital horse; others were maintained from caprice, which, like Achilles's spear, carried with it its own antidote; and then, of course, they passed into the hands of different keepers. ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... herself on the threshold of the door, her forehead against the ground, and remains in this attitude of superlatively polite salute as long as I am in sight, while I go down the pathway by which I am to ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... and fashion, the daughter of an earl, the sister of a duchess. How she must have been laughing at him! how she had taken him in! He, whose very business it was to observe, and who prided himself on his powers of observation, to be so thoroughly deceived! Was he densely stupid, or was she superlatively clever? He leaned to the last solution. No actual daughter of a hind could have played the part better. Her language, both in the pronunciation and accent, was perfect: she had even caught the trick of phrase and idea natural to the peasantry; and she had neither underdone ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... had brought for Ina Klosking were now applied to revive this malefactor; and both ladies actually ministered to him with compassionate faces. He was a villain; but he was superlatively handsome, and a feather might turn the scale of ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... coat and I gave him also a cocked hat and feather which had once belonged to Governor Darling. His portrait thus arrayed soon appeared in the print shops; an ingenious artist (Mr. Fernyhough) having drawn his likeness very accurately. Piper was just the sort of man to enjoy superlatively all his newly acquired consequence. He carried his head high for (as he now found) everybody knew him and not a few gave him money. With these donations he purchased silk handkerchiefs and wore them in his breast, gowns for his gins, for he at last had TWO, and ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... said I, were superlatively wise in devising thus a means for you to compass whatever all men naturally covet so much, and so few, or, to speak more properly, none can enjoy together—I mean, a paradise in this life, and another in the next. Sure you were born wrapt in your mother's smickets! ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais |
