Best

“ And I like those authors best whose scenes describe my own situation in life,—and the friends who are about me, whose stories touch me with interest, from resembling my own homely existence,—which, without being absolutely paradise, is, on the whole, a source of indescribable happiness." ”

“ “If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others? ”

“ The novels are as useful as Bibles, if they teach you the secret, that the best of life is conversation, and the greatest success is confidence, or perfect understanding between sincere people. ”

“ May we not, then, look forward to the time when “the best that has anywhere been in the [Pg 106] world shall be the lot of every man born into it”—that is to say, the lot of every man who desires the best? ”

“ Ideals, then, which are the motives, resulting from ideas, represent the highest effort of man after what is best and most beautiful. Most beautiful because it is best and best because it is most beautiful. ”

“ But most of the best works are heard all the same--which, after all, is the principal thing--and the enjoyment and edification which result are not less genuine because of the simplicity of the properties and the humble character of the entire surroundings. ”

“ As you grow ready for it, somewhere or other you will find what is needful for you—in a book, or a friend, or, best of all in your own thoughts—the eternal thought speaking in your thought.” ”

“ “Do my best all-round keep good company, read good books, love good things, and cultivate soul and body as faithfully and wisely as I can.” ”

“ We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can, and would fain have the praise of having intended the result which ensues. ”

“ They will enable us to find our level, they will spur us on to bring out the best—and only the best—that is within us.
Take, for instance, the gentleman who objects to realistic fiction on moral grounds. ”

“ and thus is the prudence of the best of heads often defeated by the tenderness of the best of hearts. ”

“ "His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors;
Our valors are our best gods." ”

“ It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive from the best books. ”

“ "If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others? ”

“ Ah, sister! Desolation is a delicate thing:
It walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air,
But treads with killing footstep, and fans with silent wing
The tender hopes which in their hearts the best and gentlest bear;
Who, soothed to false repose by the fanning plumes above
And the music-stirring motion of its soft and busy feet,
Dream visions of aerial joy, and call the monster, Love,
And wake, and find the shadow Pain, as he whom now we greet. ”

“ Few schools can boast of overgenerous appropriations; many not infrequently have failed to receive all that has been asked for, and have thus often been prevented from doing their best work. Yet it may be said that if the legislatures have not always responded with alacrity, or always bounteously, or at all times with a full sense of their responsibility, they have responded at least with cheerfulness, [322] and mindful of all the calls upon the state's treasury, and often according to the best of their light. ”

“ We may perhaps best approach the problem of deafness as an increasing or decreasing phenomenon in the population, if we think of the deaf as composed of two great classes: those adventitiously deaf, that is, those who have lost their hearing by some disease or accident occurring after birth, and those congenitally deaf, that is, those who have never had hearing. ”

“ My only thought when the carriage came to a halt was how to escape from those two pursuers, and that more or less pervaded my mind during what followed so that ordinary matters which at another time would have been at once clear to me, meant nothing at all. You see, the instant that carriage came to a standstill some one threw open the door, and I heard a voice call ‘Where is the best man?’ Then another voice said, ‘Here he is!’ I took it that they thought I was best man, but would soon discover that I wasn’t when I came into the light. ”

“ Fleetwood hasn't betrayed the State. There isn't a scar on his public record--he is still the best man for the place. My business is to appoint the best man I can find, and I can't find any one as good as Fleetwood."
"But--but--your wife?" Shackwell stammered. ”

“ Let us break off all commerce with the Muse:
With Thought and Love companions of our way,
Whate'er the senses take or may refuse,
The Mind's internal heaven shall shed her dews
Of inspiration on the humblest lay. ”

“ With his second policy in his pocket, Harry reverted quite casually to the subject of insurance, although he had first taken the precaution to have a lot of insurance literature sent to Alice. From this she learned that nothing could quite equal it in making the future secure.
“I have decided,” said Harry in an offhand way, “that the best investment for a young man who has any one dependent upon him is life insurance. I have just taken out another policy for a thousand dollars.” ”

“ America is a great country. Our democracy is vibrant, our economy is dynamic, and our workers can outcompete the best of them. But the way for us to remain the greatest country on Earth isn’t to turn back the clock and put the special interests in charge. ”

“ You class Fleetwood with Gregg? The best man in the State with a little beggarly thieving nonentity? It's evident enough you're new at wire-pulling, or you would show more skill at it!"
She met this with a laugh. "I'm not likely to have much practice if my first attempt is such a failure. Well, I will see if Mrs. Gregg will let me help her a little--I suppose there is nothing else to be done."
"Nothing that we can do. If Gregg wants a place he had better get one on the staff of the 'Spy.' He served them better than he did me." ”

“ Thomson gives us the best account of the Maori system of time-division in his Story of New Zealand, and also of the regulating agents employed: "Although time passes away among them like a shadow, the unrecorded year is divided into thirteen moons, and each moon is distinguished by the rising of stars, the flowering of plants, and the arrival of two migratory birds. June is the first month of the year, and it is recognized by the appearance of the Puanga star in the morning. July is marked by the stars Kopu and Tautoru and the flowering of the karaka tree. ”

“ Murray told were very sad.”
“Oh, Murray was after business,” he said with a laugh. “He told me long ago that he intended to insure me, and it’s been a sort of friendly duel with us ever since. But he has convinced me that he is right in holding that every married man should carry life insurance, and, aside from that, I would cheerfully pay double premiums to relieve you of any cause for worry. The insurance company is going to get the best of me, though: I’ll live long enough to pay in more than it will have to pay out.” ”

“ Yet every minute that they continued to think so was a distinct gain for Gordon, puzzling his pursuers and giving himself time to think and plan and study his strange surroundings.
And now they were drawing him forward and a turn of his head gave him a vision of the stubbed head of the thick-set man peering in at the chapel door and watching him eagerly. He must fool him if possible.
“But I don’t know anything about the arrangements,” faltered Gordon, reflecting that the best man might not be very well known to the ushers and perhaps he resembled him. ”

“ Everybody knows he didn't come to me with clean hands, but to hurt him now the 'Spy' would have to fasten a new scandal on him, and that would not be easy."
"It would be easy to invent one!"
"Unproved accusations don't count much against a man of such proved capacity. The best answer is his record of the last two years. That is what the public looks at."
"The public looks wherever the press points. And besides, you have your own future to consider. It would be a pity to sacrifice such a career as yours for the sake of backing up even as useful a man as George Fleetwood." ”

“ Moffat’s claim. Murray was not in particularly good humor that day. A friend had been arguing to him that corporations are notoriously ungrateful for services rendered, and another friend had endeavored to demonstrate that life insurance companies had a way of forcing a man to the limit of his endurance, of squeezing all the life and energy out of him in a few years, and then dropping him.
The worst of it was that some of the cases cited Murray knew to be true: men were “forced” and then left to seek other avenues of employment when insurance had got the best that was in them. ”

“ We couldn’t very well go on without you—you know. But don’t let that worry you. It’s all right now you’ve come. Forget it, old man, and hustle.” Dimly Gordon perceived above the sound of subdued hubbub that an organ was playing, and even as he listened it burst into the joyous notes of the wedding march. It dawned upon him that this was not a prison to which he had come but a church—not a court-room but a wedding, and horror of horrors! they took him [48] for the best man. His disguise had been his undoing. How was he to get out of this scrape? And with his pursuers just behind! ”

“ How wonderful is its affection for light—taking in the rays eagerly, dissolving them, and sending them forth again to gladden the eyes in rich prismatic beauty! And to what mental quality must the diamond correspond? As it loves the sun's rays, in which are heat and light—must it not correspond to the affection of things good and true?—heat being of love, and light of truth or wisdom? The wearer of diamonds, then, should have in her heart the heavenly affection to which they correspond. She should be loving and wise. ”

“ The short, thick-set man was getting out of the car, and the motor-cyclist had stood his machine up [47] against the wall and was coming toward the carriage. Escape was going to be practically impossible. A wild thought of dashing out the opposite door of his carriage, boldly seizing the motor-cycle and making off on it passed through his mind, and then the door on his left was flung open and the carriage was immediately surrounded by six excited men in evening dress all talking at once. “Here you are at last!” they chorused.
“Where is the best man?” ”

“ And your love would confer upon its precious object the richest blessings. Dear friend! Lift your thoughts a little way above the clouds that sorrow has gathered around your heart, and let perception come into an atmosphere radiant with light from the Sun of Truth. Think of your child as destined to become, in the better world to which God has removed him, a wise and loving angel. ”

“ Markland was already lifting his hand to wave her back, when Compassion, who had just then found an old way into his heart, hidden for a long time by rank weeds and brambles, said, in soft and pitying tones:
"She is such a little child!"
"A thieving beggar!" cried Unkindness and Suspicion, angrily.
"A weak little child," pleaded Compassion. "Don't be hard with her. Speak kindly."
Compassion prevailed. Her voice had awakened into life some old and long sleeping memories. Markland was himself, for a moment, a child, full of pity, tenderness and loving-kindness. ”

“ On one side is the private fact that my wife, without my knowledge, borrowed money from Fleetwood just before I appointed him to an important post; on the other side is his public record and mine. I want people to see both sides and judge between them, not in the red glare of a newspaper denunciation, but in the plain daylight of common-sense. Charges against the private morality of a public man are usually made in such a blare of headlines and cloud of mud-throwing that the voice he lifts up in his defence can not make itself heard. ”

“ Yet it remains that by and through all this the deaf have been the gainers as no other people in the world have ever been, and their story is as no other's in the rise of a section of mankind towards the richness and fullness of living which are the fruits of humanized society.
Great indeed can be the rejoicing of the deaf, for they are those to whom the way has been hard and long, but who have come from the darkness into the light. ”

“ The face into which I looked was of that fine oval which always pleases the eye, even where the countenance itself does not light up well with the changes of thought. But, in this case, a pair of calm, deep, living eyes, and lips of shape most exquisitely delicate and feminine—giving warrant of a beautiful soul—caused the face of Miss Gardiner to hold the vision as by a spell. ”

“ In how many branches of excellence to consider and admire him! Whether we view him on the side of art or nature, he ought equally to engage our attention; whether we respect the force and greatness of his genius, the extent of his knowledge and reading, the power and address with which he throws out and applies either nature or learning, there is ample scope both for our wonder and pleasure. If his diction and the clothing of his thoughts attract us, how much more must we be charmed with the richness and variety of his images and ideas! ”

“ You may make of life insurance a cheap business, or you may make of it a dignified profession; you may be a mere annoying canvasser, or you may be a man who commands respect; but, to be really successful, you must have, or acquire, a technical knowledge of the basis of insurance, a knowledge of law, and, above all, a knowledge of human nature,—and even that will avail little if you are not temperamentally suited to the work. ”

“ It lay more like an emblem than a jewel against her bosom. It never drew your attention from her face, nor dimmed, by contrast, the radiance of her soul-lit eyes. I was charmed, from the beginning, with this young lady. Her thoughts were real gems, rich and rare, and when she spoke there was the flash of diamonds in her sentences; not the flash of mere brilliant sayings, like the gleaming of a polished sword, but of living truths, that lit up with their own pure radiance every mind that received them. ”

“ Notwithstanding the impairment of his health, his different labors were continued, not the least of which was his office as chaplain of the Connecticut Asylum for the Insane. To Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet America owes a rare debt. Without him the work for the deaf would have been taken up eventually by other hands, but he brought to his task a disregard for obstacles, a splendid idealism, a fine conception of duty, a complete forgetfulness of self, a singular beauty of character, and a great human love that could have existed in but few other men. ”