"Descriptive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ship's cabin. He knew it was the cabin, because he had often read passages descriptive of just ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... threatened Dishpan with every known form of torture and punishment, from instant disembowelment to the more merciful end of losing her brain through the medium of a club. He grinned because Otto's vocabulary descriptive of terrible things always impending over the heads of his sleek and utterly heedless pack-horses was one of his chief joys. He knew that if Dishpan should elect to turn somersaults while diamond-hitched under her pack, big, good-natured Bruce ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... such a height that 'tis said to be the highest place in the world! And when you have got to this height you find [a great lake between two mountains, and out of it] a fine river running through a plain.... The plain is called PAMIER.' The bearing and descriptive details here given point clearly to the plain of the Great Pamir and Victoria Lake, its characteristic feature. About sixty-two miles are reckoned from Langar-kisht, the last village on the northern branch of the Ab-i-Panja and some six miles above Kila Panja, to Mazar-tapa ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... interesting chapter in the history of the thought of modern men, but has also serious interpretative value in itself. For English readers Sanday's Life of Christ in Recent Research, 1907, follows the descriptive aspect, at least, of the same purpose with Schweitzer's book, covering, however, ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... a "Note on the Block of Tin dredged in Falmouth Harbor," asserts, it is true, that there are trees growing on the Mount in sufficient numbers to have justified the ancient descriptive name of "the Hoar rock in the wood;" but though there are traces of trees visible on the engravings published a hundred years ago, in Dr. Borlase's "Antiquities of Cornwall," these are most likely due to artistic embellishment only. At present no writer will discover ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... (of Blackwood,) occasionally spins or splits his Log too small. The incidents are weakened in the drawing out, or exaggerated in the telling; but they are sometimes relieved by brilliant descriptive touches, such as the following, introduced to set off the fate of one of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... production not only of the satirical poems already noticed, and of another more genial satire, Death and Dr. Hornbook, but also of those characteristic epistles in which he reveals so much of his own character, and of those other descriptive poems in which he so wonderfully delineates the habits ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... clouds puffing their cheeks as they sound the charge of their white legions. But the line is more accurately descriptive of a rain-storm, as, in both summer and winter, rain is usually preceded by wind. Homer, describing a snow-storm ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... say much in praise of Calabrian wine. The land is full of pleasant surprises for the cenophilist, and one of these days I hope to embody my experiences in the publication of a wine-chart of the province with descriptive text running alongside—the purchasers of which, if few, will certainly be of the right kind. The good Dr. Barth—all praise to him!—has already done something of the kind for certain parts of Italy, but does not so much as mention Calabria. And yet here nearly every village has ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... the extract descriptive or meditative? What gives vividness to the description? What points are brought out in the meditation? What is the main thought or feeling presented? Does it pertain to man, nature, or God? What phases of nature are considered? ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... measure aquatic; and the setting in of the rains is the season in which they pair; the peacock is, therefore, always introduced in the description of cloudy or rainy weather. Thus, in a little poem, descriptive of the rainy season, &c., the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... with the conventional letter sent out by investment concerns: "In response to your inquiry, we take pleasure in sending you herewith a booklet descriptive of the White Cloud Investment Company." Cut and dried—there is nothing that jars us out of our indifference; nothing to tempt us to read the proposition that follows. Here is a letter that is certain to interest the reader because it approaches him ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... through quadratic equations, plane geometry, descriptive geography, physical geography, United States history and the ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... fellow-playwright, Shakespeare. To call such passages—which Jonson never intended for publication—plagiarism, is to obscure the significance of words. To disparage his memory by citing them is a preposterous use of scholarship. Jonson's prose, both in his dramas, in the descriptive comments of his masques, and in the 'Discoveries', is characterised by clarity and vigorous directness, nor is it wanting in a fine sense of form or in the ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... buckram, $5.00; sheep, $6.00; half calf or half morocco, $7.00. Sold only by subscription. Descriptive circular, with specimen pages, sent on application. Agents wanted for districts ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... to sketch those gowns (nowadays one would simply obtain photographs), I took down from la premiere, or sometimes from Worth himself, full particulars respecting materials and styles, in order that the descriptive letterpress, which was to accompany the ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... instead of Bronson, the latter was jealous, and their relations were strained. I use the word "story" in the newspaper sense, where everything written for the paper is a story, whether it is an obituary, or a reading notice, or a dramatic criticism, or a descriptive account of the crowded streets and the lighted shop-windows of a Christmas Eve. Conway had finished his story quite half an hour before, and should have sent it out to be mutilated by the blue pencil of a copy editor; but as the city editor had twice appeared ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... was sent to college at Perpignan, that he really began to take an interest in books, and his favorites were the more solid studies—algebra, descriptive geometry, surveying, and draftsmanship. His bent even at this early day seemed ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... delicately-gifted class to which he belongs. For beside his spiritual experience Obermann's is superficial, and Maurice de Guerin's a passing trouble, a mere quick outburst of passionate feeling. Amiel indeed has neither the continuous romantic beauty nor the rich descriptive wealth of Senancour. The Dent du Midi, with its untrodden solitude, its primeval silences and its hovering eagles, the Swiss landscape described in the "Fragment on the Ranz des Vaches," the summer moonlight on the Lake ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... claimed for this book, on account of the natural and progressive order of the lessons,—of the conciseness and truthfulnes of the descriptive matter,—of the number, correctness, and uniform excellence of the Maps,—from the fact that the book is faithfully revised as often as political changes in our own or other countries require it,—that the pronunciations of the difficult geographical names are given,—and finally, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... or four personal cases, the notes taken at the time of such visits, paid several thousands of miles apart, might almost be read as descriptive of the same interview, with ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... gem-blaz'd circle beaming on her brows. Hail'd with acclaim among the heav'nly choirs, Her soul new-kindling with seraphic fires, To notes divine she tunes the vocal strings, While heav'n's high concave with the music rings. Virtue's rewards can mortal pencil paint? No—all descriptive arts, and eloquence are faint; Nor canst thou, Oliver, assent refuse To heav'nly tidings from the Afric muse. As soon may change thy laws, eternal fate, As the saint miss the glories I relate; Or her Benevolence forgotten lie, Which wip'd the trick'ling tear from Misry's eye. Whene'er the ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... names are descriptive only of a portion of it. Where the phrase Chung Yung occurs in the quotations from Confucius, in nearly every chapter from the second to the eleventh, we do well to translate it by 'the course of the Mean,' or some similar terms; but ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... his story with keen appreciation and rare touches of Irish wit and drollery that made it most interesting as well as very funny. It was a first attempt at descriptive narration. With an inborn gift for striking the vital point, a naturalist's dawning enthusiasm for the wonders of the Limberlost, and the welling joy of his newly found happiness, he made McLean see the struggles of the moth and its freshly ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... then begin with worship. A church which does not emphasize it before everything else is trying to build the structure of a spiritual society with the corner stone left out. Let us try, first of all, to define it. An old and popular definition of the descriptive sort says that "worship is the response of the soul to the consciousness of being in the presence of God." A more modern definition, analyzing the psychology of worship, defines it as "the unification of consciousness around the central controlling idea of God, the prevailing emotional ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... still loftier meaning did it acquire when the Christ employed it as descriptive of the splendors of the 'better land'—of the glories and beauties of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... The descriptive Part of this Allegory is likewise very strong, and full of Sublime Ideas. The Figure of Death, [the Regal Crown upon his Head,] his Menace of Satan, his advancing to the Combat, the Outcry at his Birth, are Circumstances too noble to be past over in Silence, and extreamly ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... but we should regret to see a bishop, or even a dean, have recourse to such means of producing an impression. We shall give one other extract descriptive of ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... should follow his example, and be infected by his passion for poetry.... And so it turned out. I, too, began reading poetry, or, as my grandmother expressed it, poring over doggrel trash.... I even tried my hand at versifying, and composed a poem, descriptive of a barrel-organ, in which occurred the ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... The descriptive poems of Catullus are superior to the others, and discover a lively imagination. Amongst the best of his productions, is a translation of the celebrated ode ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... For words are the spirit, manifested to itself in symbols with no sensual alloy. Poetry is therefore the presentation, through words, of life and all that life implies. Perception, emotion, thought, action, find in descriptive, lyrical, reflective, dramatic, and epical poetry their immediate apocalypse. In poetry we are no longer puzzled with problems as to whether art has or has not of necessity a spiritual content. There cannot be any poetry whatsoever without a spiritual meaning of some sort: ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... of the face was gray, the gray of living death, and from this emblem, Peter suddenly decided, the man had been given his descriptive name. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... clamored for a sign, that "An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign" (Matt. 12:39; see also 16:4; Mark 8:38) could only be interpreted by the Jews as a supreme reproof. That the descriptive designation "adulterous" was literally applicable to the widespread immorality of the time, they all knew. Adam Clarke in his commentary on Matt. 12:39, says of this phase of our topic: "There is the utmost proof from their [the Jews'] ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... instances asked for, they may be found in Stewart, Monge, and Chasles, all of whom possessed this power in an eminent degree. Indeed, without it, all attempts to study the geometry of space (even the very elements of descriptive geometry, to say nothing of the more recondite investigations of the science) would be entirely unproductive. It is, moreover, a power capable of being acquired by men of average intellect without extreme difficulty; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... Many of them chose personal names, e.g. Jakobs, Levy, Moses, for this purpose, while others named themselves from their place of residence, e.g. Cassel, Speyer (Spires), Hamburg, often with the addition of the syllable -er, e.g. Darmesteter, Homburger. Some families preferred descriptive names such as Selig (Chapter XXII), Sonnenschein, Goldmann, or invented poetic and gorgeous place-names such as Rosenberg, Blumenthal, Goldberg, Lilienfeld. The oriental fancy also showed itself in such names as Edelstein, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... A full descriptive account of Henry's reception on his return from France is set out in the City Records (Letter Book K, fos. 103b-104b). It purports to be an account sent by John Carpenter, the Town Clerk, to a friend, and has been printed at the end of the Liber Albus (Rolls ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... relation with nature, and that the two occupants of the Manse are in good faith a new Adam and Eve, so far as the happiness of that immemorial pair remained unbroken. The charm of these experiences has all been distilled into the descriptive chapter which prefaces the "Mosses"; and such more personal aspects of it as could not be mixed in that vintage have been gathered, like forgotten clusters of the harvest, into the Note-Books. It remains to comment, here, on the contrast between the peaceful character ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... founders, and is receiving the cordial support of the contributing members of the international union which are actually represented in its board of management. A commercial directory, in two volumes, containing a mass of statistical matter descriptive of the industrial and commercial interests of the various countries, has been printed in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French, and a monthly bulletin published in these four languages and distributed in the Latin-American countries ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Ocean, in a ship by herself; carried from Syria all the way to Northumberland, and there wrecked upon the coast; thence yet again driven up and down among the waves for five years, she and her child; and yet, all this while, Chaucer does not let fall a single word descriptive of the sea, or express any emotion whatever about it, or about the ship. He simply tells us the lady sailed here and was wrecked there; but neither he nor his audience appear to be capable of receiving any sensation, but one of simple aversion, from ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... bystander; and it is certain that her friends excused in her, because she had a right to it, a tone which they would have reckoned intolerable in any other. Many years since, one of her earliest and fastest friends quoted Spenser's sonnet as accurately descriptive of Margaret:— ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of organization of the trust was unimportant. Strictly speaking, it was a combination of competing concerns, in which the control of all was vested in a group of trustees for the purpose of uniformity. The name was thus derived, but it spread in popular usage until it was regarded as generally descriptive of any business so large that it affected the course of the whole trade of which it was a part. The logical outcome of the trust was monopoly, and trusts appeared first in those industries in which there existed ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... story, gave a conspicuous illustration of the essential dramatic faculty. The first act is the adroit expansion of a few paragraphs, in the second chapter of the novel, which are descriptive of the bleak, misty November morning when Alan Ravenswood was borne to the grave; but by the introduction of the Lord Keeper and of the village crones into that funeral scene he opened the whole subject, indicated all the essential antecedents of the story, and placed ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... long, slender hand, on a kind of wavy, ribbed paper. There was something strangely suggestive about the look of it,—but exactly of what, Miss Darley either could not or did not try to think. The subject of the paper was The Mountain,—the composition being a sort of descriptive rhapsody. It showed a startling familiarity with some of the savage scenery of the region. One would have said that the writer must have threaded its wildest solitudes by the light of the moon and stars as well as by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... knee and hock downwards. For the purposes of this treatise, however, the word foot will be used in its more popular sense, and will refer solely to those portions of the digit contained within the hoof. When, in this chapter on regional anatomy, or elsewhere, the descriptive matter or the illustrations exceed that limit, it will be with the object of observing the relationship between the parts we are concerned with and ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... opinion as to the conventions that are appropriate to the designing of colour prints. In the work of the Japanese masters the convention does not vary. A descriptive black or grey line is used throughout the design, outlining all forms or used as flat spots or patches. The line is not always uniform, but is developed with great subtlety to suggest the character of the form expressed, so ...
— Wood-Block Printing - A Description of the Craft of Woodcutting and Colour Printing Based on the Japanese Practice • F. Morley Fletcher
... received, soon afterward, a prescription of a soothing nature to make up for Mrs. Yatman. The day after, Mr. Yatman purchased some smelling-salts at the shop, and afterward appeared at the circulating library to ask for a novel descriptive of high life that would amuse an invalid lady. It has been inferred from these circumstances that he has not thought it desirable to carry out his threat of separating from his wife, at least in ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... Edinburgh, MDCCCLIX, under the title of Luckidad's Garland, p. 134, is a remarkable picture of the old and new times in Scotland, eighty or ninety years ago, three of the twenty-four verses of which the ballad is composed, being descriptive of something akin to bundling. In a London edition of Hudibras, also, published in 1811, is a note to line 913, of Part I, Canto I. As both of these extracts, however, are somewhat too broad for our pages, we content ourselves with simply referring thereto. In the same category, ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... A Descriptive Catalogue of Playing and other Cards in the British Museum, accompanied by a Concise General History of the Subject, and Remarks on Cards of Divination and of a Politico-Historical Character. By William Hughes Willshire, M.D. Printed by order of the ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... been employed to celebrate the glory of the sovereign. A long inscription covers the base of the shaft, while the upper part of each face is divided into five pictures, the narrow bands between them bearing short legends descriptive of the scenes represented. It was, of course, important that such figured panegyrics should be afforded the best possible chance of immortality; and we find that most of these obelisks are composed of the hardest rocks. Of the four examples in the British ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... having found it amenable to any of the evidences by which the food-force of aliments is generally measured, it will not do for us to talk of benefit by delay of regressive metamorphosis unless such process is accompanied with something evidential of the fact—something scientifically descriptive of its mode of accomplishment in the case at hand, and unless it is shown to ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... my guardian, eyeing his black figure as if he were a bird of ill omen, "has brought an ugly report of our most unfortunate Rick." Laying a marked emphasis on "most unfortunate" as if the words were rather descriptive of his connexion ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... other such traits of inconsistency, I advert to only as being descriptive of the very unsatisfactory manner in which our business is discussed, always providing on their side apologies for future failures, instead of means of success, and projects of vigour and enterprize. Yet though the shortness of our possible residence here makes this inanimate character ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... McClain," exclaimed Colonel Snow. "I've read his work, and it is the most lucid, modest, and understandable descriptive work on the Alaskan country that ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... published some years later, and dealing with Belgium, the battle of Waterloo, and central Europe, are superior to the first two. Its excellence consists chiefly in the fact that while it is primarily a descriptive poem, its pictures, dramatically and finely vivid in themselves, are permeated with intense emotion and often serve only as introductions to passionate rhapsodies, so that the ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... the bride and bridegroom were writing that they thought of soon returning; they had spent the early spring at Paris, had wandered about in the south of France, and now were at Paris again. Flora's letters were long, descriptive, and affectionate, and she was eager to be kept fully informed of everything at home. As soon as she heard of Norman's success, she wrote a whole budget of letters, declaring that she and George would hear of no refusal; they were going to spend a fortnight at Oxford for the Commemoration, and ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Fang, in fifteen Books, contains 160 pieces, nearly all of them short, and descriptive of manners and events in several of the feudal states of Kau. The title has been translated by The Manners of the Different States, 'Les Moeurs des Royaumes,' and, which I prefer, by Lessons ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... letter to Orion Clemens, who had disposed of his paper, but evidently was still in Hannibal. An extended description of a trip to Fairmount Park is omitted because of its length, its chief interest being the tendency it shows to descriptive writing—the field in which he would make his first great fame. There is, however, no hint of humor, and only a mild suggestion of the author of the Innocents Abroad in this early attempt. The letter as here given is otherwise ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the honorable Managers, was appointed in January, 1862, during the first term of President Lincoln. Are these words, 'during the term of the President,' applicable to Mr. Stanton's case? That depends upon whether an expounder of this law judicially, who finds set down in it as a part of the descriptive words, 'during the term of the President,' has any right to add 'and during any other term for which he may be afterwards elected.' I respectfully submit no such judicial interpretation can be put on the words. Then if ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... wider than the front segment, dead-black and also bristling with hairs. Length: 16 to 18 millimetres (.63 to .7 inch.—Translator's Note.); width: about 3 millimetres." (.12 inch.—Translator's Note.) A quarter of a century and more has elapsed since I jotted down this descriptive sketch; and to-day, at Serignan, I find in the Eumenes' larder the same game which I noticed long ago at Carpentras. Time and distance have not altered the nature of ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... indifferent spectator; it is the cry of popular rage and vengeance reproduced by the lively imagination of an angered poet. Undoubtedly the Norman peasants of the twelfth century did not speak of their miseries with such descriptive ability and philosophical feeling as were lent to them by Robert Wace; they did not meditate the democratic revolution of which he attributes to them the idea and almost the plan; but the deeds of violence and oppression against which they rose were very real, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... fashion of the dwellers in Arabia,[*] into a paean of triumph or epithalamium, which, wild and beautiful as it was, is exceedingly difficult to render into English, and ought by rights to be sung to the music of a cantata, rather than written and read. It was divided into two parts—one descriptive or definitive, and the other personal; and, as nearly as I can ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... like a crowd, we may be sure, at any other public spectacle. Whatever the object which gathers together a mob of the lowest class, they will soon begin to relieve the tedium of expectation by coarse jests, drunkenness, and brawling. Yet these descriptive logicians are never weary of painting to us the grotesque and disgusting scenes which the mass of spectators exhibit on these occasions, as if this were quite decisive of the question. That ragged children, who have never thought of death at all, play their usual pranks at the foot ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... record is a complete personal history of the soldier and follows him wherever he goes. It contains: a descriptive list, report of assignment, record of prior service, current enlistment, military record, record of allotments, clothing account and settlement, deposits, indorsements (this latter to give reasons for change of status or station ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... as Liberty Street, with a garden and family burial plot to the east, lying between the house and the river. It was restored as nearly as possible to its original character on its purchase by the State in 1849, and it is now the treasure-house of many memories, and of valuable historic relics. A descriptive catalogue, prepared for the trustees, under act of May 11, 1874, by a patient and careful historian, Dr. E. M. Ruttenber, will be of service to the visitor and can be obtained on the grounds. The following facts, condensed ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... this set, pocket folder size, illustrated, and are descriptive of tours to particular points. The set comprises "Sights and Scenes in Colorado;" Utah; Idaho and Montana; California; Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. Each pamphlet, deals minutely with every resort of pleasure or health within its assigned ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... General Montgomery, Captain McPherson, one of his aids, Captain Cheeseman, and every other person in front, except Captain Burr and a French guide. General Montgomery was within a few feet of Captain Burr; and Colonel Trumbull, in a superb painting recently executed by him, descriptive of the assault upon Quebec, has drawn the general falling in the arms of his surviving aid-de-camp. Lieutenant Colonel Campbell, being the senior officer on the ground, assumed the command, and ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Loch Katrine, at sunset, after spending a long hour on the little white beach opposite Ellen's Isle, I ran along the road in advance of my parents, and, climbing a cliff, saw the breadth of the lake below me, golden under the sunset clouds, and very aptly recited, as they came up, Sir Walter's descriptive verse: ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... highest top of Great Haystack. Vulgar folks have called it Mount Lafayette, since the visit of that brave old Frenchman in 1825 or 1826. If they had asked his opinion, he would have told them the names of mountains couldn't be altered, and especially names like that, so appropriate, so descriptive, and so picturesque. A little hard white cloud, that looked like a hundred fleeces of wool rolled into one, was climbing rapidly along up the northwestern ridge, that ascended to the lonely top of Great Haystack. All the others were bare. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... considerable part of the K.C. is in rhythmic prose—some of it declamatory. I have endeavoured throughout this work to represent, or reproduce to the mind and heart of the reader the spoken word and intonation—not written language. It really should be read aloud, especially the descriptive ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... administration of the patrimony, just as politics is the morality of the sovereign, from the point of view of the good government of the State. There is as yet no question of economic laws in the sense of historical and descriptive laws; and political economy, not yet existing in the form of a science, is not more than a branch of that great tree which is called ethics, or the art of living well.'[1] 'The doctrine of the canon law,' ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... of the best historical matter extant, down to the close of the Spanish regime. Throughout the series will be used, as has been done from the beginning, all the best material available—historical, descriptive, and statistical—for reference and annotation. With the copious and carefully-prepared bibliography of Philippine historical literature, and the full analytical index, which will close the series; the broad and representative character ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... this," he said; and for more than half an hour he regaled Kapfer with a story that, stripped of descriptive and irrelevant material concerning Elkan's own feelings in the matter, ought to have taken only five ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... were not grasped by any noteworthy poet before Thomson. The Seasons was an innovation, and its novelty lay not so much in the choice of the subject as in the interpretation. Didactic as well as descriptive, it was designed not merely to present realistic pictures but to arouse certain explicitly stated thoughts and feelings. Thomson had absorbed some of Shaftesbury's ideas. Such sketches as that of the hardships which country folk suffer ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... authorities of Guillestre of the conduct of the Protestant sergeant in the matter; but when the shepherds got down to Gap, they were so full of the sergeant's praises, and of his bravery in rescuing them and their flock from certain death, that a paragraph descriptive of the affair was inserted in the local papers, and was eventually copied into the Parisian journals. Then it was that an inquiry was made into his conduct, and the result was so satisfactory that ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... different opinions show, at all events, on what uncertain grounds such attempts at interpretation stand, and that it is best to be satisfied with designating the deities by letters and collecting material for their purely descriptive designation. ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... studies which Rueckert continued to pursue with unabated ardor were to him a fruitful source of poetic inspiration. They furnished the material for the great mass of narrative, descriptive and didactic poems which were collected under the titles Erbauliches und Beschauliches aus dem Morgenlande, and again Morgenlaendische Sagen und Geschichten, furthermore Brahmanische Erzaehlungen, and lastly Weisheit des Brahmanen. We shall discuss ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... avowedly its second part, a small piece of Eve et David serving as the link between them. But it is almost sufficient by and to itself. Lucien de Rubempre ou le Journalisme would be the most straightforward and descriptive title for it, and one which Balzac in some of his moods would have been content enough ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... conversation is the Notched Rod. It is about twelve feet long with various kinds of notches cut along the two sides. Such a stick is possessed by every Scumite who expects to hold extended or descriptive conversations. It is usually held by a skin strung around the neck. While one of these persons is talking, two or three of his fingers pass from notch to notch along the rod. These indentures of the rod represent, in their ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... to those whose near and dear ones lie buried there, otherwise I would not paint it or reproduce my comments thereon, even by request. 'Tis only a miniature, with a few details, that I attempt to draw. One field—nay, one corner of the field—is descriptive of the rest, so I lift but a little ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... and touched Dandy with the tips of her dainty fingers and began to speak of him as "it." Equine sex was a matter beyond Mrs. Turner's consideration, and with eminent discretion she compromised on "it" as a safe descriptive. ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... largely physiographic but contains some good chapters on the Indians. In Stanford's "Compendium" the purpose is to treat man and nature in their relation to one another, but the relationships are not clearly brought out, and there is too much emphasis on purely descriptive and encyclopedic matter. So far as interest is concerned, the famous work by Elise Reclus holds high rank. It is an encyclopedia of geographical facts arranged and edited in such a way that it has all the interest of a fine book of travel. Like most of the ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... that unknown author; and Hazlitt said further of him that he rendered, in his own vividly characteristic manner, "not only the objects, but the feelings, of a new country." Great is the essayist's relish for passages descriptive of "a battle between two snakes," of "the dazzling, almost invisible flutter of the humming- bird's wing," of the manners of "the Nantucket people, their frank simplicity, and festive rejoicings after the perils and hardships of the whale-fishing." ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... geology, or of its bearing on the problem of the successive introduction of animals on the earth. I had never thought of the larger and more philosophical view of nature as one great world, but considered the study of animals only as it was taught by descriptive zoology in those days. At about this time, however, I made the acquaintance of two young botanists, Braun and Schimper, both of whom have since become distinguished in the annals of science. Botany had in those days received a new impulse from the great conceptions of Goethe. The metamorphosis ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... 1814, while visiting there, he was seized with a severe cold, which compelled him to prolong his stay with his friends; and Mrs Izett, who took a warm interest in his welfare, suggested that he might turn his illness to account, by composing a poem, descriptive of the beauties of the surrounding scenery. The hint was sufficient; he commenced a descriptive poem in the Spenserian stanza, which was speedily completed, and given to the world under the title of "Mador of the Moor." It was well received; and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... this earlier growth that it has more affinity with the poetic tendencies, while Wit is more nearly allied to the ratiocinative intellect. Humor draws its materials from situations and characteristics; Wit seizes on unexpected and complex relations. Humor is chiefly representative and descriptive; it is diffuse, and flows along without any other law than its own fantastic will; or it flits about like a will-of-the-wisp, amazing us by its whimsical transitions. Wit is brief and sudden, and sharply defined ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... the woods, and remote from the highway. What was believed to be the oldest pine-tree in the county gave to the place the popular name of "Grey Pine" and being accepted by the family when they came there to live, "Penhallow's Folly" ceased to be considered descriptive. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... there was an immediate recrudescence of the unfavorable first impression gained at the Hotel Chouteau supper-table. He recalled his own descriptive formula struck out as a tag for the hard-faced, heavy-browed man at the end of the cafe table—"crudely strong, elementally shrewd, with a touch, or more than a touch, of the savage: the gray-wolf type"—and he found no present reason for ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... whether the African elephant is capable of being tamed, through the kindness of my friend Admiral Smythe I am enabled to give the reader conclusive evidence on this point. In the two medals furnished from his work, "A descriptive Catalogue of his Cabinet of Roman and Imperial large brass Medals", the size of the ears will be at once noted as those of the true African elephant.* They were even more docile than the Asiatic, and were taught various feats, as walking on ropes, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... of the bone, and is, in fact, the secreting membrane of the bony structure. The bony tissue proper is of two consistencies, the external portion being hard and "compact," and called by the latter term, while the internal, known as the "spongy" or "areolar tissue," corresponds to the descriptive terms. Those of the bones that possess this latter consistency contain also, in their spongy portion, the medullary substance known as marrow, which is deposited in large quantities in the interior of ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... decrees of the magistrates, were allowed to retain the arms they had illegally seized, whilst the protestants in the departments were disarmed. The members of the reformed churches wished at this period to present another memorial to the government, descriptive of the evils they still suffered, but this was not practicable. On the 26th of September, the president of the consistory wrote as follows: "I have only been able to assemble two or three members of the consistory pastors ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... of Yellowstone Park; 1921 ed. 8 vo., 160 pp. Officially approved by The National Park Service, Washington, D. C., and The Yellowstone Trail Association. Illustrated, maps, diagrams, charts. Descriptive, Historical, Geological, and contains the Motorists' Complete Road Log; By J. E. ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough
... importance. Now this verse is not analogous to the iambic trimeter of Sophocles or the blank verse of Shakspere, but roughly corresponds to the Greek choruses or the occasional rhymed songs of the Elizabethan stage. In other words, the verse portion of a Sanskrit drama is not narrative; it is sometimes descriptive, but more commonly lyrical: each stanza sums up the emotional impression which the preceding action or dialogue has made upon one of the actors. Such matter is in English cast into the form of the rhymed stanza; and so, although rhymed verse is very rarely employed in classical ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... animated periods and thorough exposition and illustration of some event, trait, or economy,—in itself of little importance and limited value,—how much better it would have been to reserve his brilliant descriptive and keen analytical powers for the grand episodes, the prolific crises, and the leading characters of history, instead of indiscriminately devoting them to a consecutive account of national incidents and persons, both great and small, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... discussion and observation. These papers are carefully condensed, sifted, classified, and placed in proper record form, by the editing committee of the club. This committee, is also instructed to prepare short extracts, essays and descriptive articles relating to club work, for publication in the mothers' ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... copied the words of the will exactly, I suppose you take an estate in fee simple in Marrowbone, and for life only in Horse-pasture and Poison-field; the want of words of inheritance in the two last cases, being supplied as to the first, by the word 'estate,' which has been repeatedly decided to be descriptive of the quantum of interest devised, as well as of its locality. I am in hopes, however, you have not copied the words exactly, that there are words of inheritance to all the devises, as the testator certainly knew their necessity, and that the conflict ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the Netherlands, the name so descriptive of the land where not less than two hundred and twenty-three thousand acres are below the level of the sea and kept constantly drained by artificial means, are the engineering and mechanical devices for the reclamation and preservation of land, the formation of outlet-canals ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... After a time I quite forgot everything in enthusiasm at what I saw and the sense that I was enjoying the privilege of a lifetime. The life of the fields seemed to be unrolled before me like some vast panorama. Millet's comments were short and descriptive of what he aimed to represent, seldom or never concerning the method of his work. "Women in my country," meaning Lower Normandy, of course, "carry jars of milk in that way," he said, indicating the woman crossing the fields with the milk-can supported by a strap on her shoulder. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... of our forces in France, that the communications from "an eye-witness present with General Headquarters" are better than nothing, has probably wondered at the recent paucity of despatches from this descriptive writer. Is it possible that the following has strayed into our hands ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... the memorial, bearing date two days later, July 28, 1649, and was signed by the same eleven men. It is considered probable that Adriaen van der Donck was its main author. Its first part, descriptive of the province, reads like a preliminary sketch for his Beschryvinge van Nieuw-Nederlant ("Description of New Netherland"), a very interesting work published at Amsterdam six years later (1665, second edition 1656), and of which a translation appears in the Collections of the ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... more than 300 lines. Although he invents a suitable brief description of Mirrha's nurse, whom he calls "old trott," and throws in a few erotic tid-bits quite in the spirit of the minor epic, he never departs from Ovid's story line and never introduces descriptive detail of which there is not at least a hint ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... and of sociology, see my paper on "How History can be taught from a Sociological Point of View," in Education for January, 1910.] A word may be said about the relation of sociology to another science which also deals with human society in a general way, and that is history. History is a concrete, descriptive science of society which attempts to construct a picture of the social past. Sociology, however, is an abstract, theoretical science of society concerned with the laws and principles which govern social organization and social ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... itself poetic throughout in its expression. And how else shall Poetry be described than by Poetry? What form shall embrace and define the highest? Must it not be self-descriptive as self-existent? For what man is to this planet, what the eye is to man himself, Poetry is to Literature. Yet one can hardly help wishing that the poetic forms in this Essay were fewer and less minute, and the whole a little more scientific; though it is a question ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... distinguish from the metaphysical sort. The point at issue between vitalism and mechanism in biology is whether the living processes in nature can be resolved into a combination of the material. The material processes will always remain vital, if we take this word in a descriptive and poetic sense; for they will contain a movement having a certain idiosyncrasy and taking a certain time, like the fall of an apple. The movement of nature is never dialectical; the first part of any event does not logically imply the last part of it. Physics is descriptive, historical, reporting ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... about his enemy's death while he himself becomes rich—is such as to admit of indefinite expansion, so far as the number and variety of the episodes are concerned. There have been at least four comprehensive descriptive or bibliographical studies of this cycle made,—Koehler's (on Campbell's Gaelic story, No. 39), Cosquin's (notes to Nos. 10 and 20), Clouston's (2 : 229-288), and Bolte-Polivka's (on Grimm, No. 61). Of these, the last, inasmuch as it is the latest (1914) ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... didn't relish that little dash of descriptive writing. In conjunction with the noun horse Cappy Ricks had employed the indefinite article a, and while a horse was a horse and Cappy might have had a Shetland pony in mind when he coined the simile, nevertheless, a still small voice whispered to ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... at his best when describing some daring adventure, when making a confession of his own weaknesses, or in depicting scenery. Lieutenant Cameron's tribute to his descriptive powers must not be passed by. "Going over ground which he explored," says Cameron, "with his Lake Regions of Central Africa in my hand, I was astonished at the acuteness of his perception and the correctness of his descriptions." ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... gave a descriptive narrative of the killing of each bird and squirrel as he pulled them off his belt and threw them ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... or some other boy genius had done. When the article appeared in the paper my mother bought fifty copies and gave them out to our neighbors. There was nothing to shock such neighbors here, and they praised me highly for what they called my "real descriptive power." ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... favourite stone anyway and was my father's before me. But what would the ex-Slade professor do about the letter Y? Or suppose he took the other version, how would he meet the case, the two N.'s? These things are beyond my knowledge, which it would perhaps be more descriptive to call ignorance. But I place the matter in the meanwhile under your consideration and beg to hear your views. I shall tell you on some other occasion and when the A.M. is out of hearing how very much I propose to invest in this testimonial; but I may as well inform you at once that I intend ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of begging and borrowing, the money was scraped together for the opening expenses of the exhibition, and Haydon composed a sensational descriptive advertisement in the hope of attracting the public. The private view was on April 4, when it rained all day, and only four old friends attended. On April 6, Easter Monday, the public was admitted, but ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... Madam," so ran the official note, "I beg to call your attention to what I imagine must, in some way, have been an oversight. Your cat, described on the entrance form as 'a black male, named Beauty,' which was, on the evening of its arrival, placed in the class pertaining to the descriptive form, was found this morning to have presented us with four remarkably fine kittens. This, of course, necessitated the family's removal from the male cat class. I have much pleasure in being able to inform you that both mother ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... so much accustomed to words, descriptive of the cruelty of this traffic, that we had almost forgotten their meaning. He wished that some person, educated as an Englishman, with suitable powers of eloquence, but now for the first time informed of all the horrors ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... expressed in their resolution of the 2d of this month, I transmit to both Houses those instructions to and dispatches from the envoys extraordinary of the United States to the French Republic which were mentioned in my message of the 19th of March last, omitting only some names and a few expressions descriptive ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 4) of Volume 1: John Adams • Edited by James D. Richardson
... the startling increase of pauperism and crime, with other causes which can find small space here. With difficulty consent was obtained to establish a bureau which should inquire into the causes of all this; and the first report was given to the public in 1870. It was descriptive rather than statistical, and necessarily so. Methods were still a matter of question and experiment. The public had small interest in the project, and it was essential to outline, not only the work to be done, but the reasons for ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... and fetched him in. And we niver heerd of the murther at all at all, sir, until I came down here to-day, that's God's troot', and he'll tell ye so whin he's sober," she ended, breathless, reckless of her descriptive confusion ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... girl looked at him with the expression for which he had as yet found no word more adequately descriptive than his vague "queer." "I haven't exactly the habit of walking about Paris streets alone, you know," ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various |
