"Literal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chraestotaes] are Dion Cassius's words. Antony's language was differently reported, and perhaps there was no literal record of it. Dion Cassius, however, can hardly have himself composed the version which he gives in his history, for he calls the speech as ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... said No—which was the literal truth—but then it would not have been the whole truth, for they knew quite well that Dolly had been milked, and also who had done it. And their mother had always taught them that to make a person believe a lie is nearly as bad as telling him one. Yet still they did not like ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... Bowen's Corners. Near their house was the tavern, its proprietor known to all the people roundabout as "Uncle Sam" Bowen. He and Daniel Read never wearied in setting forth the merits of "free salvation." They were the only two persons in all that section of the country who did not believe in a literal hell. It was the common sentiment then that only those disbelieved in endless punishment who had reason to be afraid of it, and, since both these men were exemplary in every other respect, it was impossible for their friends to understand their ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the foot of the bed, gazing at the wall above his head. "I must earn our expenses until we're safe," said she, once more telling a literal truth that was yet a ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... its literal meaning, means an infusion of intelligence that lifts up the minds of man, and it is generally so accepted by the world at large, but education, as far as Catholicism goes, means only a rehearsal of abominations, which have been practiced upon the followers of this creed for centuries in the past, ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... chapels with pillared porticoes, but of a very old-fashioned kind. They believed in present miracles, in instantaneous conversions, in revelations by dreams and visions; they drew lots, and sought for Divine guidance by opening the Bible at hazard; having a literal way of interpreting the Scriptures, which is not at all sanctioned by approved commentators; and it is impossible for me to represent their diction as correct, or their instruction as liberal. Still—if I have read religious history aright—faith, hope, and charity have ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... them. His poetry in form and material is all his own. He asserted the poet's claim to borrow from all science, and from every phase of nature, the associations and images which he wants; and he showed that those images and associations did not lose their poetry by being expressed with the most literal reality. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... can scarcely be denied that the will of God has been distinctly revealed on this subject. The promises made to believing prayer are explicit, numerous, and diversified. If we take them in their simple and literal meaning, or if in fact we give to them any reasonable interpretation whatever, they seem to be easily understood. Our difficulty seems to be this: the promise is so "exceeding great" that we cannot conceive ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... vessels made them more than a match, in this kind of encounter, for the clumsy, top-heavy, and sluggish marine castles in which Spain and Portugal then went forth to battle on the ocean. It seems almost like the irony of history, and yet it is the literal fact, that the Dutch galleot of that day—hardly changed in two and a half centuries since—"the bull-browed galleot butting through the stream,"—[Oliver Wendell Holmes]—was then the model clipper, conspicuous among all ships for its rapid ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that it produced a characteristic protest. "I am really distressed by the illustration of Mrs. Pipchin and Paul. It is so frightfully and wildly wide of the mark. Good heaven! in the commonest and most literal construction of the text, it is all wrong! She is described as an old lady, and Paul's 'miniature arm-chair' is mentioned more than once. He ought to be sitting in a little arm-chair down in a corner of the fireplace, staring up at her. I can't say what pain and vexation ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... of it as a matter of curiosity. . . . THE correspondent who sends us the following, writes upon the envelope containing it: 'I have endeavored to preserve the measure of the original, and at the same time to present a literal translation.' It will be conceded, we think, that he has been successful in his endeavor. Perhaps in some lines (as in 'Pertransivit gladius') the translation ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... the narrow hallway connecting the four rooms on which the social regeneration of her village depended, she caught the sweet low thrum of a guitar and a too familiarly seductive voice burst forth into a chant, whose literal significance she was unable to grasp, owing to lack of familiarity with the language in which it was couched, but whose general tenor no one could mistake, so tender and arch ...
— A Philanthropist • Josephine Daskam
... amusement of the afternoon was an apple-guessing contest, the names of different varieties of apples to be guessed from literal definitions, thus: The Royal Apple—. King. After that there was an apple-peeling contest in Hallowe'en fashion and each girl threw the peeling over her left shoulder to discover the initial of ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... he had no conscientious or doctrinal scruples about a third term. He had found the White House a congenial abode, had accepted the literal theory that his election in 1908 would not imply a third but a second term, and he wanted to remain. In point of fact I have an impression that, barring Jackson and Polk, most of those who have got ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... experience, but a composition by portions of that experience suggested. Thus while egotism was avoided, the fancy was exercised, and the heart satisfied. I translate as before, and my translation is nearly literal; it continued thus:— ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... the literal history, as we find it quoted in D'Israeli,—"when the Bishop of Metz caused the Mystery of the Passion to be represented near that city, God was an old gentleman, a curate of the place, and who was very near expiring on the cross, had he not been timely assisted. He was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... is our duty, when we have the desires of the people before us, to pursue them, not in the spirit of literal obedience, which may militate with their very principle,—much less to treat them with a peevish and contentious litigation, as if we were adverse parties in a suit. It would, Sir, be most dishonorable for a faithful representative of the Commons to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of Timotheus was metaphorical, and that of Cecilia literal. But, while we stoop to such criticism, we seek for blots in ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... religious doctrines which they held which most greatly surprised John. They attached no importance, whatever, to the ceremonial law of the Jewish Scriptures; maintaining, in the first place, that the Scriptures had a spiritual signification wholly apart from the literal meaning, alone understood by the world; and that this spiritual meaning could only be attained by those who, after long probation, were initiated into the inner ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... most literal sense we live and move and have our being in the realm of spiritual forces. "Our life is hid with Christ in God." That assertion is no mere mystic phase, but a plain and direct assertion of an absolute spiritual truth. Our real life, ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... that line. There are arguments, too, from the distances. There are two journeys in the book from Eatanswill to Bury, which seem to furnish data for both theories—the Ipswich and the Norwich ones. But if we have to take the dejeuner in its literal sense, and put it early in the day, say, at eleven, and Mr. Pickwick's arrival at Bury, "wery late," as Sam had it, we have some six hours, or, say, forty miles, covered by the journey. But the events at Mrs. Leo Hunter's were certainly at mid- day—between one and three o'clock. ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... a ransom for us. Or the analogy of the ceremonial law is accepted; and then Christ is set forth as a propitiatory or expiatory offering to obtain remission of sins for us. Regarding Christ as suffering for us in one or another of these Scripture forms or figures taken as the literal dogmatic truth, we have as many distinct theories. Then, again, different as these figures are from each other, they will yet be used interchangeably, all in the sense of one or another of them. And then, again, to double the confusion ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... was anywhere; he only said he had a coral breastpin in it for Sally," put in the literal Hannah. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... est usque ad caelum— whose the soil, his to the sky— is a maxim in these pine regions of literal importance. There is something besides utility also to be mentioned in this connection. With the exception of swamps, which are few and far between, the timber land has all the beauty of a sylvan grove. ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... to allow of the literal carrying out of Tatiana Markovna's promise that Mark should not wait for Vera in the arbour. An hour after her conversation with Vera she had descended the precipice, accompanied by Savili and five peasants with axes, and within two hours the arbour had been carried ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... very fine, but one drawback remained—neither Indian understood a single syllable uttered by the other, but the beaming expressions scarcely needed literal interpretation. Truth makes it necessary to add that, with all this effusiveness, the ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... two Greek words, a literal translation of which would signify the "arrangement of skins," appears to have been practised in a limited degree ages ago, for may we not say without doubt that the first taxidermists were the ancient Egyptians, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... much practice, added to a naturally alert mind, he became astonishingly ingenious in the torture of that honest but unimaginative gentleman whom he considered his best friend. He achieved the most surprising expressions by the mere literal translation of French idiom, and he could at any time bring Hartley to a crimson agony by calling him "my dear "'before other men, whereas at the equivalent "mon cher" the Englishman would doubtless never, as the phrase goes, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... proselyte warrior, who declared with enthusiasm that he had learned from the Sulpitian missionary that the King of France was the eldest son of the wife of Jesus Christ.[32] This he of course took in a literal sense, the mystic idea of the Church as the spouse of Christ being beyond his savage comprehension. The effect was to stimulate his devotion to the Great Onontio beyond the sea, and to the lesser Onontio who represented ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... error," said the literal Agatha, as she smoothed down Little Poll's skirts and twisted her ringlets into formal corkscrews. "Right THERE, you are in error, my dear. The reason I told Robert to marry you was because he said to me, when ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... there is no substantial basis for these tales of crime. The history of mankind is not so pure but that we can afford to lose a few dark pages out of the record. Let it be granted that of the times which Homer sung historically we know nothing literal at all—not any names of any kings, of any ministers, wars, intrigues, revolutions, crimes. They are all gone—dead—passed away; their vacant chronicles may be silent as the tombs in which their bones are buried. Of such stuff as that with which historians ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... be used, or fresh versions made. In a few instances, important narratives hitherto unprinted will be inserted. The English texts will be taken from the earliest editions, or those having the highest historical value, and will be reproduced with literal exactness. The maps will be such as will give real help toward understanding the events narrated in the volume. The special editors of the individual works will supply introductions, setting forth briefly the author's career and opportunities, when known, ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... Virgil which he lent me, with Hamilton's literal translation between the lines, and an old tattered Latin grammar; I felt myself quite a learned man—actually the possessor of a Latin book! I regarded as something almost miraculous the opening of this new field ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... drifts in the world of man, so are there drifts in the world of micro-organisms— hunger-quests for food. Little is known of the micro-organic world, but that little is appalling; and no census of it will ever be taken, for there is the true, literal "abysmal fecundity." Multitudinous as man is, all his totality of individuals is as nothing in comparison with the inconceivable vastness of numbers of the micro-organisms. In your body, or in mine, ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... hindrance to a traveler and literal man of the world is this confusion of tongues! There is no human being who can make himself verbally understood everywhere on this little globe. In the Russian empire alone there are more than a hundred spoken languages and dialects. The emperor, with all his erudition, has many subjects ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... purity of style would in any case have been praiseworthy, but are nothing less than admirable, if not wonderful, when we consider how close the translator has on the whole (in spite of occasional slips into inaccuracy) kept himself to the most rigid limit of literal representation, phrase by phrase and often line by line. The really startling force and felicity of occasional verses are worthier of remark than the inevitable stiffness and heaviness of others, when the technical difficulty of such a task is duly ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... carefully prepared with far more than the average erudition, because it had been changed throughout by the substitution of bad readings for good, in defiance of MS. authority, with a view of preserving a literal agreement with the Vulgate.[124] Sigonius, another of the Vatican students, was instructed to prepare certain text-books by Cardinal Paleotti. These were an Ecclesiastical History, a treatise on the Hebrew Commonwealth, and an edition of Sulpicius Severus. The MSS. were returned ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... dispute that all the typical movements of our time are upon this road towards simplification. Each system seeks to be more fundamental than the other; each seeks, in the literal sense, to undermine the other. In art, for example, the old conception of man, classic as the Apollo Belvedere, has first been attacked by the realist, who asserts that man, as a fact of natural history, is a creature with colourless ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... Gloucester, Cirencester, and Bath, it is impossible to determine. The natives are firmly convinced that the skeletons represent the slain in a great battle fought near this spot; but this is only tradition. At all events, the words of prophecy attributed to the old Scotch bard Ossian have a very literal application with reference to this interesting relic of bygone times: "The stranger shall come and build there and remove the heaped-up earth. An half-worn sword shall rise before him. Bending above it, he will say, 'These ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... that its author was expounding the biblical standpoint, and not his own, can it be reconciled with his general doctrine of progress and evolution in Hebrew thought. It would seem to accept the Sinaitic Covenant as a literal episode, and even to synchronise the Mission with it. But an investigation of the history of other Chosen Peoples will, I fear, dissipate any notion that the Sinaitic Covenant was other than a symbolic ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... if we take the Christian code, and suppose the New Testament made the literal guide of in every man, tell me, Mr. Fellowes, what would the consequence? What ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... coal-black negro stalking along with a Sergeant's chevrons on his arm, or to gaze on a regimental line of dusky faces on dress parade, but we soon got used to it. The first strong peculiarity of the negro soldier that impressed itself, upon us was his literal obedience of orders. A white soldier usually allows himself considerable discretion in obeying orders—he aims more at the spirit, while the negro adheres to the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... meant by the 'imitation of Christ' has been also misconceived. Imitation is not a literal mechanical copying. To make the character of another your model does not mean that you are to become his mimic or echo. In asking us to follow Him, Christ does not desire to suppress our individuality, but to ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... of their tastes and occupations? In cultivating the aesthetic side of man's nature; in engaging him with the beautiful, the pure, the wonderful, the truly natural; with painting, poetry, music, horticulture, physical science—in all this lies recreation, in the true and literal sense of that word, namely, the recreating and mending of the exhausted mind and feelings, such as no rational man will now neglect, either for himself, ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... earth, according to that which the Lord saith: [Sidenote: Deut. 32. v. 21. Rom. 10. v. 19.] I will prouoke them to enuy (namely such as keepe not his Law) by a people, which is no people, and by a foolish nation will I anger them. This prophecie is fulfilled, according to the literal sense thereof, vpon all nations which obserue not the Law of God. All this which I haue written concerning the land of Pascatir, was told me by certaine Friers prdicants, which trauailed thither before euer the Tartars came abroad. And from that time they were subdued ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... escaped outside. Anything beyond his literal duty did not strike the faithful Jem. He stood on the door-sill, and gazed after me with a ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... of my profession, perhaps, that the degradation has been due, more than to those who represent their plays. They have interpreted, perhaps in too literal a sense, the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... unquestioned bounds, it might at any time throw the country into confusion. And so has each House of Parliament." But if the absolute supremacy of the Crown in the legal point of mew exactly the same over temporal matters and causes as over spiritual, is taken by no sane man to be a literal fact in temporal matters, it is violating the analogy of the Constitution, and dealing with the most important subjects in a mere spirit of narrow perverseness, to insist that it can have none but a literal meaning in ecclesiastical matters; and that the Church did ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... little girl chosen the sharpest arrow in her aunts' quiver—nay, bad she been Miss Gascoigne herself, she could not have shot more keenly home. For the dart was barbed with truth—literal truth; which, however, sore it be, people in many difficult circumstances of life are obliged to face, to recognize, and abide by—to soften and subdue if they can—but woe betide them if by any cowardly weakness or shortsighted selfishness, they are tempted ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... general idea of the Doctrine of Descent is that the plants and animals of the present day are the lineal descendants of ancestors on the whole somewhat simpler, that these again are descended from yet simpler forms, and so on backwards towards the literal "Protozoa" and "Protophyta" about which we unfortunately know nothing. Now no one supposes that Darwin originated this idea, which in rudiment at least is as old as Aristotle. What Darwin did was to make it current intellectual coin. He gave it a form that commended itself to the scientific ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... broke my back I should die, Will. It is always fatal, I believe!" quoth Rachel the literal, blushing with pleasure at his praise, but talking as primly and properly as if she were addressing a class in a school. She is a queer girl ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... philosophy; and still less have we any right to demand this of him in his use of mythology and figures of speech. And we observe that while employing all the resources of a writer of fiction to give credibility to his tales, he is not disposed to insist upon their literal truth. Rather, as in the Phaedo, he says, 'Something of the kind is true;' or, as in the Gorgias, 'This you will think to be an old wife's tale, but you can think of nothing truer;' or, as in the Statesman, he describes his work as a 'mass of mythology,' ...
— Statesman • Plato
... know, before you arrived on the scene to put everything in focus. And if I had done all that, while you were still here in Rome, running up and down your scales, honestly . . . I know I sound awfully literal . . . but I don't see how we ever could have met, ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the literal truth. He had never handled firearms of any sort, and a revolver in the hands of an inexperienced man is of all weapons the most dangerous. Nevertheless, with Murnihan's eye upon him, with the ring of anxious, threatening faces round him, ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... classical, who could philosophize in Socratic dialogue after the fashion of Plato—such a man a creature of the Ghetto! Doubtless he took his Judaism in some vague Platonic way; it was impossible to imagine him the literal bond-slave of that minute ritual, winding phylacteries round his left arm or shaking himself in a praying-shawl. Anyhow here—in logical lucid Hebrew—were Maimon's doubts and difficulties. If Mendelssohn was sincere, let him resolve them, and earn the blessings of a truly ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... by this time had ceased to be literal, except so far as it applied to Dick. Other cadets at his table talked among themselves, though never to Prescott. Greg, being Dick's roommate, was the sole ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... come in the bothering time and space, bothering in their relation to heavenly things, I mean. On the Friday, the penitent thief, as you call him, was to be with Jesus in Paradise; and now it was Sunday, and Jesus said he had not yet been up to see his Father. Some would say, I am too literal, too curious; what can Friday and Sunday have to do with Paradise? But words MEAN in both worlds, for they are not two but one—surely at least when Jesus thinks and speaks of them; and there can be no wrong in feeling ever so blindly ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... the spirited opposition which its corporation offered to the oath of spiritual supremacy. In 1622 Viscount Falkland came over as Lord Deputy, and Usher, who was at heart a Puritan,[469] preached a violent sermon on the occasion, in which he suggested a very literal application of his text, "He beareth not the sword in vain." If a similar application of the text had been made by a Catholic divine, it would have been called intolerance, persecution, and a hint that the Inquisition was at hand; as ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... in perfect health! And you, preserve for me always the honor of your good graces; and believe, my charming Sister, that never brother in the world loved with such tenderness a sister so charming as mine; in short, believe, dear Sister, that without compliments, and in literal truth, I am ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... stories is figurative. The faithful are not perplexed by the discrepancies in the inspired narratives, and one can hardly imagine an Indian sect agitated by the question whether God made the world in six literal days. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Scripture is so many-sided, and so fathomless in signification, that to dwell on one point more than another might be a wrong to the full impression, and an irreverence in the translation. Thus, as a poet, he sacrificed a good deal to the duty of being literal, but his translation is a real assistance to students, and it is on the whole often somewhat like to Sternhold's, whom he held in much respect for ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... the Club!" But if we were merry, we were wise. Shortly after dinner, M. Gail rose, as if in a moment of inspiration, from his seat—and recited the Latin verses which are here enclosed.[162] They will at least make you admire the good humour of the poet. He afterwards chanted a song: his own literal version of the XIXth ode of Anacreon, beginning [Greek: He ge melaina pinei]. The guests declared that they had never sat so long at table, or were more happy. I proposed a stroll or a seat upon the lawn. Chairs and benches were at hand; and ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... After directing that the labour of all the household, 'man-servant and maid-servant,' should cease, it then proceeds to the ox and the ass, and the stranger that is within thy gates. Now, gentlemen, this cannot be applied to the stranger in the literal sense of the word, the hospitality of the age forbidding that labour should be required of him. At that time slaves were brought from foreign lands, and were a source of traffic, as may be inferred by the readiness with which the Ishmaelites ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... than they had found it. Hegel had taught too long and thoroughly to be without influence after his eyes had ceased to look upon his entranced auditors at Berlin. It was not long after his death that his favorite theory of antagonisms had a literal fulfillment in the course adopted by the adherents to his opinions. His most ardent disciples found it difficult to tell what he had believed definitely, so varied are the expressions of his views in the eighteen volumes of his works. Even the same book was interpreted differently. ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... so much taste and execution, that the Dean expressed a desire to have them translated into English. Dr. Gore told him that the author, a Mr. Macgowran, lived at a little distance, and that he would be proud to furnish a literal translation of his own composition either in Latin or English, for he was well skilled in both languages. Mr. Gore accordingly sent for the bard, the Laureate of the Plains, as he called himself, who came immediately. "I am very well pleased," ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... responsibility because the government is presumably the people's voice and its needs also presumably are the common needs and not the special interests of individuals. It is hardly necessary to point out that it was not the intention of government officials who made the appeal to excite a literal interpretation; they did not expect to be taken so seriously and up to date they have not been taken more seriously than they intended by American labor. All they mean and what they expect to gain, is what employers have meant and wanted; that is labor's surrender of its ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... the philosophy of Karma and of reincarnation, which are the tenets of theosophy. They hold with strict fidelity to what they believe to be the literal teachings of Christ. ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... now called "The Mazarins," and those of the Parliament "The Fronde." The literal meaning of the word fronde is sling. It is a boy's plaything, and when skillfully used, an important weapon of war. It was with the sling that David slew Goliath. During the Middle Ages this was the usual ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... within their bars, 'Mid bottles, mirrors and cigars— The woman passed behind each screen, And soon ocurred a "literal" scene— Rum, ruin, racket! ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... think, in recognition of the spirit of the Jewish institution, that one day in seven should be a day of rest. But I hold that Christians are freed from the literal observance of ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... know and love them all, especially the Major Duquesnois, an almost literal translation into French of Colonel Newcome. He took to me at once, in spite of my Englishness, and drilled me, and taught me the exercise as it was performed in the Vieille Garden and told me a new fairy-tale, I verily believe, every afternoon for seven years. Scheherezade could ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... passion which these objects inspire can go along with the imagination which seeks to express that passion and the uneasy sense of delight accompanying it by something still more beautiful, and no one can feel this passionate love of nature without quick natural sensibility. To a mere literal and formal apprehension, the inimitably characteristic epithet, 'violets DIM', must seem to imply a defect, rather than a beauty; and to any one, not feeling the full force of that epithet, which suggests an image like 'the sleepy eye of love', the allusion ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... clenching his hands furiously between his knees. It was absurd, preposterous. There was no smallest occasion to take those words in such a desperately literal sense. ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... should feel that his understanding of life and of people has been increased and broadened. But it should always be remembered that truth is quite as much a matter of general spirit and impression as of literal accuracy in details of fact. The essential question is not, Is the presentation of life and character perfect in a photographic fashion? but Does it convey the underlying realities? 2. Other things being equal, the value of a book, and especially of an author's whole work, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... and it is a literal fact that I rubbed my eyes, half believing that I dreamed. For beneath, she was arrayed in gossamer silk which more than indicated the perfect lines of her slim shape; wore a jeweled girdle and barbaric ornaments; was a figure fit for the walled gardens of Stamboul—a ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... creation of the world, and the views of life after death have been illustrated by copious translations, together with discussions of the specimens chosen. The translations, I may add, have been made direct from the original texts, and aim to be as literal as is consonant with presentation in ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... and fear of the children of Israel upon the nations that were "under the whole heaven;" and that "all countries came into Egypt to Joseph to buy corn." And of course the universally admitted existence of such a class of passages, in which words are not to be accepted in their rigidly literal meanings, but with certain great modifications, renders the task of determining and distinguishing such passages from others in which the meaning is definite and strict, not only legitimate, but also ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... said Ruth, "that Laura is gone. She is very literal-minded. She might not understand that we could be hastily married and even lease a house, this way, and still be only ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... given the meaning here, not a literal translation. The writer begins: "After the death of King Crisnarao from his disease, as has been already recounted." Then he inserts a long parenthesis which might he read: "While he was sick ... he had made ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... hither—alluding to the burden of an old love-charm which is still used by the young of both sexes on May-morning. It is a literal translation of the Irish ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... given them something to think and talk about. Into this still pool Elder Hankins threw the vials, the trumpets, the thunders, the beast with ten horns, the he-goat, and all the other apocalyptic symbols understood in an absurdly literal way. The world was to come to an end in the following August. Here was an ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... still keeps her sofa; the first enthusiasm of her affliction has worn away, and she has nothing to sustain her now but planning our expeditions about the city. She has got the map and the history of Quebec by heart, and she holds us to the literal fulfilment of her instructions. On this account, she often has to send Dick and me out together when she would like to keep him with her, for she won't trust either of us alone, and when we come back she examines us separately to see whether we have skipped anything. This ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... emphatically have the same virtues. And one virtue which they very markedly share is that neither tyrants nor rabbles are snobs; they do not care a button what they do to wealthy people. It is true that tyranny was sometimes treated as coming from the heavens almost in the lesser and more literal sense of coming from the sky; a man no more expected to be the king than to be the west wind or the morning star. But at least no wicked miller can chain the wind to turn only his own mill; no pedantic scholar can trim the morning ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... this work by the Countess of Pembroke, after it had been condemned to destruction by the author. The fourth may indeed signify nothing more than Lady Sidney's bereavement by her husband's death; but this interpretation seems too literal for a professed allegory. The sixth obviously alludes to the splendid obsequies to Sidney, performed at the Queen's expense, and to the competition of the States of Holland for the honor of burying his ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... Bave, Esquire Bordey, and other expectants and dependents. Viglius, always remarkable for his pusillanimity, was at this period already anxious to retire. The erudite and opulent Frisian preferred a less tempestuous career. He was in favor of the edicts, but he trembled at the uproar which their literal execution was daily exciting, for he knew the temper of his countrymen. On the other hand, he was too sagacious not to know the inevitable consequence of opposition to the will of Philip. He was therefore most eager to escape the dilemma. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... have agreed that her stepson was wonderful, but with quite a literal meaning. She found him a real cause for wonder—this poised, handsome, crippled boy of nineteen, with his tailor, and his tutor, and his groom, and the heavy social responsibilities that bored him so heartily. With the ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... Or ignorant poor, seeking instruction, to whom it would be months of schooling. And then, I should but have given you samples, Hazel, which you might multiply by the hundred and the thousand, and still keep far within the literal fact.' ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... than the fact that in every division of her realm there seems to be a class of parasites. In the vegetable world, as is well known, there are various plants that depend wholly on other plants for the supply of their vital forces. And in the human sphere there are parasites in a very real and literal sense—men and women who rely upon the toil and thrift of others to sustain them ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... thus with these dull serving folk," she said to those nearest her. "One cannot pay for wit with wages and livery. They can but obey the literal word. Sir John, leaving me in haste this morning, I forgot a question I would have asked, and sent a lacquey to ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to a small and comparatively sequestered cafe where he had already more than once found refreshment and comparative repose, together with solutions that consisted mainly and pleasantly of further indecisions. It was a literal fact that those awaiting him there to-night, while he leaned back on his velvet bench with his head against a florid mirror and his eyes not looking further than the fumes of his tobacco, might have been regarded by him as a little less limp than usual. This wasn't ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... other improbabilities and incongruities. Every thing of this kind was now awakened; while, in order to master the Hebrew, I occupied myself exclusively with the Old Testament, and studied it, though no longer in Luther's translation, but in the literal version of Sebastian Schmid, printed under the text, which my father had procured for me. Here, I am sorry to say, our lessons began to be defective in regard to practice in the language. Reading, interpreting, grammar, transcribing, and ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... anabasis has been told in hundreds and thousands of fragments—the anabasis that has had no katabasis—the literal going up of a people, as we shall see, from primitive husbandry and handicraft and a neighborly individualism, to another level, of machine labor, of more comfortable ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... repentance can avail nothing when a man has not repentance? yet let these passages appear, with a casting weight of allowance, and their absurdity will not be so extravagant, as when examined by the literal touchstone.— ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... symbolizes the truth that a truly spiritual union bestows the crown of immortality; the power of Godhood in the Kingdom of Love; which supersedes all earthly kingdoms in splendor. This is a literal truth, although it cannot be understood in its full significance until we ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... Greeks, as it is by their present descendants. Even during the classic ages of Greece [Greek: beta] represented [Greek: phi] in certain dialects. The name Berenice or Beronice, borne by more than one daughter of the Ptolemies, would be more correctly written Pherenice or Pheronice. The literal coincidence of this name and its modifications with the Vernice of the middle ages, might almost warrant the supposition that amber, which by the best ancient authorities was considered a mineral, may, at an early period, have been distinguished ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... judgment as a painter? I am afraid this illustration of a critic's science will not prove what is desired. A painter knows a copy from an original by rules somewhat resembling these by which critics know a translation, which if it be literal, and literal it must be to resemble the copy of a picture, will be easily distinguished. Copies are known from originals, even when the painter copies his own picture; so if an author should literally translate his work, he would lose the manner ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... wonder, which this learned philosopher will render visible to them." Yet all this while the royal family have not so much as even thought of seeing the wonders of Mr. Katterfelto. This kind of rhodomontade is very finely expressed in English by the word puff, which in its literal sense, signifies a blowing, or violent gust of wind, and in the metaphorical sense, a boasting ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... rosy girl of fourteen, as rough as her native wilds, with a mind so free from guile that she gave a literal interpretation to everything ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... as the literal rule of the smallest details of her life, she never wore a mixture of wool and cotton, as that was forbidden to the Jews, nor would she wear any imitation of linen for the same reason. In consequence, her clothes, which were of sound material, never looked common, ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... the life of humanity, which unites as one the past and the present, and which, owing no allegiance of a servile kind to time, becomes a pledge for futurity. Browning's personal experience is here taken up into his imagination and transfigured, but its substance remains what it had been in literal fact. ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... founded on that of Austria. The civil code is a localized modification of the Code Napoleon. The first translation of the latter code was almost literal, and made without reference to the manners and historical antecedents of Servia: some of the blunders in it were laughable:—Hypotheque was translated as if it had been Apotheke, and made out to be a depot of drugs! When the translator was asked for ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... while Mr. Oke was despatching his Saturday heap of Conservative manifestoes and rural decisions—he was justice of the peace in a most literal sense, penetrating into cottages and huts, defending the weak and admonishing the ill-conducted—one morning while I was making one of my many pencil-sketches (alas, they are all that remain to me now!) of my future sitter, Mrs. Oke ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... literal sense the day after Cartoner landed in England on his return from America. Deulin saw his friend emerge from a club in Pall Mall and walk westward, as if he had business in that direction. Like many travellers, the Frenchman ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... those things belong to rich people who live in towns, and after all they are luxuries. Besides, you have often said yourself that everybody ought to get his bread by the work of his own hands, yet you get money and not bread. Why shouldn't you keep to the literal sense of your words? You ought to be getting bread, that is, you ought to be ploughing, sowing, reaping, threshing, or doing something which has a direct connection with agriculture, for instance, looking after cows, digging, building ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of many love-songs refer to the dawn, the time of the day when they are usually sung; but this reference is not a literal one. It figures the dawn of love in the breast of the singer. The Indian stands so close to Nature that he sees his own moods reflected ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... at him in consternation. "He's dumb, he's dumb!" they cried in astonishment, raising at once a literal pandemonium. ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... obtained by suggestion. The technique is varied and interesting, but the whole drawing lacks that individual something which we call Style. In the Lalanne drawings we see foliage convincingly represented by means of the mere outlines and a few subtle strokes of the pen. There is no attempt at the literal rendering of natural objects in detail, all is accomplished by suggestion: and while I do not wish to be understood as insisting upon such a severely simple style, much less upon the purist theory that the function of the pen is concerned with form alone, I would impress upon the student ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... the source of supply of heat and light, we are compelled to look for a philosophy more consistent than any hitherto advanced. Controlled too much by the literal evidence of the senses and the superficial appearance of things, we have ever regarded the sun as ALL ALONE in developing and ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... Bruno de Malpas would even have thought of alluding to the literal and primary meaning of the words. From the first moment of their joint existence, Jerusalem and Rome have been enemies and rivals. Not content with, so far as in her lay, blotting out the very name of Israel from under heaven, ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... Dee insisted, and was informed that they were henceforth to have their wives in common. Dee, a little startled, inquired whether the spirits might not mean that they were to live in common harmony and good-will? Kelly tried again, with apparent reluctance, and said the spirits insisted upon the literal interpretation. The poor fanatic, Dee, resigned himself to their will; but it suited Kelly's purpose to appear coy a little longer. He declared that the spirits must be spirits, not of good, but of evil; and refused to consult them any more. He thereupon took his departure, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... des Propheties qui servent de fondement a la religion Chretienne, Londres (Amsterdam), 1768. Translation of Anthony Collins, A Discourse on the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion, London, 1724. Contains also The Scheme of literal Prophecy considered, 1727, also by Collins in answer to the works of Clarke, Sherlock, Chandler, Sykes, and especially to Whiston's Essay towards restoring the text of the Old Testament, one of the thirty- five works directed ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... phrase is narrow and literal, and while it may have such a meaning, it can also have a very different one. Suppose that, instead of looking with languid eyes alike upon all things, a man finds some question of vital import, or a pursuit that promises good to himself and to ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... and, besides, it would not have been right to break up the company. When Don Quixote, carried away by his feelings like a Sicilian facchino, came to the assistance of Don Gayferos by drawing his sword and attacking the Moorish puppets, he broke up Master Peter's company in a very literal sense, and had to pay four and a half reals for King Marsilio of Saragossa and five and a quarter for the Emperor Carlo Magno; but it is not clear how large ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... arrangements are very imperfect. As a help to those who study the text at home, I have recounted the general course of the action and dialogue just in sufficient outline to enable the reader to follow what is going on, adding here and there a literal translation, where it seemed desirable, especially where the meaning of the original ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... have lived in the early days of the Faith," he said, "You are too literal—too exact in your following of Christian ethics. That sort of thing does not work nowadays. ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... though far from the best that might be done, one likes to make an end of the matter by Print. I suppose very few People have ever taken such Pains in Translation as I have: though certainly not to be literal. But at all Cost, a Thing must live: with a transfusion of one's own worse Life if one can't retain the Original's better. Better a live Sparrow than a stuffed Eagle. I shall be very well pleased to see the new MS. of Omar. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... to these signs by the ancient Sanskrit writers and their exoteric or literal meanings ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... almost instinctively, a horseman with the hands of a Chaloner, and the seat of a Land, endowed with a bright intelligence which seized the common sense of things, and comprehended the meaning of an order as well as its literal injunctions, and a happy disposition which made a trouble of nothing, he was a general favourite wherever he went. He was attached as a galloper—or bearer of orders—to the General's staff, but, being employed ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... Sophocles and the Phocion. These were true portraits, no doubt; thus it was that these men appeared to their fellow-citizens; but it does not follow that they would have appeared so to us. What they saw is there; it is a reality both for them and for us; but the literal identification of it with the form belongs to them, not to us, and our mimicry of it can result only in these abstraction's. For us it is elsewhere, beyond these finite shapes, on which, by an illusion, it seemed to rest. The Greek statues ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... a life in natural objects, which in most poetry is but a rhetorical artifice, was, then, in Wordsworth the assertion of what was for him almost literal fact. To him every natural object seemed to possess something of moral or spiritual life, to be really capable of a companionship with man, full of fine intimacies. An emanation, a particular spirit, belonged not ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... of fetid nuisances, such as slaughter-houses and manufactories of offensive stuffs, have converted cities into pestilential inclosures, and kept Jefferson's saying—"Great cities are great sores"—true in its most literal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... assistance to him. He did not mention Mercer and remained no longer than a couple of minutes, standing outside the cell. In the afternoon Doctor Cardigan came and shook hands warmly with Kent. He had found a tough job waiting for him, he said. Mercer was all cut up, in a literal as well as a mental way. He had five teeth missing, and he had to have seventeen stitches taken in his face. It was Cardigan's opinion that some one had given him a considerable beating—and he grinned at Kent. Then ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... wrong in the kitchen, and then go and fetch Melissa." The woman was, perhaps, wise to defer the evil moment as long as possible. Matters might soon change for the better, and good or evil could come only from without. So Dido clung to the literal sense of her master's question, and something note-worthy had actually happened in the kitchen. She drew a deep breath, and told him that a subordinate of the night-watch had come in and asked whether Alexander were in the house, and where his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... this evidence that we are warranted in assuming that the figures were destroyed by Ludlow's troopers when he garrisoned the belfry. But such an assumption requires many facts to support it which are not forthcoming. We have no proof that Hollar's sketch was intended to be a literal transcript of what he saw; it is quite possible that for the sake of effect he preferred to complete the design according to the supposed intention of its builders. We are not certain that the niches ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... which they adopted was a piece of insanity in the literal sense of the word, a confused medley of absurd, ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... demands of a wealthy and noble adversary. He carefully distinguished the judge from the legislator; and though he meditated a necessary reformation of the Roman jurisprudence, he pronounced sentence according to the strict and literal interpretation of those laws, which the magistrates were bound to execute, and the subjects ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... above alluded to is contained in the closing lines of the "Metamorphoses," of which we give a literal translation below: ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... said once in my hearing (said Luther) that he was earnest against the Anabaptists, as contemners of God's word, and also against those which attributed too much to the literal word, for (said he) such do sin against God and his almighty power; as the Jews did in naming the ark, God. But, (said he) whoso holdeth a mean between both, the same is taught what is the right use of the ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a literal but unidiomatic translation of the English cognate "waterproof," humorously for {wasserdicht} ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel
... I spoke the literal truth. I have no references to give either as to character, attainments, or birth. I have no friends. And I agree with you and Mrs. Heron that I should not be a fit person to teach your ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... who yet knew that the Jew was a man who would not hesitate at murder, and that his expression about getting his knife into Fraser was meant in a very literal sense. "I mean to get even with my man if I come across him again. But I won't be such a fool as to attempt it here. Take a look outside and see if Snaky ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... but in which Mr. Page used the expression, "we prefer that European Powers shall acquire no more territory on this continent," alarmed those precisians in language, who pretended to believe that the Ambassador had used the word "prefer" in its literal sense, and interpreted the sentence to mean that, while the United States would "prefer" that Europe should not overrun North and South America, it would really raise no serious objection if ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... facts and figures, tell the same story in different ways, locate the same incident at different periods, ascribe the same deeds to different men, quote statistics which are plainly exaggerated, mistake poetic legend for sober prose, report the marvellous tales of tradition as literal history, and give us statements which cannot be read as scientific facts without denying our latest and most authoritative knowledge. I shall not enumerate these "mistakes of Moses," and of others. That is an ungracious ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... expression is literal, and was twice uttered in the course of the evening. He then went on to add, that seeing the impossibility of doing as he could wish, he had been compelled to acquiesce in the proposal that came nearest to his own views. The friends of the ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... this parent idea, of which all the rest is but the necessary and inevitable deduction, is contained in the phrase far oftener repeated than understood, 'La Ilah illa Allah,' 'There is no God but God.' A literal translation, but much too narrow for the Arab formula, and quite inadequate to render its true force in an ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... truth Raeburn, spite of his keen observation, never thought for a moment of the true state of the case. He was a very literal unimaginative man, and having once learned to regard Brian as an old family friend and as his doctor, he never dreamed of regarding him in the light of his daughter's lover. Also, as is not unfrequently the case when a man has only one child, he never could take in ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... ponderous and terrific Scythe of Time (for I now discovered the literal import of that classical phrase) had not stopped, nor was it likely to stop, in its career. Down and still down, it came. It had already buried its sharp edge a full inch in my flesh, and my sensations grew indistinct ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of stage machinery, but to bring to the observation of his piece their highest powers of imagination, whereby alone can full justice be done to a majestic theme. The central topic of the choric speech is the essential limitations of all scenic appliances. The dramatist reminds us that the literal presentation of life itself, in all its movement and action, lies outside the range of the stage, especially the movement and action of life in its most glorious manifestations. Obvious conditions of space do not allow "two mighty monarchies" literally to be confined within the ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... his demand of speedy justice in a very literal sense, and allowing only fifteen days for the examination of this important affair, she sent a citation to Lenox, requiring him to appear in court, and prove his charge against Bothwell.[*] This nobleman, meanwhile, and all the other persons accused by Lenox, enjoyed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... two ways. First, painting is an art which merely addresses the eye; it does not in any particular exercise the moral sense. And second, painting, in common with all the other arts, implies the dangerous quality of imagination. A man of imagination is never moral; he outsoars literal demarcations and reviews life under too many shifting lights to rest content with the invidious distinctions of ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for them from personal knowledge, any more than I am in a position to personally vouch for the invasion of England by William of Normandy. But they rest on as good evidence as most other private events of sixty-odd years ago, and there is no reason for doubting their literal truth. With regard to the supernatural element, I am free to confess that I am not able to accept it in entirety. This is not because I question the veracity of those who vouch for the alleged facts, but because I have not received those facts at first ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... unsatisfying to the impatient, who want results to come as they walk. Probably this is a reason that it is occasionally said that Emerson has no vital message for the rank and file. He has no definite message perhaps for the literal, but messages are all vital, as much, by reason of his indefiniteness, as in ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... it. If all parsons had preached about it for the last fifteen years as Mr. Headley did last Sunday, if they had told people plainly that, if the cholera was God's judgment at all, it was His judgment of the sin of dirt, and that the repentance which He required was to wash and be clean in literal earnest, the cholera would be ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... visual and tactile sensations which, reduced to a mathematical baldness, now furnish terms to natural science. Mind then dwelt in the world, not only in the warmth and beauty with which it literally clothed material objects, as it still does in poetic perception, but in a literal animistic way; for human passion and reflection were attributed to every object and made a fairy-land of the world. Poetry and religion discerned life in those very places in which sense and understanding perceived body; and when so ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... capable of various interpretations which have changed from time to time. The benefit derived by any citizen from most of the public services evidently cannot be measured with exactness. The standard of equality cannot be applied in any literal sense to strong and weak, to rich and poor. It is possible, however, to interpret equality with reference not to objective goods, but to the psychic sacrifice occasioned by taxation. Ability is of many kinds and may be differently understood. ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter |
