"Character" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mankind of indulging a wicked disposition, when they have been so desirous of imitating laws that are to them foreign and evil in themselves, rather than following laws of their own that are of a better character, or else our accusers must leave off their spite against us. Nor are we guilty of any envious behavior towards them, when we honor our own legislator, and believe what he, by his prophetic authority, hath taught us concerning God. For though ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus
... gains neither character nor influence by abandoning good manners. It may indeed make itself disagreeable and annoying, and so silence opposition, as a polecat may effectually close the wood path which you had designed to take. It may be feared, and in the same way as that animal—feared and despised. But ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... solitary palmetto, with branchless stem and tufted crown, gives an African aspect to the scene. The eye soon tires of a landscape where every object appears angular and thorny; and upon this plain, not only are the trees of that character, but the plants,—even the very grass ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... overnight in a barn there. Next morning I tried to bribe a boy to get me some food at the grocery store. I gave him a dollar. He never came back. I heard some men talking at the door of the barn about a suspicious character who had been seen skulking about. That decided me. I got out when night came and slipped under an empty fruit car which was being shunted on the siding. I got off yesterday, slipping away between a little village up the line and here. ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... often sought indeed yet sought in vain not only by dramatists who have very [Footnote 1 Deflexit jam aliquantul im] seldom attained it but by authors of a very great diversity of type and culture. One who undertakes to personate a character belonging to an age not his own hardly ever fails of manifest anachronisms. The author finds it utterly impossible to fit the antique mask so closely as not now and then to show through its chinks his own more modern features, while this form of internal evidence ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... wholly false, and had been put forth by her and her co-conspirators for no other purpose than to despoil the plaintiff of his property. Judge Sawyer also filed an opinion in the case, in which he declared that the weight of the evidence satisfactorily established the forgery and the fraudulent character of the ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... superficial than profound, Charles X. did not lack either in tact or in intelligence. He sincerely desired to do right, and his errors were made in good faith, in obedience to the mandates of his conscience. Lamartine, who had occasion to see him near at hand, thus sums up his character:— ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... of time and space. And now the Colonel was merged and lost in his theme; he was whirled along with the stream of things, with moons and meteors, winds and tides, never for an instant compromising his character as a well-behaved barometer. ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... mile and a half from the shore, but in other places much nearer. The island was covered with a dense bush, growing down to within a few feet of the water's edge. As we were not aware at the time of the treacherous character of the natives, while the schooner was hove to, Charlie and I, with four men as a crew, pulled off in the gig, hoping to open up an intercourse with them. We were well armed with muskets, pistols, and boarding-pikes, in case we should be attacked. On approaching the reef, ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... on the agents wharf we were immediately surrounded by a group of these merry—makers, which happened to be the Butchers John Canoe party, and a curious exhibition it unquestionably was. The prominent character was, as usual, the John Canoe or Jack Pudding. He was a light, active, clean made young Creole negro, without shoes or stockings; he wore a pair of light jean small—clothes, all too wide, but confined at the knees, below and above, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Captain of Finance than anything else known to our time, and inasmuch as he had never married, and was without an heir, my father thought he would appreciate the compliment of having his first-born named for him. But Uncle Zib's moral character was of such a nature that his name seemed to my mother as hardly a fit association for an infant of my tender years. He was known to be addicted to pinochle to a degree that had caused no end of gossip at the ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... was just what we should expect from an officer of his temperament and experience. It is true things looked anything but cheering and our hero needed all his force of character and confidence in the God of Israel. This he had and kept brightly burning. To ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... inter-pellation joc'lar in its character," said Dr. Pym frigidly. "I cannot tell what may be Mr. Moon's matured and ethical ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... above mentioned remained in their depository until 1827, when they were found by Joseph Smith, junior, who was directed in the discovery by the angel of the Lord. On these plates were certain hieroglyphics, said to be of the Egyptian character, which Smith, by the direction of God, being instructed by inspiration as to their ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... tiger among men—that king resembling a Lokapala, is truth, and forbearance, and knowledge, and asceticism, and purity and self-control, and perfect tranquillity of soul. O Kali, the fool that wisheth to curse Nala bearing such a character, curseth himself, and destroyeth himself by his own act. And, O Kali, he that seeketh to curse Nala crowned with such virtues, sinketh into the wide bottomless pit of hell rife with torments." Having said this to Kali and Dwapara, the gods went ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... influenced by customary law; judicial review of legislative acts, except with respect to federal decrees of general obligatory character; accepts compulsory ICJ jurisdiction ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... said another, "has the denouncer of SALMASIUS become entitled to complain of rough attacks? Nor has his character been assailed. In that he remains episcopal. Only in his poetry ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... first parents stood before their offended Maker, and the last 5 words of the sentence were yet sounding in Adam's ear, the guileful false serpent, a counterfeit and a usurper from the beginning, presumptuously took on himself the character of advocate or mediator, and pretending to intercede for Adam, exclaimed: 'Nay, Lord, in thy justice, not so! for the man was the least in fault. Rather let the Woman return at once to 10 the dust, and let Adam remain in this thy Paradise.' And the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... tone it would be still more trying for her and more difficult to withstand, so she determined, however hard she might appear, not to give any encouragement to his feelings, and showed therefore a coolness of manner. To her meek character there was thus added a firm resolution, and it seemed like a young bamboo reed with its strength and tenderness combined, difficult to bend! Still she felt the struggle very keenly, and tears ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... regions of the atmosphere; and the air, in cooling, loses its capacity of suspending water. A strong northerly wind chased the clouds; the moon at intervals, shooting through the vapours, exposed its disk on a firmament of the darkest blue; and the view of the volcano threw a majestic character over the nocturnal scenery. Sometimes the peak was entirely hidden from our eyes by the fog, at other times it broke upon us in terrific proximity; and, like an enormous pyramid, threw its shadow over the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... have examined myself lately with more care than formerly, and find that to deaden is not to calm the mind. Aiming at tranquillity I have almost destroyed all the energy of my soul, almost rooted out what renders it estimable. Yes, I have damped that enthusiasm of character, which converts the grossest materials into a fuel that imperceptibly feeds hopes which aspire above common enjoyment. Despair, since the birth of my child, has rendered me stupid; soul and body seemed to be fading away before the withering ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... secure a complete system of teaching Geography in our Schools, there should be at least three grades of Text-books; namely, INTRODUCTORY, INTERMEDIATE, and ADVANCED. As the necessity for a Geography more introductory in its character than those now in use has been long felt, the Author would respectfully solicit the notice of his fellow-teachers to this ...
— First Lessons In Geography • James Monteith
... present ministry, and above all of its leader, the Prince Polignac, is surprising, when one considers how estimable his private character is, and that theirs are irreproachable. They are rendered responsible for the will of the sovereign, who, if report speak truth, is very pertinacious in exacting a rigid fulfilment of it ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... her; she took to all these naturally. For a few days Mr. and Mrs. Grant watched with some anxiety, fearing to discover a flaw in their treasure, but no flaw appeared. Not that Annie was faultless, but hers were honest little faults; there was nothing hidden or concealed in her character, and in a short time her new friends had learned to trust her and ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... the pastoral away from the classical tradition. (On these two schools see J.E. Congleton, "Theories of Pastoral Poetry in England, 1684-1717," SP, XLI, 1944, pp. 544-575.) Although Purney adopted a modification of Aristotle's critical divisions into Fable, Character, Sentiment, and Diction, and took for granted the doctrine of the distinction of genres, he otherwise rejected traditional formulae and critical tenets, and began with the premise that man is most delighted by the imaginative ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... clearing himself from an odious suspicion which rests upon him, and upon another Person present. That is an after-matter. The object immediately before us—so far as a woman can pretend to understand it—is to establish my step-daughter's right to call Mr. Brinkworth to account in the character of his wife. If the result, so far, fails to satisfy us in that particular, we shall not hesitate to appeal to a Court of Law." She leaned back in her chair, and opened her fan, and looked round her with the air of a woman who called ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... pure-minded. He has sinned, I know; but he has repented. One sin doesn't make a sinner, and repentance is the market price of mercy. I know a great deal of this world, my girl, and of its men and women, and I tell you Dic is as fine a character as I know. I don't know a man that is his equal. Don't let this one fault condemn him ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... coupled with that of a woman, white or brown, though he was essentially a favourite with the latter; for at the end of fifteen years' experience in the South Seas, from Easter Island to the far Bonins, he was one of the few white men who thoroughly understood the character and disposition of the various peoples among whom he had lived. Had he been a man of education his knowledge of native languages, thought and mode of life generally, might have brought him some money, fame, and distinction in the world ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... it seems, but suffering is the lot of us men. Rejoice now that your character is cleared; that here in this public place you have received the verdict of your countrymen that restores you to the liberties of our country and the affection of your kindred. I rejoice with you who am a very old man, at the end ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... him. Before all other things he placed the necessity of consolidating Piedmont as a constitutional State, and of preparing her morally and materially to take her part in the struggle when it came. If that were not done, a new Bonaparte might indeed cross the Alps in the character of liberator, but a free Italy would be no more the result of his intervention than it had been of his uncle's. Cavour was meditating the stroke of policy which gave him the power to carry out this work of consolidation and preparation. ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... false scents as I had done—he would clap his hands over new lights and see them blown out by the wind of the turned page. He was like nothing, I told him, but the maniacs who embrace some bedlamitical theory of the cryptic character of Shakespeare. To this he replied that if we had had Shakespeare's own word for his being cryptic he would immediately have accepted it. The case there was altogether different—we had nothing but the word of Mr. Snooks. I rejoined that I was stupefied to see him attach such importance even ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... the way the wind went. I did not know then why this emblem should be placed upon a house of worship, any more than I knew why codfish-balls appeared always upon the Sunday breakfast-table. But these associations invested this plebeian fish with something of a religious character, which he has never quite lost, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... by very different solutions to those come to by our friend. We are not pledging ourselves for the correctness of his opinions, which readers will please to consider are delivered dramatically, the writer being no more answerable for them, than for the sentiments uttered by any other character of the story: our endeavor is merely to follow out, in its progress, the development of the mind of a worldly and selfish, but not ungenerous or unkind, or truth-avoiding man. And it will be seen that ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... all the personages of this history in the light of my children; so I must confess the same inclination of partiality to Sophia; and for that I hope the reader will allow me the same excuse, from the superiority of her character. ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... at first mistaken for wreckage, but the fishermen soon discovered their error and loaded their carts with the treasure locally known as "gorban." Subsequent researches have shown that acorns and hazel-nuts, teeth of horses and hogs, also pottery and instruments of the same character as those found in the cromlechs, exist among the Vazon peat deposits. There is therefore abundant evidence that the legends relating to the former inhabitants of the forest are based on traditions resting on ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... Marten, member for Berkshire, a man of equivocal private character. In the heat of the civil wars he had been committed to the Tower for a short time by the Parliament, for speaking too openly against the person of the King. When he attempted to speak against the violent dissolution of the Long Parliament by Cromwell, the latter ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... Mogollon Mesa is of the same character as the walls of the Grand Canon and is an important part of the canon system. It is almost a perpendicular cliff from one to three thousand feet high which extends from east to west across central Arizona ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... inspired by the contact. The force, decision, aptitude, promptness, which distinguished Ronald, had constituted him a sort of prince among his fellow-students, who gave him the lead in all their united movements, without defining to themselves his claim to supremacy. Ronald's character was not free from imperfections; but its very faults were essentially national,—were characteristics of that "fast-running nation" which is "indivertible in aim," and incredulous of the existence of the unattainable. His ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... have a little sunshine sometimes, for you know, Susan, people must live, and grass or grain cannot grow without sunshine, so it has been arranged that there should be enough here for these purposes, but no more than enough, because Switzerland has to maintain its character as one of ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... and customs of these people, are very inconsistent and contradictory; as, in fact, the accounts of the characters of savages, and of the habits and usages of savage life, have always been in every age. It is very little that any one cultivated observer can really know, in respect to the phases of character, the thoughts and feelings, the sentiments, the principles and the faith, and even the modes of life, that prevail among uncivilized aborigines living in forests, or roaming wildly over uninclosed and trackless plains. Of those ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... D'Avalos. Ferrante had succeeded to his father's title early in boyhood, and was destined for a brilliant military career. On the young bride's side at least it was a love-match. She was tenderly attached to her handsome husband, ignorant of his infidelities, and blind to his fatal faults of character. Her happiness proved of short duration. In 1512 Pescara was wounded and made prisoner at the battle of Ravenna, and, though he returned to his wife for a short interval, duty called him again to the field of war in Lombardy in 1515. After this date Vittoria saw him but seldom. The last time they ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... character was the contrast between its fundamental simplicity and its apparent spectacular quality. His acts seemed to be unusual, striking, and some uncharitable critics thought that he aimed at effect; in truth, however, he acted at the moment as the impulse or propriety of the moment ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... each, his watch, and all his effects: he had nothing left but his shirt, a very bad pair of pantaloons, and a hat. The wives of the Moors, and still more the children, had greatly tormented him; the latter, continually pinched him, and hindered him from taking a moment's sleep. His character was remarkably soured by this treatment, and his faculties rather impaired. These two unfortunate men, after having related their distresses to each other, fell asleep close together; some hours after, the ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... turned to attend to an impatient customer, and the Girl Friend, walking with the firm and decisive steps which indicate character, made for the swing-door leading to the street. And as she went, the paralysis which had pipped Archie released its hold. Still ignoring the forty-five cents which the boy continued to proffer, he ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... place to hide, all right," remarked Davy, as he glanced around at the wild character of their surroundings, and heaved another sigh in contemplation of further ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... the human body. The actual degree of infection has no relation to the size or character of the external manifestations. The external evidence may be minute and insignificant, while the internal extent and ravages of the disease may be tremendous and of large proportions. Many men when asked regarding incidents of the long ago, may state, "Oh, yes, I had a chancre twenty-five years ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... paper to the capitalists,-poisoners of the mind of the people-this would be an inadmissible surrender to the will of capital, a giving up of one of the most important conquests of the Revolution; in other words, it would be a measure of unquestionably counter-revolutionary character. ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... a criminal, but a conventional member of society. It was not in his mind or in his character to plot the murder or mayhem of his rival. What he wanted was a public disgrace, one that would blare his name out to the newspapers as a law-breaker. He wanted to sicken Beatrice and her father of ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... of thought herself, Alice Westmore had never even permitted herself to harbor anything reflecting on the character of those she trusted; and in the generosity of her nature, she considered all her friends trustworthy. Thinking no evil, she knew none; nor would she permit any idle gossip to be repeated before her. In ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... her children closely linked together in an unconquerable resolve—the resolve to beat back an iniquitous assault upon their country. Nor was this the only surprise that she held in store. With the stone wall of her resistance, she was soon to change the whole character of the struggle, and to wreck ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... correspondence school not very far from New York City as a representative. At first I gave good promise of success, but I lost my enthusiasm and belief in the school and became ashamed to be numbered as one of its workers because of the character of most of the local field force at that time and before my time. The reputation of the school in that place was not very good. Also I was not successful in collecting the monthly payments from those who had hard luck stories or had been lied to by the man who had enrolled them. By the end of two ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... railroad company—a promoter, or something of that character. He is trying to make a boom town of Okar. He has bought a great deal of ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... permitted in such a case to sentence for not less than one year, and it is left to some administrative board to determine later how much, if any, longer the confinement shall last, in view of the circumstances of the offense, the character of the prisoner, and his conduct since ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... done his work very well—his appointment has been quoted as an instance of my precocious insight into character—and his work did not appear to have done him any harm. When he called on me I found him the same sincere simple fellow that he had been always. By consent we talked of private affairs, rather than of business. He told me that Tote was growing into a tall girl, that his other children ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... of my acting at Plymouth, Lady Morley pressed me very kindly to go and stay some days with her at Soltram, her place near there: this I was unable to do, but drove over to see her, when, putting on a white apron, to "sustain," as she said, "the character," she took me, housekeeper fashion, through the rooms; stopping before her own charming watercolor drawings, with such comments as, "Landscape,—capital performance, by Frances Countess of Morley;" "Street in a foreign town, by Frances Countess of Morley,—a piece highly esteemed ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... live in a democratic state of society, which has naturally suggested to them certain laws and a certain political character. This same state of society has, moreover, engendered amongst them a multitude of feelings and opinions which were unknown amongst the elder aristocratic communities of Europe: it has destroyed or modified all the relations which before existed, and established others of a novel ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... egoist was awake and speaking within him. He realized that immediately and felt almost a fear of this persistence of character. What is the use of cleverness, of clear sight into others, even of genius, when the self of a man declines to change, declines to be ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... him with hard eyes over the thin edge of her smile, perceived on her brow a flash of unforgiving wrath. It was not pleasing in itself, but his eyes lingered a moment, for it seemed to show off her character. What he saw in the picture frightened him and he felt himself murmur "Poor Madame de Mauves!" His departure was abrupt, and this time he really went into the forest and lay down ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... out the pathetic play of Deaf and Dumb, in which he sustains the character of the abbe ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... as reproving the Jews for attempting to evade the national punishment threatened them, by removing out of their own country of Judaea. Probably, however, neither Taylor nor Hug are correct in departing from the more obvious signification, which refers to the mercantile character of the twelve tribes (i. 1.), arising mainly out of the fact of their captivities and dispersions ([Greek: diasporai]). The practice is still common in the East for merchants on a large and small scale ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... nature had been, some time since, made against you," by Arnold; you say, you "allow full weight to so respectable a connexion and testimony;" to which you made no reply, though from the rank and character of Arnold at that time, they merited your notice. Arnold having received his information from me, it cannot be concluded, that I meant by his testimony to strengthen my own assertion; but merely to show, that having before been charged, you did ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... fellow, if you please," said Hall, with mock of state—he was quite the Perfect Fool again. "Mr. Mark Strong condescends to dine with me, and in that utter unselfishness of character peculiar to him insists on paying the bill—don't you, ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... passengers should be whirled along at a speed varying from twenty to fifty miles an hour with more safety than they could have secured by walking a-foot, would have seemed an anticipation of the very wildest character. Yet such is the case. In 1850, upwards of seventy millions of souls were conveyed by railway; when eleven passengers were killed and fifty-four injured, or less than one to each million of ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... by its accidental bearings on the one aim which they were intent on securing—a formal and provisional resettlement of Europe capable of being presented to their respective parliaments as a fair achievement. With its real character, its manifold corollaries, its innovating tendencies over the social, political, and ethnical domain, they were for the time being unconcerned. Without the slightest reference to any of these considerations they were ready to find a place for it in the new state system with which they hoped ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... for the public good of learning that every true critic, as soon as he had finished his task assigned, should immediately deliver himself up to ratsbane or hemp, or from some convenient altitude, and that no man's pretensions to so illustrious a character should by any means be received before that operation ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... existed; OLLENDORFF cannot have been a mere symbol. And as students of SHAKSPEARE have endeavoured to reconstruct the man from his plays so I feel sure that the character of OLLENDORFF, his interests and politics, might very well be reconstructed from a study of his dialogues. One must admit that his Teutonic patronymic is an obstacle to his revival, but that difficulty can be surmounted by the adoption ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... they found themselves in a court, beyond which they could see another court which looked like a hall of justice—or injustice, as the case might be. What strengthened Foster in the belief that such was its character, was the fact that, at the time they entered, an officer was sitting cross-legged on a bench, smoking comfortably, while in front of him a man lay on his face with his soles turned upwards, whilst an executioner was applying to them the punishment of the bastinado. The culprit could not ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... motor-boat can supersede the gondola on the small canals too. It may be urged that the gondolier has only to become an engineer and his position will be as secure. That may be true; but we all know how insidious is the deteriorating influence of petrol on the human character. The gondolier even now is not always a model of courtesy and content; what will he be when the poison of machinery is ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... brought up in the dry sunbaked West for nothing. The winds of the Rockies had entered into his character as well as into his physique. He was a willful man, with a good deal of granite in his make-up. A fighter from his youth, he did not find it easy to yield the point upon which he differed from Moya. There was in her so much of impulsive generosity that he had expected to overpower her scruples. ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... heard there), and went a little beyond Cape Mesurado. The precise date of this voyage is uncertain, but we may fairly consider Sierra Leone as being the point attained at, or about, the death of Prince Henry in 1463, of whose character, before parting with him, something ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... cognizance of the work as director, etc. However, as all that he wishes—is simply an interference to save him from any very severe article, and not an article in his favour, I have ventured to ask of you if you hear of any such thing, to use such influence as must naturally belong to you in your general character (whether maintaining any connection with Blackwood or not) to get it softened. On the whole, I suppose no such article is likely to appear. But to oblige Hill I make the application. He has no direct interest in the prosperity of Hazlewood; he is himself a barrister ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... This Department has no knowledge of any understanding by General Grant to allow any person to come within his lines as commissioner of any sort. You will therefore allow no one to come into your lines under such character or profession until you receive the President's instructions, to whom your telegram will be ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... same time, there were defects in his intellect and character which are perceptible in what he wrote, as well as in what he did. He had the Gallic wit in great measure, but he was absolutely devoid of any sense of humor. This is why, in both his prose and his poetry, his most tremendous ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... patients Wednesday,—six left. I still have fifteen; this lot were all ill. One man is quite a character. The doctor put him on milk diet the first day—but he did not approve, so he went to the village and bought a loaf of ...
— 'My Beloved Poilus' • Anonymous
... nation, or tribe of men, bringing up children to certain habits, from generation to generation—and such and such is their character. Here, again, is another large portion of our race, who, under similar circumstances of climate, &c. &c., have, for several hundred years, educated their children very differently, and with different results. A comparison of ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... a similar tax on every dog imported to herd them? what the house thought of a governor who placed a tax of L1 on every house in which more than three rooms were inhabited? and whether the governor had vindicated the character of this country by protecting the whites from the outrages of the natives? Nine of our countrymen, he continued, had been tomahawked after they had given up their arms: had the governor made inquiry into ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... heart that, if Skinner went the way of others from the row, it would be but another act of revenge upon the part of the townspeople, for had not one and every witness save Elias Graves testified that day to the good character of the accused man? ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... absolute truth, and the absence of any petty self-love in her character, stand out in any study of her life. "Why, if you had told me that my books were without any value in your eyes, do you imagine that I should not have valued you, reverenced you ever after for your truth, so sacred a thing in friendship?" ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... described as a "magister." At first it was not necessary that he should be a master, but this soon became usual, and ultimately (though not till the close of the Middle Ages) it was made compulsory by the University. Dr Rashdall has drawn attention to the democratic character of these Hospicia or Halls, the members of which elected their own principal and made the regulations which he enforced. This democratic constitution is found at Oxford as well as at Paris, and was, indeed, common ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... I believe that the circumstances which give so peculiar a character of atrocity to the Massacre of Glencoe were first published in print by Charles Leslie in the Appendix to his answer to King. The date of Leslie's answer is 1692. But it must be remembered that the date of 1692 was then ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the journal notes a trait of character, or rather of temperament, which often excited the wonder and also the anxiety of her friends. It caused her no little discomfort, but she ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... feeling bitterly about Polly Love, and that caused him to remember a patient to whom her selfish little heart had shown no kindness. It was her brother. He was some nine or ten years older, and very different in character. His face was pale and thin—almost ascetic—and he had the fiery and watery eyes of the devotee. He had broken a blood-vessel and was threatened with consumption, but his case was not considered dangerous. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... in which he had once more enlisted. Davis is said to have been in the battle of Waterloo; he certainly crossed the ocean and returned later on to Canada. He survived till 1871, living at Cornwall, Ontario, a well-known character—with him, died the last of all those who had been slaves in the old Province of Quebec or ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... seems like a first indication of some of the later successes in the novels; but the rest of the dramatis personae are puppets. The success of the piece was probably owing to the acting of Mrs. Oldfield, who took the part of Lady Matchless, a character closely related to the Lady Townleys and Lady Betty Modishes, in which she won her triumphs. She seems, indeed, to have been unusually interested in this comedy, for she consented to play in it notwithstanding a "slight Indisposition" ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... this cause that communication through the Atlantic Cable was so exceedingly slow and difficult, and not, as many suppose, because the cable was defective. It is true that there was a fault in the cable, discovered by Varley, before it left Queenstown; but it was not of so serious a character as to offer any substantial obstacle to the passage of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... pleasure to the spectators, or does she fight against them and refuse to speak of their pleasant vices, and willingly proclaim in word and song truths welcome and unwelcome?—which in your judgment is her character? ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... first time she experienced a little resentment of the public criticism which was so rife in Wanley, and the experience was useful—one of those inappreciable aids to independence which act by cumulative stress on a character capable of development and softly mould ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... surprised at this polite letter, after having heard the character of the author; and as for me, I was very pleased at his refusal, because I now had an opportunity of showing my disinterested love. I waited on my charmer; and having imparted the contents of her brother's letter, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Martian justice. In pronouncing sentence the judge had termed Luke an incurably vicious character and a menace to society such as the planet had never harbored. And Luke, his head swathed in bandages from which his wiry red hair bristled like the comb of a gamecock, had grinned evilly ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... Catholic majesties admiral and captain-general of their fleet. Notwithstanding of all this he fawned upon the admiral, using every demonstration of kindness in his presence, yet acting treacherously in undermining his character and authority; and this lasted all the time we remained at St Domingo. Our own ship being refitted and supplied with all necessaries for the voyage, and another hired in which the admiral and his ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... side of the pond to near its head, he crossed the little meadow and the canal, and reached the brook again about fifty yards beyond. Here he found it flowing swift and narrow, over a rocky bottom, between high banks; and this was its character for nearly half a mile, as he judged. Then, emerging once more upon lower ground, he came upon a small dam. This structure was not much over eighteen inches in height, and the pond above it, small and shallow, showed no signs of being occupied. There was no beaver house to be seen, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Richard could not hope. There had always been a strange self-willed wildness of character about his eldest brother, who, though far less violent and overbearing in actual deed than the two next in age, Simon and Guy, had contrived to incur even greater odium than they, by his mocking careless manner and love of taunts and gibing. Simon ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as the right man for this place, because I think our Cathedral, that we all so deeply love, is waiting for just such a man. Against his character no one, I suppose, has anything to say. He is known before all the world as a God-fearing Christian. He is no youth; he has had much experience; he is, every one witnesses, lovable and of strong personal charm. It is not his character, but his ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... wholly original and sufficiently varied in character and sentiment to enable the reader to make up a well-rounded program in which high comedy mingles with farce and pathos in a manner suitable for all occasions. Nineteen monologues and nine short poems which are especially adapted to that ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... each embodying the results of years of travel and research, entirely revolutionize all our theories as to the geographical and physical character of Central Africa. Instead of lofty mountains and sandy deserts, we have a wide basin, or rather series of basins, with lakes and great rivers, and a soil fertile even when compared with the abounding exuberance of our own Western valleys ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... reside on it. If I do not flatter myself, he is indeed a valuable person, of uncommon brightness, learning, piety and indefatigable industry; always loyal to the King, zealous for the Church, and friendly to our Dissenting Brethren; and for the truth of this character I will be answerable to God and man. If therefore your lordship will grant me the favour to let me resign the living unto him, and please to confer it on him, I shall always remain your lordship's most bounden, most ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... possess. There is action for the man of action, intellectual work for the thinker, artistic, literary, dramatic and religious for those whose God-given powers lie that way. What we have both in brain and character we carry over with us. No man is too old to learn, for what he learns he keeps. There is no physical side to love and no child-birth, though there is close union between those married people who really love each other, and, generally, there is deep sympathetic friendship and ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... will have them married before they know it—Agatha's dreadfully determined. Her character lies in ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... which the guard had been kept up, and only the fact that a woman had been sent for and was expected with the priest had preserved her from discovery and its consequences. As it was, however, no notice was taken of her, and her pretended character was assumed to be her real one. Even Girasole had scarcely glanced at her. A village peasant was of no interest in his eyes. His only thought was of Minnie, and the woman that the priest brought was only used as a desperate effort to show a desire for her comfort. After he ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... forwards to heave him over the side, when one of his comrades called out, "Hold on. Let Danican alone. We'll give him a funeral"—to which ceremony the old Breton owed his life, though it did not soften the by no means placid character ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... Leonard leaned back in his bunk, quite sleepless now. He stared into the blackness, his mind a moving picture show of the last three days. The Englishman was chief actor on this stage, and his disagreeably mixed character puzzled and disturbed the American. Caradoc's language and manners showed him to be a man of breeding, but he was full of contradictory habits. His uncosmopolitan moodiness, his vulgar quarreling ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... dearest friendship, shades of character, and the precise depth and power of the various qualities of mind and heart, never approximate to such a degree, as to preclude all possibility ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... come will look back upon his history as to some grand and supernatural romance. The fiery energy of his youthful career, and the magnificent progress of his irresistible ambition, have invested his character with the mysterious grandeur of some heavenly appearance; and when all the lesser tumults and lesser men of our age shall have passed away into the darkness of oblivion, history will still inscribe one mighty era with the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... life lay open before me; I could count the diurnal throbbings of that noble heart. I began to yield to the influence of a dream that was both sweet and profound, and in spite of the serious firmness of his character, I discovered an ineffable grace, the flower of kindness. While I read, the recollection of his death mingled with the narrative of his life, I can not tell with what sadness I followed that limpid stream until its waters mingled with those of ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... He shall keep a record of the boys under sixteen years of age employed by him, or by any other person, giving the name, age, place of birth, name and residence of parents, and character of employment. He shall require written evidence from the parent or guardian of each said minors, that the requirements of the school laws of this state have been complied with. (Sec. 912, 944.) (See Child Labor ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous
... such a thing as a snake-stone, which is applied to the wound, and is said to absorb the blood, and with it the poison; but medical men of character regard it as not entitled to the credit claimed for it. A chemical expert pronounced it to be nothing but a charred bone, which had probably been filled with blood, and again subjected to the action of fire. It is possible that the bone absorbs the ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... much bitterness. Men do not like to make such mistakes, but those of high character are always ready to do what they ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... self-hypnotised, or were cheated, but he absolutely ignored the evidence altogether. Now this behaviour, if scientific, was hardly quite sportsmanlike, to use a simple British phrase which does credit to our language and national character. Mr. Alfred Wallace stated a similar conclusion as to Dr. Carpenter's method of argument, in language of some strength. 'Dr. Carpenter,' he said, 'habitually gives only one side of the question, and completely ignores all facts which tell against his theory.' {320} Without going so far as Mr. Wallace, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... the Character and Tendencies of the American Colonisation and American Anti-Slavery Societies. ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... put an end to the Eastern Roman Empire, and Baldwin, Count of Flanders, was elected emperor of the East. The conquest of Constantinople restored the Greeks to a dominant position in the East; but the national character of the people, the political constitution of the imperial government, and the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Orthodox Church were all destitute of every theory and energetic practice necessary for advancing in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... pause here to say a few words about Sinfi Lovell. Some of my readers must have already recognised her as a famous character in bohemian circles. Sinfi's father was a 'Griengro,' that is to say, a horse-dealer. She was, indeed, none other than that 'Fiddling Sinfi' who became famous in many parts of England and Wales as a violinist, ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... person of even firm heart, resolving to complete the discipline, betakes himself to recitation, but fails to attain to completion in consequence of his having freed himself from attachments by a violent stretch without genuine conviction of their inutility or harmful character, he also ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the general interest, and as he was becoming used to his role as public character, he marched into the store like the Lord Mayor of London when he goes shopping in his gold coach with three men and a boy in ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... his imagination by wine, nor ever attempted to describe a battle till he had drunk two bottles—lest, as he said jestingly, the horrors of the combat should enfeeble his style! Perhaps this trait in his character also explains how it was that 'he signalised himself by strange descriptions and burlesque sallies of humour in the pulpit,' and that his works exhibit 'great fire and rapidity in their style.'[68] At all events he lived to ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... gravely. "For the last two years I have hoped that this might be so, for in no other way could I repay our debt of gratitude to you. I cannot tell what Thirza's thoughts are; but there have been three suitors for her hand this year, any of whom might well, in point of means and character, have been considered suitable; but when I spoke to her she laughed at the idea and, though she said nothing, I gathered that ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... now said this was no job for a chamber of commerce; it had become a simple matter for the police. The civic purity league had a special meeting at which the rind was peeled off Vernabelle's moral character, and the following Sabbath one of the ministers gave a hot sermon in which the fate of Babylon and a few other undesirable residence centres mentioned in the Bible was pointed out. He said that so-called Bohemia was the gateway to hell. He ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... he looked down on that little raggedy boy as we left him swinging on the front gate. His heart is softening away from wealth to his fellow-man, I know. And, as if it had not made me happy enough to have Father sitting and smoking with such a great character as Mr. Douglass Byrd, what should happen but for us to meet Tony at our front gate, coming to see Father especially? They made me go in and wait on the front steps while they talked, because they didn't want me to hear; and they both laughed so that Father tried to get out his handkerchief ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the inquest jury brought out various facts of a substantive character, but calculated rather to complicate than to unravel the mystery. The butler swore that on the very day of the murder he had served his master a half-pint of arsenic at lunch. But he claimed that this was quite a usual happening with his master. On cross-examination ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... influence of this institution appeal to the imagination of both ignorant and cultured alike. The aim of the distinguished writer of the "Grip of Desire" is far removed from that of vulgar and gratuitous image-breaking. He seeks to show the danger to human character that comes through meddling with one of the most imperious of natural instincts. If in the "Chastisement of Mansour" he bodies forth the consequences of unbridled Libertinism, in the "Grip of Desire" he demonstrates the evils attendant ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... here and there are beautiful grassy parks. To the southeast the reserve covers a large part of the White Mountains, one of the largest areas of generally high elevation in Arizona. The yellow pine forest, similar in character to that on the Mogollon Mesa, is found over a large part of the reserve between 7,000 and 8,500 feet altitude, and its general character is shown in the ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... kept interrupting himself perpetually to express his surprise at the fact of so steady and well-conducted a man as Dixon being guilty of so heinous a crime, and was willing enough to testify to the excellent character which he had borne during all the many years he had been in his (Mr. Osbaldistone's) service; but he appeared to be quite convinced by the evidence previously given of the prisoner's guilt in the matter, and strengthened ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... belong in a hospital than in a prison. It is a little premature to decide this at the present day, but it is unquestionably certain that it is the psychiatrist who will in time furnish us the most valuable data concerning the "criminal character." It is he who will eventually bring to light unshakable proof that in the habitual criminal we must see an anomalous human being, who stands in the same relation to normal man as disease does to health, and then, the problem ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... that, for the first time, she realized the sinister character of the mission they had undertaken so lightheartedly. It had begun like a page of romance. Now, shorn of its glamour, it seemed to be turning to grim reality. Tommy—that was all that mattered. Many times in the day Tuppence blinked ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie |
