"Portray" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... virtues, of the commonplace Russian individual; and the characters which revolve around him have also been selected for the purpose of demonstrating our national weaknesses and shortcomings. As for men and women of the better sort, I propose to portray them in subsequent volumes. Probably much of what I have described is improbable and does not happen as things customarily happen in Russia; and the reason for that is that for me to learn all that ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... difficult things to portray by written words is that peculiar mixture of moods expressed in a woman's countenance when, after having been sedulously engaged in establishing another's position, she suddenly suspects him of undermining her own. It was thus that Miss Aldclyffe ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... policy which you so admirably and nobly enforce, united with (or rather bottomed upon) those notions of justice and right, and that knowledge of and reverence for the moral sentiments of mankind, which, in my Tract, I attempted to portray and illustrate, the tide of military success would immediately turn in our favour; and we should find no more difficulty in reducing the French power than Gustavus Adolphus did in reducing that of the German Empire in his day. And here let ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... and for Webster's oratory, for Beecher's sermons and Greeley's editorials, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates. It must picture the daily existence of our citizens from the beginning; their working ideas, their phrases and shibboleths and all their idols of the forum and the cave. It should portray the misspelled ideals of a profoundly idealistic people who have been ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... faculty. The Last Supper in San Giorgio, for instance, and the Adoration of the Shepherds in the Scuola di San Rocco illustrate his unique power of presenting sacred history in a novel, romantic frame-work of familiar things. The commonplace circumstances of ordinary life have been employed to portray in the one case a lyric of mysterious splendour; in the other, an idyll of infinite sweetness. Divinity shines through the rafters of that upper chamber, where round a low large table the Apostles are assembled in a group translated from ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... John found all remonstrance vain, Another card he play'd, And where the angel stood so plain He had a devil portray'd. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... study of mystery in all its forms is the noblest to which the mind of man can devote itself; and truly it has ever been the occupation and care of those who in science and art, in philosophy and literature, have refused to be satisfied merely to observe and portray the trivial, well-recognised truths, facts, and realities of life. And we find that the success of these men in their endeavour, the depth of their insight into all that they know, has most strictly accorded with the respect in which ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the unpleasant feature of the new dream philosophy—the irresistible conclusion that all humanity, underneath the shell, is sensuous or sensual in nature, that practically all dreams portray some delight of the senses and that sexual dreams are a large proportion of all visions. But the more she thought of it, the more clearly was she able to analyze Mrs. Caswell's dream and to get back at the causes of it, in the estrangement from her husband and perhaps the brutality of his ignorance ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... indolence, hears not the voice of pain, sees not the hectic glow of suffering on the cheek; nursed in the sweet sorrows of romance, dreams not of living agonies more fearful than those which the greatest actor can portray, and of death ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... Epic poets, in subsequent times, have done little more than imitate his machinery, copy his characters, adopt his similes, and, in a few instances, improve upon his descriptions. Painting and statuary, for two thousand years, have been employed in striving to portray, by the pencil or the chisel, his yet breathing conceptions. Language and thought itself have been moulded by the influence of his poetry. Images of wrath are still taken from Achilles, of pride from Agamemnon, of astuteness from Ulysses, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... the modern novel, by introducing into his romance of pseudo-knighthood a faithful description of the lower classes, and intermingling the phases of popular life. But he had no one-sided tendency to portray the vulgar only; he brought together the higher and the lower in society, to serve as light and shade, and the aristocratic element was as prominent as the popular. This noble and chivalrous element disappears in the novels of the English who imitated Cervantes. "These English novelists since ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the little gods and loves portray'd Through ancient forests wandering undismay'd, Or gathered, whispering, in ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... day in 1883 it was the privilege of the writer to stand before 150,000 people at Newburgh on the occasion of the Centennial Celebration of the Disbanding of the Army under Washington, and, in his poem entitled "The Long Drama," to portray the great mountain background bounding the ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... been his friends, admirers, and disciples: and all, differing from each other, were alike in this, that, whether it be the dignified severity of Botticelli, or the chaste simplicity of Lorenzo di Credi, or the noble tenderness of Fra Bartolomeo, we feel that each of them had aimed to portray worthily the sacred character of the Mother of the Redeemer. And to these, as I think, we might add Raphael himself, who visited Florence but a short time after the horrible execution of Savonarola, and must have learned ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... He is a king among men; for he is a great artist and the world speaks his name; and yet he was only our poor little Nello, who was a beggar, as one may say, and only got his bread by the help of his dog." And he thought how he would fold his grandsire in furs and purples, and portray him as the old man is portrayed in the Family in the chapel of St. Jacques; and of how he would hang the throat of Patrasche with a collar of gold, and place him on his right hand, and say to the people, "This was once my only friend;" and of how he would build himself a great white marble palace, ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... dramatic monolog in which a character discusses his situation or life or some central part or incident, of it, under circumstances which reveal with wonderful completeness its significance and his own essential character. To portray and interpret life in this way, to give his readers a sudden vivid understanding of its main forces and conditions in representative moments, may be called the first obvious purpose, or perhaps rather instinct, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... spiritual. Bice is classic, this one is medieval. Bice is a goddess, this one a saint. Bice is Artemis, or one of the Muses; this one is Holy Agnes or Saint Cecilia. There is in that sweet and holy face the same depth of devotion which our painters portray on the face of the Madonna. This little family group stand amidst all the other passengers, separated by the wide gulf of superior rank, for they are manifestly from among the upper classes, but still more so by the solemn isolation ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... arises: Why is it that authors who deal with the intimate realities of our dull, everyday life are, on the whole, so much better as writers than those who attempt to portray the more glamorous existence of the East, of the jungle, of, so to speak, other worlds? I have a theory of my own to offer in explanation, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... to say little for the types of youth and maid which alone Scott felt it a joy to imagine, or thought it honorable to portray, that they act and feel in a sphere where they are never for an instant liable to any of the weaknesses which disturb the calm, or shake the resolution, of chastity and courage in a modern novel. Scott ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... have resulted from the modern regardlessness of truth. Consider, for instance, its effect on what is called historical painting. What do you at present mean by historical painting? Now-a-days it means the endeavoring, by the power of imagination, to portray some historical event of past days. But in the Middle Ages, it meant representing the acts of their own days; and that is the only historical painting worth a straw. Of all the wastes of time and sense which ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... accountability had fallen out. My first business was to put it in again." The coldness and indifference of the Church, which ministers usually employ the vivid language of the Bible regarding the ways of Zion to portray, he described in the equally vivid, but less dignified New England vernacular. "What did I do at Litchfield but to 'boost'? They all lay on me, and moved very little, except as myself and God moved them. I spent sixteen of the best years ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... "I cannot portray them in words—but yes, I can:—The creature whom I shall worship:—it sounds oddly, but, I verily believe, the sentiment which I shall feel for my wife will be more akin to worship than any thing else. I shall never love but such a creature as I ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... volcanic basins. The beauty of their pools of boiling water is almost inconceivable to those who have not seen them. No illustration can do them justice; for no photographer can adequately reproduce their clear, transparent depths, nor can an artist's brush ever quite portray their peculiar coloring, due to the minerals held in solution, or else deposited upon their sides. I can deliberately say, however, that some of the most exquisitely beautiful objects I have ever seen in any portion of the world are the superbly ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... existence might have been so delightful a boon without it, full of affinities and communities in every direction. She had not, I am convinced, any of the notions of a crusader upon this popular subject, nor may I portray her either shocked or revolted, only rather bored, being a creature whom it was unkind to hamper; and she would have explained quite in these simple terms the reason why Stephen Arnold's saving neutrality of temperament was to her a pervasive charm ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... of the poem does not want to portray a landscape that is thought to be real. The poetic art has the advantage over painting of offering "ideal" images. That means—in respect to the Twilight: the fat boy who uses the big pond as a toy, and the two cripples on crutches in the field and the woman ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... ordinary than Mr. Osborne in manner and appearance. I do not presume to judge his real merits, for I did not notice him sufficiently to properly portray him to you, even if I had the gift of description, which I think you will admit I have not. He lives in my memory only as a something tall, spare, coarse of texture, red, hairy, ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... To portray Vanslyperken's dismay at this intelligence would be impossible. He could not but be certain that there had been a supernatural communication. His knees knocked and trembled, and ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... had been committed by others. We have already mentioned the rude illustrations engraved by the murderer Cavaglia on his pitcher, representing his crime, imprisonment, and suicide. Books, crockery, guns, all the utensils criminals have in constant use, serve as a canvas on which to portray their exploits. ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... say panorama—was designed to portray a typical Western scene, interest culminating in a central animal figure, that of a stampeding steer, life-size, wild-eyed, fiery, breaking away in a mad rush from the herd that, close-ridden by a typical cowpuncher, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... will, activity, and work of God the Father. For since the Ten Commandments have taught that we are to have not more than one God, the question might be asked, What kind of a person is God? What does He do? How can we praise or portray and describe Him, that He may be known? Now, that is taught in this and in the following article, so that the Creed is nothing else than the answer and confession of Christians arranged with respect to the First Commandment. As if you ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... on Borrow's neglect to portray the higher traits in the gipsy woman's character. Mrs. Herne and her grandchild Leonora, who are instanced as the two great successes of his Romany group, are both steeped in wickedness, and by omitting to draw a picture of the women's loftier side, he is said to have failed to demonstrate their ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... breaking itself against the eternal fact that no man can gain the world without first losing himself. It is this catastrophe which makes the real tragedy of life; it is this which the tragic poet has the eye to see and the words to portray; and in proportion as we can follow him in imagination, we come away from the spectacle with our own hearts broken and purged, but strengthened to face the fact and obey the law. The novelist does with inferior ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... "Life of Liszt," the Herald (Boston) says: "It is written in great simplicity and perfect taste, and is wholly successful in all that it undertakes to portray." ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... doorless staircase, across the entrance of which a blanket, stretched angularly from the wall to the chimney, afforded a kind of screen; and presently he stood within a chamber which the dark and painful genius of Crabbe might have delighted to portray. The walls were whitewashed, and at sundry places strange figures and grotesque characters had been traced by some mirthful inmate, in such sable outline as the end of a smoked stick or the edge of a piece of charcoal is ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and inseparable from the perfect state and from social order, I inquired whether it would not be possible to realise all this with a king at the head, and entered so deeply into the matter as to portray the king in such a fashion, that he seemed even more anxious than any one else that his state should be organised on genuinely republican lines, in order that he might attain to the fulfilment of his own highest aims. I must own, however, that I felt bound to urge ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... newspaper and most of the secular journals, and all the pulpits, denounced the proposition. It would be an outrage, a sacrilege, a blasphemy. I thought so then; I think so now. The attempt of ordinary play actors amid worldly surroundings, and before gay assemblages, to portray the sufferings of Christ and His assassination would have been a horrible indecency that would have defied the heavens and invoked a plague worse than that for the turning back of which the Passion Play at Ober-Ammergau was established. We might ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... friends have written of him, tall, courageous, and vitally intelligent. Nor as his enemies have chronicled him, short, fat and intensely stupid. I will endeavour with a few brief flourishes of the pen, to portray the various intricacies of his character as I see them, clearly and dispassionately with the eyes of a psychological observer, whose hand is uncorrupted by the bribes of ruthless ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... influence on life and conduct the extent of which it is impossible to estimate. "The precepts they inculcate, the lessons they exhibit, the ideals of life and character which they portray, root themselves in the thoughts and imaginations of young men. They seize them with a force which, in after years, appears scarcely possible." These words of Principal Tulloch will not appear too ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... relation to the corpus as the shadow to the figure casting it. Two remarkable chapters in the Old Testament[1162] illustrate this popular view prevailing in Babylonia, as to the condition of the dead in the nether world. The prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel both portray the dead as having the same form that they possessed while alive. The kings have their crowns on their heads; the warriors lie with their swords girded about them. The dead Eabani, it will be recalled, ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... had engaged to perform. Conrad was by no means a young man of a romantic or sentimental turn, but it is not to be wondered at, that his present occupation should produce a deep effect upon his mind. The form and features he was now endeavouring to portray were certainly the most beautiful he had as yet exercised his art upon—indeed, without exception, the most beautiful he had ever beheld. The melancholy spectacle of youth cut off in the first glow of life's brightest season, and when surrounded by everything that wealth and education ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... the rat tails for the end of the feast, the worst clothes to be found in any book must come last by way of climax. Mr. Dixon, in The Leopard's Spots, has easily outdone every other knight of the pen who has entered the lists to portray women's clothes. Listen to the inspired ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... attempt to construct a political history, with Lincoln often in the background, nor is it an effort to apotheosize the American who stands first in our history next to Washington. The writers knew Lincoln intimately. Their book is the result of unreserved association. There is no attempt to portray the man as other than he really was, and on this account their frank testimony must be accepted, and their biography must take permanent rank as the best and most illuminating study of Lincoln's character and personality. Their story, simply told, relieved ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... fiendish scheme to charge this incendiarism upon the Christians, and slaughter them by tens of thousands in all the cities of the Empire,—these are only instances of a career which words are too feeble to portray. Those who succeeded him in this supreme power were not much less ferocious; the very name of pity seemed to have been blotted from the Roman speech; the whole Empire reeked with cruelty and perfidy. While ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... say that Alida de Barberie did not cast a glance behind her, as the party quitted the wharf, in order to see whether the boat that contained the commander of the cruiser followed the example of the others, we shall probably portray the maiden as one that was less subject to the influence of coquetry than the truth would justify. To the great discontent of the Alderman, whatever might have been the feelings of his niece, on the occasion, the barge continued to approach the shore, in a manner which showed that the young ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... fair cheeks, why praise them so? The northern-lights, on new fall'n snow,— I know of cheeks whose rosy warnings Portray ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... "The Redemption", is intended to portray a righteous transformation from conventional false morality to true Christian life, but in reality presents a very repulsive picture of bestial atavism. The meaner character was not "reformed by mercy", but merely withheld from wholesale vice by isolation. ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... intellect's displayed; Liquid eyes that penetrate the heart; Teeth of pearl, whose brilliancy impart To the whole expression of the face A ray of love, a fascinating sense of grace. A bust—but here presumptuous mortal stay: Let artist gods this beauteous bust portray; Splendor, royalty, magnificence combined, A Venus in Diana's arms entwined. The tiny hand, so soft, so pure, so white, Robs its emerald gem of half its light. The secret charms beneath her robe-folds hidden, Like heavens' ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... said gently under cover of the general buzz of excited comment aroused by the picture, "mademoiselle, M. Delmotte is destined to a high place among the great men of the world. While to some is given the power to portray famous events, to a very few indeed it is given to create such epochs. Such men are necessarily set apart from their fellows. Despite the promptings of their hearts, they must forego many friendships which would otherwise be dear to them. M. Delmotte is both ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... reckoned the crowning achievement of his career; perhaps the most significant of these is his discourse on Shakespeare. In the first volume of the Athenaeum, Shakespeare's universality had already been regarded as "the central point of romantic art." As Romanticist, it was Schlegel's office to portray the independent development of the modern English stage, and to defend Shakespeare against the familiar accusations of barbaric crudity and formlessness. In surveying the field, it was likewise incumbent upon him to demonstrate in what respects the classic drama differed from ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... liquid balm. Oh! in my youth, this hour has been to me Bright as the fairy arch upon the clouds Of earthly grief and gloom, and even now It gives the silent fountain of my heart A renovated action, and recalls The energies that long ago were mine. My fancy wanders as I thus portray The lineaments on which 'tis bliss to gaze: How beautiful their prototype! to whom I breath'd in youth the most impassion'd words, And felt as if Elysium had disclosed Its glory to my eye—around ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... the pictures of the most ultra-marine painters. Here and there a green island or a fishing-boat rested upon the surface of the tranquil blue. For miles and miles the eye followed indented grassy slopes, that rolled away on either side of the harbor, and the most delicate pencil could scarcely portray the exquisite line of creamy sand that skirted their edges and melted off in the clear margin of the water. Occasional little cottages nestle among these green banks, not the Acadian houses of the poem, "with ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... that every writer should draw as close to it as possible, but only in order to interpret it, to reveal it with a true feeling, yet without a too intimate analysis, and that no one should attempt to portray it exactly or servilely copy it. "Of what use is art," he says, "if it is only a reduplication of existence? We see around us only too much of the sadness and disenchantment of reality." The three novels that compose the volume 'Servitude et Grandeur militaire' are, in ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... pale straw-colour of the beech, the copper hues of the oaks; and, indeed, Sophy found that she could exhaust all the brightest colours of her paint-box, and yet not give sufficient variety or brilliancy to portray correctly the gorgeous tints of the landscape spread out before the window; nor was there blue to be found equal to the blue of the lake, still less of the sky above it. She was glad that she had finished her drawing in time, for a strong ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... clearly part of a series. On my eager inquiry for the remainder, the old man replied that no more of it was known, but added that the priest of a neighbouring village was the possessor of an entire set of tapestries, apparently intended for suspension in church, and designed to portray the whole subject of which the figure in the stained ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... have followed his example if I could, but it was impossible. My stubborn constitution seemed to defy the destructive wear and tear of prolonged hunger and thirst; but my sufferings were beyond the power of language to portray; my craving hunger was so intense that I believe I could have eaten and enjoyed any food, however revolting, could I but have obtained it; while my thirst was so overpowering that it was with the utmost difficulty I combated ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... opportunities must be made instrumental in sanctifying the soul. For it is the difficulties and the hindrances that men find in their age which give the form to their character and habits, and when mastered become the means of divine grace and their titles to glory. Indicate these, and you portray that type of sanctity in which the life of the Church will find ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... he finds to be of two types—religions of law and religions of redemption. The religions of law portray God as a being outside the world, and distinct from man, One who rules the world by law, and who decrees that man shall obey certain laws of conduct that He lays down. Failure to obey these laws brings its punishment in the present or in a future life, while implicit obedience brings ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... calls for daring and patient work. It is for Man to tame the forces of the sky, and tame them he must and will. To show how much the Weather Bureau is accomplishing, to depict the marvels of its work, to portray the ruthless ferocity of the forces as yet uncontrolled and to reveal the gripping fascination of this work, in which every American boy may join, is ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... of the exact sciences. An able mathematician, a profound natural philosopher, an exact observer of nature, he was at the same time a learned statistician, an indefatigable social observer, an unwearied philanthropist, and the most powerful describer of nature that perhaps ever undertook to portray her great and glorious features. It is this extraordinary combination of qualities that render his works so surprising and valuable. The intellectual and imaginative powers rarely coexist in remarkable vigour in the same individual; but when ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... his Greek literary sources. And yet the irrepressible Servius was so reckless as to say that the whole book had been "transferred" from Apollonius. Fortunately we have in this case the alleged source, and can meet the scholiast with a sweeping denial. Both authors portray the love of a woman, and there the similarity ends. Apollonius is wholly dependent upon a literal Cupid and his shafts. Vergil, to be sure, is so far obedient to Greek convention as to play with the motive—Cupid came to the banquet in the form of Ascanius—but only after it was really no ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... count them on my fingers, had I but one hand.... And these few friends—what shall I say of them? They have become so a part of my constant thoughts and feelings, so a part of myself, that I can not project them—if I may so speak—from my own interior self, so as to portray them. Have you not such friends? Are there none whom to love has become so a habit of your life that you are almost unconscious of it—that you hardly think of it, any ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... and comfort, to great poets, orators, philosophers, because it gratifies their natural talent for admiring, and because they are reverentially grateful to the genius which can so clearly read their secrets, and so powerfully portray their souls to themselves. Sophocles, the highest Greek poet, whose firm and delicate portraitures of feminine character were not equalled in antique literature, must have had many admirers and friends among the choice women of Athens. And Virgil, we cannot imagine any high- souled, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... entered the room, a scene of solemn drollery presented itself, that a humorous painter might well desire to portray. Kneeling on a high-backed and curiously-carved chair, was seen the lean, lanky figure of Fleetword, placed within a foot of the sofa, on which, in the most uneasy manner and discontented attitude, sat the Master ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... UTILIZED BY ANCIENT MANAGERS.—The native reaction most utilized by the first managers of armies and ancient works of construction was that of fear. This is shown by the ancient rock carvings, which portray what happened to those ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... His specialty was the performance of character parts, often dialect roles, either broadly comic or cruel and ironic. The central figure of this, his best comedy, is such a part. It combines those features that the author could portray so effectively, the broad dialect, the callous selfishness, the hypocrisy, the passionate resistance to all appeals to sentiment and the imperviousness to affection. One can detect in the creation strong resemblances to Macklin's interpretation of Shylock, something of Sir Giles Overreach, who ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... philosophy, then, as Hegel conceives it, is to portray in systematic form the evolution of the World-Spirit in all its necessary ramifications. These ramifications themselves are conceived as constituting complete wholes, such as logic, nature, mind, society, history, art, religion, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... ships. Alone on the upper bridge stood the Monarch, attired in full military uniform, with white coat and tight breeches, high top boots, shining silver breastplate and silver helmet, surmounted by an eagle, the dress of the Prussian Guard Regiment so dear to those who portray romantic and kingly roles upon the stage, a figure on whom all eyes were fixed, as splendid as that of Lohengrin, drawn by his fairy swan, coming to rescue the unjustly accused Princess. And, alas, the Germans like all this pomp and splendour. It appeals to something in ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... start forth before you, in full proportions, but are gradually depicted in a mass of small details with all the most delicate shades. Turgeneff is most renowned artistically for the landscapes which are scattered through his works, and principally portray the nature of his native locality, central Russia. Equally famous, and executed with no less mastery and art, are his portrayal and analysis of the various vicissitudes of the tender passion, and ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... jealousy where all are ignored! We are tempted to ask, "What can be thought or said of an article which, professing to portray and describe Chess Masters, devotes near a page to Lowenthal and more to Rosenthal, yet not a line to Staunton or to Buckle?" Can the Reviewer have forgotten that Staunton and Lowenthal were contemporary; if not, what can be the ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... or defect in temper and education, so near an approach to greatness and so manifest a failure to attain it, that his worst enemy ought to find something to admire in him, and his best friend something painful in the attempt to portray him truly." A thorough disciplinarian and a master of detail, his merits found full play, and his defects were less apparent in his position ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... ah, how charming! I portray myself alarming Herby swearing I would "mount the deadly breach," Or engage in any scrimmage For a glimpse of her sweet image, Or her shadow, or her footprint on ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... accomplishments of those wonderful interpreters of the works of the noble masters, who have, either through the enchanting modulations of their voices or with skilful touch upon instruments, evolved their magic strains. Let an abler pen than mine portray the sublime triumphs of Hasse, Mario, Wachtel, Santley, Whitney; of Albani, Malibran, Lind, Parepa Rosa, Nilsson; of Haupt, Paganini, Vieuxtemps, Ole Bull, Rubinstein, ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... days widely diffused in the Mediterranean and in South Europe. Another hypothesis is that they represent not a truly steatopygous type of women, but only an abnormally fat type. A third suggestion is that they portray the generative aspect of nature in the form ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... be easy to portray to the reader all the delight which these specks of incipient verdure conveyed to the mind of Mark Woolston. It far exceeded the joy that would be apt to be awakened by a relief from an apprehension of wanting food at ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... saturate his mind with what writers nearest the time had to say, rather than depend upon recent historians. In this he chose well, for the romancer's art, different from the historian's, needs the literary shades and colors of the period it would portray. ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... to describe the sluggish waters of the Dead Sea, but what pen can portray the Indian Ocean lashed and ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... clearly visible for a one-mile radius around the Nautilus. What a sight! What pen could describe it? Who could portray the effects of this light through these translucent sheets of water, the subtlety of its progressive shadings into the ocean's upper and ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... I was wrong, for later I was to learn that there was something for which she did care. The full measure of human suffering was in her face, and, in addition, there was the tragic expression of incapacity for further suffering. Nothing could hurt any more, was what her face seemed to portray; but in this, too, I ...
— The Road • Jack London
... will be of great importance, when you come to the proper part, to portray at full length the consequences of this new doctrine, that the common law is the law of the United States and that their courts have, of course, jurisdiction co-extensive with that law, that is to say, general over all cases and persons. But great heavens! Who could have conceived in 1789, that ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... considered it to be the best work of his artistic life. The moment chosen for delineation is that when Christ utters the words, "One of you shall betray me!" The artist said that he meditated for two years how best to portray upon a human face the workings of the perfidious heart of Judas, and ended at last by taking for his model the prior of this very monastery, who was well known to be his bitterest enemy! The likeness at the period of its production was unmistakable, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... and mixed too freely with the kind of disreputable people he loved to paint, but he never became so degraded that his hand lost its cunning, or his eye its keen vision for that which he wished to portray. In 1644, he was made a director of the Guild of St. Lucas, an institution for the protection of arts and crafts in Haarlem, but from that time onward he sank in popular esteem, deservedly. He fell into debt, then into pauperism, and when he died, about the age of eighty-six, ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... lunacy, rather than the mature results of philosophic thought "Physio-philosophy has to show," says Dr. Oken, "how, and in accordance indeed with what laws, the Material took its origin, and, therefore, how something took its existence from nothing. It has to portray the first periods of the world's development from nothing; how the elements and heavenly bodies originated; in what method, by self-evolution into higher and manifold forms, they separated into minerals, became finally organic, and, in man, attained ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... strange thing, that when I feel most fervently and most deeply, my hands and my tongue seem alike tied, so that I cannot rightly describe or accurately portray the thoughts that are rising within me; and yet I am a painter: my eye tells me as much as that, and all my friends who have seen my sketches and fancies ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... What does each of the first three stanzas portray? The last three stanzas describe the sights and ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... illustration to No. 26, while the Haberdasher was propounding his problem of the triangle, this young Squire was standing in the background making a drawing of some kind; for "He could songs make and well indite, Joust and eke dance, and well portray and write." ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... shafts, so majestic of form, so varied of hue, is reflected in the transparent green water, the reflections softening the awful grandeur of the reality. Nothing, certes, in nature can surpass this scene; no imagination can prefigure, no pen or pencil adequately portray it. Nor can the future fortunes of the district vulgarize it! The Tarn, by reason of its remoteness, its inaccessibility—and, to descend to material considerations, its expensiveness as an excursion—can never, fortunately, become one of the cheap ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... these early private tombs consists in the paintings with which the walls are decorated, and which vividly portray the ordinary every-day occupations carried on during his lifetime by the person who was destined to be the inmate of the tomb. These paintings are of immense value in enabling us to form an accurate idea of the life of the ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... the story is preeminently the story of Morgan. I have striven to make it a character sketch of that remarkable personality. I wished to portray his ferocity and cruelty, his brutality and wantonness, his treachery and rapacity; to exhibit, without lightening, the dark shadows of his character, and to depict his inevitable and utter breakdown finally; yet at the same time to bring out his dauntless ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... to portray in words the sensations of the book-collector when engaged in searching some ancient building or library—especially if he be upon a 'hot scent.' The thrills that he experiences as he handles some rich volume that has lain hid for years, the ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... time the countenance of Mr. Samuel Weller had exhibited an expression of the most overwhelming and absorbing astonishment that the imagination can portray. After looking from Job to Jingle, and from Jingle to Job in profound silence, he softly ejaculated the words, 'Well, I AM damn'd!' which he repeated at least a score of times; after which exertion, he appeared wholly bereft of speech, and again cast his eyes, first upon the one and then ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... the mosaics on the vaults and lunettes of the arches in the outer narthex of the church portray scenes from the life of Christ, as recorded in the canonical and the apocryphal Gospels, while on the faces and soffits of the arches are depicted the figures of saints 'who desired to look into these things.' Scenes from the Saviour's ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... is certainly not one. He is always talking about the magnificence, and the high breeding of the Lindons, but anything less high-bred than the head of the Lindons, in his moments of wrath, it would be hard to conceive. His language I will not attempt to portray,—but his observations consisted, mainly, of abuse of Paul, glorification of the Lindons, and ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... in one place. Here were shrines and temples, carved from single immense stones or pieces of jade; here was a woven thing of gold and silver, in which the warp and woof lay close as tapestry, portraying as no tapestry could portray it the fabled valley of "Sinbad," in which the sands were gold, the sky silver, and the gems were ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... within the limits of the so-called civilised and Christian world. There are some here in this room now who have suffered the torments depicted on those canvases, and who could tell of worse horrors than even they portray. We should like to know what you think of ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... and more courageous literature: we may hope to see the drama free itself from sensualism and frivolity, and rise to the Shaksperian dignity of true passion; while the romance will learn better its true ground, and will create, rather than portray—delineate, rather than dissect ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... given will help the reader to an idea of life in Constantinople; more especially they portray the peculiar service rendered by Corti during the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... they lose in the ordinary church histories. The heat of passion they aroused becomes intelligible. It was no battle about words. The stakes were high. The controversialists championed far-reaching principles with a decisive influence on the course of thought and conduct. Unfriendly critics usually portray the Christologians as narrow-minded and audacious. So, no doubt, they were, but they were not wrong-headed. If the matters in dispute between theist, deist, and pantheist are trivialities, then and then only can ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... of the National Magazine, and was writing my verse, trying to be inspired by the concepts of middle-class morality ... or what was even worse, I was attempting to glorify the under-dog; who, if he were the demigod Socialists portray him, would by no ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... am sure, for me to attempt to portray the robbery of the poor and the widespread corruption of public and private morals which are the necessary ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... in Elmbrook had ever seen John McIntyre smile, nor did he do so now; but as he watched the absurd attempts of the youngster to portray the queer gait of the village philosopher there came into his eyes a look as though there had passed before them the ghost of the days when he, himself, was young and light-hearted and full of boyish pranks. He arose, and lighting ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... after one has mastered the technical difficulties one should try to steep one's personality into that of the character one is to portray, and for that reason all study, no matter what it is, and reading of all kinds help ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... Rome 'a sink of all the vices,' and observers so competent as Machiavelli and Guicciardini ascribed the moral depravity and political decay of Italy to their influence. It might be objected that there is now no need to portray the profligacy of that court, which, by arousing the conscience of Northern Europe to a sense of intolerable shame, proved one of the main causes of the Reformation. But without reviewing those old scandals, a true understanding ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... laws and movements of the present system, which have resulted in these vast fortunes; nor is there the least glimmering of a scientific interpretation of a succession of states and tendencies from which these men of great wealth have emerged. With an entire absence of comprehension, they portray our multimillionaires as a phenomenal group whose sudden rise to their sinister and overshadowing position is a matter of wonder and surprise. They do not seem to realize for a moment—what is clear to every real student of economics—that the great fortunes are the natural, logical ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... inarticulate sounds to attract their attention, then gestured to his mouth and ears to indicate his assumed affliction. He rubbed his stomach to portray hunger. Looking about, he saw an ax sticking in a chopping-block, and a pile of wood near it, probably the fuel used by these people. He took the ax, split up some of the wood, then repeated the hunger-signs. The man and the woman both nodded, laughing; he was shown ...
— Flight From Tomorrow • Henry Beam Piper
... with never-resting temptations. He calls himself a fool at times for resisting, and his mind pictures the delights he misses—if not from direct experience, from information he gathers in books and from those who know—and if he yields, then self-reproach embitters him. But correctly to portray the situation is to drop our hypothetical adolescent, for here is where individual reaction and individual situations are too varied to be met with in one case. Some do not inhibit their sex desires at all; others resist now and then, others yield occasionally; still others ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... write out as did Washington, apparently from French sources, and read and reread elaborate "Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation." In the fashion of the age of Chesterfield they portray the perfect gentleman. He is always to remember the presence of others and not to move, read, or speak without considering what may be due to them. In the true spirit of the time he is to learn to defer to persons of superior ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... the Korinos were subject to the Chief's will. Within the caves they knew no fear. The boys looked at Uraso and John. A slight smile could be seen on Uraso's face, as he returned the gaze of the boys; but John's face was immobile, and did not in the least appear to portray any concern. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... the beginning of the fourth century. This may be conveniently divided into two parts, the first of which will treat of the preparation, the second of the establishment of the ecclesiastical doctrine of faith. The second main part, which has to portray the development of dogma, comprehends three stages. In the first stage the doctrine of faith appears as Theology and Christology. The Eastern Church has never got beyond this stage, although it has to a large extent enriched dogma ritually and mystically (see the decrees of the seventh council). ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... Demoiselles Plantation, in the marshy lowlands towards the mouth of the Mississippi. Cable was the leader in the noteworthy literary movement which has influenced nearly all southern writers since the war of 1861—a movement of which the chief importance lay in the determination to portray local scenes, characters and historical episodes with accuracy instead of merely imaginative romanticism, and to interest readers by fidelity and sympathy in the portrayal of things well known to the authors. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... frolicking about the White House, a licensed intruder everywhere. Another flood of anecdotes preserve the stupefying grief of his father after the child's death. Of these latter, the most extreme which portray Lincoln toward the close of February so unnerved as to be incapable of public duty, may be dismissed as apocryphal. But there can be no doubt that his unhappiness was too great for the vain measurement of descriptive ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... I need not portray the pleasure of this noble passion; for you who have not loved, I cannot. Love is a delight that may be known only to those ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... the lines and features of the face, in which the character is seen, than in the other parts of the body, so I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks and indications of the souls of men; and, while I endeavor by these to portray their lives, may be free to leave more weighty matters and great battles to be treated of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... with no joints in them, on which the colossus stalked like a moving stone tower—a body resembling an enormous boulder carved by an amateurish hand to portray the trunk of a human being—a craggy sphere of rock for a head, set directly atop the deeply riven shoulders—a face like the horrible mask of an embryonic gargoyle—a mouth that was simply a lipless chasm that opened and closed with the sound of rocks grinding together in a slow-moving ...
— The Planetoid of Peril • Paul Ernst
... to carry out their plans. An ignorant voter may be an honest one but unless he is intelligent enough to study public questions for himself he is an easy prey for the political sharper. It is beyond the power of the pen to portray what a magnificent government would be possible with an educated electorate. The idea can be approximated only when we consider how much we have been able to accomplish even with all the inefficiency, vice ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... change. It is probable the House of Lords will not recognize itself in the foregoing description, nor yet in that which follows, thus resembling the once pretty woman, who objects to having any wrinkles. The mirror is ever a scapegoat, yet its truths cannot be contested. To portray exactly, constitutes the duty of a historian. The King-at-Arms, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... moisture and compression. An application of the ramrod showed that both the pistols were charged, although Judith could testify that they had probably lain for years in the chest. It is not easy to portray the surprise of the Indian at this discovery, for he was in the practice of renewing his priming daily, and of looking to the contents of his piece ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... The host himself, when he entered, was still clad in a dressing-gown exposing a hairy chest; and as he sat holding his pipe in his hand, and drinking tea from a cup, he would have made a model for the sort of painter who prefers to portray gentlemen of the less curled and ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... enjoyment of existence. He has left us, in his Letters, some brilliant passages, indicative of the delights of his boyhood and youth. Like him, we linger over a period still fresh, still hopeful, still generous in impulse— still strong in faith in the world's worth—before we hasten on to portray the man of the world, heartless, not wholly, perhaps, but wont to check all feeling till it was well-nigh quenched; little minded; bitter, if not spiteful; with many acquaintances and scarce one friend—the Horace Walpole of Berkeley Square ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... bi-centenary of that event, the army of women who wield the pen will erect a statue to the memory of that courageous and brilliant pathfinder. When they do so, two memorable scenes in the life of their heroine will probably be represented in bas-relief upon the pedestal. The one will portray Miss Burney, hopeless of ever inducing a biased public to read a woman's work, making a bonfire of the manuscripts to which she had devoted such patient care. The other will illustrate the famous scene when Miss Burney danced a jig to Daddy Crisp round the great mulberry-tree ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... order to summon all the priests to attend early in the morning in the hall of the convent. I esteemed it a good omen, that the business was to be opened by a courser so dull and limping. Scarcely had we assembled on the morrow, when the bishop began in a fashion, which I will portray further on in the conduct of affairs before the Council. The whole speech was violent, threatening and haughty, although he carefully abstained from any personal allusions to myself and even avoided calling me by name. His declamation ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... roaring for their prey The foaming billows choked the watery way! 'Tis said that souls have giv'n in parting hour A vast and fearful and mysterious power. A chart pictorial of the past is made, In which minute events are all portray'd— One painful glance the scroll entire surveys And then in death the blasted eye-balls glaze— Perchance at that dark moment when the maid On life's dim verge her coming doom survey'd, Such vision flash'd across her spirit pure, And help'd the ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... give these remarks more fitting close than by describing briefly the surroundings which set their impress upon the character of the men whose lives I have attempted to portray. The picture is full of meaning, dignity, and simplicity. In this time "Canetuckee" was still a part of Virginia. The grounds on which, as boys, they played were held by their fathers under what is known as a "tomahawk claim." "Beyond ...
— Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell
... any but myself, to listen to I, I, I, in conversation, till, wearied with the monotony of the sound, I was fain to quarrel with the useful little word, and almost wish I could portray its hydra head, and present it in a mirror to my oracles, that they might turn away disgusted for ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... Scott, a Dickens, a Thackeray, a George Eliot, remain among the dearest possessions of all English-speaking people. But the unhealthy, unnatural, and hideous pictures given to the world by vicious men and women receive the same wages as the sin they portray. ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... flow'rs, while yet you may; Your fading leaves will soon portray The lovely, fragile form, Which passed from earth while skies seemed fair, Like vapors quiv'ring in the air, Before ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... never known the absence of faction and conflict, and had preserved its liberties through carefully regulated strife, his work has been held to be that of some avenging angel who came, not to renew, but to destroy. There is truth in both these pictures; but the Gracchus whom they portray as the force that annihilated centuries of crafty workmanship, as the first precursor of the coming monarchy, is the Gracchus who rightly lives in the historic imagination which, unfettered by conditions of space or time, prefers the contemplation of the eternity of the work ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... bright spirit, of whose power I sing, Electric, deathless energy of mind, Harp of the soul, by genius swept, awake! Inspire my strains, and aid me to portray The base and joyless vanities which man Madly prefers to everlasting bliss!— Come! let us mount gay Fancy's rapid car, And trace through forest and o'er mountain rude The bounding footsteps of the youthful bard, Yet new to life—a ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... to feel the effects of local treatment on the body, and the power of rapidly changing disease to health, and was personally taught to perform the manipulations for this purpose, and to investigate disease or portray character by the psychometric methods as well as to ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... Displayed how routed fled the Assyrians After that Holofernes had been slain, And likewise the remainder of that slaughter. I saw there Troy in ashes and in caverns; O Ilion! thee, how abject and debased, Displayed the image that is there discerned! Who e'er of pencil master was or stile, That could portray the shades and traits which there Would cause each subtile genius to admire? Dead seemed the dead, the living seemed alive; Better than I saw not who saw the truth, All that I trod ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... interesting lectures I had attended with much enjoyment, and who very kindly gave me lists of books, and assisted me with advice, I engaged in the task of writing this book. It is not intended to add to the mass of criticism of Balzac's novels, being merely an attempt to portray the man as he was, and to sketch correctly a career which has been said to be more thrilling than a large ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... unfold into quality of thinker or doer or dreamer. To each Nature whispers: "Unsight, unseen, hold fast what you have." For the soul is shadowless and mysterious. No hand can carve its outline, no brush portray its lineaments. Even the mother embosoming its infancy and carrying its weaknesses, studying it by day and night through years, sees not, she cannot see, knows not, she cannot know, into what splendor of maturity ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... was about two feet high, and of spotless Parian, which well symbolized the angelic purity it was intended to portray. To many, perhaps, it might appear simply a specimen of modeling, but little better than the average. However, those who looked on it with the eyes of faith saw before them, not so much the work itself, as the ideal of ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... rill;— Eyes with mute rapture every waving line, Prints with adoring kiss the Paphian shrine, And learns erelong, the perfect form confess'd, 35 Ideal Beauty from its mother's breast. Now in strong lines, with bolder tints design'd, You sketch ideas, and portray the mind; Teach how fine atoms of impinging light To ceaseless change the visual sense excite; 40 While the bright lens collects the rays, that swerve, And bends their focus on the moving nerve. How thoughts to thoughts are link'd with viewless chains, Tribes ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... sense, which should embody every beauty. The artist of the Renaissance on the other hand delighted not so much in the type as in the variation from it. Preoccupied with the unique mystery of the individual soul—a sense of which was Christianity's gift to Christendom—he endeavored to portray that wherein a particular person is unique and singular. Acutely conscious also of his own individuality, instead of effacing it he made his work the vehicle and expression of that individuality. The ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... painters, who, as Lord Bacon describes witches, "are imaginative," have often involuntarily betrayed, in the act of composition, those gestures which accompany this enthusiasm. Witness DOMENICHINO enraging himself that he might portray anger. Nor were these creative gestures quite unknown to QUINTILIAN, who has nobly compared them to the lashings of the lion's tail, rousing him to combat. Actors of genius have accustomed themselves to walk on the stage for an hour before the curtain was drawn, that they might fill their minds ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... the Managers for the Commons have not used any inapplicable language. We have indeed used, and will again use, such expressions as are proper to portray guilt. After describing the magnitude of the crime, we describe the magnitude of the criminal. We have declared him to be not only a public robber himself, but the head of a system of robbery, the captain-general of the gang, the chief under whom a whole predatory band was arrayed, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... nature of the task which lay before both Ministers and soldiers, whether in London or in South Africa, should be recognised. The next three chapters will deal in succession with each of these subjects. The attempt which is here made to portray in a few pages the mountains, the rolling prairies, and the rivers of the sub-continent must be aided by an examination of the map which has been specially prepared in order ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... not wish it understood that I regard any of the major features of this story as likely to become facts in the near future—indeed, it has been my aim to portray the highly improbable—it is my belief that there is no mathematical or scientific impossibility to be found in ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... right, since the years are confirmatory of this first conviction. The second portrait pictured the poet wrapped in his cloak, standing, lost in thought, alone upon a cliff, gazing solitary at the sea, and listening. If I do not mistake, these pictures caught the poet's spirit in so far as pictures can portray spirit. Tennyson was always alone beside a sea, looking, listening, dreaming; and as dreamer ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... the tenderest and loveliest flowers that grow on the banks of the Ganges, and he calls for the brush of Raphael, the melodies of Mozart, the language of Calderon, so that he may conjure up before his readers an Aphrodite of the Vistula. Liszt, bolder than Heine, makes the attempt to portray them, and writes like an inspired poet. No Pole can speak on this subject without being transported into a transcendental rapture that illumines his countenance with a blissful radiance, and inspires him with a ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... not told me the sound of London. Now, in New York the artists are able to portray sound because in New York a dray is not a dray at all; it is a great potent noise hauled by two or more horses. When a magazine containing an illustration of a New York street is sent to me, I always know it beforehand. I can hear it coming through the mails. ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... notable and extremely interesting both in their original and revised versions. Although the subjects they portray are the stiff-moving and grotesque figures of Marionettes, their general effect is often intensely human. The set as a whole may be viewed as a half serious, half whimsical study of characters in human life, issued under the disguise of jointed and painted dummies. ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... disguise, and wrote to the publisher declaring his opinion that Adam Bede was written by a woman. When this was denied, he still persisted in his conviction, detecting the womanly insight into character, her failure adequately to portray men, while of women "she seemed to know their ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke |
