"Characteristically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... treatment and distribution. When one reads the statements they made, and the warnings they gave, the wonder is the mutiny did not sooner occur. Lord Ellenborough, before leaving India, declared the Sepoys were our one peril in India, and characteristically proposed we should keep them in humour ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... I would rather not look away from Fifth Avenue at all. It is astonishing how that street has assumed and resumed all the larger and denser life of the other streets. Certain of the avenues, like Third and Sixth, remain immutably and characteristically noisy and ignoble; and Fifth Avenue has not reduced them to insignificance as it has Broadway. That is now a provincial High Street beside its lordlier compeer; but I remember when Broadway stormed and swarmed with busy life. Why, I remember the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Spain as to be easily reinforced; in consequence Uruj was soon blockaded by the Spaniards, and remained so for seven months. But no blockade could keep Uruj Barbarossa for long within stone walls; sortie after sortie did the gallant corsair lead against the foe, and it was in one of these that he characteristically came by his death. Ever rash and impetuous, he allowed himself to be drawn too far away from possible shelter or support; and, as there was something dramatic in the whole life of this man, so also was there in the manner of his death. They had him trapped at last, this grim Sea-wolf, ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... familiar with mirth and passion, there was often wonderful talk there, and it was only the setting that was still and solemn. It happened that this evening—there was no knowing in advance—the scene was not characteristically brilliant; but to confirm his assertion, at the moment he spoke, Mademoiselle Dunoyer, who was also in the play, came into the room attended by ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... old age his confidence in his own powers was never shaken. He persistently acted up to the sentiment—slightly paraphrased from Terence—which he had characteristically adopted as his family motto, Forti nihil difficile; neither could there be any question as to the genuine nature either of his strength or his courage, albeit hostile critics might seek to confound the latter quality with sheer impudence.[70] He abhorred the commonplace, ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... From the end of April until the beginning of September— during the most momentous period of the whole crisis, he was engaged in London upon a financial conference, while his place was taken in Cairo by a substitute. With a characteristically convenient unobtrusiveness, Sir Evelyn Baring had vanished from ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... magic lanterns for the village children, an amateur concert or a review article in the evening; plenty of hard work by day; regular visits to meetings of the British Association, from one of which I find him characteristically writing: "I cannot say that I have had any amusement yet, but I am enjoying the dulness and dry bustle of the whole thing"; occasional visits abroad on business, when he would find the time to glean (as I have said) gardening hints for himself, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... greatly pleased, but he characteristically tried not to show it. "Well, now, ma'am," he drawled, "I'm afraid you ain't been to the post office much mail times. If you'd just drop in there some evenin' and hear Gabe Bearse and Bluey Batcheldor raise hob with the Kaiser you'd understand why ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... much novelty in the present Gem: the prints, prose, and poetry sparkle most characteristically, and are just such as the title of the work would lead one to expect to find in it; which is a rare merit ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various
... immediately after his return to the apartment, when—Caroline having gone to her own room to remove her wraps—he and the butler were alone, he characteristically unburdened ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... with the Alumbagh. The walls of the staircase and the flat roof of the tower are scratched and written all over with the names of visitors; many of the names are those of natives, but more are those of British soldiers, who have occasionally added a piece of their mind in characteristically strong language. ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... London, perhaps Lord Cardwell. Professor Smith gave the two Houses of Parliament,—Jowett, the Clergy, coupling with it the name of your friend Mr. Rogers—on whom he showered every kind of praise, and Mr. Rogers returned thanks very characteristically and pleasantly. Lord Lansdowne drank to the Bar (Mr. Bowen), Lord Camperdown to—I really forget what: Mr. Green to Literature and Science delivering a most undeserved eulogium on myself, with a more rightly directed one on Arnold, Swinburne, and the old pride ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... philosophical correspondence with Descartes. It is to her that the Principles of Philosophy were dedicated; and in her alone, according to Descartes, were united those generally separated talents for metaphysics and for mathematics which are so characteristically co-operative in the Cartesian system. Two Dutch friends, Constantijn Huygens (von Zuylichem), father of the more celebrated Huygens, and Hoogheland, figure amongst the correspondents, not to mention various savants, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... characteristically cried out to him again, "there is one thing more that I hardly dare show you then. You'll think me such a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... probably snatched knowledge as most of us snatch indulgences, making the utmost of scant opportunity. He looked around him with the quiet air of respect habitual to him among equals, ordered whisky and water, and offered the contents of his cigar-case, which, characteristically enough, he always carried and hardly ever used for his own behoof, having reasons for not smoking himself, but liking to indulge others. Perhaps it was his weakness to be afraid of seeming straight-laced, and turning himself into a sort of diagram instead of a growth which can ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... by his almost fanatical conviction in his principles and in his mission. On the other hand, this dogmatic attitude made it very difficult to work with him, for persons of any independence of mind. He could scarcely brook discussion, never contradiction. This is most characteristically shown by a fragment of Froebel's dated ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... attention of Mademoiselle de Bellefonds' brother, Alphonso; and as he paid her more attention than from such a quarter was agreeable to Jacques, the young men had had more than one quarrel on the subject, on which occasions they had each, characteristically, given vent to their enmity, the one in contemptuous monosyllables, and the other in a volley of insulting words. But Claudine had another lover more nearly of her own condition of life; this was Claperon, the deputy governor of the Rouen jail, with whom she had made acquaintance during one or ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the rich which he attended. He lacked the power to make the most of his opportunities. The ability to cultivate acquaintances, to push his way into a good place in this sleek company of the well-to-do,—an ability characteristically American,—he was utterly without. It would be better for him, he reflected with depression, to return to Marion, Ohio, or some similar side-track of the world, or to reenter the hospital and bury himself in a ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... cannot at present be definitely associated with bacteria, probably for the reason that the methods employed to find the bacteria have not been adequate. For instance, the bacteria of smallpox has never been found, although the disease is so characteristically one of bacterial origin that no one can doubt the cause. Similarly, the bacteria responsible for measles, scarletina, and whooping cough have never been discovered, although the cause of each is also presumably bacterial. More definite information on the subject ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... over the literatures of other countries and the cultivating of an intimacy with the great classics of the past. In the following essay on the "Study of Poetry," one of the most famous of his utterances, there may be found exemplified his characteristically vivacious and memorable style, his delicate appreciations brilliantly and precisely expressed, his concrete and persuasive argument. Perhaps no single critical document of our time has contributed so many phrases to the current literary ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... And yet, characteristically enough, it was to Tip that she turned in what was without any doubt the great decision of her life, and Tip that influenced her to it. She knew whom to go to well enough, and she knew that he was the one person qualified to give her absolutely unprejudiced counsel. Oh, yes! she knew. ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... Romans, but it is not easy to see what part of a Roman building they can ever have formed. The truth is that they bear no resemblance to known classical features, while they are on the other hand, characteristically Saxon. The nearest parallel to them is to be found in the imposts of the chancel arch at Worth in Sussex, a place far away from Roman sites. The Worth imposts, like the bases at Bosham, are huge and ungainly, testifying both to the general love of bigness in the ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... distinguish tunes would listen to music. He feels the agreeable sensation which their forms and aspects produce; but, like one who thinks without adequate language for his thoughts, his ideas are vague and indefinite. The Beech is particularly worthy of study, as in many points it differs characteristically from most other trees. I am acquainted with no tree in the forest that equals it, when disrobed of its foliage, in the gracefulness of its spray. There is an airiness about its whole appearance, at all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... course, impossible to state precisely what were those unuttered thoughts that passed through Gladstone's mind as he spoke these characteristically cautious words, but what in general they were can be satisfactorily gleaned from a letter that he had written six days before this ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... all so characteristically employed that she could not help smiling as she looked. Archie and Charlie, evidently great cronies, were pacing up and down, shoulder to shoulder, whistling "Bonnie Dundee"; Mac was reading in a corner, ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... characteristic distinctness: "If I die, you may inscribe on my tomb stone, Died of the Mahoning Railroad;" so great had been his devotion to the interests of the road, and so severe the personal exposures which its supervision had required of him, who was characteristically more thoughtful of every interest confided to his care, than of ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... supernatural citation is mentioned by all our Scottish historians. It was, probably, like the apparition at Linlithgow, an attempt, by those averse to the war, to impose upon the superstitious temper of James IV. The following account from Pitscottie is characteristically minute, and furnishes, besides, some curious particulars of the equipment of the army of James IV. I need only add to it, that Plotcock, or Plutock, is no other than Pluto. The Christians of the middle ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... himself to help others. He was as energetic and industrious as he was good-natured; work was his recreation, and it was notorious that to his energy it was chiefly due that the firm of which he was a member had attained its eminence. His senior partner characteristically took all the credit to himself, and had gradually brought himself to believe that in establishing the business he had seriously impaired his own health; but everybody else who knew anything about them knew also that the junior ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... France but a few days before she discovered his indifference to the wonders which seemed of such importance to her. On the way over she had noticed his spells of abstraction. She had seen how quickly the shadows descended upon her husband's face when it was in repose. With an intuition characteristically feminine, she concluded rightly that Frederick's interest was not in her, that his attention was really concentrated upon something quite apart from his wife and their honeymoon. She determined to ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... words, to explain the position of affairs to Love, who was characteristically quick at grasping it, and suggesting ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... the Spanish awakening, but the art of Spain during the sixteenth century shows that the two most powerful influences were Moorish and Italian. The most characteristically Spanish furniture of that period are those cabinets,—"Vargueos," made of wood ornamented on the outside with wrought iron, while inside are little columns made of fine bone, painted and gilded. Much ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... uncovered a bundle of letters and documents addressed to her husband, which in some way aroused her curiosity. Swallowing her qualms, she examined the contents. They proved to be, in the main, letters from Bob's mother and father urging him to break off his marriage. Those from Mr. Wharton were characteristically intolerant and dictatorial; those from Bob's mother were plaintive and infinitely sad. Both parents, she perceived, had exhausted every effort to win their son from his infatuation, both believed Lorelei to be an infamous woman bent upon his destruction, ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... morning characteristically at Ara Coeli, one of the churches here I like best, or rather one of the few I like at all. I find that the pleasure I derive from churches is mainly due to their being the most inhabited things in the world: inhabited by generation after generation, ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... But characteristically the greater part of this long letter refers not to his own doings, but to the admirable qualities of those who were with him. Wilson, Royds, Skelton, Hodgson, Barne and Bernacchi are all referred to in terms of the warmest praise, and for the manner in which ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... day she made a desperate resolve, and characteristically put it into execution at once. She sent for the caretaker. When he came, uneasy, for the Loscheks were justly feared in the country side, and even the thing of which he knew gave him small courage, she lost no time ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... give to Daisy's thoughts took effect for the moment. It was grievous; to wish so much for her friend and to have him join in the wish, and all in vain. But, characteristically, Daisy said nothing. She was ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... imperatively require or sanction. It was impossible to mistake the import of terms and phrases where the means of their analysis were ample. If the style is sometimes found to be bald, and of jejune simplicity, the original is characteristically so. Few adjectives are employed, because there are few in the original.[1] The Indian effects his purposes, almost entirely, by changes of the verb and demonstrative pronoun, or by adjective inflections of the ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... the modern phrase—worthy of Madame Sarah Bernhardt. Other visitors were occasionally attracted. My father knew John Mill, though never, I fancy, at all intimately. He knew politicians such as Charles Greville, the diarist, who showed his penetration characteristically, as I have been told, by especially admiring my mother as a model of the domestic virtues which he could appreciate from an outside point ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... hundreds if not thousands of black men in this country who in capacity are to be ranked with the superior persons of the dominant race; and it is hard to say that in any evident feature of mind they characteristically differ from their ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... Characteristically, I had gone to the office of the Independent, had not found the editor in, that morning, and had chafed at the idea of waiting till the afternoon, when I might have had a fruitful talk with a man who was interested in the one real thing in ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... offended that the disgraced son should come home at all; he would have thought better of him if he had hidden his shame in the country that had witnessed it. Probably his sense of pride and respectability is offended more than his love of virtue, though he characteristically gives his jealous anger the illusion of morality. This, I say, is the average social view. There are few things more cruel than affronted respectability. The elder brother is an eminently respectable person, totally unacquainted ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... which can on occasion behave like a very devil within us, is, when rightly used, our greatest asset, the source of powers whose appearance in the occasional individual has been considered almost superhuman, but which prove to be characteristically human, the common inheritance ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... the Schools, and by the definitions and decisions of Rome, and in the enormous mass of its post-Reformation theology, at once so comprehensive, and so minute in application. This distinction was the foundation of what was, characteristically, Anglican theology, from Hooker downwards. This distinction, at least for all important purposes, Mr. Ward gradually gave up. It was to a certain degree recognised in his early controversy about No. 90; but it gradually grew fainter till at last it avowedly disappeared. The Anglican writers had drawn ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... Sylvester Baxter entitled "The Upbuilding of a Great Railroad." It is the familiar "slush" article which we professional writers learn to know at a glance. "Prodigious", Mr. Baxter tells us, has been the progress of the New Haven; this was "a masterstroke", that was "characteristically sagacious". The road had made "prodigious expenditures", and to a noble end: "Transportation efficiency epitomizes the broad aim that animated these expenditures and other constructive activities." There are photographs of bridges and stations—"vast terminal improvements", ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... industry, had long asserted among their rights that of each gild to refuse to pay one of the taxes, any one it chose, levied by the government. [Sidenote: 1539] The attempt {237} of the government to suppress this privilege caused a rising which took the characteristically modern form of a general strike. The regent of the Netherlands, Mary, yielded at first to the demands of the gilds, as she had no means of coercion convenient. Charles was in Spain at the time, but hurried northward, being granted free passage ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... assuredly that my father had again, characteristically, suffered me to dangle; he having been called to Linwood by the dire trouble of his sister, Mrs. Temple, and brought me with him from Staten Island—I make the matter out as of the summer of '54. We had come up, he and I, to New York; but our doings there, with ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... Peter, characteristically, speaks out, and says exactly what a fisherman would be likely to say to a carpenter from Nazareth, that came down to teach him his business. The landsman would not know what the fisherman knew well enough, that it was useless to go fishing in the morning if you had ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and characteristically put," said Mr Ross. "If the ice were heavier than the water, and continued sinking, the colder regions would continually be encroaching on the warmer, to such a degree that in time the earth's habitable portions would be very ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... necklace—pronounced in Jack Hopkins's abbreviated articulation of it, neck-luss—a word repeated by him a round dozen times at the least within a few seconds in the reading version of that same anecdote. How characteristically and comically the abbreviations were multiplied for the delivery of it, by the very voice and in the very person, as it were, of Jack Hopkins, who shall say! As, for example—"Sister, industrious girl, seldom treated herself to ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... the war-whoop, fell upon the enemy, and captured seventy prisoners, with scarcely a show of resistance. The Indians conveyed their prisoners to Montreal, bound with their own sashes and garters; and when Sir John Colborne thanked the chief of the party, he characteristically offered to bring in the scalp of every habitant in the vicinity within twenty-four hours. Sir John Colborne, however, did not think it prudent to give him such a commission, though use of these warriors was made during the struggle. Every day the number of the insurgents ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... since—since—" Lydia nodded. "I mistook his object in coming into my room as he did, unannounced. In fact, he almost forced his way in. Some words arose between us. At last he taunted me beyond endurance, and offered me—characteristically—twenty pounds to strike him. And I am sorry to say that I ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... beginning to attract to our services. They were brought up in religious, but not in fanatical, families, and I was the only 'converted' one among them. Mrs. Paget, of whom I shall have presently to speak, characteristically said that it grieved her to see 'one lamb among so many kids'. But 'kid' is a word of varied significance and the symbol did not seem to us effectively applied. As a matter of fact, we made what I still feel was an excellent tacit compromise. My young companions never jeered ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... are not within the sphere of faith or morals. The rescript was promulgated in May, and at this time the subscription list amounted to less than L8,000. Within a month it had doubled, and by the end of the year it amounted to L37,000. The amount of the mortgage was L13,000. As Parnell, in a characteristically laconic way, put it in his evidence before the Commission, "The Irish people raised a collection for me to pay off the amount of a mortgage. The amount of the collection considerably exceeded the amount necessary." ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... the remonstrants, the controversy went on with considerable vigor for three or four years. Both parties to it were characteristically Unitarian in their attitude and in their demands. Both sought the truth with an attempt at unbiassed judgment; and neither wished to disfellowship the other, or to put any restrictions upon its expression of its opinions. Much ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... of his life is characteristically told in this brief autobiographical sketch, written at the request of ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... possess a poem by G.A. Buerger which contrasts the naked rights of labor with the historic rights of rank in so sharp a fashion that, if it should be published today, it would undoubtedly be confiscated as communist literature. This ancient specimen of modern social-democratic poetry, characteristically, for those times, takes its theme from the "War about the Forest;" it bears the title: The Peasant to His Most Serene Tyrants. Because the princely huntsman has driven the peasant through the latter's own down-trodden corn-field, followed by the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... have once more a characteristically Shaksperean transmutation and development of the idea rather than a reproduction; and the same appears when we compare the admirable lines of the poet with a homiletic sentence from the ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... bones and stones that I have helped to dig out of our Mousterian caves in Jersey. As the stock phrase has it, it is, as far as it goes, a "human document." The individuality, in the sense of the intimate self-existence, of the speaker and his group—for, characteristically enough, he uses the first person plural—is disclosed sufficiently for our souls to get into touch. We are the nearer to appreciating human ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... offended him deeply. He believed all that he had said to his brother, yet there had been developing a feeling of pity for him in his heart, and in his cold way he had sought to express it. His magnanimity had been rejected with scorn. He looked down at the scattered bills on the floor. Characteristically—for he inherited his father's business ability without his heart—he stooped over and picked them slowly up, thinking hard the while. He finally decided that he would give his brother yet another chance for his father's sake. After all, they were brethren. But the decision ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... general terms we shall find that its meaning is that the State has an ethical or moral purpose or function; the State exists to secure and to maintain justice. You must not, indeed, confuse this great conception with that foolish perversion of it which was suggested, I think, by some characteristically reckless phrases of St. Augustine, stated in set terms by St. Gregory the Great, almost forgotten in the Middle Ages, and unhappily revived by the perversity of some Anglicans and Gallicans in the seventeenth century. This foolish perversion, which we ...
— Progress and History • Various
... of the Middle Ages is that they were so intensely human. A naive spirit appears in their formal literature, as in Chaucer's account of the Canterbury pilgrims, in their decorated religious manuscripts, in their thought, and very characteristically, in their architecture, which combines a simple naturalness with a bold and daring ingenuity. From columns, the constructional motive of which is so simple and natural, and walls pierced with windows, they erected systems of lofty arches and high stone-vaulted roofs, ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... day, April 1, was characteristically gentle, yet no less positive and definite to any save one obsessed with his own superior wisdom. Lincoln merely noted that Seward's "domestic policy" was exactly his own, except that he did not intend to abandon Fort ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... left of his author but the idea. Neither the Ship of Fools, nor the Eclogues retain perceptible traces of a foreign source, and were it not that they honestly bear their authorship on their fore-front, they might be regarded as thoroughly, even characteristically, English productions. ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... nor I had a clear conception of what might be on the other side when we, metaphorically speaking, took him up and hove him over the wall with scant ceremony. At the moment I merely wished to achieve his disappearance; Stein characteristically enough had a sentimental motive. He had a notion of paying off (in kind, I suppose) the old debt he had never forgotten. Indeed he had been all his life especially friendly to anybody from the British ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... The nose is characteristically broad and flattened, the ala being bound down to the alveolar margin of the maxilla by fibrous tissue. The margins of the cleft in the lip are also attached to the alveolus by firm reflections of the mucous membrane. The orbicularis oris and other muscles of expression ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... not as a perfect thing, put into life to blossom and die, as a perfect flower doth. Man is a seed, and birth is planting. He is in life for cultivation, not exhibition; he is here chiefly to be acted on, not to be characteristically an agent. For, though man is also an actor, he is yet more a recipient. Though he produces effects, he receives a thousand fold more than he produces. And he is to be estimated by his capacity of receiving, not of doing. He has his least value in what he can ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... world through a film of yellow which the morning light seemed to have drawn across their photographs. Lady Otway sighed, it may be at the faded relics, and turned, with resignation, to her balls of wool, which, curiously and characteristically, were not an ivory-white, but rather a tarnished yellow-white. She had called her niece in for a little chat. She had always trusted her, and now more than ever, since her engagement to Rodney, which seemed to Lady Otway extremely suitable, and just what one would wish for one's own daughter. ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... later. The Americans apparently felt the force of the satire, as the poem was widely reprinted throughout the States. It subsequently returned to this country, embodied in an American work on American manners, where it characteristically appeared as the writer's own production; and it afterwards went the round of British newspapers, as an amusing satire, by an American, ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... also characteristically Latin and un-Germanic in her feelings and sentiments. Without criticism she subjected herself to the spiritual teachings of the group to which she belonged. The conventional was an unalterable mental reality to her, tradition possessed for her all the power of ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... greeting was characteristically unselfish and loyal, and typical of the British officer. He gave no sign of his own in calculable relief, nor did he give to Caesar the things which were Caesar's. He did not cheer Dundonald, nor Buller, nor the column which ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... the metalwork of the late pagan period and that of early Christian times is chiefly exemplified by the penannular brooches, of which great numbers have been found in Ireland. Examples of this characteristically Celtic ornament may be seen in ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... petrifaction, by other nations, of the rude forms and materials adopted in the haste of early settlement, or consecrated by the purity of rural life. The whole system of Swiss and German Gothic has thus been most characteristically affected by the structure of the intersecting timbers at the angles of the chalet. This was in some cases directly and without variation imitated in stone, as in the piers of the old bridge at Aarburg; and the practice ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... lifting Christian doctrine and practice to a higher plane, with suggestions for a new theology, see two Sermons by Archdeacon Wilson, of Manchester, S. P. C. K.. London, and Young & Co., New York, 1893; and for a characteristically lucid statement of the most recent development of evolution doctrines, and the relations of Spencer, Weismann, Galton, and others to them, see Lester F. Ward's Address as President of the Biological Society, Washington, 1891; also, recent articles in the leading English ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... evening of the day following his luncheon at Papps's, Garth, in his room at the hotel, was packing in a characteristically masculine fashion, preparatory to his start for ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Nelson's assurances that it made him stagger, with a rush of blood to his head. Two white figures, distinct against the light, stood in an unmistakable attitude. Freya's arms were round Jasper's neck. Their faces were characteristically superimposed on each other, and Heemskirk went on, his throat choked with a sudden rising of curses, till on the west verandah he stumbled blindly against a chair and then dropped into another as though his legs had been swept from under him. He had indulged too long ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Miss Pendleton's attitude toward college education is characteristically practical, she is careful to make it clear that the practical educator does not necessarily approve of including vocational training in a college course. "I do not propose to discuss the question in detail, but is it not fair to ask why vocational subjects ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... he flamed out, bringing his clenched hand down upon the table as if he had been in a public house dicing with blackguards—"my view of it is that it was a characteristically dastardly assassination by that damned traitor, Washington, and his ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... have none other. One remark I may make in this connection, viz., that those enormous vases and other similar articles of Japanese ware which have long been so greatly prized in Europe, and many of which are magnificent specimens of decorative art, are not, in one sense, characteristically Japanese. The Japanese has always, if I may so express it, used art as the handmaiden of utilitarianism. Every article intended for the Japanese home had to be not merely a thing of beauty but a thing for use. It never entered the minds of the Japanese to hang beautiful specimens of ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... relative—Craig," he added, "has taken possession there as completely as if he'd owned the place a lifetime instead of been a visitor two days." The long moustaches that gave the man's face an unmeritedly ferocious expression lifted characteristically. "I like you, How, or I wouldn't stick my bill into your affairs. That boy is going to make you trouble, take my word ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... north gate, and playing baseball in its precincts. There are the Germans, the Dutch, the French, the Italians, the Russians, the Japanese; and there, in a magnificent Chinese palace, are the British, girt by that famous wall of the siege on which they have characteristically written "Lest we forget!" Forget what? The one or two children who died in the Legation, and the one or two men who were killed? Or the wholesale massacre, robbery, and devastation which followed when the siege was relieved? This latter, I fear, the Chinese are not likely to ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... was not in existence at this date. The only interest attachable to the question is, as I have before said, the paucity of the testimony regarding the book, to demonstrate which it has been necessary to discuss all such supposed allusions. But the apologetic argument characteristically ignores the fact that "many took in hand" at an early date to set forth the Christian story, and that the books of our New Testament did not constitute the whole of Christian literature in circulation in the early ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... letters that the lecture owed its interest and its value. What M. Dreyfus contributed himself was little more than a running commentary on the correspondence that he had collected. This commentary was characteristically clever, brisk, bright and amusing; but its interest was partly personal, partly local, and partly contemporary. The interest of the letters themselves is permanent; and this is the reason why it has seemed advisable to select ...
— How to Write a Play - Letters from Augier, Banville, Dennery, Dumas, Gondinet, - Labiche, Legouve, Pailleron, Sardou, Zola • Various
... tables before them; nearly all were drinking and smoking. They comprised fifteen or twenty men, some of whose faces were familiar to him elsewhere as Southern politicians; a few, he was shocked to see, were well-known Northern Democrats. Occupying a characteristically central position was the famous Colonel Starbottle, of Virginia. Jaunty and youthful-looking in his mask-like, beardless face, expansive and dignified in his middle-aged port and carriage, he alone retained some of the importance—albeit ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... important point of poetry. In eloquence, in philosophy, even in theology; in history, in fiction, in criticism, in epistolary writing, in what may be called the pamphlet; in another species of composition, characteristically, peculiarly, almost uniquely, French,—the Thought and the Maxim; by eminence in comedy, and in all those related modes of written expression for which there is scarcely any name but a French name,—the ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... so characteristically distinguish this species are highly deserving of notice, instances of such rarely occur; as the bulbs produce numerous offsets, the plant is propagated by them without difficulty, and requires the same treatment as ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 8 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... to his disgust at a party gathering in his own county in 1843, Baker was preferred to him. A letter of his gives a shrewd account of the manoeuvres among members of various Churches which brought this about; it is curiously careful not to overstate the effect of these influences and characteristically denies that Baker had part in them. To make the thing harder, he was sent from this meeting to a convention, for the whole constituency, with which the nomination lay, and his duty, of course, was to work for Baker. Here it became ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... gave the fullest particulars of the opening of the hotel, but contented itself with saying: "The entertainment concluded with a dance." Mr. Brooks, who felt himself compelled to call upon his late charming partner twice during the week, characteristically soothed her anxieties as to the result. "The fact of it is, Mrs. Wade, there's really nobody in particular to blame—and that's what gets them. They're all mixed up in it, deacons and Sunday-school teachers; and when old Johnson tried ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... naturalists have disputed to which kingdom they should be referred. As Professor Asa Gray has remarked, "the spores and other reproductive bodies of many of the lower algae may claim to have first a characteristically animal, and then an unequivocally vegetable existence." Therefore, on the principle of natural selection with divergence of character, it does not seem incredible that, from some such low and intermediate form, both animals and plants may have been developed; and, if ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... The conversation then turned to the pet project of the King—the conforming of the Scottish Church to Episcopacy. James Melville, speaking in his own mild way, was listened to with patience by the Primate; but when Scott began to enter into the subject in a characteristically Scottish fashion, with great seriousness and elaboration, Bancroft's patience failed him; and interrupting his discourse, smiling and laying his hand on his shoulder, the Primate said, 'Tush, man! Tak heir a coupe of ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... wildcat from the woods. At any rate, Latisan had accepted at face value Mern's repeated dictum that if the other fellow could get Mern while Mern was set on getting the fellow, there would be no grudges. Latisan's come-back, the chief reflected, was crude work, but it was characteristically after the style of the men of the open; and the wreck of an office was less disastrous than the wreck of a man's prospects and his very soul. Mern was not a bit of a sentimentalist, but he could see the situation vaguely from Latisan's standpoint. And ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... all know what English plum pudding is—it is served at many American tables on Christmas day. But nothing is more characteristically English, unless, indeed, it is the roast beef, not turkey, which the tailor was planning to have for ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... school of thought which seeks in the so-called gregarious instincts an explanation of all that is characteristically social in ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... into her big blue eyes one day at church, small wonder that he immediately went off again to Paris, and an extended Continental sojourn, with a serious leaning to theology! Golly bore his absence meekly but characteristically; got a boat, disported like a duck in the water, attempted to elope with a boy appropriately named Drake, but encountered a half gale at sea and a whole Gale in John on a yacht, who rescued them both. Convinced now that there was but one way to escape from his Fate—Golly!—John ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... the truth, whatever their inconveniences, are helpful as imperfect formulations of Catholic instinct; both mischievous, if viewed as adequate and close-fitting explanations. Patmore was characteristically enthusiastic for his own aspect of the truth; and characteristically impatient of the other. Thus, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... remainder of the shelf. She stared, with the factitious interest of one who is very nervously awaiting an encounter, at the titles, and presently deciphered the words, 'Victor Hugo,' on each of the thin volumes. Her interest instantly became real. Characteristically abrupt and unreflecting, she deposited her basket on the floor and, going to the bookcase, took out the slanting volume. Its title was Les Rayons et Les Ombres. She opened it by hazard at the following poem, which had no heading and which stood, a small triptych of print, rather ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... nuclei, or as they are characteristically called by the country people LIVRES DE BEURRE, from Grand-Pressigny, have been picked up in the bed of the Seine, at Limagne in Auvergne, in Brittany, at Saint Medard near Bordeaux, on the banks of the Meuse, and even as far north ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... "yellow cur" of the States. The Ibilao have the same dog in two colors, the black and the "brindle" — the brown and black striped. In fact, a dog of the same general characteristics occurs throughout northern Luzon. No matter what may be his origin, a dog so widely diffused and so characteristically molded and marked must have been on the island long enough to have acquired its typical features here. The dog receives little attention from his owners. Twice each day he is fed sparingly with cooked rice or camotes. Except in the case of the few hunting ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... day and told mother and daughter the rest, excusing himself characteristically for not letting Cornelis and Sybrandt hear of it. "It is not for me to blacken them; they come of a good stock. But Gerard looks on them as no friends of his in this matter; and I'm Gerard's comrade and it is a rule with us soldiers not to tell the ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... her mother from Nohant, whither she had returned in April for a length of time as agreed, Madam Dudevant speaks out characteristically in defense ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... he is far from being a polite man: yet is not directly and characteristically, as I may say, unpolite. But his is such a sort of politeness, as has, by a carelessness founded on very early indulgence, and perhaps on too much success in riper years, and an arrogance built upon both, grown ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the kind, the newest man had as much chance of success as the firm of most established reputation, since every competitor entered on his own merits, the designs being submitted to a jury of architects who voted on them without knowing the names of the contestants. Dick, characteristically, was not afraid of the older firms; indeed, as he had told his mother, Paul Darrow was the only rival he feared. Mrs. Peyton knew that, to a certain point, self-confidence was a good sign; but somehow her son's did not strike her as being of the right substance—it ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... small and the author remained in very uncomfortable circumstances. Even after four or five years he was still so poor that he was glad to accept a modest pension from the British Civil List. This official recognition of his genius, when it came at last, seems to have impressed the public, characteristically enough, far more than his books themselves had done, and the foundations were thus laid for that wider recognition of his genius which now prevails. But getting him on his legs was slow work, and such friends as Hueffer, Clifford and ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... artists, but it could, and did, in respect of scenic investiture, and in its choral and instrumental ensemble. Unhappily, even in these elements it was unwisely directed, though with a daring and a degree of confidence in popular support which may be said to have given it a characteristically American trait. In three respects the season was unique in the American history of English opera (or opera in English, as it would better he called, since there was not an English opera in its repertory), viz.: in the brilliancy of the orchestra, the excellence of the chorus ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... your former letter came, I saw the pre-ordained uselessness of mine. Speaking is to some end, (apart from foolish self-relief, which, after all, I can do without)—and where there is no end—you see! or, to finish characteristically—since the offering to cut off one's right-hand to save anybody a headache, is in vile taste, even for our melodramas, seeing that it was never yet believed in on the stage or off it,—how much worse to really make the ugly chop, and afterwards come sheepishly in, one's arm in ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett |
