"Characterise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the answer, with that faint, elusive suggestion of sadness in its tone which seems to characterise the human voice when heard in the midst of the lonely ocean on a night of darkness and calm. There followed a slight scuffling of feet, another subdued murmur of voices, a pause of a few moments, then the sharp clink of flint and steel, a tiny spark of light, and finally the ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... being, in fact, rather brighter than the edges. Distinctly perceptible in it were those singular aurora-like coruscations which gave to the "tresses" of Charles V.'s comet the appearance—as Cardan described it—of "a torch agitated by the wind," and have not unfrequently been observed to characterise other similar objects. A consideration first adverted to by Olbers proves these to originate in our own atmosphere. For owing to the great difference in the distances from the earth of the origin and extremity of such vast effluxes, the light proceeding ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... do not characterise such exclusions as selfish, but rather respect and sympathise with them, it is because we recognise that the whole object and raison d' etre of association would in each case be nullified by the weak-minded admission of the ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... Italian widow, because she was an Italian, and because she was a widow, and he mistrusted the whole connexion, because there had been in it none of that honourable openness which should, he thought, characterise all family doings in such a family as that of the Germains. "I don't know of what kind you mean," he said, shuffling, and knowing that he shuffled. "I don't suppose my brother would do anything really wrong. But it's a blot ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... once, in speaking of her master, made the memorable pronouncement that he was "Apples abroad and crabs at home." This speech, being interpreted, meant that the noisy, boisterous good temper and high spirit which his acquaintances witnessed in him did not always characterise the deportment of the head of the house in the bosom ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... through experience. She was an expression of youth, of health, of beauty, and of the moral loveliness that comes from a fortunate combination of these; but beyond this she was elusive in a way that seemed to characterise her even materially. He could not make anything more of the mystery as he walked at her side, and he went thinking—formlessly, as people always think—that with the child or with her mother he would have had a community of interest and feeling which he lacked with ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... still preserve, a strong willingness to disbelieve the accusations which come so suspiciously before us.[61] An approximation to the truth may be obtained if, rejecting as improbable the accusations of devil-worship and its concomitant rites which, invented to amuse the vulgar, characterise the proceedings, we admit the probability of a secret understanding with the Turks, or the possibility of infidelity to the religion of Christ. Their destruction had been predetermined; the slender element of truth ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... itself down the North Shore scarcely further than Manchester at the furthest; but there are more courageous or more detachable spirits who venture into more distant regions. These contribute somewhat toward peopling Bar Harbour in the summer, but they scarcely characterise it in any degree; while at Campobello they settle in little daring colonies, whose self-reliance will enlist the admiration of the sympathetic observer. They do not refuse the knowledge of other colonies of other stirps and origins, and they even ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and other time in a state of lowest depression: we pass through numerous phases between the two extremes. Not merely does the present modify, but there is also the subtle impress of memory of the past. The sum total of all these characterise one individual from another. How is the hidden to be made manifest? To test the genuineness of a coin, we strike it and the sound response betrays the true from the false. The genuine rings true and the other gives a false note. In this way perhaps the inner history of different lives may be ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... truth permitteth and need requireth) may be detected and displayed. For this cause particularly may we presume our Lord (otherwise so meek in His temper, and mild in His carriage towards all men) did characterise the Jewish scribes in such terms, that their authority, being then so prevalent with the people, might not prejudice the truth, and hinder the efficacy of His doctrine. This is part of that [Greek], that duty of contending earnestly ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... more quietly and with more dignity than was likely from his previous conduct. "I will not allow you to characterise as folly what might be presumptuous on my part—I had no business to express myself so soon—but which in its foundation was true and sincere. That I can answer for most solemnly. It is possible, though it may not be a usual thing, for a man to feel so strongly ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... at the narrative. Why had not Mrs. Pendennis married a serious man, he thought—Mr. Tatham was a widower—and kept this unfortunate boy from perdition? As for Mr. Costigan's daughter, he would say nothing: her profession was sufficient to characterise her. Mr. Foker here interposed to say he had known some uncommon good people in the booths, as he called the Temple of the Muses. Well, it might be so, Mr. Tatham hoped so—but the father, Tatham knew personally—a man of the worst character, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the awkwardness of men who are ill at ease in an unaccustomed sphere, who have not yet mastered the happy mean between arrogance and obsequiousness and who are therefore somewhat prone to both extremes, still frequently characterise them. Few persons who know Germany will doubt that the tone of manners of the German Jews has contributed quite as much as any ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... because irresponsible). A similar phenomenon of panic, sympathetic hope and despair, is exhibited by every stock-exchange, and is not peculiar to political life. And when political opinion is not manufactured solely in the reverberating furnace of a city, fickleness ceases to characterise democracy; and, in fact, is not found in Switzerland, or the United States, nor in France so far as politics, ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... question as to whose the two other sisters were; they are probably two of my late aunt's daughters. But who's 'quite independent,' and in what sense is the term used?—that point's not yet settled. Does the expression apply more particularly to the young lady my mother has adopted, or does it characterise her sisters equally?—and is it used in a moral or in a financial sense? Does it mean that they've been left well off, or that they wish to be under no obligations? or does it simply mean that they're fond of their ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... instinct, it presents, in the whole range of organised beings, a series of phenomena closely linked together, and upon it are based not only the higher manifestations of the mind, but the very permanence of the specific differences which characterise every organ. Most of the arguments of philosophy in favour of the immortality of Man apply equally to the permanency of this principle in other living beings."* (* Contributions to the "Natural History of the United States ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... its guide. For the human spirit by its expression as intellect judges, decides, directs, controls. Its activity is the outcome of its thinking; and if without caring for thought you plunge into action, you have the constant experiments, feeble and fruitless, which so largely characterise our modern life. ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... countryside knows its physical features by heart, and to him they have personality. You will have observed the tendency of Londoners to guide you by the names of public-houses; you will have noticed their blank ignorance of points of the compass. To a great extent these defects characterise the Home Counties, and one might try to excuse them in various ways. In the North of England, and in Scotland throughout, you will be told to "go east," or "keep west" (as the Wordsworths were asked, were they "stepping westward?"), with a conviction that the ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... to characterise him who jests well by his saying what is becoming a gentleman, or by his avoiding to pain the object of his wit, or even by his giving him pleasure? or will not such a definition be vague, since different things are hateful ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... with that genus: the blossoms while in bud fold up somewhat in the same manner as those of the Celsia, but on expansion they appear widely different; their shape indeed then becomes truly singular, resembling a half-formed imperfect corolla, its filaments are short and want the hairs which in part characterise the Celsia; its seed-vessels also are far from being round: its antherae are large and close together, somewhat like those of the Solanum, and there is so little of inequality in them, that few students would be induced to refer its flowers to the ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 6 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... the rear. From first to last, some of the sick Hottentots rode the hospital donkeys, allowing the negroes to tug their animals; for the smallest ailment threw them broadcast on their backs. In a little while we cleared from the rich gardens, mango clumps, and cocoa-but trees, which characterise the fertile coast-line. After traversing fields of grass well clothed with green trees, we arrived at the little settlement of Bomani, where camp was formed, and everybody fairly appointed to his place. The process of camp-forming would be thus: Sheikh ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... One cannot characterise this attitude otherwise than as a piece of special pleading. The appointment, not merely of the Royal Commission, but of the Select Committees of 1865 and 1890, presupposed a disparity between the conditions in the two countries which not only existed in fact but ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... recollection of "Garibaldi's Englishman," Colonel Peard. Peard had many more qualities and capabilities than such as are essential to a soldier of fortune. The phrase, however, is perhaps not exactly that which should be used to characterise him. He had qualities which the true soldier of fortune should not possess. His partisanship was with him in the highest degree a matter of conviction and conscientious opinion, and nothing would have tempted him to change his colours or draw his sword on the other side. I am not sure either, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... the mother is not allowed to save her child, unless she can find a man who will patronise it as a father; in which case, the man is considered as having appropriated the woman to himself, and she is accordingly extruded from this hopeful society. These few anecdotes sufficiently characterise ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... edition of the "Regne Animal," published in 1828, Cuvier devotes a special section to the "Division of Organised Beings into Animals and Vegetables," in which the question is treated with that comprehensiveness of knowledge and clear critical judgment which characterise his writings, and justify us in regarding them as representative expressions of the most extensive, if not the profoundest, knowledge of his time. He tells us that living beings have been subdivided from the earliest times into animated beings, which possess sense ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... natural in a work of this kind, which is a direct review of a particular book, to begin with an account of that book, and with some attempt to characterise it. Such had been my own intention, but there seems to be sufficient reason for pursuing a different course. On the one hand, an account of a book which has so recently appeared, which has been so fully reviewed, and ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... Characters by pure or uncrossed forms.—Striking instances of this first class of cases were given in the sixth chapter, namely, of the occasional reappearance, in variously-coloured pure breeds of the pigeon, of blue birds with all the marks which characterise the wild Columba livia. Similar cases were given in the case of the fowl. With the common ass, as we now know that the legs of the wild progenitor are striped, we may feel assured that the occasional appearance of such ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... remarkable, that Mr. Gray has employed somewhat the same image to characterise Dryden. He, indeed, furnishes his car with but two horses, but they are ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... heart and the understanding comprehend no language but the straight forward voice of truth. Unhappily this language was no longer known to Murat. Since his accession to the throne, he had adopted the system of dissimulation and duplicity, which pretty generally characterise Italian politics. These narrow politics, which support themselves by cunning and temporizing, were incompatible with the French blood, that circulated in his veins; and the continual conflicts, that arose between his novel inclinations and his natural petulance, were incessantly rendering his ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... had no resource then, but to re-make that, and thus I afresh entered on the bitter path I had deemed I should never have occasion again to tread. But if my first confession had lacerated my feelings, what was it to this one? Words have no power, language has no expression to characterise the ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... Sisyphus fragment cannot be used to characterise its author as an atheist, it is, nevertheless, of the greatest interest in this connexion, and therefore demands ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... you his friend!—as well call a Bug his bedfellow!" said the sturdy old yeoman, whose racy English I should like to borrow, to characterise the stupid incongruity between Garibaldi and his worshippers. It is not easy to conceive anything finer, simpler, more thoroughly unaffected, or more truly dignified, than the man himself. His noble head; his clear, honest, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... more true to say that Physiology is the experimental science par excellence of all sciences; that in which there is least to be learnt by mere observation, and that which affords the greatest field for the exercise of those faculties which characterise the experimental philosopher. I confess, if any one were to ask me for a model application of the logic of experiment, I should know no better work to put into his hands than Bernard's late Researches on the ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to them or their fashions. So far as the outer world comes to him, it is by the channel of the newspapers. He has all the boundless curiosity, the thirst for knowledge miscellaneous, pulpy, and piquant, which characterise those that dwell remote. When he gets hold of you he flies at you, hugs you, gets every blessed thing he can out of you. "Favourable specimen," you will say. That is true; but, as regards the independence and ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... external objects of animate or inanimate nature, and partly, in fine, they prescribe abstinence from certain things which to all others are left permissive. It will be easy to every attentive student to discern and point out the prescriptions of this class, as their very nature is sufficient to characterise them; we shall have, however, occasion to mention them, after we shall have endeavoured to place in a clear light the three principal articles ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... and he strove to atone for this mistake, as well as for his youthful follies, by a life of austerity and piety. While his letters testify his great affection for Madame Recamier, they are entirely free from those lover-like protestations and declarations of eternal fidelity so characterise of her other masculine correspondents. He always addressed her as "amiable amis", and his nearest approach to gallantry is the expression of a hope that "in prayer their thoughts had often mingled, and might continue so to do." He ends a long letter of religious counsel with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... whole army applauds the wisdom and vigour which you have displayed upon this important occasion, and participates in the success of the country with the enthusiasm and energy which characterise our soldiers. It is only to be hoped, however, that the Government will not be playing at see saw, and thus throw itself into the opposite party. Wisdom and moderate views alone can establish the happiness of the country on a sure foundation. As for myself, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... material as the fabliaux and the nouvelles themselves, with the additional liveliness of voice and action. These later additions imposed not the smallest restraint on the license which had characterised and was to characterise the plain verse and prose forms,[85] and no doubt the result was all the more welcome to the taste of the time. But for that very reason the appetites and tastes, which could glut themselves with the full dramatic representation, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... least of the commandments, not to give way to anger, not to tolerate the thought of impurity, to give no rash promises, or in conversation to say more than yea or nay. The spirit of retaliation is not to be indulged in; a yieldingness of spirit is to characterise the child of the kingdom; those who hate and despitefully use us are to be pitied, and loved, and prayed for. Then comes the direction, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your FATHER which is in heaven is perfect." In the little frictions of daily life, as well as in the more serious trials ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... vascular apparatus predisposed to arterio-sclerosis; tuberculous subjects will supply germs in which the vital vibrations and cellular solidity will be below the normal, and bring about those degenerate tendencies which characterise the tuberculous subject; those of sanguine constitution will transmit a faculty for vital assimilation and considerable ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... danger of not attending to trifles: A feeble attempt to characterise a man of uncommon virtue: The dying ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... excellent a magistrate, it is in the family of his father that we find indications of those especial qualities of vigour, of courage, of the generous and tolerant outlook of the well-born man of the world, that characterise Henry Fielding. And it is also in these Fielding ancestors that something of the reputed wildness of their brilliant kinsman ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden |
