Sentence Examples:
As usual the most empty make the greatest noise, and the declaimers vie with each other in coarseness, violence, and stupidity.
To them also I addressed some select moral discourse regularly, and every individual among them seemed to vie with his companions in avoiding every thing verging on impropriety; and the language of passion, anger, or indecency, became quite strange among them.
The children, who are sitting around in large numbers, vie with their elders in matters of idleness, though they are occasionally aroused to a condition of pernicious activity by the hope of securing donations or compensation of some kind from newcomers and guests.
Those writers, therefore, command a more ready attention who, regarding this public opinion as final, proceed to vie with each other in their jubilant praise of the war, and of the powerful influences it has brought to bear upon morality, culture, and art.
Such pride, if it existed, might do much for the regeneration of great cities, by creating a series of eager and intelligent communities, which would vie with one another in civic self-improvement; but this is just the kind of pride which does not exist.
In fact, the vessel was Catalan built, and the captain and crew were of that nation; the greater part of the passengers already on board, or who subsequently arrived, appeared to be Catalans, and seemed to vie with each other in producing disagreeable sounds.
In the evening, on the return of the officers on board, they expressed themselves highly delighted with the country and the very obliging behavior of the inhabitants, who seemed to vie with each other in doing what they thought would please their visitors.
I shall merely notice here, that after the practice of modelling had been brought to vie with sculpture; and after engraving upon wood had so well counterfeited works of design, we have to record this third invention, belonging to a state of no great dimensions.
Are we placing our attractive children's rooms, clean and orderly, adorned with flowers and fine pictures, where they may be readily seen from the street, where picture books placed in the windows may vie in alluring powers with the nickel-novel window displays?
As it is, we see the legislature, judges, juries, parsons, specially those of the nonconformist persuasion, all vie with one another in denouncing the villainy and baseness of the male person, and ever devising ways and means to make his life hard for him.
The wholesomeness of such a practice, in a country where the strides of putrefaction know no bounds, infection and its effects being prodigiously extensive and rapid, cannot be disputed; such an ordinance may vie with the acts of any other legislature, however enlightened.
They vie with each other in being corrupt; and, if we could but raise a few thousand pounds to bribe the scoundrels, and we managed the thing properly, your lordship might walk out of these gates in open day, without officer, turnkey, or warder seeing you.
Gounod's warmest friends were amazed by the beauty of the masterpiece, in which exquisite melody, great orchestration, and a dramatic passion never surpassed in operatic art, were combined with a scientific skill and precision which would vie with that of the great masters of harmony.
No soldier can vie with a Frenchman in tempering respect with familiarity; so that while preserving toward me all the freedom of the comrade, they recognized in every detail of duty the necessity of prompt obedience, and followed every command I gave with implicit submission.
For so the chief's daughter was called, resounded from every quarter; and the women seemed to vie with each other in mourning her fate with more significant expressions of their grief than tears and cries, for there were many bloody heads upon the occasion.
I have many times took great satisfaction by standing in the court, and seeing how the tawdry butterflies vie upon one another: the ladies shall measure the height of their humors by the length of their trails, which must be borne up by a page behind.
Although then a place of great trade, and giving indubitable promise of what it has since become, New York was far, very far from approaching its present splendor and magnificence, which entitle it to vie with the most brilliant capitals of the world.
They cannot vie with the Greeks in intellectual gifts, and they never possessed the force that determines the course of history; but they were able to develop their capabilities earlier than other nations, and thus secured for the world the substantial groundwork of civilization.
From Paris to the Italian frontier one finds the roads uniformly excellent; but, as one enters Italy, they deteriorate somewhat, except along the frontiers, where, curiously enough, nations seem to vie with each other in a careful maintenance of the highroads, which is, of course, laudable.
Order, symmetry, elegance, beauty of ornament, gracefulness of symbolic imagery, had all combined to exhibit the external manifestations which are always seen among people who are not only anxious to gratify others as well as themselves, but to vie with each other in the exhibition of individual tastes.
Lastly, we may consider Irene, as one other illustrious proof, that the most strict adherence to the far-famed unities, the most harmonious versification, and the most correct philosophy, will not vie with a single and simple touch of nature, expressed in simple and artless language.
Or best of all, highest of all, might he not vie with that abnormal and remarkable man who wore at once the three crowns, and whether as Edinburgh Reviewer, as knight of the shire for York, or as Chancellor of England, played his part with equal ease?
All seemed to vie with each other in rendering us every aid in their power; and our Mexican friends, notwithstanding the hostile attitude in which the two countries stood towards each other, were treated with a kindness which they still recollect with the warmest feelings of gratitude.
While the matter is yet undecided the competitors vie with each other in pouring correspondence into the nearest post office in order to show the postal importance of their respective villages, an importance which is apt to decline sadly when once the post office has been opened.
These dealers, jobbers, manufacturers and others interested in the maintenance and the improvement of the local stores and the local community, and who oppose any extension of the domestic parcels post, vie with its advocates in denunciation of the extortionate charges of the express companies.
Those who could neither vie with Gustavus Adolphus in importance, nor suffer from his ambition, expected the more from the magnanimity of their powerful ally, who enriched them with the spoils of their enemies and protected them against the oppression of their stronger neighbors.
One is apt to wonder that, through all this part of the world, those districts which are most barren and unwholesome are the best inhabited; while other places, that seem to vie with our nations of the terrestrial paradise, in beauty and fertility, are but thinly peopled.
The Canadian Empire will probably one day lock hands with the imperial States of the Northwest; Mexico, perhaps, will join the Confederacy, and Western America will doubtless vie with Eastern Russia in power, in progress, and in the glories of the achievements of the arts and sciences.
The system is wasteful both of money and energy, for the isolated departments often overlap unconsciously; and since there is no local check, the tendency is for the head of a department to increase his local staff and to vie with other heads in securing large estimates.
What bounds can the vision of the human mind descry to the spread of American greatness, if we but firmly adhere to those first principles of government, which have already enabled us, in the infancy of national existence, to vie with the proudest of the century-nurtured states of Europe?
The relation between them was really a beautiful one, such as does not often arise between two young men; for they did not understand friendship as binding the one to bear everything at the hands of the other, but seemed rather to vie with each other in mutual considerateness.
That he could have foreseen this day, when the poet and the historian, the manly and the fair, the peer and the peasant, vie with each other in paying their tribute of admiration to the untaught but mighty genius whom we hail as the first of Scottish poets!
Along her mouth are spread rows of teeth, which from the sharpness of their appearance, might belong to a wild beast, the neck is of an immense thickness; and the whole appearance is one which may vie in frightfulness with any deity or demon of this idolatrous people.
As we have said elsewhere, instead of spending their time in idle talk and unprofitable occupation, if not in unpleasant dissension, they now vie with each other in producing works of art and usefulness, and as a matter of course the annual distribution of rewards is a great incentive to exertion.
We have shown, that in proportion to their numbers, they vie and compare favorably in point of means and possessions, with the class of citizens who from chance of superior advantages, have studiously contrived to oppress and deprive them of equal rights and privileges, in common with themselves.
Gladden, then, the hearts of the Achaeans at your ships, and more especially those of your own followers and clansmen, while I, in the great city of King Priam, bring comfort to the Trojans and their women, who vie with one another in their prayers on my behalf.
While Great Britain and the United States have undertaken to vie with each other in Free Trade, France holds fast to the principle of Protection, with scarcely a division in her Councils on the subject; and she is consequently amassing in silence the wealth created by other Nations.
My only wish, my sole aim, is to render you as happy as you were before unhappy, to exalt you as you have been abased, for the last trace of your humiliation must disappear when you see the noblest in the land vie with each other who shall show you most respect.
The estuary of the Shannon might well vie with Dingle Bay under conditions similar to those of the preceding day, but we see only a leaden sheet of water fading away in the fitful showers or lying sullenly under the dim outlines of the coast of County Clare.
Perhaps too there was the least mite of haughtiness in her manner, born of the knowledge that she belonged to an old and honored family, and that she had in her possession a trunk full of clothes that could vie with any that Hannah Heath could display.
While I looked on admiring the dresses of the ladies and the extravagances of the gentlemen, who seemed to vie with each other in calling attention to themselves by their dress and by their gestures, there passed me, walking alone, a lady whom at first I did not recognize.
It is said that on more than one occasion the Cortes deplored the prevalent extravagance and the foolish pride which made even the laboring classes vie in richness of dress with the nobility, "whereby they not only squander their own estate, but bring poverty and want to all."
Neither was all the dazzle of the precious stones, which flamed with their own light, worth one gleam of natural sunshine; nor could the most brilliant of the many-colored gems which Proserpina had for playthings vie with the simple beauty of the flowers she used to gather.
Enthusiastic and independent in thought and action, she soon acquired the spoken language to a remarkable degree, and with a praiseworthy tenacity she studied the classical works of the Chinese, and at the same time could vie with most of the women in all branches of their domestic activities.
No one of the governing classes is guiltless in the matter; cabinets, senators, deputies, prefects, mayors, town councils, provincial councils, each and all, sin alike in this matricide, and seem to vie with each other in suggesting and executing the abominable projects which disgrace the close of the century.
Only the Great Wall of China can vie with it, and this is ruined and to a large extent obliterated, while the pyramid of Cheops still stands, scorched by the sun, or sharply defined in the moonlight, or dimly visible as a mysterious apparition in the dark, warm night.
The present volume, while not pretending to vie in any respect with the magnificence of the illustrations contained in these beautiful and costly works, nevertheless presents in recognizable form almost every species figured in them, and in addition a multitude of others, many of which have never before been delineated.
It is almost unnecessary to specify the innumerable kinds of work that can be done in a hand lathe, but the amateur who delights in metal turning may make trinkets of all kinds for his friends, that shall vie in beauty with the best efforts of the jeweler and goldsmith.
This, which was, perhaps, inevitable in a national collection professedly showing to the public every species of bird and mammal in the least possible space, is unpardonable in a provincial museum, which has not the task imposed upon it of attempting to vie with the national collection in point of numbers.
The rain was coming down in torrents through the blackness of the night; now and then the lightning would vie with the fire in lighting up the room, while the thunder seemed at home in that valley of the mountain, for its volleys of sound and their echoes never ceased.
Before he was available, the task of organizing and setting to work the new institution was unanimously entrusted to and accepted by President Eliot, of whose qualifications all I will say is that we foreign students of social problems vie with his own countrymen in our appreciation of his public work and aims.
Their musical system has never been carefully formed or elucidated, and although they may vie with the Chinese in the beauty of their poetical effusions, in the field of music their research is nothing, when compared with the immense patience and study which the latter people have given to the subject.
After recovering from these bitter recollections, they vie with each other in bursts of admiration for the brute, until some more than usually enthusiastic member, unable any longer to control his feelings, swoops down upon the unhappy quadruped in a frenzy of affection, clutches it to his heart, and slobbers over it.
Elwood, who had watched the operation with a housewife's interest, made her appearance with a roll of fine white tablecloths, the relics of her better days, and covered the whole with the snowy drapery, making a table which might vie in appearance with those of the most fashionable restaurants of the cities.
Whoso wish to woo a good lady and the daughter of a rich man, and vie one with another, themselves bring with them oxen of their own and goodly flocks, a banquet for the friends of the bride, and they give the lady splendid gifts, but do not devour another's livelihood without atonement.'
Individuals, platoons, whole companies and regiments offered themselves for their fellow men, and future historians will vie with one another in their endeavor to have live the thousands of heroic incidents in the great World War, to the end that they may serve as lamps for the feet of coming generations of freemen.
From all parts of the earth the representatives of science, of art, and of industry have hastened to vie with each other, and we may say that peoples and kings have both come to do honor to the efforts of labor, and to crown them by their presence with the idea of conciliation and peace.
I was not surprised when, laying down the ornament with which she had been toying, she turned on me one of those rare smiles to which the King could refuse nothing; and wherein wit, tenderness, and gaiety were so happily blended that no conceivable beauty of feature, uninspired by sensibility, could vie with them.
That in the loins of every titled legislator should lie the germ of another is a miracle (I grant you) of the first order, and may vie with Jonah's sojourn in the whale's belly; nay, it deserved an even longer run for its money, since it persuaded people that they saw the miraculous succession.
Here we have traced out for us in the most elaborate manner, the gradual development of the collegiate idea, from the time when it expressed itself in a building that had no particular plan, down to our own days, when colleges vie with one another in architectural splendor and in the lavish completeness of their arrangements.
The daughter declared, that she did not pretend to vie with anybody in point of riches; and if the lady, who insisted upon non-resistance, would promise to indemnify us all for the loss we should sustain, she would be one of the first to persuade the captain to submission, in case we should be attacked.
He quickly saw that the rear propeller was half buried in the water; and if it turned at all would have to churn things just as though they were in truth a queerly fashioned boat, instead of an airship, intended to mount to lofty heights, and vie with the eagle in his circling above the clouds.
All the afternoon the sky and sea, so nearly of the same cerulean hue that where they met they matched so perfectly as to seem a curtain of the same texture, had appeared to vie with each other in their placidity, while now the stars overhead were scarcely brighter than their reflections in the waters below.
For it was impossible to believe that any iron road running across fields and waste places could vie with this splendid highway, this orderly procession of coaches, travelling and stopping and meeting with the regularity of a weaver's shuttle, these long lines of laden wagons, these swift chaises horsed at every stage!
They are considered the only really warlike and aggressively savage tribe of the north, and it is the custom of the young men about to marry to vie with each other in presenting to the sires of their future brides all the scalps they are able to take from their enemies, as proof of their manly courage.
Not content with being admitted to equal privileges with the nobles, and vexed at not being able to vie with them in brilliant titles and long lines of illustrious ancestry, they did their utmost to surpass them in the magnificence of their houses, and in the pomp which they displayed upon every occasion.
Many of its political and social leaders vie with those of New York in rushing over to England and Germany to get the foreign construction of our Federal Constitution, and foreign consent to proposed financial legislation by Congress, and foreign sanction of the orders, social preferences and privileges, and marriages of our "corner"-made aristocracy.
Though we have seen some who have been foolish enough to forget the years that have passed, and cannot realize the fact that they are no longer young, and vie with the youngest in the youthfulness of their attire, we do not, we admit, often find the young endeavoring to make themselves look older than they are.
Much judgment, as well as vivacity, are displayed in the scholastic disputations, and nothing is wanting but greater liberality in the professors, or rather a removal of all ecclesiastical restrictions, with a better selection of books and instruments, to enable the university of Quito to vie with some of those of the most polished countries in Europe.
Vivid flashes of lightning that seemed to vie with each other in intensity, darted from the heavens, accompanied by deafening crashes of thunder that shook the building to its foundations, while the shrieking of the wind, as though it were rushing through the rigging of a ship at sea, added to the noise of the tempest.
He left her to the gray mystery of the stars, and passed back through the quiet, lamp-lit room and down the slippery stairs that led to the mundane world; and with each step he took, each breath he drew, the words from Louise repeated themselves, justifying all things, glorifying all things: 'C'est la vie!
And this humor of ordering their gardens so well, is not only kept up by the pleasure they find in it, but also by an emulation between the inhabitants of the several streets, who vie with each other; and there is indeed nothing belonging to the whole town that is both more useful and more pleasant.
Nothing could exceed the kindness and attention of our friends in Adelaide, who had literally inundated us with presents of every kind, each appearing to vie with the other in their endeavors to console us under our disappointments, to cheer us in our future efforts, and if possible, to make us almost forget that we were in the wilds.
It means the coming of a day when love shall rule and war shall cease, when reason and righteousness shall be the arbitrators for differences between nations, when owls and bats will nest in the portholes of battleships, and each nation will vie with the other in warring against the kingdoms of want and wickedness.
When I look around and see the happiness here, even among the poorer classes, and that too in a country where the soil is not at all to be compared with our own, I mourn for our down-trodden countrymen, who are plundered, oppressed, and made chattels of, to enable an ostentatious aristocracy to vie with each other in splendid extravagance.
Of all the forms which have been handed down to us from the most remote antiquity, the bronze sword is the most beautiful, and it is very questionable if any of the hundreds of shapes of lethal weapons of that description which have subsequently seen the light can vie with it in symmetry of form and general gracefulness.
The friends of a lady near her confinement, vie with each other in procuring her every kind of supernatural assistance for the trying hour; when, strange to say, she is often dressed in the episcopal robes of some saint, which are supposed to act most effectually when in contact with the body of the distressed petitioner.
Those who were passing the house, often heard neighing like a foal, grunting like a pig, whistling like a nightingale, and hooting like an owlet; and often an old and a young child's head were seen at the window: it was Pilgrim and his young godson, trying to vie with each other, to see who could imitate most animals.
Every thing gave promise of one of those days in the latter end of May when spring seems resolved to triumph over summer, by contrasting her superiority in beauty and freshness with that sultry season so soon to appear, at the same time that she might almost vie with the latter in the genial heat of her noontide sun.
Railway cuttings carried through a sandy district offer, perhaps, equal attraction; and it is probable that a majority of the colonies planted within the last twenty years overlook, not the silent highway of the river, but the unromantic parallel bars of iron which have enabled man to vie almost with the Swallow in rapidity of flight.
At Ferrara, we see another and very different design in the grand front to the cathedral, which, save that it is entirely and shamelessly a sham front, might vie even with that of a Northern cathedral in beauty, intricacy, and richness of character; but this design is not really very Italian in style, and is a solitary example.
Only the asters, white and purple and all hues between, vie here and there with the mightier host, but its yellow plumes nod triumph on every crest, banks and hedgerows glow with its soldiery, it beards the forest, and even where the plow has passed posts its tall sentries at the furrow's brim.
Its position on the side of India nearest to Europe, its advantages as a port and a railway center, and its monopoly of the cotton industry, are counteracted by the fact that the region which it serves cannot vie with the valley of the Ganges in point of fertility and has no great waterway like the Ganges or Brahmaputra.
Vain, indeed, would be my effort to describe what I now saw and heard; the powers of the physical and moral demons that externally and internally, at the same moment, wrung his nerves and fired his brain, seemed to vie with each other in the degree of torture to which they were capable of elevating his sufferings.
The numerous accessories which are purchased from the beauty specialist, and as the result of speciously worded and attractively illustrated advertisements, in the present day, indicate that it is not at all unlikely that the fashions of all ages have demanded a plentiful supply of toilet requisites in order that the Society beauty might vie with her nearest rival.
That China was civilized to a certain degree before most of the nations of Europe, not even Greece excepted, is a fact that will not admit of a doubt; but that it has continued to improve, so as still to vie with many of the present European states, as the missionaries would have it supposed, is not by any means so clear.
The people were in a feverish state of excitement, the drinking saloons and the corridors of the hotels were filled with crowds of excited men, each of whom seemed to vie with the other in giving loud expressions of their opinions, and of denouncing the attempt of the government to transport armed troops through the streets of a peaceful city.
Now men vie with one another in wasting what they have stolen, and in collecting together what they have wasted with the keenest avarice; they become utterly reckless, scorn poverty in others, fear personal injury more than anything else, break the peace by their riots, and by violence and terror domineer over those who are weaker than themselves.
Though we are quartered in what is called the best hotel, it is a musty, fusty, rusty old building; and we agree with our friends among the residents (who vie with each other in showing us true English hospitality) who say they need an enterprising Yankee to start a good new hostelry, and "to show 'em how to run it."
He imagines that the daily life of the prosecutor consists in demanding the conviction of hardened felons with sordid, crime-tracked features, varied by occasional spectacular "star cases" where counsel for the defendant and the prosecutor vie with one another in stupendous outbursts of oratory in which the bird of liberty screams unrestrained and Justice frantically waves her scales.
This single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected corner, I once knew in a nourishing state in a forest: it was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs: but now, in vain does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk.
This single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest; it was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs: but now in vain does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk.
And that where there can be found no other reason for it, but that they have lived too fast; they have affected the luxuries of life in their dress and furniture, food, equipage, and attendance, and would vie with their neighbors in splendor, grandeur, and expense, where the circumstances of their estate or trade have not been able to afford it?
They touched her fingers with henna dye, and anointed her with rare and costly perfumes, seeming to vie with each other in their interesting efforts to deck and beautify one who had only the voluptuous softness of her dark eyes to thank them with, for those lovely lips, of such tempting freshness in their coral hue, could utter no sound.
In the heart of the temperate zone of this continent, in the land of corn, of wheat, and the vine, the eldest daughter of the Ordinance of 1787, already the young mother of other commonwealths that bid fair to vie with her in beauty, rises in her loveliness and glory, crowned with cities, and challenges the admiration of the world.
It was one of those nights which, on this continent, are peculiarly beautiful; when the moon drowns, in her own effulgence, all the stars immediately round herself, but leaves the rest of the sky full of bright luminaries, which, large and full, seem to vie the one with the other in aiding her to make up for the absence of the sun.
In the heart of the temperate zone of this continent, in the land of the corn, of wheat, and the vine, the eldest daughter of the Ordinance of 1787, already the young mother of other commonwealths, that bid fair to vie with her in beauty, rises in her loveliness and glory, crowned with cities, and challenges the admiration of the world.
The privileges which they asked for were very extensive, and such was the desire to secure their political support, that all were granted for the mere asking; indeed, the leaders of the American legislature seemed to vie with each other in sycophancy towards this body of fanatical strangers, so anxious was each party to do them some favor that would secure their gratitude.
This was my first experience of the West Indies, and after the glorious scenery of the island and the marvelous luxuriance, beauty, and strangeness of the tropical vegetation which everywhere clothed it, I think that what impressed me most was the amazing hospitality of its inhabitants, who positively seemed to vie with each other in their efforts to show us kindness.
Pol, not only have held for several centuries the first rank among the nobility of the Low Countries, but vie with most royal families in Europe; the former having given five emperors to the Germans, several kings to Hungary and Bohemia, a queen to France, and innumerable renowned heroes, whose great actions are famous in the histories of Europe and the East.