You," he said to the First Poet, "
excel in Art - take the Apple.
Only at evening, as he returns from the chase, he sounds his note, playing sweet and low on his pipes of reed: not even she could
excel him in melody -- that bird who in flower-laden spring pouring forth her lament utters honey-voiced song amid the leaves.
They that desire to
excel in too many matters, out of levity and vain glory, are ever envious.
Your ill-judged remarks have made me exceedingly angry, and you are quite mistaken, for I excel in a great many athletic exercises; indeed, so long as I had youth and strength, I was among the first athletes of the age.
I far excel every one else in the whole world, of those who still eat bread upon the face of the earth, but I should not like to shoot against the mighty dead, such as Hercules, or Eurytus the Oechalian--men who could shoot against the gods themselves.
The learning of this people is very defective, consisting only in morality, history, poetry, and mathematics, wherein they must be allowed to
excel. But the last of these is wholly applied to what may be useful in life, to the improvement of agriculture, and all mechanical arts; so that among us, it would be little esteemed.
Look now at Stubb; a man who from his humorous, deliberate coolness and equanimity in the direst emergencies, was specially qualified to
excel in pitchpoling.
He was one of those invaluable labourers who can not only turn their hand to everything, but excel in everything they turn their hand to.
You pick the things for what they can excel in--for what they can excel in.
It is in this power of suggestion that the Chinese poets
excel. Asked to differentiate between European and Chinese poetry, some critics would perhaps insist upon their particular colour sense, instancing the curious fact that where we see blue to them it often appears green, and vice versa, or the tone theories that make their poems so difficult to understand; in fact, a learned treatise would be written on these lines, to prove that the Chinese poets were not human beings as we understand humanity at all.
"And now to come to those qualities in which David
excels over Porthos--the first is that he is no snob but esteems the girl Irene (pretentiously called his nurse) more than any fine lady, and envies every ragged boy who can hit to leg.
What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but
excels in winning with ease.