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Preeminence   /priˈɛmənəns/   Listen
Preeminence

noun
1.
High status importance owing to marked superiority.  Synonyms: distinction, eminence, note.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Preeminence" Quotes from Famous Books



... one thousand five hundred pesos. The tariff of fees is appraised by the Audiencia, of which I also send a copy to that said royal Council. I petition your Majesty that it be examined in that royal Council, so that the military department may have a defense on its part, and so that its rights of preeminence may ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various

... lastly the Balhara[10], or king of the Moharmi al Adon, or people who have their ears bored. The Balhara is the most illustrious sovereign in all the Indies, and though all the other kings in India are masters and independent each in their own dominions, they thus so far acknowledge his preeminence, that when he sends ambassadors to the other princes, they are received with extraordinary honours. This king makes magnificent presents after the manner of the Arabs, and has vast numbers of horses and elephants, and great ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... crude materials exhibited, coal, the greatest mineral product of the State, was given preeminence. A piece of anthracite coal weighing 11 tons, said to be the largest unbroken piece of this coal ever taken from the ground, was surrounded by pyramidal glass cases in which were displayed anthracite coals of various kinds, quantities, and ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... was in his day and generation one of the sovereign emancipators, because he awoke one dormant set of energies, just as Rousseau presently came to awake another set. Each was a power, not merely by virtue of some singular preeminence of understanding or mysterious unshared insight of his own, but for a far deeper reason. No partial and one-sided direction can permanently satisfy the manifold aspirations and faculties of the human mind in the great average of common men, and it is the ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... that, as I believe in his outward man as well as in his inward part, he was the exactest, purest, completest, and beautifulest creature that ever God made, till his visage was so marred by his persecutions; for in all things he had, and shall have the preeminence. ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... Nevertheless it has as much right as any other to be called Divine, for God's nature, in so far as we share therein, and God's laws, dictate it to us; nor does it suffer from that to which we give the preeminence, except in so far as the latter transcends its limits and cannot be accounted for by natural laws taken in themselves. (7) In respect to the certainty it involves, and the source from which it is derived, i.e. God, ordinary, knowledge is no whit inferior to prophetic, ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza

... them: [Sidenote: Winchelsey first builded 1277] but I suspect rather, that his sonne king Edward the first, (by whose encouragement and aide, olde Winchelsey was afterward abandoned, and the newe towne builded) was the first that apparelled them with that preeminence. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt

... themselves for the more shining passages with which this tragedy so much abounds: but Barry knew the value of these introductory traits of character, and in his first speech, "'Tis better as it is," bespoke such a preeminence of judgment, such a dignified and manly forbearance of temper, as roused the attention of his audience, and led them to expect the fullest gratification ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... must be given the preeminence among all human words. But even here there are gradations in rank. Thus the adverb, "Why?" may be nothing but a question of curiosity, and hence its idea may be suggested to an inquisitive monkey. But it is not so with the question, "How?" "Why?" may be answered by an affirmation, but ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... name of Sin is written show him to have been regarded as the god of wisdom, but while wisdom and light may be connected, it is Nannar's character as the "illuminator" that becomes the chief trait of the god. No doubt the preeminence of Ea in this respect, who is the personification of wisdom, par excellence, made it superfluous to have another deity possessing the same trait. It is, accordingly, as the god of light, that Sin continues to be ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... been as an open book, he would surely have become a figure of interest. His mental attitude was that of a professional beau of acknowledged preeminence; he was comparing the self at home in the mummy case with the remnants of defunct Pharaohs here exposed under glass, and he was sniffing, in spirit, at their lack of kingly dignity and their inferior state of preservation. Their wooden cases were often marred, faded, and broken. Their shrouding ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... and wisdom to his posterity. He would try to gain their secrets from all the temples and this would increase his power immensely; he would secure to Egypt preeminence ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... exist apart And independent of the first, a bar Of equal force restrains from hating that. "Grant the distinction just; and it remains The' evil must be another's, which is lov'd. Three ways such love is gender'd in your clay. There is who hopes (his neighbour's worth deprest,) Preeminence himself, and coverts hence For his own greatness that another fall. There is who so much fears the loss of power, Fame, favour, glory (should his fellow mount Above him), and so sickens at the thought, He loves their opposite: and there is he, Whom wrong or insult seems to gall ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... we read of in Spain, or in other strictly Roman Catholic countries. There are many causes for this peculiar influence. Where equality of rank is affectedly acknowledged by the rich, and clamourously claimed by the poor, distinction and preeminence are allowed to the clergy only. This gives them high importance in the eyes of the ladies. I think, also, that it is from the clergy only that the women of America receive that sort of attention which is so dearly valued by every female heart throughout ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... colour that it cannot contend with the tower, which therefore holds the eye, and becomes the key of the picture. We shall see presently how the very objects which seem at first to contend with it for the mastery are made, occultly to increase its preeminence. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... elements are grouped around the accented ones. In an aesthetic whole there are certain qualities and positions which, because of their claim upon the attention, tend to make dominant any elements which possess them. In space-forms the center and the edges are naturally places of preeminence. The eye falls first upon the center and then is drawn away to the boundaries. In old pictures, the Madonna or Christ is placed in the center and the angels near the perimeter; in fancy work it is the center and the border which women embroider. In time, ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... women who presided over famous salons, Mme. Geoffrin had perhaps the least claim to intellectual preeminence. The secret of her power must have lain in some intangible quality that has failed to be perpetuated in any of her sayings or doings. A few commonplace and ill-spelled letters, a few wise or witty ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... sincerity than shall be practised here might own that the table of the good steamboat 'Avonek' left something to be desired, if tested by more sophisticated cuisines, but in the article of corn-bread it was of an inapproachable preeminence. This bread was made of the white corn which North knows not, nor the hapless East; and the buckwheat cakes at breakfast were without blame, and there was a simple variety in the abundance which ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... The surrender of Italian opera was complete, and Verdi took his right place at the head of the vigorous new school which has arisen in Italy, and which promises to regain for the "Land of Song" some of her ancient preeminence in music. A comic opera by Verdi, "Falstaff," was announced in 1892: it has well ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... small-scale ownership was reflected in the distribution of wealth. The "swollen fortunes" of that period rested upon the same foundation that had given stability for centuries to the aristocracies of Europe. Social preeminence in large cities rested almost entirely upon the ownership of land. The Astors, the Goelets, the Rhinelanders, the Beekmans, the Brevoorts, and practically all the mighty families that ruled the old Knickerbocker ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick

... allegiance to his rightful Lord; Doing dishonour to his high estate; Turning the truth and wisdom which were his For ages of supreme felicity, To thirst for power, and hatred of his God, Who raised him to such vast preeminence! ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster

... he possessed to an astonishing fulness the talent so little known in the ancient world, and which has exalted our Shakspeare in lofty preeminence above the rest of mankind, of portraying nature in every condition of human life. We have heard of, and frequently read many terse and witty compliments to the genius of Shakspeare, on account of his intimacy with nature; but we know of none superior to that paid to Menander by the great Byzantian ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... existence of degrees among the subjects of His heavenly kingdom, but articulately affirm that such variety is provided for by the preparation of the Father. Probably the two brothers thought that they were only asking for preeminence in an earthly kingdom, and had no idea that their prayer pointed beyond the grave; but that confusion of thought could not be cured in their then stage of growth, and our Lord therefore leaves it untouched. But the other error, if it were an error, was of a different kind, and might, for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... recollection that we began the day along conventional lines. The six of us—for Sterrett was along—made progress among the cantinas, divesting the bars as we went of all strong drink bearing American labels. We kept informing the atmosphere as to the glory and preeminence of the United States and its ability to subdue, outjump, and eradicate the other nations of the earth. And, as the findings of American labels grew more plentiful, we became more contaminated with patriotism. Maximilian Jones ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... history, has it been so necessary to urge upon the students of the law the example of their worthiest predecessors. The tendency of the age is to lower, not to elevate, the standard set up by our ancestors for the attainment of preeminence. That our giants may not be stunted in their growth—that the legal stock may not hopelessly degenerate—Chief Justice Campbell does well to impress upon his brethren the patient and laborious course—the high and admirable qualities—by which Chief ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... were the concerns and interests blended, of two princesses whose celebrated rivalry was destined to endure until the life of one of them had become its sacrifice! So remarkably, too, in this first transaction was contrasted the high preeminence from which the Scottish princess was destined to hurl herself by her own misconduct, with the abasement and comparative insignificance out of which her genius and her good fortune were to be employed in elevating the future ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... aware of the value of this preeminence, and it lay in his wisdom and pleasure to fan the flame of his own repute. In this it amused him to seek the picturesque—the unexpected. With an imagination fed by primeval humor and checked by no outward circumstances of law, he achieved a ready facility. Once, for example, while trundling through ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... virtue as he was abundant in virtuosity. He was notoriously immoral, and yet the greatest organist of his time, as his father had been before him; and it was this father, Johann Sebastian Bach, who by his life and preeminence in music, offers the biggest obstacle to any theory about the immoral influences of the art. For surely, if he, who is generally called the greatest of musicians, led a life of hardly equalled domesticity, it will not be easy to claim that music has an unsettling effect upon society. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... kind. The same intelligence invoked, the same energies exercised, and in almost any proper field he would before this have been a rich man and an honored one. By his twisted code of ethics and unmorals, though, the dubious preeminence he enjoyed was ample reward. He stood forth from the ruck and run, a creator and a leader who could afford to pass by the lesser, more precarious games, with their prospect of uncertain takings, for the really big and important things. He was ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... hundred and fifty-eight vessels of all sizes to scan the horizon for British topsails. They accounted for four hundred prizes, or half the whole number to the credit of American arms afloat. This preeminence was due partly to freedom from a close blockade and partly to a seafaring population which was born and bred to its trade and knew no other. Besides the crews of Salem merchantmen, privateering enlisted the idle fishermen ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine

... about to culminate in a serene and acknowledged preeminence. The people had recognized his greatness, and the reaction at last conquered all classes. Publishers vied with each other in producing his works, and their performance was greeted with great audiences and enthusiastic applause. His last ten years were a peaceful ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... became impressed with his true manliness and worth. Like everybody else on the border, he smoked freely, and at one time drank considerably; but he had quit drinking years before, and said he owed his excellent health and preeminence, if he had any, to his habits of almost total abstinence. In conversation he was slow and hesitating at first, approaching almost to bashfulness, often seemingly at a loss for words; but, as he warmed up, this ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis

... wealth and prosperity of the republic of Venice were largely due to its preeminence in the Oriental trade, carried on by the overland route through Asia, in caravans. By the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope the Portuguese opened the sea-route to India, by which the products of the East were carried to Europe more cheaply and in greater abundance; and the decline ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... immense popularity of "Jackanapes," "The Story of a Short Life," "Daddy Darwin's Dovecot," "Lob-Lie-by-the-Fire," "Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances," and many another of the stories that delighted young readers when they first appeared in the pages of Aunt Judy's Magazine. The preeminence of "Jackanapes" among these many splendid stories may at least partly be accounted for by the fact that it grew out of the heat of a great conviction about life. Early in 1879 the news reached England of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... in addition to other liquors. Now, you must know that the rum expiates whatever opprobrium attends upon the other commodities. For rum-making, mind you, is a government monopoly; and to keep a government dispensary assures respectability if not preeminence. Moreover, the saddest of precisians could find no fault with the conduct of the shop. Customers drank there in the lowest of spirits and fearsomely, as in the shadow of the dead; for Madama's ancient ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... verdict may be in this matter, the fact remains that all of Ariosto's lyric poetry and many of the passages in the Orlando Furioso were inspired by his real love for some woman, and it was this living, burning passion which gives him his preeminence as a poet. He had mannerisms, it is true, and much that he wrote is apt to appear stilted to the ordinary English reader, but such mannerisms are only the national characteristics of most Italian ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... decay. When all Europe trembled at the haughty tread of her matchless infantry, Spain was empress in the realm of mind. The Elizabethan age in England was shaped by the sword. America's intellectual preeminence followed the long agony of the Revolution, and blazed like a banner of glory in the wake of the Civil War. The Reign of Terror gave forth flashes of true Promethean fire—the crash of steel in the Napoleonic war studded the heavens with ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... first of which is dissimilitude of minds and manner, n. 246. Of external causes of cold the second is, that conjugial love is believed to be the same as adulterous love, only that the latter is not allowed by law, but the former is, n. 247. Of external causes of cold the third is, a striving for preeminence between married partners, n. 248. Of external causes of cold the fourth is, a want of determination to any employment or business, whence comes wandering passion, n. 249. Of external causes of cold the fifth is, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... people to their present commanding position in the world, is their thoroughness. It is giving young Germans a great advantage over both English and American youths. Every employer is looking for thoroughness, and German employees, owing to their preeminence in this respect, the superiority of their training, and the completeness of their preparation for business, are in great demand to-day in England, especially in ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... long since preceded him; and the reception accorded him in this country, as a soloist and one of the greatest exponents and teachers of his instrument, has been one justly due to his authority and preeminence. ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens

... Japanese customs duties to complete the shutting out of foreign goods, now made only partially possible by the discrimination of a railway monopoly, and with the entire Chinese Empire and foreign trade rights within it menaced by the added preeminence of Japan, the people of Europe and America {92} may wake up too late to find out at last that the Open Door in Manchuria is a matter of somewhat more general importance than the disturbances in Turkey or the change of ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... That it will hunt the other higher races of animals and will struggle with them for preeminence (lui disputer les biens de la terre) and that it will force them to take refuge in regions which it does ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... poetry alone, Swinburne would have to be named first, with Carducci for a fairly close second. But if we take literature in its larger sense, as including all the manifestations of creative activity in language, and if we insist, furthermore, that the man singled out for this preeminence shall stand in some vital relation to the intellectual life of his time, and exert a forceful influence upon the thought of the present day, the choice must rather be made among the three giants of the north of Europe, falling, as it may be, upon the great-hearted ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne

... atrocious monuments to man's lack of artistic taste. It is a pity Creil is so banal on close acquaintance, for it is bejewelled with emerald hills and a tiny belt of silvery water which, in the savage days of long ago, must have given it preeminence among similar spots in ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... God forgives us, man will forgive us," said Phebe. But Felicita pondered over the possibility of Roland having paid the penalty of his crime, and going back again to take up his life, walking more humbly in it evermore, with no claim to preeminence save that of most diligently serving his fellow-men. She endeavored to picture herself receiving him back again from the convict prison, with all its shameful memories branded on him, and looking upon him again as her ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... memoranda to express them simply as fourths, seconds, &c. But "order" is an excellent word for any known group of forms, whether of windows, capitals, bases, mouldings, or any other architectural feature, provided always that it be not understood in any wise to imply preeminence or isolation in these groups. Thus I may rationally speak of the six orders of Venetian windows, provided I am ready to allow a French architect to speak of the six or seven, or eight, or seventy or eighty, orders of Norman windows, if so many are distinguishable; ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... playing off the most tremendous batteries on him.... It is mortifying to the real friends of the President that his fame and his influence should have anything to apprehend from the success of liberty in another country, since he owes his preeminence to the success of it in his own. If France triumphs, the ill-fated proclamation will be a millstone, which would sink any other character and will force a struggle even on his." Yet it is certain that Washington was not in the least doubt as to his own political principles; ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay

... the plans of his father. The Governor's reply was that he had appointed another officer, Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, to lead in the search for the Western Sea. Francois hurried to Quebec. The Governor met him with a bland face and seemed friendly. Francois, urged that he and his brothers claimed no preeminence and that they were ready to serve under the orders of Saint-Pierre. The Governor was hesitant; but at last told Francois, frankly that the new leader desired no help either from him or from his brothers. Francois, was dismayed. He and his brothers were ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong

... If preeminence in this particular prejudice can be assigned to any single region or people, perhaps Germany more than any other land was subject to the demonological fever. A fact to be explained as well by its being the great theatre for more ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... another: "It is the full measure of pure, unmixed, unsophisticated wickedness; and scorning all competition or comparison, it stands without a rival in the secure, undisputed possession of its detestable preeminence." ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... happiness, the crown and aim of a woman's life, and I must and I will attain it; I must and I will once, if only for a short time, hear myself called by some dear lips by the name which gives the veriest beggar-woman with her infant in her arms preeminence above the Empress who has never stood by a child's cradle. I must and I will, before I die, be a mother, be called mother and be able to say, 'my child, my son—our son.'" And as she spoke she sobbed aloud and covered her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... delivered into my hands." Moses: "I am greater than all others that came into the world, I have had a greater communion with the spirit of God than thee and thou together." Samael: "Wherein lies thy preeminence?" Moses: "Dost thou not know that I am the son of Amram, that came circumcised out of my mother's womb, that at the age of three days not only walked, but even talked with my parents, that took no milk from my mother until ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... against the bitterest opposition of a so-called sugar trust, and brought on a "war" signalized by the most ruthless cutting of prices of both coffee and sugar. This war was costly to both sides; but when it had ended, Arbuckle Bros. remained unshaken in the preeminence of their package-coffee business and had acquired also great publicity and a ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... continent will cease. Our policy should be shaped, in view of this probability, so as to ally the commercial interests of the Spanish American States more closely to our own, and thus give the United States all the preeminence and all the advantage which Mr. Monroe, Mr. Adams, and Mr. Clay contemplated when they proposed to join in the congress ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant

... debated its authorship. One said a certain newspaper correspondent, naming him, had proved it to be the work—I forget of whom. But I shall never forget what followed. Two or three challenged the literary preeminence of that correspondent, and from as many directions I was asked for my opinion. Ah me! Lying back against a pile of saddles with my head in my hands, sodden with self-assurance, I replied, magnanimously, "Oh, I don't set up for a critic, but—well—would you ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable

... was descended from the princely German house of Nassau, which had already flourished eight centuries, had long disputed the preeminence with Austria, and had given one Emperor to Germany. Besides several extensive domains in the Netherlands, which made him a citizen of this republic and a vassal of the Spanish monarchy, he possessed also in France the independent princedom of Orange. William was born in the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... Mary having been present to witness even the ascension of her blessed Son; we read no command of our Lord, no wish expressed, no distant intimation to his disciples that they should even show to her marks of respect and honour; not an allusion is there made to any superiority or distinction and preeminence. Sixty years at the least are generally considered to be comprehended within the subsequent history of the New Testament before the Apocalypse was written; but neither in the narrative, nor in the Epistles, ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler

... institutions, sought to find some substitute for the agricultural despotism exercised for generations by their slaveholding families. In the East, the first families of the Revolution, secure in their preeminence, assumed again the manufacturing-banking-social prestige. The far West was still almost unknown, and remained in possession of the buffalo and the Indian. Settlers poured, in increasing numbers on to the unappropriated lands still left in the states of the ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... the great preeminence of vegetative varieties above the improved strains multiplied by seeds. They have a definite relation. Asexually multiplied strains may be said to be generally two times or even three times superior to the common offspring. This is a difference of great practical importance, and ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... Ethel Marr was admitted by all competent judges to have the most stylish modes of hair-dressing, and Jane Andrews—plain, plodding, conscientious Jane—carried off the honors in the domestic science course. Even Josie Pye attained a certain preeminence as the sharpest-tongued young lady in attendance at Queen's. So it may be fairly stated that Miss Stacy's old pupils held their own in the wider arena ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Mahaffy's flask the important event of the day was past, and both knew it was likely to retain its preeminence for a terrible and indefinite period; a thought that enriched their thirst as it increased their gravity while they were traversing the stretch of dusty road that lay between the cavern and the judge's shanty. When they had settled ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... daily victory to-day, eh? Well, so it goes; we must not expect to win always. We must have reverses, and heavy ones too; but in the end we must win. To lose now would mean national extinction. To win means Germany's commercial and military preeminence ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... inquire by what means he was raised to the distinction? It is an idle question. In this world, preeminence over your fellow-creatures can only be obtained, by leaving others far behind in the career of virtue or of vice. In compliance with the dispositions of those who rule, faithful service in the one path or the other will shower honour upon the subject, and by the breath of kings ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... of your good opinion and good wishes, is quite sufficient for me. I feel for the difficulties of your situation, but your spirit and prudence will carry you thro them, tho not without paying the tax which the wise laws of nature have imposed upon preeminence and celebrity of every kind, a tax which, for want of true greatness of mind, neither of your predecessors, if I estimate their characters ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith

... warlike tribe of that name, which held in partial subjection the Nyantics near Point Judith. To the west of these, and about the Thames river, dwelt the still more formidable Pequots, a tribe which for bravery and ferocity asserted a preeminence in New England not unlike that which the Iroquois league of the Mohawk valley was fast winning over all North America east of the Mississippi. North of the Pequots, the squalid villages of the Nipmucks were scattered over the beautiful highlands that ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... cried. "Rather better class than entertaining strolling players." Indeed the merit of the proposal rather overwhelmed me. It would be dignified and yet spectacular. It would show the Klondike woman that we chose to have contact only with artists of acknowledged preeminence and that such were quite willing to accept our courtesies. I had hopes, too, that the Honourable George might be aroused to advantages which he seemed bent upon casting to ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... his travail grief. That which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of man whether it goeth upward? I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... of this light, which gave it its great preeminence over all other penetrating rays, was the power it possessed of illuminating an object; passing through it; rendering it transparent and invisible; illuminating the opaque substance it next met in its path, and afterwards rendering ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... offenders,—perhaps there was some fear of the world's opinion, which, though it might be indifferent to the sacrifice of a few obscure ecclesiastics, yet would surely not pass over lightly the execution of men who stood out with so marked preeminence. The council board was unevenly composed. Cromwell, who divides with the king the responsibility of these prosecutions, had succeeded, not to the authority only of Wolsey, but to the hatred with which the ignoble plebeian was regarded by the patricians who ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... woman. He was now beginning to find out what that cleverness was—what was the shape into which it had run as into a close network aloof and independent. No one quicker than Rosamond to see causes and effects which lay within the track of her own tastes and interests: she had seen clearly Lydgate's preeminence in Middlemarch society, and could go on imaginatively tracing still more agreeable social effects when his talent should have advanced him; but for her, his professional and scientific ambition had no other relation to these desirable ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... established: that, in the consensus of learned people, Thucydides and Tacitus stand at the head of historians; and that it is not alone their accuracy, love of truth, and impartiality which entitle them to this preeminence since Gibbon and Gardiner among the moderns possess equally the same qualities. What is it, then, that makes these men supreme? In venturing a solution of this question, I confine myself necessarily to the English translations of the Greek and ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... breathes full East,' I said, 'On that which leans to you. I know the Prince, I prize his truth: and then how vast a work To assail this gray preeminence of man! You grant me license; might I use it? think; Ere half be done perchance your life may fail; Then comes the feebler heiress of your plan, And takes and ruins all; and thus your pains May only make that footprint upon sand Which old-recurring waves of prejudice Resmooth to nothing: ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... they do not say so in so many words—that the products of Nature procured by labor and industry are a reward, a palm, a crown offered to all kinds of preeminence and superiority. They regard the land as an immense arena in which prizes are contended for,—no longer, it is true, with lances and swords, by force and by treachery; but by acquired wealth, by knowledge, talent, and by virtue itself. In a word, they mean—and everybody agrees with ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... Attica had braved everything for the common cause of Greece, even to leaving Athens to be burned by the invader, and for the next fifty years she held the position of political as well as cultural preeminence among the Greek City-States. Athens now became the world center of wealth and refinement and the home of art and literature (R. 7), and her influence along cultural lines, due in part to her mastery of the sea and her growing commerce, was now extended throughout ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... a gifted nature to come into possession of a current of true and living ideas, and to produce amidst the inspiration of them, that we are likely to underrate it. The epochs of AEschylus and Shakespeare make us feel their preeminence. In an epoch like those is, no doubt, the true life of literature; there is the promised land, towards which criticism can only beckon. That promised land it will not be ours to enter, and we shall die in the wilderness: but to have desired to enter it, to have saluted it from afar, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... so potent. Except for the power of religion, and the sustaining influence of faith, nothing could have restrained him from falling back on despondency or despair. Yet even to his final sermon, he maintained his preeminence; and in no one discourse of his last years, did he decline into mediocrity, or fail to remind the elder part of his audience of a period when his eloquence was ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... and so fearless of any distortion or strain spoiling the adjustment afterwards, that in one place he runs his joint quite gratuitously through a bas-relief, and gives the keystone its only sign of preeminence by the minute inlaying of the head of the Lamb into the stone ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... for some days past made this house more intolerable than I may one day find Phlegethon. I want to go into the whirl and din of life, where my thoughts can dwell on some more comforting theme than the peerless preeminence of the man who is master here, where I can spend hours in elaborating toilettes and coiffures that will show to the greatest advantage my small stock of personal charms; where the admiration and love ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... sufficient to counterbalance that which it is desired to connect with his name. Descending to the earth, we encounter first of all the general science of our globe, or geography. In this order of studies a German, Ritter, enjoys an incontestable preeminence. He is called, even in France, the "creator of scientific geography." Scientific geography rests for support on nearly all the sciences: it proceeds from the general results of chemistry, physics, and geology. Had then the vast knowledge of Ritter turned him ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... Washington City, and was buried in St. Philip's Churchyard, Charleston, his grave being marked by a monument. His preeminence in South Carolina during his life has not ceased with his death. His picture is found everywhere and his memory is still living throughout the entire country. See Life, by Jenkins, and by Von Hoist. See ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... for the "Rancho," being engaged in another case, some trifling inconsistency was discovered in his statements, which had the effect of throwing the weight of evidence to the party who had paid him most, but was instantly detected by the weaker party. Garcia's preeminence as a witness, an expert and general historian began to decline. He was obliged to be corroborated, and this required a liberal outlay of his fee. With the loss of his credibility as a witness bad habits supervened. He was frequently drunk, he lost his position, ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... The contests of the years immediately following 1066 led to a short period of decay, but very soon increasing trade and handicraft led to still greater progress. London, especially, now made good its position as one of the great cities of Europe, and that preeminence among English towns which it has never since lost. The fishing and seaport towns along the southern and eastern coast also, and even a number of inland towns, came to hold a much more influential place in the nation than they had possessed in the ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... towards social functions underwent a change of front. He began to feel confidently, vaingloriously at ease. He joined in the general conversation determined to rout the brilliant Miss Cantillon, who knew so many things. Now the rule for such preeminence is simple and some acquire it by cunning and others by instinct. Deny the obvious. Reputations have fattened on nothing else. When inevitably the moment arrived to discuss Maude Adams, and her latest play, Skippy announced that he did not like ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... of excitement in all the affairs and relations of men, and America is fast becoming the central point of these activities. They are, no doubt, associated with many blessings, but they may also be attended by great evils. We claim for our country preeminence in education. This may be just, but it is also true that Americans, more than any other people, need to be better educated than they are. Where else is the field of statesmanship so large, or the necessity for able ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... transformations from the gloomy fortress home—appeared regal and splendid, compared with the humbler houses of the people lying prostrate before it. Viewed from afar, the town seemed to abase itself in the presence of the architectural preeminence of that monarch of buildings. Even the sun, when it withdrew its rays from the miscellaneous rabble of shops and dwellings, yet lingered proudly upon the noble structure above, caressing its imposing and august outlines and surrounding it with the glamour of ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... membership of a Reform society! Mr. Erskine defended him: "I will assert the freedom of an Englishman; I will maintain the dignity of man, I will vindicate and glory in the principles which raised this country to her preeminence among the nations of the earth; and as she shone the bright star of the morning to shed the light of liberty upon nations which now enjoy it, so may she continue in her radiant sphere to revive the ancient privileges of the world ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... existing among ourselves, another species of slavery, not less ruinous in its tendency, and not less criminal in the sight of God—we mean the slavery by strong drink. We feel too much ashamed of the sad preeminence which these nations have acquired in regard to this vice to take any offence at the reproaches cast upon us from across the Atlantic. Such smiting shall not break our head. We are anxious to profit by it. Yet when it is used as an argument to justify slavery, or to ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... of conquistadors and original settlers should be preferred to those who are more recent and have not rendered greater services is a just and holy thing, especially in the peaceful countries of the Indias. But if this preeminence in life and in the favor of your Majesty is granted to them in consideration of the services which their ancestors have rendered in their conquests and pacifications, and on occasions of wars which ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various

... higher Ego. Some students even seem to think that such an occurrence is quite a common one, and that we may meet scores of such "soulless men," as they have been called, in the street every day of our lives, but this, happily, is untrue. To attain the appalling preeminence in evil which thus involves the entire loss of a personality and the weakening of the developing individuality behind, a man must stifle every gleam of unselfishness or spirituality, and must have absolutely no redeeming point whatever; and when we remember how often, even ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater

... wiry little horse-thief, as the others gathered about Sneed with threatening eyes and gestures, while he vociferated amongst them, as lordly as if he were in his oft-time preeminence as the foreman of a jury. Nick Peters's face had changed. There was a sudden fear upon it, uncomprehended by Persimmon Sneed. It did not occur to him until long afterward that he had for the first time used the expression "a jury of view," and that the horse-thief's familiarity with the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... man, Abraham Lincoln, whose death had but just closed the national tragedy, is delineated in a manner that gives this poet a preeminence, among those who capture likeness in enduring verse, that we award to Velasquez among those who fasten it upon the canvas. 'One of Plutarch's men' is before us, face to face; an historic character whom Lowell fully comprehended, ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... to mention but one peril which besets the New Man. It is danger of physical exhaustion. Dr. Kane, the hero of two Arctic nights, came forth to the day only to die. That which makes the preeminence of our organization makes also its peril. Denmark is said to be impoverished by the disproportion of the learned to the industrial class; production is insufficient, and too much of a good thing cripples the country. The nervous system is a learned class in the body; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... the church. Their equality is clearly taught in the New Testament. Christ gave them the express command, "Be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren." Mat. 23:8. When two of the disciples manifested a desire to gain preeminence over their brethren and their aspirations displeased the ten, Christ said to them all, "Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you." Mat. 20:25, 26. Thus a perfect standard ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... Great Britain." Admiral Warren was still in a peevish humor at the hard knocks inflicted on the Royal Navy when he wrote, in congratulating Captain Broke: "At this critical moment you could not have restored to the British naval service the preeminence it has always preserved, or contradicted in a more forcible manner the foul aspersions and calumnies of a conceited, boasting enemy than by the brilliant act you have performed. The relation of such an event restores the history of ancient times and will do more good to ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine

... noted the beauty of his eloquence her senses fled and her wit was dazed and love of him gat hold upon her whole heart. So she pressed him to her bosom and fell to kissing him like the billing of doves, whilst he returned her caresses with successive kisses; but preeminence appertaineth to precedence.[FN437] When she had made an end of kissing, she took the lute and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... the kingdoms and mainland of China, and in the said islands, for the time and space of six years, first commencing from the date of the departure of the first vessel with a cargo of merchandise for the said Nueva Espana. I prohibit and forbid all other persons whomsoever, of whatever rank and preeminence, from trading in the said islands and in China for the space of the said six years, reckoned as above stated, under penalty of confiscation of the merchandise that they have traded for therein. I order that this my provision be promulgated in the City of Mexico, and that my royal officials there ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair

... devising the ways and means of raising revenue. The fact that the Constitution provides that "all bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives," gives the Committee of Ways and Means a sort of preeminence over all other committees, whether of the Senate ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... was founded in Scripture, in reason, in policy, or on the rights of man! A minister, by his vote, by his single voice, may negative the unanimous vote of the church! Are ministers composed of finer clay than the rest of mankind, that entitles them to this preeminence? Does a license to preach transform a man into a higher order of beings and endow him with a natural quality to govern? Are the laity an inferior order of beings, fit only to be slaves and to be governed? Is it good policy for mankind to subject themselves to such degrading vassalage ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... concerning the Apostle.] He, the Most High, sent Mahomet, the illiterate prophet of the family of the Koreish, to deliver his message to all the Arabians and barbarians and genii and men; and abrogated by his religion all other religions, except in those things which he confirmed; and gave him the preeminence over all the rest of the prophets, and made him lord over all mortal men. Neither is the faith, according to his will, complete by the testimony of the unity alone; that is, by simply saying, There is but one God, without the addition of the testimony of the apostle; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... the winter delightfully, reading to each other, and lately studying German. I knew a little, just enough to empower me to hold the rod, and be somewhat impertinent, and I have entire preeminence in the way of pronunciation. But ever and anon I am made quite humble by being helped out of thick forests by my knight, instead of guiding him. So we teach each other in the most charming manner, and I call it the royal road to knowledge, finally ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... her preeminence,—and she did not think of it nearly so often as other people thought of it,—she determined that it should make no difference to her; and when next she gave a high tea,—not the grand repast to which she intended to invite the Buskirks on the hill,—she ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton

... brief, tragic. The influence of this one novel (overlooking that of "Salambo," in its way also of influence in the modern growth) has been especially great upon a kind of fiction most characteristic of the present generation: in which, in fact, it has assumed a "bad preeminence." I mean the Novel of sexual relations in their irregular aspects. The stormy artist of the Goncourt dinners has much to answer for, if we regard him only as the creator of such a creature as Madame Bovary. Many later ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... till old age. Bain remarks that other passions, such as maternal love, hatred, the desire of domination may be extended to many objects, while love has a tendency to concentrate itself on a single one which then takes preeminence over the others and tends to monogamy. We have seen that birds and monkeys generally love only one female. With some conjugal love is so strong that one of the conjoints cannot survive the other; this fact has been observed with certainty, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... difficult to interpret in passing tableaux; better than similar display at Nice and Mentone. This I do call "unique" and the only. Let Santa Barbara have this yearly festa for her own. She has fairly won the preeminence. ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn

... call him now, his former name Is heard no more in Heaven: He of the first, If not the first Archangel; great in power, In favour and preeminence. ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... far beyond the Pyrenees and the Alps. On the south of the Ebro the English won a great battle, which for a time decided the fate of Leon and Castile; and the English Companies obtained a terrible preeminence among the bands of warriors who let out their weapons for hire to the princes and commonwealths ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... is pervaded throughout by anger that the masses will not acknowledge the preeminence of their superiors. In Julius Caesar everything turns upon the conception that the better people do not wish any one placed in supreme authority because they imagine, mistakenly, that they can work in unison. Anthony and Cleopatra, calls ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... as a raid against dancing have been raised ere now. Will the coming man smoke? Will the coming man drink wine? These tremendous and imperative problems only recently agitated some of the "thoughtful minds" in our midst. By degrees they lost their preeminence, they were seen to be in process of solution without social cataclysm, they have, in a manner been referred for disposal to the coming man himself, that is to say, they have been dropped, and are to-day as dead as Julius Caesar. The present hour has, in ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... chance; that it is by a mere fluke that we find orchids and not mushrooms, men and not monkeys, at the head of plant and animal life; and that Nature herself is wholly indifferent as to which of the two establishes its preeminence—then he will feel the chill upon his soul, he will shrivel up within himself, the very fountain-spring of Beauty will be frozen up, and never again will he see Beauty in any single one of ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... the wise man? As the fool.... That which befalleth the sons of men befalleth the beasts, even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth so dieth the other, yea they have all one breath; so that man hath no preeminence above a beast; for ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... to be frank, liberal and courteous in all his professional intercourse. [Referring to a particular case the Chancellor continues.] Hamilton by means of his fine melodious voice, and dignified deportment, his reasoning powers and persuasive address, soared far above all competition. His preeminence was at once and universally conceded.... Hamilton returned to private life and to the practice of the law in '95. He was cordially welcomed and cheered on his return, by his fellow citizens. Between this year and 1798, he took his station as ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... to preeminence given to outward distinction, and the conditions under which mainly it impresses and is accepted by men not yet arrived at the [200] essentially intellectual stage. In the spiritual domain the conditions have ever been quite ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... made, not born. Training counts for as much as natural ability. In fact if a person considers carefully the careers of men whose ability to speak has impressed the world by its preeminence he will incline to the conclusion that the majority of them were not to any signal extent born speakers at all. In nearly all cases of great speakers who have left records of their own progress in this powerful art their testimony is that without ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... second elements as we may, it is the third which completes our conception. Let us praise the mechanism of the body to the utmost; let it be granted that the height and force of our intellect bespeaks a glorious intelligence; still our distinctive excellence and preeminence lies in moral ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... read Astounding Stories since its first issue, and I am convinced that it is without a peer in the field of Science Fiction. This preeminence is due to the fact that the magazine regularly contains the work of the best contemporary writers of scientific fantasy, such as Cummings, Rousseau, Leinster, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... found full of interest and points of excellence, and can scarcely fail to afford amusement and pleasure, as well as to impart instruction, to all who may avail themselves of the opportunity of examining them, they will be of especial service to amateurs who aspire to preeminence ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird

... are old noble families in Athens,—like the Alcmeonide whereof Pericles sprang, and the Eumolpide who supply the priests to Demeter, the Earth Mother. But these great houses have long since ceased to claim anything but SOCIAL preeminence. Even then one must take pains not to assume airs, or the next time one is litigant before the dicastery, the insinuation of "an undemocratic, oligarchic manner of life" will win very many adverse votes among the jury. Nobility and wealth are only allowed ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... prevailed for many preceding ages. Next to the magnificent cathedrals, the venerable monasteries and collegiate establishments, which had been founded and sumptuously endowed in every part of the kingdom, might most justly claim the preeminence; and many of the churches belonging to them were deservedly held in admiration for their grandeur ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam

... which afforded him much amusement. When the major concluded, he presented me as the greatest living politician Cape Cod, or indeed any other district of Massachusetts, had ever given to the world. He, however, corrected himself, lest what he had said might compromise his own preeminence, and added that I had joined him merely to gain that experience so necessary to the perfection of all great minds. This done, he commenced to give an account of his horse and pig, whose rare qualities he failed not to extol highly; all of which afforded the listener an infinite amount of amusement. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... he felt strange, uneasy, uprooted from his sober aplomb. Unknown irritations possessed him. Under his breath he muttered an Arabic cynicism about woman, from the fourth chapter of the Koran: "Men shall have the preeminence above women, because Allah hath caused the one of them to ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... Noyon itself being for long interdependent with the see of Tournai. Nevertheless, it is a beautiful type which was cradled here in the country called, by Caesar, Suessiones; and difficult it would be to attempt to assign preeminence ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... carried off the palm in all the grander trials of intellectual strength, for the majesty of the epopee and the impassioned vehemence of the tragic drama, to Pope we owe it that we can now claim an equal preeminence in the sportive and aerial graces of the mock heroic and satiric muse; that in the Dunciad we possess a peculiar form of satire, in which (according to a plan unattempted by any other nation) we see alternately her festive smile and her gloomiest scowl; that the grave good ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... confirmed him in the high priesthood, and in all the honours that he had before, and gave him preeminence among his ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous

... the school develops this in a measure, but not fully, because it determines the standing of the boy through his intellectual ambition. The academical youth will not take much interest in special gymnastics unless he can gain preeminence therein. Running, leaping, climbing, and lifting, are too meaningless for their more mature spirits. They can take a lively interest only in the exercises which have a warlike character. With the Prussians, and some other German states, the art of Gymnastics ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... the gods of Greece and Rome are all repose. Their actions acquire a superiority over those of man not by supernatural agencies or extraordinary developments of physical power; their preeminence lies in the quiet assumption of power, in the immediate sequence of action on volition. Their divinity is esoteric, consisting in attributes innate and not assumed. Action with them is power; but in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... in the two ways in which "Master Jacques" was pronounced on the one hand, and the "master" by preeminence on the other, the difference between monseigneur and monsieur, between domine and domne. It was evidently the meeting of a ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... Sapor during this period, for at the end of it we find Bactria, which was certainly subject to Persia during the earlier years of the monarchy, occupying an independent position, and even assuming an attitude of hostility toward the Persian monarch. Bactria had, from a remote antiquity, claims to preeminence among the Aryan nations. She was more than once inclined to revolt from the Achaemenidae, and during the later Parthian period she had enjoyed a sort of semi-independence. It would seem that she now succeeded in detaching herself altogether ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... know," he said, and he spoke somewhat in earnest,—"I didn't know that you cared anything about eminence or preeminence." ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... pull; preponderance, preponderation; vantage ground, prevalence, partiality; personal superiority; nobility &c. (rank) 875; Triton among the minnows, primus inter pares[Lat], nulli secundus[Lat], captain; crackajack * [obs3][U. S.]. supremacy, preeminence; lead; maximum; record; [obs3], climax; culmination &c. (summit) 210; transcendence; ne plus ultra[Lat]; lion's share, Benjamin's mess; excess, surplus &c. (remainder) 40; (redundancy) 641. V. be superior &c. adj.; exceed, excel, transcend; outdo, outbalance[obs3], outweigh, outrank, outrival, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Darwin Atwater, a farmer, who afterward occupied the pulpit, and of whom Hayden says, "The uniformity of his life, his undeviating devotion, his high and consistent manliness and superiority of judgment, gave him an undisputed preeminence in the church." In a letter to Hayden, dated April 26, 1873, Mr. Atwater said of Rigdon: "For a few months before his professed conversion to Mormonism it was noticed that his wild extravagant propensities had been more marked. That he knew before ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... exercises. To them the individual Englishman owes his superiority to the individual of every other country, in courage, strength, and agility: and as a country is composed of individuals, to what other causes can England more reasonably impute her proud preeminence among nations which she now enjoys, and which she will ever maintain till this spirit is tamed into servility, under the pretence of applying salutary restrictions to the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... conclusion. From this are derived those results of the rhetoricians drawn from contraries, which they call enthymemes. Not that every sentence may not be legitimately called an enthymeme; but, as Homer on account of his preeminence has appropriated the general name of poet to himself as his own among all the Greeks; so, though every sentence is an enthymeme, still, because that which is made up of contraries appears the most acute ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... canticle, and recite it daily, and that Brother Pacificus, the famous poet, of whom we have before spoken, and who was then in France or in the Low Countries, should put it into well-sounding verse. He called it the Canticle of the Sun, because of the preeminence of that beautiful planet, in which, David says, God seemed to have taken up His abode, in order ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... placed her mechanical skill in the front ranks of the civilized world; that our mother-country, whose haughty minister, some eighty-odd years ago, declared that not a hobnail should be made in the colonies which are now the United States, was brought, some four years ago, to recognize our preeminence by sending a commission to examine our workshops and our machinery, to perfect their own manufacture of the arms requisite for their defense? Do not our whole people, interior and seaboard, North, South, East, and West, alike feel proud of the hardihood, the enterprise, the ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... nearly a hundred and seventy years; in the second class of English poets perhaps no one stands, on the whole, so high as he; during his lifetime, in spite of jealousy, detraction, unpopular politics, and a suspicious change of faith, his preeminence was conceded; he was the earliest complete type of the purely literary man, in the modern sense; there is a singular unanimity in allowing him a certain claim to greatness which would be denied to men as famous and more read—to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... seem a happy circumstance that there has just been, for seven critical years, at the head of American affairs the strenuous advocate of the strenuous life. I read through his Messages the warning that in the struggle for preeminence the ultimate victory will lie with those nations who found their prosperity on the high physical and ethical condition of the people. That is the oldest, as it is the latest, wisdom of the East. It is in this spirit that the neglected problem of Rural ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett

... have never seen such stupendous arms to any trees." Everything was running wild; "the underwood was of myrtle, growing sometimes twenty feet high, the beautiful daphne laurel, and the arbutus; and they seemed contending for preeminence with the vine, clematis, and woodbine, which climbed to the very tops, and in many instances bore them down into a thicket of vegetation, impervious except to the squirrels and birds, which, sensible of their security in these retreats, stand boldly to survey the traveller." ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... impression, stamp, sign, trace, vestige, symptom, token, symbol, indication, brand, stigma; badge, cognizance; trademark, idiograph; target, bull's-eye; preeminence, distinction, prominence, earmark; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... triumphe," such as were uttered by Horace on a far less exciting occasion, and in boasts resembling those which Virgil put into the mouth of Anchises. The superiority of some foreign nations, and especially of the Greeks, in the lazy arts of peace, would be admitted with disdainful candor; but preeminence in all the qualities which fit a people to subdue and govern mankind would ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... nephews of his own; but as, like most imitators, they could do little more than mimic his defects without reaching his excellencies, they served only as a foil to set off the lustre of his great successor Sophocles, who, while yet his scholar, aspired to be his competitor, and gained the preeminence at ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... a certain preeminence among the districts of Sweden because of the part its people have played in the history of the country, and however the other provinces may dispute among themselves about their claims for distinction, ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... have taken place in other respects, in maple-sugar, at least, Vermont retains her preeminence, producing each year from eight to ten million pounds, or more than any other single State, and nearly one-third of the entire amount ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... many singular commodities towards the state and occasions of man's life. That there is less reason of distrust in the course of interpretation now propounded than in any knowledge formerly delivered, because this course doth in sort equal men's wits, and leaveth no great advantage or preeminence to the perfect and excellent motions of the spirit. That to draw a straight line or to make a circle perfect round by aim of hand only, there must be a great difference between an unsteady and unpractised hand and ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon

... art expressed immortality as much as Christian art, but did not throw it into the future, by preeminence. They expressed it in the present, by casting out of the mortal body every expression of infirmity and decay. The idealization of the human form makes a God. The fact that man can conceive and express this perfection of being, is as good a witness to immortality, as the ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... the late disgraceful discoveries, by which a woman of apparent means and unsullied honor has been precipitated from her proud preeminence as a leader of fashion, how many women, known and admired to-day, could stand the test of such an inquiry as she was subjected to? We know one at least, high in position and aiming at a higher, who, if the merciful veil were withdrawn which protects the secrets of the heart, would show ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green

... of Mr. Crawford's high standing in the city, and now, learning of his local preeminence, I began to think I was about to engage in what would probably be ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells

... glory of my salvation; no, it is none but the blood of Christ, the death of Christ, of the Man Christ Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter's son, as they called Him, that must have the crown and glory of my salvation. None but Christ, none but Christ. And thus the soul labours to give Christ the preeminence ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... historical truth in a matter where it might well have been overlooked; and future critics may perhaps spend their time more profitably in discovering other indications of a like vigilant industry than in laboring to prove that the absence of so servile a virtue has been conducive to his preeminence as a creative artist." ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... magnitude of the library, the ascending intricacy of the books, the multitude of the instruments, or the variety of the experimental apparatus in the use of which the searchers into thy mysteries must be familiar; we are compelled to reverence the courage of him who seeks preeminence through thee, and to yield to those mortals who have attained thy favours, our ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... afford to lose this factor of preeminence even if many military men—not only ours but others as well—believe that today we are superior to our future opponents. Our own officers believe this to a man, naturally. Every soldier believes this. He would almost cease to be a useful soldier if he did not wish ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... Romans achieved preeminence. The temples and other public works of Greece seem almost insignificant beside the stupendous edifices raised by Roman genius in every province of the empire. The ability of the Romans to build on so large a scale arose from their use of vaulted ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... decaying body! For God I sacrifice it. I should recant? Never! Faith is not enveloped in this or that garb; it must be naked and open. So may mine be. And if I then am chosen to be an example of pure faith, that denies not, and makes profession—well, then, envy me not this preeminence. 'Many are called, but few are chosen.' If I am one of the chosen, I thank God for it, and bless the erring mortals who wish to make me such by means of the torture of the rack. Ah, believe me, Catharine, I rejoice to die, for it is such a sad, desolate, ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... all greatness is from Him alone. And those who are born great, who acquire greatness, or who have greatness thrust upon them, alike owe their superiority to Him. Nor are these advantages and this preeminence due to our merits and deserts. Everything that comes to us from God is purely gratuitous on His part, and undeserved on ours. Since our very existence is the effect of a free act of His will, why should not, for a greater ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... evidence that the greatness of the master whom I wished you to follow as your only guide in landscape depended primarily on his studying from Nature always with the point; that is to say, in pencil or pen outline. To-day I wish to show you that his preeminence depends secondarily on his perfect rendering of form and distance by light and shade, before he admits a thought ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin

... of March, 1863, when Congress was closing the session, President Lincoln gave away the bride at a marriage ceremony held—by his invitation—in the House of Representatives' chamber. This seems a singular and high honor to the couple. Their preeminence and the function being acclaimed by all the notables connected with the field and the forum in the capital, was a characteristic testimonial to the comforters whose service to the soldier was inestimable. The pair were John ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... is, the powerful. The Bayoc alone could offer sacrifice to him. There was another idol, Acasi, whose power almost equaled that of the first. In fact, they sang in religious ceremonies that "although Malyari was powerful, Acasi had preeminence." In an inferior order they worshiped also Manlobog or Mangalagan, whom they recognized as having power of appeasing irritated spirits. They rendered equal worship to five less important idols who represented the divinities of ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed

... before which the stoutest French heart quails—"C'est inadmissible," "C'est convenu," "La patrie en danger." One day he may be called upon to break bounds, to renounce the national tradition, deny the preeminence of his country, question the sufficiency of Poussin and the perfection of Racine, or conceive it possible that some person or thing should be more noble, reverend, and touching than his mother. On that day the Frenchman will turn ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell



Words linked to "Preeminence" :   preeminent, note, eminence, king, high status



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