"Characteristic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this be the relation of faith to reason, we see the explanation of what seems at first sight to the philosopher to be the most irritating and hypocritical characteristic of faith. It is always shifting its intellectual defences. It adopts this or that fashion of philosophical apology, and then, when this is shattered by some novel scientific generalisation of faith, probably after a passionate ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... the Templar, with his characteristic calmness, "a knight, Rebecca, must encounter his fate, whether it meet him in the shape of sword or flame—and who recks how or where a ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... tent stands out very distinctly by contrast against a dark horizon, and almost before he had left the ranch house yard the man on the impatient, mouse-coloured broncho knew that he had company; yet, characteristic in his every action, he did not hurry. Methodically he put up the pony in the new barn, fed and bedded him for the night. From the adjoining stall, out of the darkness, there came a nasal puppyish whine and the protest of a straining chain. Had it been daylight, an observer would ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... impossible to resist him, and so yielded with characteristic briskness of decision. "Very well, if you will let me dive from the boat afterwards. Hold tight, preux ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... ground, defending himself cleverly. Not one single blow from the powerful fist of Diaz reached him, Phil exhibiting the wonderful self-control that was characteristic of him. He even found opportunity to warn Teddy to get out of the tent until the tempest had ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... harmony, in art, as "a normal state of completeness in the relation of things to each other." This "state of completeness" in a harmonious scheme is such that we have no desire to change or modify any detail or characteristic. ...
— Applied Design for Printers - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #43 • Harry Lawrence Gage
... and wide, even into domains where the king's authority did not reach. Much of the Code is occupied with regulating the relations between the merchant and his agent. The agency was that form of commenda which is so characteristic of the East at the present. The agent takes stock or money of his principal, signs for it, agrees to pay so much profit, and goes off to seek a market, making what profit he can. There is much ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... it appeared—the son of a celebrated litterateur of a past day—had called to show some beautiful drawings by the celebrated "Dicky" Doyle, a relation of Dr. Conan Doyle. With Mr. Newnes—and it is thoroughly characteristic of the man—to close with a good bargain is but the work of a moment, and therefore I was not surprised, as he placed the dainty pictures before me, to learn that he had purchased them for reproduction in his world-famed magazine. After luncheon, Mr. Newnes suggested ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... with characteristic eagerness to the invitation. "Shall I? But won't Maud mind? Do ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... It is characteristic of the limited knowledge which troops in battle have of what goes on outside of their immediate geographical vicinity, that we ran almost into the great battle area for which we were searching before anyone gave us a ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... outlines of the body could be traced, even the features, these having that unnaturally sharp definition which seems to belong to faces of the dead, but is really characteristic of those only that have been wasted by disease. From the silence of the room one would rightly have inferred that it was not in the front of the house, facing a street. It really faced nothing ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... tribes on the middle Columbia was the measles. The disease was commonly fatal among them, owing largely to the manner of treatment. When an Indian began to show the fever which is characteristic of the disease, he was put into and inclosed in a hot clay oven. As soon as he was covered with a profuse perspiration he was let out, to leap into the cold waters of the Columbia. Usually the ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... easily acquired, it has very little beauty. It is not for the sake of that commonplace usefulness that we should care to spend trouble upon permanent foundations in any tongue. The mind is satisfied only by the genius of the language, its choicest forms, its characteristic movement, and, most of all, the possession of its literature from within, that is to say of the spirit as it speaks to its own, and in which the language ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... manifest; it is meant as a witness to others and ourselves; it must find expression in the external, if internally it is to be real and strong. It is the characteristic of a symbolic action that it not merely expresses a feeling, but nourishes and strengthens the feeling to which it corresponds. When the soul enters the fellowship of God, it feels the need of external separation, ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... the biographers of Knox, have not taken the trouble to unravel this question of the treaty of July 24. But the behaviour of the Lords and of Knox seems characteristic, ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... of Pushkin's career that the mighty star of Byron first rose, like some glittering, but irregular comet, above the literary horizon of Europe. The genius of the Russian poet had far too many points of resemblance, in many of its most characteristic peculiarities, with the Muse of the Noble Childe, for us to be surprised at the circumstance that the new and brilliant productions of Byron should have a powerful influence on so congenial a mind ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... always one of the sources of power of the Emperor Napoleon, and perhaps the rarest among them, that the marvellous fecundity of his mind, and the inexhaustible variety of the projects and conceptions which he was constantly turning over, reciprocally sustained and complemented each other. This characteristic of his genius has been ignored; and little honor has been done to his foresight when he has been depicted as taken in some degree unawares by the failure of his maritime plans, and constrained to improvise by a supreme ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... This characteristic scruple in the lawyer gave him a high standing in his profession, and naturally led to success at the bar, besides winning for him the respect and admiration of troops of warm ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... far as that goes it follows almost necessarily from my views upon aristocracy and democracy that I declare for the conventional equality of women, that is to say for the determination to make neither sex nor any sexual characteristic a standard of superiority or inferiority, for the view that a woman is a person as important and necessary, as much to be consulted, and entitled to as much freedom of action as a man. I admit that this decision is a choice into which temperament enters, that I cannot produce compelling ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... a characteristic of frontier life that one learns to face facts. June looked at them now, clear-eyed, despair in her heart. As she walked beside Jake to the corral, as she waited for him to hitch up the broncos, as ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... and unpretentious building, which was largely due to the munificence of Archbishop Laud, was begun in 1635 and finished two years later. It cost, with the buildings above, about L4,200. Its dreary late-Gothic windows and heavy tracery, and the Spartan severity of its unbacked benches, are characteristic of the time of transition, alike architectural and religious, to which it belongs. It has been from that time to this the Parliament House of the University, where all matters are first discussed by the Congregation of resident Doctors and Masters; ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... a chase? To all appearance, yes; a probability strengthened by the relative size and character of the vessels. One is a barque, polacca-masted, her masts raking back with the acute shark's-fin set supposed to be characteristic of piratical craft. The other is a ship, square-rigged and full sized; a row of real, not painted, ports, with a gun grinning out of each, proclaiming ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... tertulias his mother attended evenings in his company, it was enough for him to recite a fable or get off some piece of learning characteristic of a studious child eager to bring his school work into the conversation, for the women to rush upon him and ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... as in the time of Wang Mang. And once more, as then, a popular movement broke out, that of the so-called "Yellow Turbans". This was the first of the two important events. This popular movement had a characteristic which from now on became typical of all these risings of the people. The intellectual leaders of the movement, Chang Ling and others, were members of a particular religious sect. This sect was influenced by Iranian Mazdaism on the one side ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... desolate home, tore it into a thousand shreds. There was something characteristic of her husband in these little honourable scruples that cut her to the heart. "Why didn't he read it?" she repeated, wringing her hands and walking up and down the room. "He knows Mr. Stanmore quite well. Why didn't he read it? and then he would have ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... glee with a characteristic cheer or yell, that at once set fire to the easily inflamed spirits of the dogs, causing them to resume their excited gambols and furious barking. This effectually stopped the ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... of study of this question of prostitution I learned to know personally many of the characteristic White Slaves of the West and South Side "levees." One "Alice" I shall never, never forget. Beautiful aside from her dissipation, a high school graduate, grammar and syntax perfect, manner exquisite. "Alice," seduced at eighteen, was at the age of twenty-one away down the line in ...
— Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls • Jean Turner-Zimmermann
... preserved, or the same confidence might not be felt in its preservation, in a country whose legislators are more possessed (as is apt to be the case on the Continent) with the mania for uniformity. A people having that unbounded toleration which is characteristic of this country for every description of anomaly, so long as those whose interests it concerns do not feel aggrieved by it, afforded an exceptionally advantageous field for trying this difficult experiment. In most countries, if it was an object to retain different systems of law, it might ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... written accepting the invitation. As that from the tailor to the lord was short and characteristic it ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... additional flavour to his style, since they present few difficulties to the modern reader, and yet sound like echoes from the earlier periods of the language. Generally he is content to follow his author with almost plodding fidelity, but occasionally he makes additions which are eminently characteristic. His author having remarked:—"Il nest an Jour Duy nulle chose qui tant grieue Rome ne ytalie come fait le college Des notaires publiques Car ilz ne sont mie en accort ensemble"—Caxton improves ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... absolutely the same individuals with Jupiter, Venus, and Cupid as Odysseus undoubtedly is with Ulysses—still I cannot see why, in making a version of (say) Theocritus, one should not use by way of preference those names by which he invariably called them, and which are characteristic of him: why, in turning a Greek author into English, we should begin by turning all the proper names into Latin. Professor Blackie's authoritative statement[H] that "there are whole idylls in Theocritus which would ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... which in many places was tawny yellow. Along the river bank grew tall reeds, sedges and rushes. Beyond the plain, and beyond the blue waters, rose the Island of Euboea, and ranges of mountains, those mountains of Greece which are so characteristic in their unpretentious bareness, which neither overwhelm nor entice, but which are unfailingly delicate, unfailing beautiful, quietly, almost gently, noble. In the distance, when he turned his head, Dion could see the little Albanian village of Marathon, a huddle of tiny houses far off ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... tender, and kind. The gray hair was arranged in rows of little quaint old-fashioned curls on either side of the head, under a plain lace cap. At one corner of the mouth there was a mark, apparently a mole, which added to the characteristic peculiarity of the face. I looked and looked, fixing the portrait thoroughly in my mind. This woman, who had almost insulted me and my relatives, was, beyond all doubt or dispute, so far as appearances went, a person possessing unusual attractions—a person ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... for the present, I must say 'nay.' I am resolved to be a home-body the coming year, with the exception of attending the celebration of Mrs. Stanton's eightieth birthday and our regular Washington convention." Among the characteristic short letters is this to Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson, of Chicago, who had asked for a word of encouragement in regard to a hospital she was founding for mothers whose children were born ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... in awaking him, and then flew back to try and save some of her own treasures. The first thing she thought of was her portfolio of drawings, which she dragged outside; but it had already been partially burned, and most of the valuable and characteristic sketches she had made at the different durbars were destroyed. She next tried to rescue her jewels, many of which she had worn the night before; her pearls were lying on the dressing-table, and she was only just in time to save them; one of the strings had caught ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... and spirit is, in the nature of the case, far more difficult to determine. It is possible that some court-plays may show the influence of the artificial arrangement of characters and the conventional play of motives characteristic of the pastoral drama. But it is a matter of the greatest difficulty to analyse with certainty such structural peculiarities as these, still more so to assign them with confidence to their proper origin. Many characteristics which one ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... over him. Then he watched and listened. The cedar-wood burned with a clear flame, and occasionally snapped out a red spark. The voices of the Navajos, scarcely audible, sounded "toa's" and "taa's"—syllables he soon learned were characteristic and dominant—in low, deep murmurs. It reminded Hare of something that before had been pleasant to his ear. Then it came to mind: a remembrance of Mescal's sweet voice, and that recalled the kinship between her and the Navajo chieftain. ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... "woman's war against whisky" had been inaugurated by the woman suffrage party, its aspect, in the eyes of newspapers, would be different from what it now is. If Lucy Stone had set the movement on foot, it would have been so characteristic of her! What more could one expect from such a disturber of public peace? She, who has no instinctive scruples against miscellaneous crowds at the polls, might be expected to visit saloons and piously serenade their owners, until patience ceases ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... infirmity, weakness, age, or youth cannot support themselves. There is room, I think, in the world for both kinds of individualist, though the contemplative individualists are in the minority; and perhaps it must be so, because a certain lassitude is characteristic of them. If they were in the majority in any nation, one would have a simple, patient, unambitious race, who would tend to become the subjects of other more vigorous nations: our Indian empire is a case in point. Probably China is a similar ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... is one of the most picturesque rivers of North America. Its name is indeed characteristic: the word Genesee being formed from the Indian for Pleasant Valley, which term is very descriptive of the river and its vicinity. Its falls have not the majestic extent of the Niagara; but their beauty compensates for the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... This impersonality is perhaps a later characteristic. The original form of the Chinese character for T'ien Heaven represented a man. The old Finnish and Samoyede names for God—Ukko and Num—perhaps belong to ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... of virtues to be cultivated. This zeal for righteousness marks the character of Paul both before and after his conversion. Nay, it explains his conversion. "Into this spirit, so possessed with the hunger and thirst for righteousness, and precisely because it was so possessed by it, the characteristic doctrines of Christ, which brought a new aliment to feed this hunger and thirst—of Christ, whom he had never seen, but who was in every one's words and thoughts, the Teacher who was meek and lowly in heart, who said men were brothers and must love one another, ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... parts: Tiflis properly so called, or the ancient town; Kala, or the citadel; and the suburb of Issni. This town is built on the Kur, and the greater part of its outer walls is now in ruins. Its streets are so narrow, that 'arbas,' as the lofty carriages so characteristic of Oriental places are called, could only pass with difficulty down the widest, whilst in the others a horseman would barely find room to ride. The houses, badly built of flints and bricks cemented with mud, never last longer than about fifteen years." In Klaproth's ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... characteristic clubs of the city itself, the Maryland Club and the Baltimore Club, are known the country over. The former occupies a position in Baltimore comparable with that of the Union Club in New York, the Chicago ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... His delicate body soon sank under the hardships of his terrible existence. One day while sweeping the streets he ruptured a blood-vessel and died there, with no mourners save his fellow-criminals.—See Hubner ii., pp. 583-591. "Characteristic and Historical Anecdotes of Joseph II." "Friedel's Letters from Vienna," vol. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... audience. Some of his university admirers, who appreciated academic honors more than the musician did, urged him to accept the degree of Doctor of Music, for which he would have to pay a small fee. The characteristic reply was a Parthian arrow: "Vat te tevil I trow my money away for dat vich the blockhead ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... for in the background the minor characters in the little drama had filled a role all their own. In the doorway stood Harrison, bound to witness the outcome of her master-stroke and experiencing no small triumph in it. Behind her Mammy, with characteristic African emotion, was doing a veritable camp-meeting song of praise, though it was a voiceless song, only her motions indicating that her lips were forming the words, "Praise de Lawd! Praise Him!" as she ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... age of eighty. The young duke admired women, but he placed them too high and respected them too much; in fact, he adored them, and was only at his ease with those whom he could not respect. This characteristic caused him to lead a double life. He found compensation with women of easy virtue for the worship to which he surrendered himself in the salons, or, if you like, the boudoirs, of the faubourg Saint-Germain. Such habits and his puny figure, his suffering face with its blue eyes turning ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... operations the present volume must appeal as forecasting movements strictly within the bounds of actuality. A literal translation is all that has been attempted, with absolutely no embellishment to make it "popular" or easy reading. With characteristic bluntness this German officer brushes aside non-essentials and goes to the main point in daring fashion. For that very reason it is exceedingly pertinent ...
— Operations Upon the Sea - A Study • Franz Edelsheim
... suggestion without hesitation. It was common enough for the pickets on either side to grow friendly both before and after those terrific but indecisive battles so characteristic of the Civil War, a habit in which the subordinate officers sometimes shared while those of a higher rank closed their eyes. It did no military injury, and contributed somewhat to the smoothness ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... have been accustomed to them from infancy; so that, upon the whole, his household presents one of the few tolerable specimens that can now be met with, of the establishment of an English country gentleman of the old school. By the by, the servants are not the least characteristic part of the household; the housekeeper, for instance, has been born and brought up at the Hall, and has never been twenty miles from it; yet she has a stately air that would not disgrace a lady that had figured at the court of ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... overflowed the uneven brick pavement to the asphalt was characteristic: women in calico, drudges, women in wrappers, with sleepy, awestricken faces; idlers, men and boys who had run out of the saloons, whose comments were more audible and caustic, and a fringe of children ceaselessly moving on the outskirts. The crowd parted at their approach, and they reached ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... characteristic nature in an animal is worth recording, although the creature could scarcely be considered a sufferer from the flood. One man, whose house was swept away and lodged on an embankment lower down, had a pet hog, whose ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Scott in the 'Discovery' in November 1901. He, with several naturalists, landed on the eastern side to collect specimens, but remained only a few hours. He refers to the penguins, kelp-weed and tussock grass; certainly three characteristic features. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... genuinely, respectably, marital relation. He told me that after his interview at the Embassy he would have thrown everything up, would have tried to sell his shop, and leave the country, only he felt certain that his wife would not even hear of going abroad. Nothing could be more characteristic of the respectable bond than that," went on, with a touch of grimness, the Assistant Commissioner, whose own wife too had refused to hear of going abroad. "Yes, a genuine wife. And the victim was a genuine brother-in-law. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... orphaned nephew of Sir Gilbert Faversham, is a wholesomely mischievous lad who nevertheless has the beautiful faith and love for the Saviour so characteristic of the early sixteenth century Christians. How he saves the fortress of Rhodes from the besieging Turks, is later betrayed, captured and tortured by them in the hope that he may be made to turn traitor and apostate, and ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... to read letters from John Quincy Adams, Thaddeus Stevens, Gerrit Smith, Theodore Weld, and others, who had been invited to deliver addresses, but who, from various causes, were obliged to decline. That from Weld was characteristic of the earnestness of the man. After stating that for a year and a half he had been prevented from speaking in public on account of an affection of the throat, and must therefore decline the invitation of the committee, ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... this policy was a measure of Napoleon's already referred to, but little known. In some respects it was more successful than any other; it certainly is most characteristic of the man. The evil aimed at was cured at the time, and the permanent question is less acute in modern France than in any other European country. For years past there had been chronic distress among the agricultural classes in some of the most fertile districts of France, notably ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Tumblers, namely, a splash cock and kite hen (neither of which are blue or barred), and from the first nest he got a perfect blue bird, and from the second a silver or pale blue bird, both of which, in accordance with all analogy, no doubt presented the usual characteristic marks. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... enrolled Spenser in that band and order of poets,—with one exception, not the greatest order,—to whom the wonderful passion of love, in its heights and its depths, is the element on which their imagination works, and out of which it moulds its most beautiful and characteristic creations. ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... apostasy out to hire.(44) The paper left behind him, called Thoughts on Religion, is merely a set of excuses for not professing disbelief. He says of his sermons that he preached pamphlets: they have scarce a Christian characteristic; they might be preached from the steps of a synagogue, or the floor of a mosque, or the box of a coffee-house almost. There is little or no cant—he is too great and too proud for that; and, in so far as the badness ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... case, Bentley thought, the Mind Master would take action during the first hours of darkness. Bentley was gambling desperately on what he knew to be characteristic of ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... hold. The men as usual trooped in, and the room was crowded; the scene was a striking one. Fine stalwart men to the number of sixty were present—free rovers of the sea, men who never call any one master, with all the characteristic independence and even dignity of those who follow the sea. There was present the coxswain of the lifeboat, and there were present also most of the men who manned the lifeboat a few hours afterwards. In every man's face was written the story of dangers conquered, and a lifelong ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... not want to make out your bird the first time; the book or your friend must not make the problem too easy for you. You must go again and again, and see and hear your bird under varying conditions and get a good hold of several of its characteristic traits. Things easily learned are apt to be easily forgotten. Some ladies, beginning the study of birds, once wrote to me, asking if I would not please come and help them, and set them right about certain birds in dispute. I replied that that would be getting their knowledge too ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... the cabinet of a lover of Folk-lore are two quaint and humble memorials by which two "inglorious Miltons" have perpetuated their affection, each in characteristic sort. The one was a potter; the other, probably, a shepherd. The "pignus amoris" of the former is a small earthenware vessel in the shape of a book, intended apparently to hold a "nosegay" of flowers. The book ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... poplars—the poplars are very characteristic, dear. And the women toilers in the sunset fields garnering up the golden grain. You might exclaim, 'Why are they always in blue?' Have ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the employment and effects of the one offensive maritime measure left open by the exigencies of the war; the cruises directed against the enemy's commerce, and the characteristic incidents to which they gave rise. In this pursuit were engaged both the national ships of war and those equipped by the enterprise of the mercantile community; but, as the operations were in their nature more consonant to the proper purpose of privateers, so the far ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... way was through woods: at the bottom of the slope we found ourselves by a fine brook, which we forded. Then began an ascent as precipitous, slippery and unpleasant. The trail followed the bank of the stream. Passing through a dense jungle of vegetation, where the air was hot and wet, the flora was characteristic. Trees with large, coarse, broad pods enclosing two or three great seeds, trees with acorn-shaped red fruits, quantities of sensitive plants covered with pink flowers, occasional orchids bearing flowers ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... thus extending back into the regions of doubt and fable; neither did I conceive I was committing any grievous historical sin in helping out the few facts I could collect in this remote and forgotten region with figments of my own brain, or in giving characteristic attributes to the few names connected with it which I might ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... struck with the simple and earnest strain of devotion which this letter breathed. It was but indifferently written and spelt. But this the rather tended to endear the hitherto unknown writer, as it seemed characteristic of the union of humbleness of station with eminence of piety. I felt quite thankful that I was favoured with a correspondent of this description; the more so, as such characters were at that time very rare in the neighbourhood. I have often wished that epistolary intercourse of this kind were ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... transformation, and at an early age he hastened to put it in training. All day long he was pulling faces. As an artist will sketch everything he comes across, so Mike would endeavour to imitate any characteristic expression or attitude, animate or inanimate, in the world around him. Dogs, little boys, and grotesque old men were his special delight, and of all his elders he had, it goes without saying, a private gallery of irreverently ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... It was characteristic of Angel's that the disappearance of Johnson, and the fact that he had left his entire property to Tommy, thrilled the community but slightly in comparison with the astounding discovery that he had ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... on the flange above its normal position opposite the web of the ring, and resulted usually in the breaking out of a piece of the flange or in several radiating cracks with or without a depression of the flange. These breaks were very characteristic, and the cause was readily recognizable, even though the intruding substance was ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace, Francis Mason and S. H. Woodard
... a strong work ethic, mastery of high technology, and a comparatively small defense allocation (1% of GDP) have helped Japan advance with extraordinary rapidity to the rank of second most powerful economy in the world. One notable characteristic of the economy is the working together of manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors in closely knit groups called keiretsu. A second basic feature has been the guarantee of lifetime employment for a substantial portion of the urban ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... such daydreaming in our precarious condition. Face the facts as they exist in the present. After we kick the aliens out of our solar system, maybe we can go back to the old ideas again. Maybe. I'm not even very sure of that. But as for now, the characteristic of despair is the lowest common denominator among the combat patrols, and we therefore have mutinies, disobedience of orders, defections of every variety. That is a real situation, and it will persist until we can induce ...
— Shock Absorber • E.G. von Wald
... (nature), its characteristics, and its source, I have, ye learned Brahmanas, declared to you, accurately and in due order, everything about (the quality of) Darkness. Who is there that truly understands it? Who is there that truly sees it? That, indeed, is the characteristic of Darkness, viz., the beholding of reality in what is not real. The qualities of Darkness have been declared to you in various ways. Duly has Darkness, in its higher and lower forms, been described to you. That man who always bears in mind the qualities mentioned here, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... been silent about herself and her past, but they found a letter from one of her old schoolmates asking about teachers' salaries in the West, and they wrote to her begging her to make known my mother's condition to her relatives if any were living. At length came a letter from grandfather—characteristic to the last. The old home was there, for her and for her children, but no home for the traitor, as he called father. She must give him up even to his name. No Bogardus could ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... hot iron, to know them again if they escape. This is the treatment bestowed on those "who save other men the labour of sowing, tilling, and reaping."* (* La Bruyere Caracteres edition 1765 chapter 11 page 300. I will here cite a passage strongly characteristic of La Bruyere's benevolent feeling for his fellow-creatures. "We find (under the torrid zone) certain wild animals, male and female, scattered through the country, black, livid, and all over scorched by the sun, bent to the earth which ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... these rich materials plainly appear mixed with the mould." It is not strange, if this were the case, that the natives—who, though apparently gentle and well disposed, were barbarians—should naturally have possessed the taste so characteristic of a barbarous people, and have loved to decorate themselves even lavishly with ornaments rudely fashioned in this rare metal. Yet they seemed to know little of its value, and to care less for it than for fuss and feathers. Either they were a ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Vinci and others have imposed upon the world, for Christ, to begin with, must be a Jew. And even when, in the course of my researches for a Jewish model, I became aware that there were blonde types, too, these seemed to me essentially Teutonic. A characteristic of the Oriental face, as I figured it, was a sombre majesty, as of the rabbis of Rembrandt, the very antithesis of the ruddy gods of Walhalla. The characteristic Jewish face must suggest more of the Arab ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... he stands in an attitude towards the past unthinkable to Englishmen, and remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears, good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth generation. No more characteristic instance could be found than in the family of Kirstie Elliott. They were all, and Kirstie the first of all, ready and eager to pour forth the particulars of their genealogy, embellished with every detail that memory had handed down or ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... suggestive characteristic of the time,—another of its promises. So far we find Progress gathering fulness and strength,—making sure of itself. It has also been gathering impetus. It has been, all along, accumulating momentum, and now it sweeps on with breathless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... at home?" asked Sarah Brown, after a pause, during which she made her characteristic effort to remember what she ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... have, therefore, to consider first of all is fundamentally: What is Man? What is a man? What is a human being? What is the defining or characteristic mark of humanity? To this question two answers and only two have been given in the course of the ages, and they are both of them current to-day. One of the answers is biological—man is an animal, a certain kind of animal; the other answer is a mixture partly biological and partly mythological ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... temptation to transcend proper limits in quoting from this most characteristic production ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... at Pyrford was a spider whose appearances have been oftenest noted at Hampton Court. These creatures, large, black, and horrific, were accordingly known as 'Hampton Courters,' but received no welcome, being slain on sight, their slayer quoting a characteristic saying which he had heard ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... counts her full share of fearless truth-seekers in most departments of inquiry, yet there is on the whole no weakening, but a rather marked confirmation, of what has become an inveterate national characteristic, and has long been recognised as such; a profound distrust, namely, of all general principles; a profound dislike both of much reference to them, and of any disposition to invest them with practical authority; and a silent but most pertinacious ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... answered, and he wished Frank to hear from him. After various preparations, he at last got settled down to his task, and, before the evening was over, a letter was written. As the first letter which Dick had ever produced, and because it was characteristic of him, my readers ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... soil are found that are well adapted for fruit-growing, but they all have one general characteristic which is a sine qua non of success—viz., they must possess good natural drainage, so that there is no danger of their becoming waterlogged or soured during periods of continued or heavy rainfall, as these conditions are fatal to fruit culture under tropical and semi-tropical ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
... information about Gray's Ode, I send an entertaining and very characteristic circumstance told in Mrs. Bigg's (anonymous) Residence in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... he, as a staunch Whig detested, made it one of their complaints against him that he built palaces for farmhouses. At first he met with that stolid opposition to progress which seems the particular characteristic of the farmer. For sixteen years no one followed him in the use of the drill, though it was no new thing; and when it was adopted he reckoned its use spread at the rate of a mile a year. Yet eventually he had his reward; his estate came to command the pick of English tenant farmers, ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... is often lost sight of, but which, if it should lose this, would find itself paralyzed; and in trade, and in the mechanic's shop, gives that honesty in performance, that thoroughness and solidity of work, which is a national characteristic. This conscience is one element, and the other is that loyal adhesion, that habit of friendship, that homage of man to man, running through all classes,—the electing of worthy persons to a certain ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... assemblage of the inhabitants of this City were present at what we consider to be one of the most important and interesting ceremonies lately witnessed in this part of the Province. Though there was none of the gaudy appearance and display characteristic of religious or Masonic Processions, yet to the mind of the philosopher and friend of education, the simple and appropriate ceremony, an account of which we are about to lay before our readers, presented more charms than if decked out with all the ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... imported a resolute cheerfulness into all that he did. The man, as I have said, was not in any way distinguished, but there can be no doubt that the thought of his heavenly smile was a very sustaining one, and that the sense of responsibility that the possession of such a characteristic gave him, undoubtedly made him endeavour to smile like the Cheshire Cat, when he did not feel ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... among the greatest writings of the Old Testament. While there is a powerful argument running through them all, the logic is not cumulative but rather moves in a spiral, frequently returning to the same subject but having a gradual onward movement. It is the characteristic Oriental method of thinking, which is the opposite of that of the Western world. These poems are grouped into three cycles which apparently represent the prophet's thinking during succeeding periods. The first cycle is ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... the highlands of Tiflis, Louise possessed all of the unreasoning bigotry characteristic of the people inhabiting that region. She was religious to the very depths of superstition, and she chose Lubny for a dwelling-place, less for its resemblance to the sunny hills of her native province than for its proximity to several ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... is fully transformed, changes his shape, acquires wings and wing-cases; nevertheless, like the female, he possesses, from the time when he is hatched, the pale lamp of the end segment. This luminous aspect of the stern is characteristic of the entire Glow-worm tribe, independently of sex and season. It appears upon the budding grub and continues throughout life unchanged. And we must not forget to add that it is visible on the dorsal as well as on the ventral surface, whereas the two large belts peculiar ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... leading characteristic of Thomas Henry Hall Caine as a man, just as extreme conscientiousness is his leading characteristic as a writer. He possesses in a high degree the sense of the responsibility which an author owes to the public and to himself. ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... them the superfluous wealth of the State. And public benefactors, in turn, had statues erected to their memory by their grateful admirers. The genius of the age expressed itself in marble histories. And these histories stand in the mystery of absolute perfection—the glory and the characteristic of a great and ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... several French-Canadian women were in the church, crouched at the feet of the marble statue of the Virgin, near the gorgeous altar. As the church door complainingly opened and disclosed the wet, weary figure of little Mother Soulard, the worshippers, with that lack of curiosity so characteristic of French-Canadian women when in church, did not look up, nor even appear to notice her as she crowded past them, and also knelt before the statue that had given such wonderful answers to prayer. Devoutly ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... eager to be at his enemy, and moving with his characteristic energy—Jackson sent a small force down to make a night attack on the British camp; also a schooner, heavily armed with cannon, to co-operate from the river. It was a wild and inconsequent fight; but it checked the advance of the British, who now were still more impressed with the need of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... was neither eating nor talking, which was far from pleasant to behold. He was very much esteemed by Mr. Carter, nevertheless; not so much because he was clever, as because he looked so eminently stupid. This last characteristic had won for him the sobriquet of Sawney Tom, and he was considered worth his weight in sovereigns on certain occasions, when a simple country lad or a verdant-looking linen-draper's apprentice was required to enact some little part in the ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... network of creeks, here surrounds a large island upon which stand the ruins of the famous city which was for more than four centuries the capital of Siam. The bulk of the inhabitants live in the floating houses characteristic of lower Siam, using as thoroughfares the creeks to the edges of which the houses are moored. The ruins of the old city are of great archaeological interest, as are the relics, of which a large collection is housed in the local museum. Outside the town ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... of these opiates my soul gradually settled into a sort of pleasing pensive melancholy. Has it not been said, that melancholy is a characteristic of genius? I make no pretensions to genius: but I am persuaded that melancholy is the habitual, perhaps the natural state of those who have the misfortune to feel ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... (1% of GDP) have helped Japan advance with extraordinary rapidity to the rank of second most technologically powerful economy in the world after the US and third largest economy in the world after the US and China. One notable characteristic of the economy is the working together of manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors in closely-knit groups called keiretsu. A second basic feature has been the guarantee of lifetime employment for a substantial portion of the urban labor force. Both features are now ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... them tacitly ignored. In the end they decided that it might be wiser not to conceal Audrey's knowledge of the existence of a second key; and they told Mr. Cowl, because he happened to be at hand. In so doing they were ill-advised, because Mr. Cowl at once acted in a characteristic and inconvenient fashion which they ought to ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... I have so far tried to indicate will have to be frequently noticed in the course of the following pages. One point may be emphasised before proceeding: a main characteristic of the whole social and political order is what is now called its 'individualism.' That phrase is generally supposed to convey some censure. It may connote, however, some of the most essential virtues that a race can possess. Energy, self-reliance, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... overjoyed. In private talk with Harvey she sang the praises of her step-daughter, whom, she declared, any man might be proud to have won. For Alma herself had so much pride; the characteristic, said Mrs. Frothingham, which had put dangers in her path, and ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... remarkable and interesting person. He stood about Sir Charles's own height, but was slimmer and straighter, with an aquiline nose, strangely piercing eyes, very large black pupils, and a finely-chiselled close-shaven face, like the bust of Antinous in our hall in Mayfair. What gave him his most characteristic touch, however, was his odd head of hair, curly and wavy like Paderewski's, standing out in a halo round his high white forehead and his delicate profile. I could see at a glance why he succeeded so well in impressing ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... is a monument to some members of the Thrale family who died between 1676 and 1704, adorned with a shield of arms and a crest on a ducal coronet. Mrs. Thrale's marginal note on Boswell's account of her husband's family is curious and characteristic: ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... think I could touch it," confessed Rod; "but I was bound to try my handsomest for it." Which was characteristic of the ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... felo de se, he had ordered all his other actions with a carelessness arguing one of three things: cynical indifference to the actual outcome of his false clue; sublime faith in the stupidity of the police; or a stupidity of his own as crass as that said to be characteristic of the ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... companions of elderly spinsters; therefore, if there are many of the latter, there will be more cats, fewer field-mice, more bees, richer clover fields, and finer cattle! Each link is real and the whole chain is a characteristic example of the countless ways that the natural destinies of living ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... Greece exactly as they appeared to their contemporaries, Faustus obligingly yielded to the proposal. The heroes of the Trojan war walked in procession before the astonished auditors, no less lively in the representation than Helen had been shewn before, and each of them with some characteristic attitude ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... our days. Jerrold did not know the successful men who presided over it. He had no patrons; and he had few friends. The isolation and poverty in which he formed his mind and style deepened the peculiarity which was a characteristic of these. They gave to his genius that intense and eccentric character which it has; and no doubt (for Fortune has a way of compensating) the chill they breathed on the fruits of his young nature enriched their ripeness, as a touch of frost does with plums. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... France bears the characteristic name of Chanson de Geste, or song of deed, because the trouveres in the north and the troubadours in the south wandered from castle to castle singing the prowesses of the lords and of their ancestors, whose reputations they thus made or ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... more characteristic of that life than its extreme fluidity. The Japanese population represents a medium whose particles are in perpetual circulation. The motion is in itself peculiar. It is larger and more eccentric than the motion of Occidental populations, though feebler ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... stood by while Romulus made this speech, their countenances animated with excitement and pleasure. The maidens themselves seemed much inclined to yield to their fate. Their resentment gradually subsided. It has been, in fact, in all ages, characteristic of women to be easily led to excuse and forgive any wrong on the part of another which is prompted by love for herself: and these injured maidens seemed gradually to come to the conclusion, that considering all the circumstances of the case their abductors were ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... inherited many of the traits which for a thousand years had been characteristic of the Phoenicians. It was a vast business-house, protected by a strong navy, indifferent to most of the finer aspects of life. The city and the surrounding country and the distant colonies were all ruled by a small but exceedingly powerful group ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... silently erect. Her chief personal characteristic was that air of hot-house fragility so often seen in American girls, but in that silence her chin squared, her lips set, the delicate brows contracted in a beetling frown. It was no longer the face of a girl of two-and-twenty which confronted the spinster across the ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... "like the rhythm of a song," {euruthmon}. See Mr. Ruskin's most appropriate note ("Bib. Past." i. 59), "A remarkable word, as significant of the complete rhythm ({ruthmos}) whether of sound or motion, that was so great a characteristic of the Greek ideal (cf. xi. 16, {metarruthmizo})," and much more ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... finish. Raising his head, he gazed across the river for a few minutes with that stony fixity of attention which is a characteristic of his kind. But for the ruffling of his black mane to the touch of the passing breeze he might have been wrought from golden bronze, so motionless, so statuesque ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... under the egis of the Russian throne is perfectly evident to them; they know that it is the Russian Government which has resuscitated the Finnish race, systematically crushed down as it had been in the days of Swedish power. The more prudent among the Finlanders realize that now, as before, the characteristic local organization of Finland remains unaltered, that the laws which guarantee the provincial autonomy of Finland are still preserved, and that now, as before, the institutions are active which satisfy its social and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor |
