"Describe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... opposed to rites and superstitions, for they will have a perfect knowledge of the past. The coition of lovers in the springtime will be the one religious ceremony they will allow themselves. I have a vision sometimes of the holy scene, but I am afraid it is too beautiful to describe. 'The intercourse of the sexes, I have dreamed, is ineffably beautiful, too fair to be remembered,' wrote the chaste Thoreau. Verily human beauty, joy, and love will reach their divinest height during those inaugural days of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... happy for Stuart to describe the host of ten thousand riders which he had just seen. Their lives were in ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... confined between masses of tall, smoky, old houses, and its azure colour stained by party-coloured streams from dyers' shops, and a thousand other abominations, which would defy the pen of a Smollett to describe, and all the breezes from the Alps to purify. There are several bridges in this quarter, mostly appearing from their paltry and irregular character, to have been erected on some sudden emergency; from these, however, the noble Pont ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... in her story which, being obliged to relate a wicked action, seem to describe it too plainly, the writer says all imaginable care has been taken to keep clear of indecencies and immodest expressions; and it is hoped you will find nothing to prompt a vicious mind, but everywhere much to discourage ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... tea, is a circumstance, an occurrence, in social life, but a dinner is an event. It is the full-blown flower of that cultivated growth of which those lesser products are the buds. I will not try to enumerate, still less to describe, the various entertainments to which we were invited, and many of which we attended. Among the professional friends I found or made during this visit to London, none were more kindly attentive than Dr. Priestley, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a turn or two about the room, and looking round him with a wistful air, he came to the bed's foot, stared at me in a manner impossible to describe—and then he—he laid hold of my pantaloons; whipped his long bony legs into them in a twinkling; and strutting up to the glass, seemed to view himself in it with great complacency. I tried to speak, but in vain. The effort, however, seemed to excite his attention; ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... figure that came out to us—how shall I describe him? It was the most beautiful and gracious sight of all that I saw in my pilgrimage. He was a man of tall stature, with snow-white, silvery hair and beard, dressed in a dark cloak with a gleaming clasp of gold. But for all his age he had a look of immortal youth. His clear and piercing ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... so pityingly as you describe, and bless me as I was praying, unwitting of his presence?" repeated she, with a look that searched the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... military training. His face was fleshy, but the features were bold and he was coarsely handsome. As a rule, he affected an easy good-humor, but Lisle had felt that there was something about him which he could best describe as predatory. He occasionally spoke of business ties, so he had an occupation, but he had not in Lisle's ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... that the old man was so devoted to the house rather suggested a reason for Mrs Wedgwood seeing him here, so I asked my old lady if she had known this gentleman, and if so, would she describe him. She did this, almost word for word as Mrs Wedgwood had seen him. Also, she added, that he was a good deal of an invalid, often sat indoors, with a hat on for fear of draughts, and carried a stick, upon which ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... language was not powerful enough to describe the infant phenomenon. 'I'll tell you what, sir,' he said; 'the talent of this child is not to be imagined. She must be seen, sir—seen—to be ever so faintly appreciated. There; go to ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... now to discuss Sir Thomas's position and to describe his own, but he perceived from her own aloofness just now that it would seem a profanity, so he preserved silence instead, knowing that it would be eloquent to her. At last she spoke again, and there was a suggestion of a tremor ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... closed with the dawn of that summer morning, in the year of grace 1800, when the parliamentary union of Great Britain and Ireland was enacted. I have quoted Sir Jonah Barrington's description of the closing night of the Irish Parliament, because he writes as an eyewitness, and because few could describe its "last agony" with more touching eloquence and more vivid truthfulness; but I beg leave, in the name of my country, to protest against his conclusion, that "Ireland, as a nation, was extinguished." There never was, and we must almost fear there never will be, a moment in the history of ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... Vale again. "The thing came down. There was a terrific explosion. It vanished. Nothing happened for a while. Then it came up and found a place where it could come to shore. Things came out of it. I can't describe them. They're motes even in my binoculars. But they aren't human! A lot of them came out. They began to land things. Equipment. They set it up. I don't know what it is. Some of them went exploring. I saw a puff of ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... sought. Seeming not won, yet won she was at length: In such wars women use but half their strength. Leander now, like Theban Hercules, Enter'd the orchard of th' Hesperides; Whose fruit none rightly can describe, but he That pulls or shakes it from the golden tree. Wherein Leander, on her quivering breast, Breathless spoke something, and sigh'd out the rest; Which so prevail'd, as he, with small ado, Enclos'd ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... of fine phrases, he has sometimes spoken to me of, or rather, insisted upon what he called "the lonesome splendour of the human soul," which it is our business to perfect through various lives till I can scarcely appreciate and am certainly unable to describe. ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... chestnut harvest and the peasants used to pass along the road on their way to the forests, and she liked to watch them. She used to try to sketch them too, but she was too weak; and when I wrote home for her, she made me describe them——" ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... was so complex, so tremulously poised between world-wide poles of poetry and philosophy, of what is individual and concrete on the one hand and what is abstract and general on the other, that the task of revealing himself was singularly difficult. It is not easy even to describe him as he painted himself: it may be that, wishing to avoid a mere catalogue of disparate qualities, I have brought into too great prominence the gentle passionate side of Shakespeare's nature; though that would be difficult and in any case no bad fault; for this is the side which has hitherto ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... tough job for a little pin point germ of protoplasm; but he has no doubt that it has been done, and he writes several books to show us how. We propose to look into this self-evolving process, as he and his brother evolutionists describe their theory. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... To describe, however, the windings and circumfluences of rivers, the embraces of mountain and rain-cloud in language on the other side of amorousness may easily be inconvenient or ridiculous, and not impossibly ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... elections, and the year following Crassus and Pompey were made consuls. Caesar had to resist powerful confederations of the Gauls, and in order to strike terror among them, in the fourth year of the war, invaded Britain. But I can not describe the various campaigns of Caesar in Gaul and Britain without going into details hard to be understood—his brilliant victories over enemies of vastly greater numbers, his marchings and countermarchings, his difficulties and dangers, his inventive genius, his strategic talents, his boundless ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... when applied to primeval people like the Sakais. They may observe, enquire, and seek to understand—as far as their intelligence permits—everything they see around them; they remember well all they have heard and seen, and will mimic and describe it in their poor, strange language to their relations and friends; they carry with them presents which are a tangible record of their travels; they explain to the others how the houses were protected from wind, sun and rain; they will teach how to imitate the engine whistles, ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... tear gas shells—which at that time was a new horror introduced to the sufferings of the British armies. Who will forget the Redans, Le Grand and Le Petit, the Bridges Putney and Pelican? The last named was renewed or rebuilt on the average three times every twenty-four hours. No words can describe what took place between the 10th and 13th of that awful month. The Germans, expecting an attack, made one. After these terrible three days, the Battalion, whose luck it was on this occasion to be spared the brunt of the action, after being relieved by ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... pillars and innumerable statues; these decorations all wrought to great perfection, give to that part of the edifice a nicety that makes it resemble a work coming from the hands of a chaser. But how to describe, in the short space which the limits of this sketch admit, all the details, all the particular parts of our Cathedral? There is in it such a profusion, such a richness, that to be properly explored, it would require volumes. We must therefore limit ourselves to some ...
— Historical Sketch of the Cathedral of Strasburg • Anonymous
... To describe public opinion respecting the negro a half a century ago, is no easy task. It was just budding into maturity when DeTocqueville visited the United States, and, as a result of that visit, he wrote, from observation, a pointed criticism upon the manners and customs, and the laws of the people ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... when you have, you hain't a-goin' to describe it—words can't do it; you can walk through it and talk about the size of the buildin's, and the wonders of the display, but that hain't a-goin' to describe it, no more than the pan of dishwater ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... historic Rhine, the picturesque Hudson, or the beautiful St. Lawrence. The panorama includes besides the wilder grandeurs, economic scenes suggesting the fecundity of the earth and the industry of the husbandman. To enumerate and describe these ever so briefly would require an entire volume. This short chapter is a suggestion only that "By reason of scenic grandeur, absorbing interest of physical features, the majesty and mystery of its flow through some of the ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles
... is Death; "part of the framework breaks down," "something has snapped"—these phrases by which we describe the phases of death yield their full meaning. They are different ways of saying that "correspondence" has ceased. And the scientific meaning of Death now becomes clearly intelligible. Dying is that breakdown in an organism which ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... describe her appearance as completely as lay in his power, she wormed out of him the statement that everybody had been saying—before Mrs. Manston's existence was heard of—how well the handsome Mr. Manston and the beautiful Miss Graye were suited for each other as man and wife, and that Miss Aldclyffe ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... except to the ideal. His certitude and his arguments are no more pertinent to the religious question than would be the insults, blows, and murders to which, if he could, he would appeal in the next instance. Philosophy may describe unreason, as it may describe force; it cannot hope to ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... advocate of economy in our national expenditures, but it is a misuse of terms to make this word describe a policy that withholds an expenditure for the purpose of extending our foreign commerce. The enlargement and improvement of our merchant marine, the development of a sufficient body of trained American seamen, the promotion of rapid and regular mail communication between ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... in the native army is absolutely voluntary, and does not even require to be stimulated by a bounty. A subsequent passage shows that the author refuses to describe the British army as an 'entirety voluntary' one, because a soldier when once enlisted is bound to serve for a definite term; whereas the sepoy could resign ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... not describe the SPIRIT OF CANT, Of popular humbug, and vulgar rant, And tell how he looks in a tangible form, And give the length of his horns and claws, The spread of his wings, the width of his jaws, And detail the other proportions grim, Which belong to a ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... Daffodil, and there is only one other species that is truly native—the N. biflorus, chiefly found in Devonshire. But long before Shakespeare's time a vast number had been introduced from different parts of Europe, so that Gerard was able to describe twenty-four different species, and had "them all and every of them in our London gardens in great abundance." The family, as at present arranged by Mr. J. G. Baker, of the Kew Herbarium, consists of twenty-one species, with several ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... "Who can describe the joy, and who again the terror, of their meeting? The Indian women had fled in fear, and for the short ten minutes that the lovers were left together, life, to be sure, was one long kiss. But what to do they knew not. To go inland was to rush into the enemy's ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... I am somewhat closely restricted in the number of my pages, I would describe at full the merits and beauties of Hetta and Susan Bell. As it is I can but say a few words. At our period of their lives Hetta was nearly one-and-twenty, and Susan was just nineteen. Hetta was a short, plump, demure young woman, with the softest smoothed hair, and the ...
— The Courtship of Susan Bell • Anthony Trollope
... may be certain that I shall enforce it. Perhaps my policy as to the treatment of Rebels and their property is as well set out in Order No. 13, issued the day (December 4, 1861), your letter was written, as I could now describe it." ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... relief. 'Thank you,' she said; 'we do; some of us have it. Is your daughter's article signed A. A., and doesn't it describe a boarding-house on the Italian lakes? I thought it very ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... impulse. So did all the others. If any Bedouins had approached us, then, from that point of the compass, they would have paid dearly for their rashness. We all remarked that, afterwards. There would have been scenes of riot and bloodshed there that no pen could describe. I know that, because each man told what he would have done, individually; and such a medley of strange and unheard-of inventions of cruelty you could not conceive of. One man said he had calmly made up his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... absolute change of character with the change of circumstances; but oftener it is due to a more intelligible cause. They move from a country beyond the reach of historical and geographical knowledge to one within it; and having done this they find writers who observe and describe them, simply because they have come within the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... to describe what, as a private gentleman, I can not help feeling, on representing to my mind the disagreeable situation which confidential letters, when exposed to public inspection, may place an unsuspecting correspondent in; but, as a public officer, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... vain to attempt to describe Burns's feelings during those first few days in Edinburgh. He had never before been in a larger town than Kilmarnock or Ayr; and now he walked the streets of Scotland's capital, to him full of history and instinct with the associations of centuries. This was really the heart of Scotland, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... all right, Happy," said St. Clair. "I believe you could keep up the sort of existence you describe for ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... story, will best describe the heroine: A TOAST: "To the bravest comrade in misfortune, the sweetest companion in peace and at all times the most courageous of women."—Barbara Winslow. "A romantic story, buoyant, eventful, and in matters ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... this was said, there ensued a dead silence. I felt that the thoughts of all were turned upon me as the one who had withheld from poor Mrs. Blake the trifling sum due her for washing. What my feelings were, it is impossible for me to describe; and difficult for any one, never himself placed in so unpleasant a ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... ingenious trade-building plans worked out successfully by grocers in all parts of the country are too numerous to describe in a book of this character; but the methods cited in the following, all of which have been tested in actual working conditions, will serve to indicate the fundamentals of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... is impossible for the tongue to describe, or for man to write a perfect description of the horrible scene of the blood and carnage which was among the people, both of the Nephites and of the Lamanites; and every heart was hardened, so that they delighted in the ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... to the first, leads to the third floor, which is the kitchen of the building. It stands about sixty-six feet above the foundation. We shall have occasion to describe it and the rooms above presently. Meanwhile, let it suffice to say, that the fourth floor contains the men's sleeping-berths, of which there are six, although three men is the usual complement on the rock. The fifth ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... belongs to man as an intelligent, moral, and responsible agent, it is manifestly impossible to discover any ground for the doctrine of future rewards and punishments. And accordingly, D'Holbach, Comte, and Atkinson describe man as if he were the mere creature of circumstances, and deny that his character could possibly have been different from what it is. But even when it is not associated with fatalism, the theory, which denies the distinct existence of the soul as a substantive being, ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... slightly and, for a moment, lost the picture. It was changed when again I saw it; Randolph Chance was still there, but he no longer advanced toward the vision wife—she had faded into mist; he came slowly toward me. There was a beautiful look on his face—I cannot describe it—it was too holy to translate into language; but I could feel it vibrate through my being until it set my very soul a-quivering. I had no power of resistance—no wish to resist. I almost think I went ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... friend's outpouring, and the first time Dove stopped for breath, went straight for the matter which, in his eyes, had dwarfed all others. So eager was he to learn something of her, that he even made shift to describe her; his attempt fell out lamely, and a second later he could have bitten ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... books? How could he paint with such exact fidelity the peculiar scenery pertaining exclusively to the subject in question, when he can be proved never to have left London? What time had he to tread the 'blasted heath,' or describe the aspect of Glammis Castle? How could he accomplish all this? Why, simply, and naturally, and easily—by affording his poet all the requisite leisure, and defraying the expenses of all the requisite tours. And with this view, though it cannot be proved, and is very unlikely, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... I say of an Italian opera?—For who can describe sound! Or what words shall be found to embody air? And when we return, and are asked our opinion of what we have seen or heard, we are only able to answer, as I hinted above the scenery is fine, the company splendid and genteel, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... prepared to parse the following verbs in full; and I presume, all the other parts of speech. Whenever you parse, you must refer to the Compendium for definitions and rules, if you cannot repeat them without, I will now parse a verb, and describe all its properties by applying the definitions and rules according to ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... enjoyment of some odd strain of philosophy. Good heavens! was that the way men went to war,—as if it were a hunt with an equal chance of being the hound or the hare? 'Sausage-eaters'—what a phrase to describe those eagle-helmeted supermen of Prussia's cavalry! And this little island of pipe-smoking, country-side philosophers and pampered, sport-loving youth—this was the country, heart of a crumbling empire, that had ordered the gray torrent of Germany to alter its course ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... first opportunity to watch shell fire. The shells sailed overhead so slowly that he half expected to see them in their flight. The noise they made was very difficult to describe. They hurtled, they whizzed, they shrieked, they sang. He could imagine the thing spinning in its flight, creating a noise something like steam escaping jerkily from ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... would have given worlds to calm the anxiety I know she feels for Caroline, and I do wish that on some points my sister thought as I do, not from vanity, my dear Mary, believe me, but for her own happiness. I cannot describe each member of our circle, dear Mary, in this letter, but you shall have them by degrees. The Earl and Countess Elmore are my favourites. I was very sorry mamma did not permit me to join a very small party at their house last week; the Countess came ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... servant, I again slipped my key under the door, imprisoning myself for the night. Then, finding it too early to go to bed, I lay down with my clothes on and began to read one of Dumas's novels. Suddenly I was gripped—gripped and dragged from the couch. It is only thus that I can describe the overpowering nature of the force which pounced upon me. I clawed at the coverlet. I clung to the wood-work. I believe that I screamed out in my frenzy. It was all useless, hopeless. I MUST go. There was no way out of it. It was only at the outset that I resisted. The force soon ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the very first beginning, Shame of the versifying tribe! Your history whither are you spinning? Can you do nothing but describe? ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... with the present purpose to describe all the interesting men who were assembled, among whom were Captain Frost, Messrs. Le Fort, Hill, John Jacket, Dr. Wilson and others. We spent much of the time during the week in conversation with the chiefs and most intelligent Indians of ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... in this respect. A basket with half-a-dozen brushes, combs, laces, a piece of oilcloth, and a pocket Bible, is all the stock-in-trade they require, and it will serve them for a year. They generally prophecy good. Knowing the readiest way to deceive, to a young lady they describe a handsome gentleman as one she may be assured will be her "husband." To a youth they promise a pretty lady with a large fortune. And thus suiting their deluding speeches to the age, circumstances, anticipations, and prospects of those ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... in dealing with the character I am now about to describe. The world at large is very prone to condemn the hunting parson, regarding him as a man who is false to his profession; and, for myself, I am not prepared to say that the world is wrong. Had my pastors and masters, my father and mother, together with the other outward circumstances of ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... attempting to describe my own sensations, I labor under the disadvantage of speaking mostly to those who have never experienced anything of the kind. Hence, what would he perfectly clear to myself, and to those who have passed through a similar experience, may be unintelligible to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... shame and every nicer sense, Ne'er blush'd, unless, in spreading Vice's snares, She blunder'd on some virtue unawares; With all these blessings, which we seldom find Lavish'd by Nature on one happy mind, 140 A motley figure, of the Fribble tribe, Which heart can scarce conceive, or pen describe, Came simpering on—to ascertain whose sex Twelve sage impannell'd matrons would perplex. Nor male, nor female; neither, and yet both; Of neuter gender, though of Irish growth; A six-foot suckling, mincing in Its gait; Affected, peevish, prim, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... I understand, as well as they were able, and saw it scale the garden wall of the premises; there it escaped, leaving, as you may well imagine, on all their minds, a sensation of horror difficult to describe." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... up with her own children. She gives an amusing description of her home life in India during the hot season, so terribly trying to Europeans: "The mode of existence of an English family during the hot winds in India is so very unlike anything in Europe that I must not omit to describe it. Every outer door of the house and every window is closed; all the interior doors and venetians are, however, open, whilst most of the private apartments are shut in by drop-curtains or screens of grass, looking like ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... known traditions describe the stone as having been set in the forehead of the four-handed Indian god who typifies the Moon. Partly from its peculiar colour, partly from a superstition which represented it as feeling the influence of the deity whom ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... best seen on dark, starry nights. It was not in the north only, but all around them, great bright fringes of coloured lights—chiefly green, crimson, or pink. How they danced and flickered, to be sure! Such dazzling beauty no pen could describe, and ...
— Crusoes of the Frozen North • Gordon Stables
... trunkner Mann—a God intoxicated man: an expression which has been quoted by everybody who has since written upon the subject, and which is about as inapplicable as those laboriously pregnant sayings usually are. With due allowance for exaggeration, such a name would describe tolerably the Transcendental mystics, a Toler, a Boehmen, or a Swedenborg; but with what justice can it be applied to the cautious, methodical Spinoza, who carried his thoughts about with him for twenty years, deliberately shaping ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... due to a father, how shall we describe the claims of a mother? To this parent the daughter owes her very being. These are the arms which never tired of supporting her in infancy. For her the step was light, the voice hushed, the breath almost suppressed. ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... possessed by a fixed idea, blind men led by dreams, drawn on by an invisible leash. The terrible feature of it all was this, that when M. Joyeuse returned home, after those long, cruel days of inaction and fatigue, he must enact the comedy of the man returning from work, must describe the events of the day, tell what he had heard, the gossip of the office, with which he was always accustomed ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... at seeing each other again under such circumstances," said King William. "I had seen Napoleon only three years before, at the summit of his power. What my feelings were is more than I can describe." ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... earls, baronets, generals, and colonels that throng its pages. A novelist in his first production never limits his creative activity in any respect; and Cooper, (p. 022) moreover, knew the public well enough to be aware that a fictitious narrative which aimed to describe aristocratic society might perhaps succeed without much literary merit, but would be certain to fail without an abundance of lords. The leading characters, however, whether of higher or lower degree, are planned upon the moral model. They ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... balloon was out of sight the crowd began to return home, and such a confusion it is almost impossible for me to describe. A gang of pickpockets had contrived to block up the way, which was across a bridge, with carriages and carts, etc., and as soon as the people began to move it created such an obstruction that, in a few moments, this great crowd, in the midst of which I had unfortunately got, was stopped. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... party, they were, a few days before reaching it, 700 miles from the coast of Mozambique, and 1500 from the Cape of Good Hope. Now Messrs. Murray and Oswell, the enterprising travellers to whom we owe the discovery of this vast South African lake, describe it as being in longitude 24 deg. East, latitude 19 deg. South; a position not very wide apart from that indicated in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... has vocal music, but in no way can I describe it — to say nothing of writing it. I tried repeatedly to write the words of the songs, but failed even in that. The chief cause of failure is that the words must be sung — even the singers failed to repeat the songs ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... said. "Curiously enough, sir, no boat has gone out to-day with a lady and a gentleman in it, like what you describe." ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... necessary that we should describe this celebrated voyage, with which every boy is familiar—its storms and hurricanes; the landings on islands where the white man's face had never been seen before; the visits to the simple natives of Huahine and Otaheite, then a little Eden; the perilous coasting along the North ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... it is the use he really makes of it, namely, that his shop looking like something eminent, he may sell dearer than his neighbours: who, and what kind of fools can so be drawn in, it is easy to describe, but satire is none of our ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... sun sank below the western hills our travellers drew near, by one of the three converging roads, the antipodean town of Warwick; which, to describe to the reader, we need only to say, seen at a short distance, bears a striking resemblance to an English village, and will sustain very creditable comparison with some of the prettiest in our blessed and favoured isle. This view, however, the young men were not at the time permitted ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... Hayden? The old expressions of joy seemed utterly inadequate to describe her feelings. It seemed that she was veritably dreaming of heaven, such a sense of largeness, of freedom, had come over her, so much wider was her horizon, so much more clearly could she see and understand the hard questions that had always puzzled her, and yet she had, as it were, just ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... the keeper's could be found sufficiently to revile that cat. Indeed, the head-keeper went speechless, and nearly had epilepsy, in trying to describe it to the Court, and if it had done only one-half the things that the keeper asserted, it must have been a very remarkable beast indeed; the magistrate said so. In consequence Hawkley got rather heavily ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... tell me about that,' said Stephen, and added, 'some time tonight.' He did not care to discuss the bewildering internal economy of the human frame at his dinner-table. There were details...and Mr Bittenger was in a mood that it was no exaggeration to describe as gay. ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... on it," the man replied, and these he proceeded to describe. As the description was found to be correct, and as the other witness, who had sworn that he had made the weapon, had not described any such marks, the case against Hogan broke ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... narration than with description. To write a whole page of description is a task for a master, and very few attempt it; but for the uninitiated amateur about three sentences of description mark the limit of his ability to see and describe. To get started, to gain confidence in one's ability to say something, to acquire freedom and spontaneity of expression,—this is the first step in the practice of composition. Afterward, when the pupil ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... to imitate several sketches I gave them; but they made but a poor job of it after all; for the front face is no likeness at all, and the profile is all that they could hit upon. The body gives but a poor idea of the General, who was tall and straight as a rush. So that after my best endeavors to describe his person, and I knew it well, for which purpose I attended every day at their workshop which was in that house in St. Louis street where the Misses Napier are now (1828) residing, [349] and which is somewhat retired from the line of the street, the shop itself ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... made a great difference to me if Dusautoy had been here at the time of my trouble. When he did come, I had sunk into a state whence I could not rouse myself to understand his principles. I can hardly describe how intolerable my life had become. I was almost resolved on returning to India. I believe I should have done so if you had not come ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the most reliable works he could obtain at home and in Europe, and he believes his geographical, historical, and political matter is correct, and as full as could be embodied in a story. He has endeavored to describe the appearance of the country, and the manners and customs of the people, so as to make them interesting to young readers. For this purpose these descriptions are often interwoven with the story, or brought out in the comments of the boys of ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... is fair to try The Prince by the author's own standards. He did not purpose, in Bacon's phrase, to describe what men ought to be but what they actually are; he put aside ethical ideas not as false but as irrelevant. But this rejection was fatal even to his own purpose, "for what he put aside . . . were nothing less than the living forces by which societies subsist and governments ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... and inflamed your cheeks. Your gaze was so peculiar, as if seeking to grasp in empty space forms not seen of any other eye, and all your words ended in sighs betokening some mystery. Then your friends asked you, "What is the matter with you, my dear friend? What do you see?" And, wishing to describe the inner pictures in all their vivid colours, with their lights and their shades, you in vain struggled to find words with which to express yourself. But you felt as if you must gather up all the events that had happened, wonderful, splendid, terrible, jocose, and ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... gnomon or "shadow tracker" (in Greek [Greek: skiatheras]). At about the fifth hour in the morning, take the end of the shadow cast by this gnomon, and mark it with a point. Then, opening your compasses to this point which marks the length of the gnomon's shadow, describe a circle from the centre. In the afternoon watch the shadow of your gnomon as it lengthens, and when it once more touches the circumference of this circle and the shadow in the afternoon is equal in length to that of the morning, mark it with ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... really earned it. She sowed the seeds, and it was only right that she should reap the fruit. And of all the praises that were heaped upon her none equalled the simple unvarnished story of her own deed. To describe her exploit, with no word of comment, was to load her with commendation of the highest kind. And it is well indeed when that can be said of any woman—which is always the case when her life is right. On the whole, even now people get pretty much ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... simple definitions of those parts—which she undoubtedly did, she owed it in no small degree to Judy Harbottle. This one feels to be hardly a legitimate reference, but it is something tangible to lay hold upon in trying to describe the web of volitions which began to weave itself between the two that afternoon on my veranda and which afterward became so strong a bond. I was delighted with the thing; its simplicity and sincerity stood out among our conventional little compromises at friendship like an ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... let us go on to describe the course of the Nile. It rolls away from its source with so inconsiderable a current, that it appears unlikely to escape being dried up by the hot season, but soon receiving an increase from the Gemma, the Keltu, the Bransu, and other less rivers, it is of such ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... adversary, she rejoined, "How can we go to him, seeing the door is locked on us and our feet shackled and the Jew hath the keys?" The smith replied, "I will make the keys for the padlocks and therewith open door and shackles." Asked she, "But who will show us the Kazi's house?"; and he answered, "I will describe it to you." She enquired, "But how can we appear before him, clad as we are in haircloth reeking with sulphur?" And the smith rejoined, "The Kazi will not reproach this to you, considering your case." So saying, he went forthright and made keys for the padlocks, wherewith ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... it blew a regular hurricane, and the captain dared not venture out to sea, our schooner lying safely at anchor inside the coral reef. I have not space to describe my stay here, but it proved most enjoyable, and the captain's pretty Samoan daughters gave several "meke-mekes" (Fijian dances) in my honour, and plenty of "angona" was indulged in, and what with ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... Consciously or unconsciously men describe themselves in the characters they draw. One must have the mordant in his own personality or he will not take the color of his subject. He may force himself to picture that which he dislikes or even detests; but when he loves the character he delineates, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... expression of that pictured face was something which I cannot describe—a curious look in the eyes which was at the same time both attractive and mysterious. In that brief moment the girl's features were indelibly impressed ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... arranging to go upon their journey wearing their helmets with waving plumes, and with their shields and spears, and Franz and Paul were to have weapons to place with that of Fritz in the armory. But who can describe their surprise and dismay when that evening they went to put the hunting-knife in its proper place, they found the armory plundered, and everything gone! The enemy had come in an unguarded moment and carried everything away. But where? That was the question, ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... Scott's periodic recurrence to his own personal history should be artistic mistakes either. If Scott's reverie was less lofty than Milton's, so also was his story. It seems to me as fitting to describe the relation between the poet and his theme in the one case as in the other. What can be more truly a part of Marmion, as a poem, though not as a story, than that introduction to the first canto in which Scott expresses his passionate sympathy with the high national feeling ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... here to describe the effects which gunpowder and grape- shot had had on the walls of Antwerp. Let the curious in these matters read the horrors of the siege of Troy, or the history of Jerusalem taken by Titus. The one may be found in Homer, and the other in Josephus. ...
— The Relics of General Chasse • Anthony Trollope
... not attempt to describe the meeting of the father and daughter, loving each other so affectionately, and separated under such perilous circumstances. Still less shall we attempt to analyse the deep blush of Rose at receiving the compliments of Waverley, or stop to inquire whether she had ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... memory let loose in the universe—goes about remembering everything, hit or miss. I never see one of these memory-machines going about mowing things down remembering them, but that it gives me a kind of sad, sudden feeling of being intelligent. I cannot quite describe the feeling. I am part sorry and part glad and part ashamed of being glad. It depends upon what one thinks of, one's own narrow escape or the other man, or the way of the world. All one can do is to thank God, silently, in some safe place in one's thoughts, that after all ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... people you describe, that seems a hard case," observed the stranger. "By what right are they prohibited from ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... M. Knaak, and no words can describe how wonderfully the man brought out the nasal sound. They were practising the quadrille, and to Tonio Kroeger's intense terror he found himself in the same set with Inga Holm. He avoided her when he could, and still he kept getting near her; he forbade his eyes to approach her, and still ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... describe that exquisite, evanescent universe; even for me 'tis but the bubble of a moment; I soon snuff it out, or of itself it melts ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... the most candid artlessness, and with that tone of sincerity which comes from the heart, had upon me an effect which it would be difficult to describe; I suffered because I could not imprint the most loving kiss upon the sweet lips which had just pronounced them, but at the same time it caused me the most delicious felicity to see that such an ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... will; now I want to understand him by examining all the processes which go on in his consciousness, by studying their make-up and their behavior, their elements and their laws. In one case I wanted to interpret the man, and finally to appreciate him; in the other case I wanted to describe his inner life, and finally to explain it. The man whose inner life I want to share I treat as a subject, the man whose inner life I want to describe and explain I ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... clear, and I examined them with interest, for, remember, I was expecting a stranger to give me orders. He had a long, rather strong chin and an obstinate mouth with peevish lines about its corners. But the remarkable feature was his eyes. I can best describe them by saying that they looked hot—not fierce or angry, but so restless that they seemed to ache physically and to want sponging with ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... warmly loved in return. Alma even condescended to tell Nono that it was the princess who had first led her dear mother to a true Christian life; which high origin for religious influence Alma seemed to look upon as if it were a sort of superior aristocratic form of vaccination. Alma went on to describe the saintly princess as she had heard her spoken of by both her father and her mother, whose respect and affection she ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... I cannot describe the impatience I felt when the postman Brainstein, the son of the bell-ringer, came into the street. I could hear him half a mile away, and then I could not go on with my work, but must lean out of the window and watch him as he went from house to house. When he would ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... Florentines, and in several other rooms of the same palace; he having continued all the later years of his life in the service of Duke Cosimo, by whom the palace was restored and decorated. His works are too numerous and not sufficiently important to catalogue or describe, his composition is overcrowded and wanting in perspective. There is generally a superabundance of flesh; muscular limbs in all attitudes form a great part of his pictures, but as the flesh tints he used were wanting in mellowness and ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... memory of every one, that the injury and lapse of time cannot efface her from it; for we shall ceaselessly mourn and lament for her, like Antimachus the Greek poet wept for Lysidichea, his wife, with sad verses and delicate elegies which describe and ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... unreserved manner in which we conversed, when fate, less cruel than at present, suffered us to live in the sunshine of each other's smiles. You speak of a certain person in your letter, whom, for obvious reasons, I will in future call ANTONIO. You describe him with the partiality of a friend; but how can I doubt his being worthy of all that you say, and more—sensible, brave, rich, and handsome. From his name, I suppose, of course, he is well connected. What ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... mountains of New York, New England, or northern Michigan, and see the Hermit in his nesting home, you would find him quite another character, true to his name. There he is shy—or perhaps cautious would be a better word to describe the way in which he keeps the secrets of his precious nest. He loves the little moist valleys between the pine-clad mountains, where a bit of light woods is made an island by the soft bog-moss that surrounds it. There, feeling quite secure, he makes his ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... observed, that an alteration began to take place. My master attributed this to his altered fortunes, and I placed it to the score of my decayed appearance—the threadbare cloth and tarnished button came in, I was sure, for their full share of neglect, and he at last fell into the same opinion. To describe all the variety of treatment that we experienced would be a tedious and unpleasant task,—but I was the more convinced that I had at least as much to do with it as my master, from observing that all the gradations in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... the outlines of his Person and work. As he thought upon Him, beneath the gracious teaching of Him who had sent him to baptize (John i. 33), the dim characteristics of his glorious personality glimmered out on the sensitive plate of his inner consciousness, and he could even describe Him to others, as well as ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... the crow flies. By the road, reckoning from where the accident had occurred, it would be fifteen. But the lie of the place or the distance from Grangersons mattered little to Silas. His mind was going through a process difficult to describe. ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... comic strip in three panels. I'll do my best to describe each panel and then put the text which ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... in the soil on which they stand. If the inhabitants are asked concerning this wonderful monument, they say it is an old camp of Caesar's, an army turned into stone, or that it is the work of the Crions or Gories. These they describe as little men between two and three feet high, who carried these enormous masses on their hands; for, though little, they are stronger than giants. Every night they dance around the stones, and woe betide the ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... obsequiousness itself; delicate viands were placed before him, and, like every other intelligent traveller in these Islands, he was charmed by that distinguishing trait of the Luzon Islanders—that hospitality which has no parity elsewhere, and for which words cannot be found adequately to describe it to the reader. As Governor Taft himself said truly, "When a Filipino who has a house says it is yours, he turns out his family and puts you in." [241] Governor Taft's reception was only that which had been accorded to many ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... mightn't get into other people's 'ands? Would you like to know how my beast of a mother and him put their 'eds together to see how they could get hold of the bloomin' money? An' you thought you was sure of it, didn't you? Will you come with me to the perlice-station, just to help to describe what he looks like? An affectionate father, ain't he? Almost as good as he is a 'usband. You just listen to me, Jane Snowdon. If I find out as you're havin' money from him, I'll be revenged on you, mind that! I'll be revenged ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing |
