Literary notes about Paramount (AI summary)
Writers use "paramount" to signify supreme authority or the ultimate importance of a concept, person, or duty. In historical and political texts, it is often attached to leadership—consider the depiction of a captain as "lord paramount" [1] or the notion of a "paramount sovereign" [2]—while philosophical treatises extol ideas or values as paramount, indicating that they surpass all else in significance [3], [4]. The term also appears in more personal contexts, where it designates an overriding desire or interest that governs behavior, as when one’s commitment or care is described as paramount [5], [6]. Whether referencing literal supremacy or metaphorically conveying an essential quality, "paramount" consistently imbues its subject with the highest rank or importance.
- The captain, in the first place, is lord paramount.
— from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana - As Bretwalda, or paramount sovereign ( v. Stubbs, “Constitutional History,” I, pp.
— from Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England by Saint the Venerable Bede - The apparition of Greek philosophers since the time of Socrates is a symptom of decadence; the anti-Hellenic instincts become paramount.
— from The Will to Power: An Attempted Transvaluation of All Values. Book I and II by Nietzsche - "Well, then, are not the claims of country paramount to all other duties?"
— from De Officiis by Marcus Tullius Cicero - The paramount desire to please herself by pleasing others rose strong within her.
— from Fishpingle: A Romance of the Countryside by Horace Annesley Vachell - My interest in the issue of the Polish war, however, remained paramount.
— from My Life — Volume 1 by Richard Wagner
