Eminence Quotes

There is a form of eminence which does not depend on fate; it is an air which sets us apart and seems to prtend great things; it is the value which we unconsciously attach to ourselves; it is the quality which wins us deference of others; more than birth, position, or ability, it gives us ascendance. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The foundation on which (our government is) built is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office, and particularly the denial of a pre-eminence by birth. ~ Thomas Jefferson

To be forward to praise others implies either great eminence, that can afford to, part with applause; or great quickness of discernment, with confidence in our own judgments; or great sincerity and love of truth, getting the better of our self-love. ~ William Hazlitt

The lusts of the flesh can be gratified anywhere; it is not this sort of license that distinguishes New York. It is rather, a lust of the total ego for recognition, even for eminence. More than elsewhere, everybody here wants to be somebody. ~ Sydney J. Harris

[Science] has challenged the super-eminence of religion; it has turned all philosophy out of doors except that which clings to its skirts; it has thrown contempt on all learning that does not depend on it; and it has bribed the skeptics by giving us immense material comforts. ~ Katharine Fullerton Gerould

The Land of Israel will be small, but the people of Israel will make it great. Not
in opulence, but in eminence will their destiny be fulfilled, and the elixir of their
pride will be distilled not out of dominion or far-flung borders, but out of the
faithful and skillful building of the good society. ~ Abba Hillel Silver

A more important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

There's nothing situate under heaven's eye But hath his bond in earth, in sea, in sky. The beasts, the fishes, and the winged fowls Are their males' subjects and at their controls. Man, more divine, the master of all these, Lord of the wide world and wild wat'ry seas, Indu'd with intellectual sense and souls, Of more pre-eminence than fish and fowls, Are masters to their females, and their lords; Then let your will attend on their accords. ~ William Shakespeare

Krishna placed a finger on his chin. 'Eldest, when you have reached a certain eminence, you must be ready to reach out to a higher eminence; otherwise you will be torn to pieces,'he said. ~ Kanhaiyalal Maniklal Munshi

Suddenly we were in Hawaii - tropical mountains running down to sparkling seas, sweeping bays, flawless beaches guarded by listing palms, little green and rocky islands standing off the headlands. From time to time we drove through sunny canefields, overlooked by the steep, blue eminence of the Great Dividing Range. ~ Bill Bryson

The language of love is unspoken. It is a feeling, an acknowledgment, and acceptance of not only our human frailties, but our divine eminence. ~ Charles F. Glassman

However great an intellectual may be, however great one may be as a scholar or a man of learning, one has also to acquire humanness. Without humanness, scholarship and intellectual eminence are of no value. ~ Sathya Sai Baba

But in another moment she seemed to have descended from her womanly eminence to helpless and timorous girlhood; and he understood that her courage and initiative were all for others, and that she had none for herself. It was evident that the effort of speaking had been much greater than her studied composure betrayed, and that at his first word of reassurance she had dropped back into the usual, as a too adventurous child takes refuge in its mother's arms. ~ Edith Wharton

History may well be a series of stories we tell about the past, but the stories are not just any stories. They're not chosen by chance. By and large, the stories are about famous men and celebrated events. We throw in a couple of exceptional women every now and then, not out of any need to recognize female eminence, but out of embarrassment. ~ Thomas King

Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible object; and every nation has formed to itself some favorite point, which by way of eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness. ~ Edmund Burke

Whoever rises above those who once pleased themselves with equality, will have many malevolent gazers at his eminence. ~ Samuel Johnson

The building of Kuwait and her Eminence, it's defense and protection, is primarily a responsibility by her people and the efforts of her children ~ Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

I do not find illness an eminence, and I do not understand how people can use it to draw attention to themselves since the attention they draw is nearly always reluctantly given and unpleasantly carried out. ~ John Steinbeck

It stands on a slight eminence ~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu

The endurance of monotony has about the same place in a healty mind that the endurance of darkness has: that is to say, as a strong intellect will have pleasure in the solemnities of storm and twilight, and in the broken and mysterious lights that gleam among them, rather than in mere brilliancy and glare, while a frivolous mind will dread the shadow and storm; and as a great man will be ready to endure much darkness of fortune in order to reach greater eminence of power or felicity, while an inferior man will not pay the price; exactly in like manner a great mind will accept, or even delight in, monotony which would be wearisome to an inferior intellect, because it has more patience and power of expectation, and is ready to pay the full price for the great future pleasure of change. ~ John Ruskin

I could not help weeping with him - not over my own fate which, however clearly laid out, was just as sad as his, but over the injustices, the iniquities, and the crimes to which the exploited poor are always and everywhere subjected to, by a mob of scoundrels and trash who deck themselves out in many-colored robes, in helmet and plumed hats, in gold and silver embroideries, and take themselves titles of majesty, holiness, eminence, lordship, in order to fleece, bleed, and slaughter the poor. ~ Jean-Marie Deguignet

The gratification which affluence of wealth, extent of power, and eminence of reputation confer, must be always, by their own nature, confined to a very small number; and the life of the greater part of mankind must be lost in empty wishes and painful comparisons, were not the balm of philosophy shed upon us, and our discontent at the appearances of unequal distribution soothed and appeased. ~ Samuel Johnson

Whoever is humble to men for God's sake, may God exalt his eminence ... ~ Elijah Muhammad

To presume a want of motives for such contests as an argument against their existence, would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious. To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages. The causes of hostility among nations are innumerable. There are some which have a general and almost constant operation upon the collective bodies of society. Of this description are the love of power or the desire of pre-eminence and dominion - the jealousy of power, or the desire of equality and safety. There are ~ Alexander Hamilton

Personal commitment to the principles of the kingdom must take pre-eminence ~ Sunday Adelaja

I believe that the clue to his mind is to be found in his unusual powers of continuous concentrated
introspection. A case can be made out, as it also can with Descartes, for regarding him as an accomplished
experimentalist. Nothing can be more charming than the tales of his mechanical contrivances when he was a
boy. There are his telescopes and his optical experiments, These were essential accomplishments, part of his
unequalled all-round technique, but not, I am sure, his peculiar gift, especially amongst his contemporaries.
His peculiar gift was the power of holding continuously in his mind a purely mental problem until he had
seen straight through it. I fancy his pre-eminence is due to his muscles of intuition being the strongest and
most enduring with which a man has ever been gifted. Anyone who has ever attempted pure scientific or
philosophical thought knows how one can hold a problem momentarily in one's mind and apply all one's
powers of concentration to piercing through it, and how it will dissolve and escape and you find that what
you are surveying is a blank. I believe that Newton could hold a problem in his mind for hours and days and
weeks until it surrendered to him its secret. Then being a supreme mathematical technician he could dress it
up, how you will, for purposes of exposition, but it was his intuition which was pre-eminently extraordinary
- 'so happy in his conjectures', said De Morgan, 'as ~ John Maynard Keynes

It is no slight testimonial, both to the merit and worth of Christianity, that in all ages since its promulgation the great mass of those who have risen to eminence by their profound wisdom and integrity have recognized and reverenced Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of the living God. ~ John Quincy Adams

So that, upon the whole, there must be some kind of subjection due from every man to every man, which cannot be made void by any power, pre-eminence, or authority whatsoever. ~ Jonathan Swift

Religion has everything on its side: revelation, prophecies, government protection, the highest dignity and eminence ... and more than this, the invaluable prerogative of being allowed to imprint its doctrines on the mind at a tender age of childhood, whereby they become almost innate ideas. ~ Irvin D. Yalom

But assuredly Fortune rules in all things; she raised to eminence or buries in oblivion everything from caprice rather than from well-regulated principle.
[Lat., Sed profecto Fortuna in omni re dominatur; ea res cunctas ex lubidine magis, quam ex vero, celebrat, obscuratque.] ~ Sallust

Real merit requires as much labor, to be placed in a true light, as humbug to be elevated to an unworthy eminence; only the success of the false is temporary, that of the true, immortal. ~ Francis Alexander Durivage

An incessant change of means to attain unalterable ends is always going on; we must take care not to let these sundry means undo eminence in the perspective of our minds; for, since the beginning, there has been an unending cycle of them, and for each its advocates have claimed adoption as the sole solution of successful war. ~ George S. Patton

Economics is not a gay science. It is a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Why--?" he jerked his thumb in the direction of the young, "when they're so lovely--"

She too looked at the girl, who was fastening a flower that had come undone in the front of her frock. She smiled. She said nothing. Then half consciously she echoed his question without a meaning in her echo, "Why?"

He was dashed for a moment. It seemed to him that she refused to help him. And he wanted her to help him. Why should she not take the weight off his shoulders and give him what he longed for --assurance, certainty? Because she too was deformed like the rest of them? He looked down at her hands. They were strong hands; fine hands; but if it were a question, he thought, watching the fingers curl slightly, of "my" children, of "my" possession, it would be one rip down the belly; or teeth in the soft fur of the throat. We cannot help each other, he thought, we are all deformed. Yet, disagreeable as it was to him to remove her from the eminence upon which he placed her, perhaps she was right, he thought, and we who make idols of other people, who endow this man, that woman, with power to lead us, only add to the deformity, and stoop ourselves. ~ Virginia Woolf

What more she said, or what de Crucis answered, he could never afterward recall. He had a confused sense of having cried out a last unavailing protest, faintly, inarticulately, like a man struggling to make himself heard in a dream; then the room grew dark about him, and in its stead he saw the old chapel at Donnaz, with its dimly-gleaming shrine, and heard the voice of the chaplain, harsh and yet strangely shaken: - "My chief prayer for you is that, should you be raised to this eminence, it may be at a moment when such advancement seems to thrust you in the dust." Odo lifted his head and saw de Crucis standing alone before him. "I am ready," he said. ~ Edith Wharton

... your midthirties...is the age that women usually start to feel confident. Having finally left behind the...awfulness of your twenties...your thirties are the point where the good stuff kicks in...How odd, then, that as your face and body finally begin to display the signs (lines, softening, gray hairs) that you've entered the zone of kick-ass eminence and intolerance of dullards, there should be pressure for you to...totally remove them. Give the impression that, actually, you are still a bit gullible and incompetent, and totally open to being screwed over by someone a bit cleverer and older than you... Lines and grayness are nature's way of telling you not to fuck with someone--the equivalent of the yellow-and-black banding on a wasp...Lines are your weapons against the idiots. Lines are your 'KEEP AWAY FROM THE WISE INTOLERANT WOMAN' sign. ~ Caitlin Moran

I affect no contempt for the high eminence he [Senator Stephen Douglas] has reached. So reached, that the oppressed of my species,might have shared with me in the elevation, I would rather stand on that eminence, than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a monarch's brow. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Don't beg for houses, build them.
Don't beg for jobs, create them.
Don't beg for degrees, acquire them.
Don't beg for titles, earn them.
Don't beg for opportunities, provide them.
Don't beg for helpers, draw them.
Don't beg for possessions, attain them.
Don't beg for followers, win them.
Don't beg for admirers, multiply them.

Don't beg for money, work for it.
Don't beg for power, contest for it.
Don't beg for success, strive for it.
Don't beg for respect, achieve for it.
Don't beg for friendship, love for it.
Don't beg for eminence, perform for it.
Don't beg for honor, accomplish for it.
Don't beg for devotion, contest it.
Don't beg for love, serve for it.

Don't beg for understanding, yearn for it.
Don't beg for freedom, struggle for it.
Don't beg for equality, vote for it.
Don't beg for justice, combat for it.
Don't beg for peace, battle for it.
Don't beg for change, push for it.
Don't beg for education, labor for it.
Don't beg for dignity, contend for it.
Don't beg for unity, endeavor for it. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

I tell you frankly, Mrs. Damer, the more I see of different nations, the less sure I feel about the pre-eminence of my own. ~ Emma Donoghue

The mind which relate clover with eminence, why forget to relate limitations with human ambitions. ~ M.H. Rakib

What has history said of eminence without honor, wealth without wisdom, power and possessions without principle? The answer is reiterated in the overthrow of the mightiest empires of ancient times. Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome! The four successive, universal powers of the past. What and where are they? ~ Orson F. Whitney

Reading is the royal road to intellectual eminence ... Truly good books are more than mines to those who can understand them. They are the breathings of the great souls of past times. Genius is not embalmed in them, but lives in them perpetually. ~ William Ellery Channing

Pow'r above pow'rs!
O heavenly eloquence!
That with the strong rein of commanding words,
Dost manage, guide, and master th' eminence
Of men's affections, more than all their swords! ~ Samuel Daniel

Many a man has risen to eminence under the powerful reaction of his mind in fierce counter-agency to the scorn of the unworthy, daily evoked by his personal defects, who with a handsome person would have sunk into the luxury of a careless life under the tranquillizing smiles of continual admiration. ~ Thomas De Quincey

You say respect my elders, but what you mean is respecting my betters, is that not right? Are you so full of your own arrogance that you need me to bow and kowtow to you like some throwback fledgling? Or perhaps we should reinstate the role of concubines in our society. Then you may have the pleasure of claiming me and forcing me to fall to my knees, bowing low in respect of your masculine eminence!"
Gideon watched as she did just that, her gown billowing around her as she gracefully kneeled before him, so close to him that her knees touched the tips of his boots. She swept her hands to her sides, bowing her head until her forehead brushed the leather, her hair spilling like reams of heavy silk around his ankles.
The Ancient found himself unusually speechless, the strangest sensation creeping through him as he looked down at the exposed nape of her neck, the elegant line of her back. Unable to curb the impulse, Gideon lowered himself into a crouch, reaching beneath the cloak of coffee-colored hair to touch her flushed cheek. The heat of her anger radiated against his touch and he recognized it long before she turned her face up to him.
"Does this satisfy you, my lord Gideon?" she whispered fiercely, her eyes flashing like flinted steel and hard jade.
Gideon found himself searching her face intently, his eyes roaming over the high, aristocratic curves of her cheekbones, the amazingly full sculpture of her lips, the wide, accusing eyes that lay behind extrao ~ Jacquelyn Frank

He, although he received no symbols and types of high priesthood from any one, although he was not born of a race of priests, although he was not elevated to a kingdom by military guards, although he was not a prophet like those of old, although he obtained no honor nor pre-eminence among the Jews, nevertheless was adorned by the Father with all, if not with the symbols, yet with the truth itself. ~ Eusebius

Today's Quote of the Day is an excerpt from 'The Religion of God (Divine Love)' by His Divine Eminence RA Gohar Shahi (http://thereligionofgod.com/)

'Had all humanity called upon God by one name, all would have been united inwardly despite different religions. ~ Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi

Sciences usually advances by a succession of small steps, through a fog in which even the most keen-sighted explorer can seldom see more than a few paces ahead. Occasionally the fog lifts, an eminence is gained, and a wider stretch of territory can be surveyed-sometimes with startling results. A whole science may then seem to undergo a kaleidoscopic rearrangement, fragments of knowledge sometimes being found to fit together in a hitherto unsuspected manner. Sometimes the shock of readjustment may spread to other sciences; sometimes it may divert the whole current of human thought. ~ James Jeans

Hence a 'bishop' who has set his heart on a position of eminence rather than an opportunity for service should realize that he is no bishop. So ~ Augustine Of Hippo

A position of eminence makes a great person greater and a small person less. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

They should live all together on an equal footing; merit to be their only road to eminence, and the disgrace of evil, and credit of worthy acts, their one measure of difference between man and man. ~ Plutarch

Flaubert teaches you to gave upon the truth and not blink from its consequences; he teaches you, with Montaigne, to sleep on the pillow of doubt; he teaches you to dissect out the constituent parts of reality, and to observe the Nature is always a mixture of genres; he teaches you the most exact use of language; he teaches you not to approach a book in search of moral or social pills
literature is not a pharmacopoeia; he teaches the pre-eminence of Truth, Beauty, Feeling and Style. And if you study his private life, he teaches courage, stoicism, friendship; the importance of intelligence, skepticism and wit; the folly of cheap patriotism; the virtue of being able to remain by yourself in your own room; the hatred of hypocrisy; distrust of the doctrinaire; the need for plain speaking. ~ Julian Barnes

Frederick Douglass, former slave, extraordinary speaker and writer, wrote in his Rochester newspaper the North Star, January 21, 1848, of "the present disgraceful, cruel, and iniquitous war with our sister republic. Mexico seems a doomed victim to Anglo Saxon cupidity and love of dominion." Douglass was scornful of the unwillingness of opponents of the war to take real action (even the abolitionists kept paying their taxes): The determination of our slaveholding President to prosecute the war, and the probability of his success in wringing from the people men and money to carry it on, is made evident, rather than doubtful, by the puny opposition arrayed against him. No politician of any considerable distinction or eminence seems willing to hazard his popularity with his party . . . by an open and unqualified disapprobation of the war. None seem willing to take their stand for peace at all risks; and all seem willing that the war should be carried on, in some form or other. ~ Howard Zinn

An upright character is of greater worth than the gold of Ophir. Without it none can rise to an honorable eminence. But character is not inherited. It cannot be bought. Moral excellence and fine mental qualities are not the result of accident. The most precious gifts are of no value unless they are improved. The formation of a noble character is the work of a lifetime and must be the result of diligent and persevering effort. God gives opportunities; success depends upon the use made of them. - Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 222, 223. ~ Ellen G. White

Know you that Allah has made Islam the most sublime path for attainment of His supreme pleasure and the highest standards of his worship and obedience. He has favoured it with noble precepts, exalted principles, undoubtable arguments, unchallengeable supremacy and undeniable wisdom. It is up to you to maintain the eminence and dignity granted to it by the Lord, to follow it sincerely, to do justice to its articles of faith and belief, to obey implicitly its tenets and orders and to give it the proper place in your lives. ~ Ali Ibn Abi Talib

Perhaps the rhinos and she-crocodiles whose gyrations between Mortimer's and East Hampton gives us our vision of social eminence today are content to entrust their faces to Andy Warhol's mingily cosmetic Polaroidising, but one would bet they would rather go to Sargent. ~ Robert Hughes

The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticism of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from it's indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and pre-eminence. ~ Thomas Jefferson

We are more put off by people who parade their dignity than by people who show off their wardrobes. When people have to trick themselves out to gain attention, it is a sure sign that they are unworthy of it. If we want to make ourselves worthy, we can do so only by the innate eminence conferred by virtue. We hold great people in esteem more for the qualities of their soul than for the qualities of their fortune. ~ Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...

...nothing is more blissful than to occupy the heights effectively fortified by the teaching of the wise, tranquil sanctuaries from which you can look down upon others and see them wandering everywhere in their random search for the way of life, competing for intellectual eminence, disputing about rank, and striving night and day with prodigious effort to scale the summit of wealth and to secure power. O minds of mortals, blighted by your blindness! Amid what deep darkness and daunting dangers life's little day is passed! To think that you should fail to see that nature importantly demands only that the body may be rid of pain, and that the mind, divorced from anxiety and fear, may enjoy a feeling of contentment! ~ Titus Lucretius Carus

His stark beauty was the least of his eminence. His stature, that self-assuredness, that ability to handle anything or anyone was what made him so enigmatic. ~ Vanessa Fewings

The Grace of God and the human will are co-operant, but not on equal terms. Grace has the pre-eminence. ~ William Burton Pope

I wonder if any of you have ever noticed that it is sometimes those who find most pleasure and amusement in their fellow man, and have most hope in his goodness, who get the reputation of being his most carping critics. Maybe it is that the satirist is so full of the possibilities of humankind in general, that he tends to draw a dark and garish picture when he tries to depict people as they are at any particular moment. The satirist is usually a pretty unpopular fellow. The only time he attains even fleeting popularity is when his works can be used by some political faction as a stick to beat out the brains of their opponents. Satirical writing is by definition unpopular writing. Its aim is to prod people into thinking. Thinking hurts.
(John Dos Passos, 1957, from the speech he delivered upon accepting the Gold Medal for Eminence in Fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters) ~ John Dos Passos

By the '40s, Sam Goldwyn is a very serious man. By the '50s, he's the dean of American producers. To the end, he was Hollywood's gray eminence. ~ A. Scott Berg

If you are one of the truly elect, be careful how you attain your eminence. ~ C.P. Cavafy

I will be satisfied if my epitaph shall be written thus: 'Here lies one who never rose to any eminence, who only courted the low ambition to have it said that he striven to ameliorate the condition of the poor, the lowly, the
downtrodden of every race and language and color.' ~ Thaddeus Stevens

As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight. ~ Thomas Paine

The iambic pentameter owes its pre-eminence in English poetry to its genius for variation. Good blank verse does not sound like a series of identically measured lines. It sounds like a series of subtle variations on the same theme. ~ James Fenton

Satan may play his wicked role in the drama and take Job's children and strike him with boils from head to toe, but Job will not give Satan the eminence of ultimate causality. That belongs to God alone, even if we cannot understand it all. When Job's ten children were crushed to death, he "fell upon the ground, and worshiped. And he said, 'Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return; the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD'" (Job 1:20-21, RSV). ~ John Piper

Persons who are born too soon or born too late seldom achieve the eminence of those who are born at the right time. ~ Katharine Anthony

No one loves his country for its size or eminence, but because it's his own. ~ Seneca The Younger

She is a reflection of comfortable middle-class values that do not take seriously the continuing unemployment. What I particularly regret is that she does not take seriously the intellectual decline. Having given up the Empire and the mass production of industrial goods, Britain's future lay in its scientific and artistic pre-eminence. Mrs Thatcher will be long remembered for the damage she has done. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

There are so many highly esteemed ones who became miserable and humiliated just because of their bad temper and morals; and humble people who have attained eminence and the highest honors because of good temper and morals. ~ Ali Ibn Abi Talib

I spent on the Other Earth many "other years," wandering from mind to mind and country to country, but I did not gain any clear understanding of the psychology of the Other Men and the significance of their history till I encountered one of their philosophers, an aging but still vigorous man whose eccentric and unpalatable views had prevented him from attaining eminence. ~ Olaf Stapledon

Woolf turned her back on a number of tokens of her rising eminence in the 1930s, including an offer of the Companion of Honour award, an invitation from Cambridge University to give the Clark lectures, and honorary doctorate degrees from Manchester University and Liverpool University.
'It is an utterly corrupt society,' she wrote in her diary, '. . . & I will take nothing that it can give me ~ Jane Goldman

I never climbed any ladder: I have achieved eminence by sheer gravitation. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Well, in that case, your mighty eminence of unbiased objectivity and impartiality," said the Accuser sarcastically, "I ask for seven days to finish discovery, since I was surprised by the unreasonable volume of documents that deluged my council. These tablets of unending toledoth are time consuming." He was referring to the clay tablets that contained the genealogies of the heavens and the earth as well as those of Adam's descendants. The gall of this rascal amazed Enoch. He could turn everything into an accusation, even against Yahweh Elohim. The Accuser continued, "And you really have to admit that this endless list of animal names is quite tedious and would fatigue any staff, much less my own of less than two hundred Watchers." After a deliberate delay, he added, "Your magnificent majesty most high. ~ Brian Godawa

I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning. ~ Jonathan Swift

Knowledge can be heady stuff, but it easily leads to an excess of zeal!
to illusions of grandeur and a desire to impress others and achieve eminence ... Our search for knowledge should be ceaseless, which means that it is open-ended, never resting on laurels, degrees, or past achievements. ~ Hugh Nibley

Dream Song 90: Op. posth. no. 13

In the night-reaches dreamed he of better graces,
of liberations, and beloved faces,
such as now ere dawn he sings.
It would not be easy, accustomed to these things,
to give up the old world, but he could try;
let it all rest, have a good cry.

Let Randall rest, whom your self-torturing
cannot restore one instant's good to, rest:
he's left us now.
The panic died and in the panic's dying
so did my old friend. I am headed west
also, also, somehow.

In the chambers of the end we'll meet again
I will say Randall, he'll say Pussycat
and all will be as before
whenas we sought, among the beloved faces,
eminence and were dissatisfied with that
and needed more. ~ John Berryman

But young men have not only this frivolous ambition of being thought masters of execution, inciting them on the one hand, but also their natural sloth tempting them on the other. They are terrified at the prospect before them, of the toil required to attain exactness. The impetuosity of youth is disgusted at the slow approaches of a regular siege, and desires, from mere impatience of labour, to take the citadel by storm. They wish to find some shorter path to excellence, and hope to obtain the reward of eminence by other means, than those which the indispensable rules of art have prescribed. ~ Joshua Reynolds

Things have their time, even eminence bows to timeliness. ~ Baltasar Gracian

What may appear as a towering peak to one may seem but an ordinary eminence to another. ~ Cargill Gilston Knott

It is to be regretted that few persons who have arrived at any degree of eminence or fame, have written Memorials of themselves, at least such as have embraced their private as well as their public life. ~ Adam Clarke

Thomas Cromwell is now about fifty years old. He has a labourer's body, stocky, useful, running to fat. He has black hair, greying now, and because of his impermeable skin, which seems designed to resist rain as well as sun, people sneer that his father was an Irishman, though really he was a brewer and a blacksmith at Putney, a shearsman too, a man with a finger in every pie, a scrapper and a brawler, a drunk and a bully, a man often hauled before the justices for punching someone, for cheating someone. How the son of such a man has achieved his present eminence is a question all Europe asks. ~ Hilary Mantel

Tungnath's lonely eminence gives it a magic of its own. To get there (or beyond), one passes through some of the most delightful temperate forest in the Garhwal Himalaya. Pilgrim, or trekker, or just plain rambler such as myself, one comes away a better person, forest-refreshed, and more aware of what the world was really like before mankind began to strip it bare. Duiri ~ Ruskin Bond

responds to and develops recent currents of critical and scholarly thought which see Shakespeare not as a lone eminence but as a fully paid-up member of the theatrical community of his time, a working playwright with professional obligations to the theatre personnel without whose collaboration his art would have been ineffectual, and one who, like most other playwrights of the age, actively collaborated with other writers, not necessarily always as a senior partner. ~ Stanley Wells

The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than his intellectual nature. I know they cannot be divorced
that without intelligence we should be brutes
but it is the tendency of our gaping, wondering dispositions to give pre-eminence to those faculties which most astonish us. Strength of character seldom, if ever, astonishes; goodness, lovingness, and quiet self-sacrifice, are worth all the talents in the world. ~ George Henry Lewes

Power is seldom innocent, and envy is the yokefellow of eminence. ~ Martin Farquhar Tupper

When they had ended their prayers, the Angel of Death recovered his loquacity and his gayety and ascending the chariot again, preceded by Gil Gil, spoke as follows.

'The village you see on that mountain is Gethsemane. In it was the Garden of Olives. On the other side you can distinguish an eminence crowned by a temple which stands out against a starry sky - that is Golgotha. There I passed the greatest day of my existence. I thought I had vanquished God himself - and vanquished he was for some hours. But, alas! on that mount, too, it was that three days later I saw myself disarmed and my power brought to naught on the morning of a certain Sunday. Jesus had risen from the dead. There, too, took place on the same occasion my great single combat with Nature. There took place my duel with her, that terrible duel (at the third hour of the day, I remember it well), when, as soon as she saw me thrust the lance of Longinus in the breast of the Saviour she began to throw stones at me, to upturn the cemeteries, to bring the dead to life, and I know not what besides. I thought poor Nature had lost her senses.'

The Angel of Death seemed to reflect for a moment... ("The Friend of Death") ~ Pedro Antonio De Alarcón

Bear with me then, if lawful what I ask; Love not the heav'nly Spirits, and how thir Love Express they, by looks onely, or do they mix Irradiance, virtual or immediate touch? To whom the Angel with a smile that glow'd Celestial rosie red, Loves proper hue, Answer'd. Let it suffice thee that thou know'st Us happie, and without Love no happiness. Whatever pure thou in the body enjoy'st (And pure thou wert created) we enjoy In eminence, and obstacle find none Of membrane, joynt, or limb, exclusive barrs: Easier then Air with Air, if Spirits embrace, Total they mix, Union of Pure with Pure Desiring; nor restrain'd conveyance need As Flesh to mix with Flesh, or Soul with Soul. But I can now no more; the parting Sun Beyond the Earths green Cape and verdant Isles HESPEREAN sets, my Signal to depart. ~ John Milton

Charles Talent Manx the Third at your service, my dear! CEO of Christmasland Enterprises, director of Christmasland Entertainment, president of fun! Also His Eminence, the King Shit of Turd Hill, although it doesn't say that on my card. ~ Joe Hill

As much depended on the priest's willingness to listen to his imploring cry, a leprous Israelite would often go up to the spot whence he could call on him desponding or fearful. And the priest, however willing, might be busy so as not to be able to come at once. As, with most wistful eye, the man gazes on the living, cheerful camp, he sees one and another meet the priest and pour some message or entreaty into his ear - so that the priest is detained, and hurried away to this and that part of the camp, while the trembling, weary leper waits at the gate. In this we see that our high priest hath the pre-eminence - never too busy - never unwilling - never unable. "He waits that he may be gracious." (Isa. 30.18). Neither the business nor the bliss of heaven will detain him from a wretched soul. He who in the days of his flesh forgot to eat, and even ceased to feel faintness, when a soul stood before him in his leprosy, has nothing now to keep him from instant compassion. He who on the cross, under the dark shade of the approaching cloud of wrath and of death, heard the heaving of his mother's bosom and the rush of anguish through her heart - has nothing now to hinder him freely to direct his ever ready compassions towards the coming leper. Even as this is true in regard to those already come, so also is it to the coming. ~ Andrew A. Bonar

though this pre-eminence in it applies to the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe; ~ Herman Melville

I beg your forgiveness, Your Eminence. I would not truly feed your face to the hogs. It might make them sick. ~ Mary E. Pearson

The one profession where you can gain great eminence without ever being right. ~ George Meany

Sauces comprise the honor and glory of French cookery. They have contributed to its superiority, or pre-eminence, which is disputed by none. Sauces are the orchestration and accompaniment of a fine meal, and enable a good chef or cook to demonstrate his talent. ~ Curnonsky

If I were a German today, I would be proud, proud but also worried. I would be proud of the magnificent achievement of rebuilding my country, entrenching democracy and assuming the undoubtedly preponderant position in Europe. But a united Germany can't and won't subordinate its national interests in economic or in foreign policy to those of the Community indefinitely. Germany's new pre-eminence is a fact - and its power is a problem - as much for Germans as for the rest of Europe. ~ Margaret Thatcher

His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of
Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the most reverend Dr William
Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, the chief
rabbi, the presbyterian moderator, the heads of the baptist, anabaptist,
methodist and Moravian chapels and the honorary secretary of the society
of friends. ~ James Joyce

Wherever the human mind is healthy and vigorous in all its proportions, great in imagination and emotion no less than in intellect, and not overborne by an undue or hardened pre-eminence of the mere reasoning faculties, there the grotesque will exist in full energy. ~ John Ruskin

They're not bad people. They just want a little more."

"I thought feelings did not come into it?" The Arch Lector's left eye had started to weep, and he pulled out a white handkerchief and gently dabbed it. "You grew up in the camps, Inquisitor Teufel."

"You know I did, Your Eminence."

"You have seen humanity in the raw."

"About as raw as it gets, Your Eminence."

"So tell me. These good people. If they get a little more, what will they want then?"

Vick paused a moment, but there was nothing else to say. "A little more."

"Because that is the nature of people. And their little more must be taken from someone else, and that someone else will be less than delighted. One cannot eliminate unhappiness any more than one can eliminate darkness. The goal of government, you see," and the Arch Lector prodded at the air with his bony forefinger, "is to load the unhappiness onto those least able to make you suffer for it. ~ Joe Abercrombie