Literary notes about Surmount (AI summary)
The term surmount is used in literature to evoke the act of overcoming both tangible and intangible obstacles. In some texts, it describes literal ascents or breaches, as when a character climbs a wall or a mountain ([1], [2], [3]), while in others it conveys the internal struggle against inhibitions or difficult circumstances, such as the challenges of personal examination hurdles ([4]) or the effort to overcome shyness ([5]). At times, surmount is employed in a more abstract or metaphysical sense, illustrating how characters confront and eventually prevail over moral or intellectual barriers ([6], [7], [8]). Overall, the word serves as a powerful metaphor for human resilience and determination in the face of adversity.
- They surmount a wall about ten or twelve feet high.
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain - The ascent is precipitous, but the path is cut into continual and short windings, which enable you to surmount the perpendicularity of the mountain.
— from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - If by some superhuman valour you surmount even these barriers, farther on you will meet with still greater danger.
— from Pan Tadeusz; or, The last foray in Lithuania by Adam Mickiewicz - ffe did not realize how difficult they were making my examinations, nor did they understand the peculiar difficulties I had to surmount.
— from The Story of My Life by Helen Keller - His face all at once took an expression of anger from the effort he was making to surmount his shyness.
— from Anna Karenina by graf Leo Tolstoy - Yet his interpretation is one perpetual harsh metaphor; nor can he surmount the Roman authorities of Quintilian, Caecilius, Favonius, and Tertullian.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - And the question, 'What has it to do?' is one which psychology has no right to 'surmount,' for it is her plain duty to consider it.
— from The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2) by William James - When with Madam de Warens, my felicity was always disturbed by a secret sadness, a compunction of heart, which I found it impossible to surmount.
— from The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Complete by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
