"Characterize" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have to bring to the enterprise all that ability which used to characterize your efforts as an amateur actor, Bunny," she replied. "Summon all your sang-froid to your aid; act with deliberation, courtesy, and, above all, without the slightest manifestation of nervousness, and we should win, not a petty little twenty-seven hundred dollars, but as ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... their laurels, for here is one who is destined successfully to enter an honorable contest for the possession of the very highest honors. Unity of design, and warmth as well as vividness of light, positive atmosphere, characterize the works of this artist, and render each one a satisfactorily completed poem. No. 226, 'South Mountain, Catskills,' presents a view doubtless well known to many of our readers. The far-away horizon, the winding Hudson with its tiny sails, the square dent where lies the lake in the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... American citizens. Not to discuss spitting, which is for spittoons, not literature, our fellow-travellers on the deck of the "floating palace" were passably endurable people, in looks, style, and language. I dodge discrimination, and characterize them en masse by negations. The passengers of the Isaac Newton, on a certain evening of July, 18—, were not so intrusively green and so gasping as Britons, not so ill-dressed and pretentious as Gauls, not so ardently futile and so lubberly as Germans. Such were the negative ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... is the witness of the infidel doctor who sent her to Lourdes, since it seemed to him that "religious suggestion," was the only hope left. He, by the way, had diagnosed her case as one of hysteria. "It had a result," he writes, "which I, though an unbeliever, can characterize only as marvellous. Marie Cools returned completely, absolutely cured. No trace of paralysis or anaesthesia. She is actually on her feet; and, two hospital servants having been stricken by typhoid, she is taking the place of one of them." Another interesting ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson
... Brentano, and the wife of Arnim, who resembles these authors in her imaginative character, wrote a singularly enthusiastic book, entitled, "Goethe's Correspondence with a Child." Imaginative pictures in words, interspersed with sentiments, characterize the writings of Bettina and many other romancists, while they show little power in the construction of plots and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... there were also some feeble attempts at negotiation to characterize the Ernestian epoch at Brussels. The subject hardly needs ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... convex aspect of the bent pasterns and fetlocks will look toward that flank in which lie the head and shoulders. On examination still higher the smooth, even outline of the knee and its bend, looking toward the hind parts, characterize the fore limb, while the sharp prominence of the point of the hock and the bend on the opposite side of the joint, looking toward the head, indicate the hind limb. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... Tamerlane, in which, under the name of Tamerlane, he intended to characterize king William, and Lewis the fourteenth under that of Bajazet. The virtues of Tamerlane seem to have been arbitrarily assigned him by his poet, for I know not that history gives any other qualities ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... or the foes that he fancies are threatening him on every side—one word recalls him in a moment. Dispersed by the magic influence of his master's voice, every object of terror disappears, and he crawls towards him with the same peculiar expression of attachment that used to characterize him. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... we always called him, was a puny little fellow, of heavy aspect, and wholly destitute of the life and animation that generally characterize that class, who are obliged to use looks and gestures as a substitute for words. He seemed for a long while unable to comprehend my object in placing before him a dissected alphabet, and forming the letters into words significant of dog, man, hat, ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... is so potent as the silent lesson of a good [20] example. Works, more than words, should characterize Christian Scientists. Most people condemn evil-doing, evil-speaking; yet nothing circulates so rapidly: even gold is less current. Christian Scientists have a strong race to run, and foes in ambush; but bear in mind that, in the [25] long race, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... that organization through which all its members in one industry, or in all industries if necessary, can act as a unit." While this convention was united in denouncing the trade unions, it was not so unanimous in other matters, for the leaders were all veterans in those factional quarrels which characterize Socialists the world over. Eugene V. Debs, for example, was the hero of the Knights of Labor and had achieved wide notoriety during the Pullman strike by being imprisoned for contempt of court. William D. Haywood, ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... expressed myself with the independence which should characterize a freeman, I cannot expect that a party which has dealt in the most unmitigated denunciation of wiser and better men than myself, will permit my observations to pass with impunity, but I shall be amply compensated for their abuse if abler tongues and pens will improve ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... rapidity. There was nothing of the old man in the Baron, it must be admitted; his sight was still so good, that he could read without spectacles; his handsome oval face, framed in whiskers that were indeed too black, showed a brilliant complexion, ruddy with the veins that characterize a sanguine temperament; and his stomach, kept in order by a belt, had not exceeded the limits of "the majestic," as Brillat-Savarin says. A fine aristocratic air and great affability served to conceal the libertine with whom Crevel ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... shipboard, cannot be considered large, for it could not have been above one-eighth part of the invading force, counting the reinforcements that arrived while the siege was going on. Compared with the enormous losses of life and limb that characterize our war, it is a mere bagatelle; and the magnitude of the prize is to be set off in contrast to the price which it cost. Some of the regiments employed, however, were destined to suffer severely from the effects ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... of the characters, so that they can be recognised in different places by different observers. It is the conviction of all who work with bacteria that, in spite of the difficulties, it is only a matter of time when we shall have a classification and description of bacteria so complete as to characterize ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... years' residence at the Mall, I have the honour and happiness of presenting Miss Amelia Sedley to her parents, as a young lady not unworthy to occupy a fitting position in their polished and refined circle. Those virtues which characterize the young English gentlewoman, those accomplishments which become her birth and station, will not be found wanting in the amiable Miss Sedley, whose INDUSTRY and OBEDIENCE have endeared her to her instructors, and whose delightful sweetness of temper has ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... children about the crown of thorns, the blasphemous (I speak deliberately and determinedly) head of Christ upon the handkerchief, and the mode in which the martyrdom of the saint is exhibited (I do not choose to use the expressions which alone could characterize it), are perfect, sufficient, incontrovertible proofs that whatever appears good in any of the doings of such a painter must be deceptive, and that we may be assured that our taste is corrupted and false whenever we feel disposed to admire ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... forecast of punishments. It promised that it would stop this evil practice, drive out corruption here, and prosecute this-and-that offense. All that belongs to a moribund tradition. Abuse and disuse characterize the older view of the state: guardian and censor it has been, provider but grudgingly. The proclamations of so-called progressives that they will jail financiers, or "wage relentless warfare" upon social evils, are simply the reiterations of men who do ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... age differed strikingly. Let me by way of illustration cite a few cases of difference in docility. Number 1000 learned to discriminate white from black more quickly and retained his habit longer than any other dancer with which I have experimented. I should characterize him as an exceptionally docile individual. Table 44 offers several examples. Numbers 403 and 407, though they were born in the same litter and were alike in appearance and in conditions of life, acquired the white-black habit with a difference in rapidity which is expressed ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... Congress the state of the Union, I find it impossible to characterize it other than one of general peace and prosperity. In some quarters our diplomacy is vexed with difficult and as yet unsolved problems, but nowhere are we met with armed conflict. If some occupations and areas are not flourishing, in none does there remain any acute chronic ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... present. I had been reading an English magazine article in which, after the manner of a certain English school in literature and art, a great deal was said of the spirituality and piety of sentiment which are thought to characterize the great Umbrian painter's works, and I cited some of the remarks which I had been reading. I saw a somewhat wicked smile mantling on the learned professor's face and a merry twinkle shining in his eye, which led me to ask him if his estimate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... recurrence of duty—not in itself particularly irksome-than that an important post—the nucleus of the future prosperity of the State—should be perilled by the absence of that vigilance which ought to characterize the soldier. If he allowed to be retrenched, or indeed left unemployed, any of that military exhibition, which tends to impress upon the many the moral superiority of the few, where, he argued, would be their safety in the hour of need; and ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... comes in to enhance and steady the flow of a lively and luxuriant imagination. To all the refinement and subtle divination common to Slavic genius, you ally the patient research and learned scruples which characterize the German explorer. You assume alternately the gait of the mole and of the eagle—and everything you do succeeds wonderfully, because amid your subterranean maneuvers and your airy flights you constantly preserve, as your own inalienable property, so much wit ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... Maino of Milan, differing in construction from the Sax model, was independently introduced into the orchestra.[7] Wagner employed the bass clarinet in Bb and C in Tristan und Isolde,[8] where at the end of Act II. it is used with great effect to characterize the reproachful utterance of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... will agree in the necessity of an energetic Executive, it will only remain to inquire, what are the ingredients which constitute this energy? How far can they be combined with those other ingredients which constitute safety in the republican sense? And how far does this combination characterize the plan which has ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... vastly cultivated in the middle ages, especially in France and Spain, and of which we have a doughty exemplar in the Morte D'Arthur, which dates nearly a century before Shakspere's day. Loose construction and no attempt to deal with the close eye of observation, characterize these earlier romances, which were in the main conglomerates of story using the double ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... in the morning, with that absorption and regularity which characterize the labor of men who are remembered. When his health began to show signs of giving way, in 1861, it was suggested by a relative, whose intellect, strength of will, and appetite for theories were of equally splendid proportions, that my father only needed a high ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... the horrible crime of which Sarajevo had been the scene was circulated, the feeling which animated the fanatical crowd was, to judge by the numerous expressions of applause reported to me by authorities in whom I have absolute confidence, one that I can only characterize ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... and making merry. Klara could hear the gipsy band, the scraping of the fiddles and banging of the czimbalom, followed now and then by one of those outbursts of jollity, of clapping of mugs on wooden tables, of banging of feet and shouts of laughter which characterize all festive ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... extent had been actually made in the abdomen, when the fresh and undecayed appearance of the subject suggested an application of the battery. One experiment succeeded another, and the customary effects supervened, with nothing to characterize them in any respect, except, upon one or two occasions, a more than ordinary degree of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... could be overcome. At his dictation the Constitution was to fall. There was no escape; the Bill must surely pass. It rested with the Lords themselves whether they should bow their heads to the inevitable, humbly or proudly, contemptuously or savagely—characterize it as you will—or whether there should ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... and Hippocrates, with whose writings he shows great familiarity. He makes use besides of Aristotelian notions, and is influenced by the Neo-Platonic treatise, known as the "Liber de Causis," and derived from a work of Proclus. It is for this reason difficult to characterize his standpoint, but we shall not go far wrong if we call him a Neo-Platonist, for reasons which will ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... as his sire was austere, stern, reserved and tyrannical. The youth was also unlike his father in personal appearance, his hair being of a rich brown, his eyes of a soft blue, and the general expression of his countenance indicating the fairest and most endearing qualities which can possibly characterize human nature. ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... and animal natural process begins, at any rate, with the contact of heterogeneous elements which we characterize as sexual cells (gametes). They exert upon each other a reciprocal influence which sets into activity ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the peaceful little village went the fisherman, and, reaching the house where the boy had left the note, taking therefrom its answer, Colonel Ashley waited with all the patience that might characterize a ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... to the city. It was shown that, on the whole, up to the present at least, farm life has not been as pleasant as it should or could be made. Some aspects of it are uncomfortable, if not painful. Hard manual labor, long hours of toil, and partial isolation from one's fellows usually and generally characterize it. Of course, there are many who by nature or habit, or who by their ingenuity and thrift, have made it serve them, and who therefore have come to love the life of the country; but we are speaking with reference to the average men and women who have not mastered the forces at hand, ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... in time, to have certain tricks of style, such as are apt to characterize a body of anonymous folk-poetry. Such is their use of conventional epithets; "the red, red gold," "the good, green wood," "the gray goose wing." Such are certain ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... crumplings, and clippings, and what not. But there is nothing so constantly noble as the pure leaf of the laurel, bay, orange, and olive; numerable, sequent, perfect in setting, divinely simple and serene. I shall call these noble leaves 'Apolline' leaves. They characterize many orders of plants, great and small,—from the magnolia to the myrtle, and exquisite 'myrtille' {52} of the hills, (bilberry); but wherever you find them, strong, lustrous, dark green, simply formed, richly scented or stored,—you have ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... since we had last seen him: but that time had sufficed to make an alteration of years in his appearance. He had grown thinner; something of gloom and anxiety had taken the place of that cordial serenity which used to characterize his features. His dark blue eyes, always penetrating, now gleamed with a sterner light from under his shaggy grey eyebrows. It was not such a change as grief alone usually induces, and angrier passions seemed to have had their share ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... disagreeable look, if compared to the generality of the people, but this seems to be entirely owing to the particular animation attending that period of life; for, after attaining a certain age, there is hardly any distinction. Upon the whole, a very remarkable sameness seems to characterize the countenances of the whole nation; a dull phlegmatic want of expression, with very little variation, being strongly ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... magnanimity, of the old Castilian heroes who figure in "Count Lucanor." The book, though now no longer read, must have been very popular at one time, for there exist two or three later English versions of it, without, however, the nervous concentration of style and idiomatic diction that characterize the translation sent forth to the world under ...
— Waltoniana - Inedited Remains in Verse and Prose of Izaak Walton • Isaak Walton
... was gratified, however, to perceive that they all had good feeling or good taste enough to preserve, throughout their drive and the services which followed it, a quiet and reverent demeanor. It may seem strange to some, that I should characterize this as a possible effect of "good taste;" but in my opinion, he who does not pay the tribute at least of outward respect to this holy day, is incapable not only of that high, spiritual communion which brings man near to his Creator, but of ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... Man, as depicted in the stories told of him by the Blackfeet, is a curious mixture of opposite attributes. In the serious tales, such as those of the creation, he is spoken of respectfully, and there is no hint of the impish qualities which characterize him in other stories, in which he is powerful, but also at times impotent; full of all wisdom, yet at times so helpless that he has to ask aid from the animals. Sometimes he sympathizes with the people, and at others, out of pure spitefulness, he plays them malicious tricks that are worthy of a ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... delivered at Philadelphia in August 1776, and published here, is the only complete address of his which has come down to us. It was translated into French and published in Paris, and it is believed that Napoleon borrowed from it the phrase, "A Nation of Shopkeepers," to characterize ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... country-folk who have never studied Buddhist metaphysics, believe the self composite. What is even more remarkable is that in the primitive faith, Shinto, a kindred doctrine exists; and various forms of the belief seem to characterize the thought of the Chinese and of the Koreans. All these peoples of the Far East seem to consider the soul compound; whether in the Buddhist sense, or in the primitive sense represented by Shinto ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... chide him for taking so short-sighted a view of the subject, or to tell him it is very foolish for him to talk as he does, or silence him by a dogmatic decision, delivered in a dictatorial and overbearing manner, all of which is too often found to characterize the discussions between parents and children, but calmly and quietly to present to him the considerations bearing upon the question which he has not yet seen. To this end, and to bring the mind of the child into that listening ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... have read the short Hebraistic sentences of the Book of Wisdom, and the long involved periods that characterize the style of all Philo's known writings, and yet attribute both to one writer? But indeed I know no instance of assertions made so audaciously, or of passages misrepresented and even mistranslated so grossly, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... beginning to distinguish themselves by the prudence of their conduct, by forwarding, in time, their orders to the manufacturers of India and China, and, in other respects guiding themselves by the principles which characterize the intelligent merchant. Finally, it is to be presumed that, as soon as the government shall have thrown down this singular and preposterous system that has been the cause of so many disorders, and proclaimed the unlimited freedom of Philippine commerce, the greater part of these ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... indeed a sublimity in this invincible faith in the power of truth exhibited by the Son of Man. In the calmness with which he moves amid the moral ruin that encompasses him, without that anxious haste, and longing for immediate results, which characterize so many modern reformers. The world would have expected a direct and tremendous onslaught upon evil. It would have said that the dropping of a seed of positive truth here and there, would never result in anything. Christ knew better. ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... the h's) 'in happearing before this respectable body of Hamerican gentlemen hand ladies!—ladies hand gentlemen! (his lordship suddenly corrected himself), let it not be thought that I ham bestowing flattery when I say I esteem it an 'onor which I cannot too highly characterize, and for which I am so deeply indebted to my friend who 'as so long and nobly contributed to the durability of friendly intercourse between the two greatest and most enlightened peoples on earth—the man ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... States binding each for the common defense and general welfare of the other—and retaining to himself a mental reservation that he will war upon the institutions and the property of any of the States of the Union. It is a crime too low to characterize as it deserves before this assembly. It is one which would disgrace a gentleman—one which a man with self-respect would never commit. To swear that he will support the Constitution, to take an office which belongs in many of its relations to all the States, and to use it ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... begins with an analysis of a concept that most abstractly describes reality, follows it through its countless conflicts and contradictions, and finally reaches the highest category which, including all the foregoing categories in organic unity, is alone adequate to characterize the universe as an organism. What these categories are and what Hegel's procedure is in showing their necessary sequential development, can here not ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... study of the situation, high school teachers, in the main, do not know the fundamental scientific facts, and therefore can not account for actions, points of view, signs of waywardness, lack of appreciation, poor lessons, etc., etc., that sometimes characterize the youth while a student in the high school. They often lay to an unclean mind what springs from a perfectly normal development of the sex function; they are sure that moral perversity is the basis of actions that are more correctly ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... Friedrich's childhood, and treating of his Father's Court, there is hardly above one that we can characterize as fairly human: the Book written by his little Sister Wilhelmina, when she grew to size and knowledge of good and evil; [Memoires de Frederique Sophie Wilhelmine de Prusse, Margrave de Bareith (Brunswick, Paris et Londres, l8l2), 2 vols. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... brought in other fields. But we must be on our guard lest we overestimate or incorrectly estimate this influence. Posterity, in glancing backward, is always prone to stamp any given age of the past with one idea, and to desire to characterize it with a single phrase; whereas in reality all ages are diversified, and any generalization regarding an epoch is sure to do that epoch something less or something more than justice. We may be sure, then, that the ideal of ecclesiasticism is not solely responsible for the scientific stasis ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... fly in the ointment at this juncture was the author's unmannerly attitude towards publishers who issued books at the writer's expense. He went so far as to characterize them as crooks and declined to have anything to do with them. He had been writing for a good many years of apprenticeship and had arrived at the conclusion that a man might get along in decent comfort all his life without publishing anything at all, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... history of even the leading Netherland provinces, during the five centuries which we have thus rapidly sought to characterize, is foreign to our purpose. By holding the clue of Holland's history, the general maze of dynastic transformations throughout the country may, however, be swiftly threaded. From the time of the first Dirk to the close of the thirteenth century there were nearly four hundred years of unbroken ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was very much impaired, first by the tribunes of the people, and afterwards upon the establishment of the empire, yet they were still employed in consulting the senate, administering justice, managing public games and the like, and had the honor to characterize the year ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... the gravity which should characterize a paper addressed to the Congress of the nation by the Chief Magistrate of the nation. Nor do I forget that some of you are my seniors, nor that many of you have more experience than I in the conduct of public ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... in general of the class of early cabbages, that most of them have elongated heads between ovoid and conical in form. They appear to lack in this country the sweetness and tenderness that characterize some varieties of our drumhead, and, consequently, in the North when the drumhead enters the market there is but ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... notice, remark, observe, see; indicate, betoken, characterize, stamp, imprint, impress, brand, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Borem had hinted might characterize his future conduct was first intimated by his treatment of the "Widow Cully," an aged and impoverished woman whose property was heavily mortgaged to him. He had curtly summoned her to come to his office on Christmas Day and settle up. Frightened, hopeless, and in ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... transparent water colors are not permanent, I claim that in the sense in which the word is ordinarily used in connection with photography they may properly be called so. In this sense the lasting qualities which characterize the materials used by the old masters are not looked for, but where photographs have been thus colored, finished in the form of French crystals, and properly sealed from the atmosphere, they are practically permanent. I have some in my possession that were made years ago, and ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt
... a good deal of amusement, and some profit, in the perusal of those little items which characterize the manners and circumstances of the country. New England was then in a state incomparably more picturesque than at present, or than it has been within the memory of man; there being, as yet, only ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... beautiful face, unearthly, I may say, with a light in it or an expression or something "that was never on land or sea." Fear and terror had completely vanished, and it was a placidly beautiful face—if by "placid" one can characterize that intangible and occult something that I cannot say was a radiance or a light any more than I can say it ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... Tales we may characterize as bold, out-spoken, and humorous, in the true sense of humour. In the midst of every difficulty and danger arises that old Norse feeling of making the best of everything, and keeping a good face to the foe. The language and tone are perhaps rather lower than in some other ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... progress. (Blaise Pascal(1623-1662). The allusion is to a passage in the philosopher's "Pensees." Pascal describes man as a reed, the weakest thing in nature, but "a thinking reed."—Translator's Note.) Master of implements and of fire! These two aptitudes, simple though they be, characterize man better than the number of his vertebrae and ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... indigenous to Great Britain and some parts of the south of Europe, and, to a considerable extent, naturalized in this country. In its native state, the root is small and fibrous, and possesses little of the fineness of texture, and delicacy of flavor, which characterize the Parsnip ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... that is well worthy of attention. Fermentation is no longer one of those isolated and mysterious phenomena which do not admit of explanation. It is the consequence of a peculiar vital process of nutrition which occurs tinder certain conditions, differing from those which characterize the life of all ordinary beings, animal or vegetable, but by which the latter may be affected, more or less, in a way which brings them, to some extent within the class of ferments, properly so called. We can even ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... arriving at Bonjem, I saw, by the nature of the country, that we were approaching the regions of rain, herbage and shrubs increasing on every side. The country also assumed a more even, though an undulating surface; and I lost sight of those low, dull, dreary, and monotonous ridges which characterize the desolations, of the African Wilderness. However, I expected to see the eastern terminations of the Tripoline Atlas. Continuing our six days' route, now west, now north-west, now north, and now ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... apparent he means something more than this. Experiences are not relegated to this class or to that merely at random, but the final decision is the outcome of a long experience of the differences which characterize different individual experiences and is an expression of the relations which are observed to hold between them. Certain experiences are accepted as signs, and certain others come to take the more dignified position of thing signified; the mind rests in them and regards them ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... of every sovereign would characterize his reign, and open to us some of the interior operations of the cabinet. The despotic will, yet vacillating conduct of Henry the Eighth, towards the close of his reign, may be traced in a proclamation to abolish the translations of the scriptures, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Problems characterize every age, sum up the complex life of nations and give them their distinctive features. They form that moral atmosphere which makes one period of history responsible and tributary to another. And indeed, in every human problem there ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... for formal or monumental uses. On the other hand, the small letter form is excellently adapted for the printed page, where the occasional capitals but tend to break the monotony, while the ascenders and descenders strongly characterize and increase the legibility of ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... in themselves but contributing each its mite to ultimate success or failure, occupied detachments of the opposing Indian forces with considerable frequency.[776] Two, devised by Cooper, those of the fourteenth[777] and twentieth[778] of May may be said to characterize the entire ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... suspended one of their pastors from his functions for six months because he had inadvertently alluded to revolutionary principles from his pulpit! I may add that the same principle of wise abstention from all political discussions still characterize the Vaudois pastors, both in the valleys and the mission-field of ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... calm winter's day was unbroken. From the west high above the reach of the heaviest gun, and almost beyond the carry of the rifle, came the long-expected vanguard of the migrating hosts of heaven. Flock upon flock, each in the wedge-shaped phalanx of two converging lines, which ever characterize the flight of these birds, each headed by a wary, powerful leader, whose clarion call came shrill and clear down through the still ether, came in one common line of flight, hundreds and thousands of geese. All that afternoon their ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... upon it, which was different from the recommendation here made and the argument used by the French Government? No; and the whole of that statement is a statement that is delusive, and if I were not in this House I would characterize it by a harsher epithet. I say now what I stated in March last, and what I have since said and written to the country, that you are making war against the Government which accepted your own terms of peace; and I state this now only ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... industrial world. Per capita GDP has been moving up toward the levels of the big West European economies. New Zealand's heavy dependence on trade leaves its growth prospects vulnerable to economic performance in Asia, Europe, and the US. Moderate growth probably will characterize 2000. ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... that there should still linger in her churches and religious life the fluttering rays of a blighting superstition! that there should be a want of true modesty and cleanliness in the habits of her people! that an ignoble love of ease should still characterize her upper classes, while the lowest orders generally are steeped in ignorance and importunate mendicancy! and that enervating and dirty habits should be engendered in her people by their inveterate indulgence in the cheap wine and tobacco of the country!—though, in common ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... history and practically acquainted with affairs. Refined thoughtfulness and common sense combine to give value to all that Mr. Helps writes, and he is master of a style at once manly and elegant, quiet and strong. Two famous lines, which occur in a passage quoted in these volumes, serve well to characterize their merits:— ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... probably five feet ten inches, or ten and a half; but my first impression, or feel of the man, was not of this, but of his strength. And yet, while he was of massive build, with broad shoulders and deep chest, I could not characterize his strength as massive. It was what might be termed a sinewy, knotty strength, of the kind we ascribe to lean and wiry men, but which, in him, because of his heavy build, partook more of the enlarged gorilla order. Not that in appearance he seemed in the least gorilla-like. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... and loyalty is that, and, in English literature, half the drama, and all the novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to Sir Walter Scott, paint this figure. The word gentleman, which, like the word Christian, must hereafter characterize the present and the few preceding centuries by the importance attached to it, is a homage to personal and incommunicable properties. Frivolous and fantastic additions have got associated with the name, but the steady interest of mankind in it must be ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... himself to a fit of candid, unrestrained cursing. He cursed largely and variously and shamelessly both in English and in French. And he did not cease cursing. It was a reaction which I do not care to characterize; but I will not conceal that it occurred. The fit spent itself before he reached the hotel, for most of Parliament Street was blocked for the spectacular purposes of his funeral, and his driver had to seek devious ways. The cursing over, ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... fresh atmosphere, wholesome purity, deep passion, and searching analysis characterize ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... him, to characterize his life first by its quantity. He belonged to the true race of the giants of learning; he took in knowledge at every pore, and his desires were insatiable. Not, perhaps, precocious in boyhood,—for it is not precocity to begin ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... there never was a purely prophetic dream. He would contend, no doubt, that your waking thoughts having been a good deal engaged with Western life, your dream carried the same train of thought straight through. He would probably characterize the incidents of the rich mines, the store and the relative as merely coincidental, yet as the writer of a text-book on mental philosophy observes, to call such dreams coincidences leaves the mystery as ...
— The Secret of Dreams • Yacki Raizizun
... the injury heaped upon the defenseless by assuming that you have done them a kindness. This you follow by the assertion that you will "make as much sacrifice for the peace and honor of the South as the best-born Southerner." And, because I characterize what you call as kindness as being real cruelty, you presume to sit in judgment between me and my God; and you decide that my earnest prayer to the Almighty Father to save our women and children from what you call kindness, is a "sacrilegious, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... beginning to end. Though the writer's ideas of the Person of Christ practically leave nothing to be desired, yet these ideas are still held in solution, and have not yet crystallized into the dogmatic forms which characterize the later generation. And from first to last this Epistle is silent upon those questions which interested the Church in the second half of the second century. Of Montanism, of the Paschal controversy, of the developed Gnostic heresies of this period, it ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... still linger in many English and American magazines, especially in the Christmas numbers. They mention no winding-sheets, coffins, skeletons, graveyards, no sulphurous flames, curses, blood-curdling groans, no clanking chains, nor any of the time-honoured trappings that characterize this rather feeble literature of the supernatural. On the contrary, the scenes enacted in houses that appear to be really haunted are generally very simple and insignificant, not to say dull and commonplace. ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... younger branches of the family had followed the same evil profession, and taken foreign pay—chiefly from poverty and prejudice combined, but not a little in some cases from the inborn love of fighting that seems to characterize the Celt. The last soldier of them had served the East India Company both by sea and land: tradition more than hinted that he had chiefly served himself. Since then the heads of the house had been peaceful farmers of their own land, contriving to draw what to many farmers nowadays ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... a writer of uncommon freshness and power.... Those who have read his brief but carefully written studies will value at their true worth the genuine critical insight and fine literary qualities which characterize his work."—Christian Union. ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... Highlands, by Dunkeld and Blair. The aspect of this commanding edifice is one which recalls the association of ancient power and princely wealth. Beneath its walls is an expanse of a magnificent and varied country, combining all those features which characterize lands long held in peace by opulent and liberal possessors. "Noble avenues, profuse woods," thus speaks one of unerring accuracy, "a waste of lawn and pasture, an unrestrained scope, everything bespeaks the carelessness of liberality and extensive possessions; while the ancient ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... interior. There is promise that, as the demology of aboriginal America is pushed forward, the records relating to the Siouan Indians and especially to their structure and institutions will aid in explaining why some stocks are limited and others extensive, why large stocks in general characterize the interior and small stocks the coasts, and why the dominant peoples of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were successful in displacing the preexistent and probably more primitive peoples of the Mississippi valley. ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... through the restraint that seemed to characterize the Lanstron of thirty-five. The Lanstron of twenty-five, who had met catastrophe because he was "wool-gathering," asserted himself. He put his hand on Stransky's shoulder. It was a strong though slim hand that looked as if it had been trained to do the work of two hands in the process of its owner's ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... Indians did not pursue them far, from a desire to return for plunder. Yet the entire way, for near thirty miles, the distance to Fort Jefferson, bore the marks of a trepidation that seemed to characterize the entire engagement. The soldiers continued to throw away their guns, knapsacks, or whatever else impeded their flight, even when at a wide remove from ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... and Lady Kitty were charming hoydens, with all the modern simplicity of fourteen or fifteen in their manners. Lady Bab had a fine long neck, which was always in motion—Lady Kitty had white teeth, and was always laughing;—but it is impossible to characterize them, for they differed in nothing from a thousand other ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... sinuous river gorges, to the weather-beaten front of a mountainous coast; and in following any of its great rivers, the scenery of its deep valleys no less strikingly resembles that of such narrow arms of the sea (or fiords) as characterize every mountainous coast, of whatever geological formation: such as the west coast of Scotland and Norway, of South Chili and Fuegia, of New Zealand and Tasmania. There are too in these Himalayan valleys, at all elevations below 600 feet, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... to State and Federal politics. He notes particularly the higher tone, the wider knowledge, the freedom from petty class and personal concerns, the broader range of thought, the familiarity with subjects of general human interest, which characterize the conversation of an English dinner-table or drawing-room, as compared with that of American clubs and parlours. He speaks, with the bitterness of a man often and deeply bored, of the limited range of American table-talk, the prominence ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... you with a wretched mixture of self-consciousness, awkwardness, and attempts to carry off both, which are betrayed by the cowardly behaviour of the eye and the tell-tale weakness of the lips that characterize these ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... seem quite so much at home in Latin poetry as on the playground. He pronounced the Latin words in flagrant violation of all the rules of quantity, and when he came to give the English meaning, his translation was a ludicrous farrago of nonsense. Yet, poor Mr. Crabb did not dare, apparently, to characterize it as it deserved. ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... health, and abused Guizot's majority as corrupt and servile: the majority and the king grew excited; the Government forbade the Banquets to continue. The king met the Chamber with the words "passions aveugles" to characterize the dispositions of the Banqueters: and Guizot grandly declared against the spirit of Revolution all over the world. His practice suited his words, or seemed to suit them, for both in Switzerland and Italy, the French Government incurred ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... disordering the circulating medium, over which they had no control, and which have, in fact, doubled and trebled debts, by reducing, in that proportion, the value of the property which was to pay them? If all these circumstances, which characterize the present case, have taken place in theirs also, then follow the precedent. Be assured, the cases will be so rare as to produce no embarrassment, as never to settle into an injurious habit. The single feature of a sixty years' service, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... No spirit world can exist without form, neither can it exist without motion. Motion produces the spheroid, and the rotation of the spheroid produces atmosphere and diversity of surface; all these variations characterize ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... five to nine inches, usually under eight inches. This, the largest family of birds that we have (about one-seventh of all our birds belong to it), comprises birds of such varied plumage and habit that, while certain family resemblances may be traced throughout, it is almost impossible to characterize the family as such. The sparrows are comparatively small gray and brown birds with striped upper parts, lighter underneath. Birds of the ground, or not far from it, elevated perches being chosen for rest and song. Nest in low bushes or on the ground. (Chipping sparrow often selects tall ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... who lived about that time, is, so far as we can find, the first Latin author who speaks of falconers, and the art of teaching one species of birds to fly after and catch others. The occupation of these functionaries has now, however, all but ceased. New and nobler efforts characterize the aims of mankind in the development of their civilization, and the sports of the field have, to a large extent, been superseded by other exercises, it may be less healthful and invigorating, but certainly more elegant, intellectual, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... words here quoted characterize exactly the conditions of the first eight or ten months of the war, until the spring of 1813. They also define the purpose of the British Government to close the coast of the United States in such manner as to minimize the evils of widely dispersed ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Little Toohkees, the wood mouse that dies of fright in the author's hand; the mother otter, Keeonekh, teaching her little ones to swim; and the little red squirrel with his many curious habits,—all are presented with the same liveliness and color that characterize the descriptions in the first two volumes. The illustrations by Charles Copeland are unusually accurate in portraying animal life as it really ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... How could the Parisians, who are so capable of distinguishing what is good, delicate, and noble, let slip this opportunity of paying their homage to the profound tenderness, the touching grace, the true dignity that characterize Your Majesty? The happy influence of these rare qualities already makes itself felt in all classes of society, and while your august spouse elevates France in glory, you inspire it to resume the first rank among the races most ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... trust ourselves to characterize such conduct. In the calm, judicial language of the Chancellor of his own State such proceeding of Mr. Seward will find its most fitting rebuke. "Independent, however," says Chancellor Walworth, "of any legislation on this subject either by the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... system; and, in its absence, left exposed to free unrestricted competition from abroad, must inevitably have progressed at a more gigantic rate of speed still. This is asserted to be in the order of nature, but as nature is every where the same—as the same broad features and first elements characterize all countries more or less alike—we ask for examples, for one example only, of the successful establishment and progress of any one unprotected industry. The demand is surely limited, and reasonable enough. The mendacious League, with the Brights and Cobdens of rude and riotous oratory, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... of these theories afford an explanation for many of the secondary pathological manifestations which characterize the intra-ocular tissues ...
— Glaucoma - A Symposium Presented at a Meeting of the Chicago - Ophthalmological Society, November 17, 1913 • Various
... approaches an ecstasy, and, with the exception of the winter wren's, is the most rapid and copious strain to be heard in these woods. It is quite destitute of the trills and the liquid, silvery, bubbling notes that characterize the wren's; but there runs through it a round, richly modulated whistle, very sweet and very pleasing. The call of the robin is brought in at a certain point with marked effect, and, throughout, the variety is so great and the strain so rapid that ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... of organization which was destined to characterize the church in the province of New York was increased by the inflow of population from New England. The settlement of Long Island was from the beginning Puritan English. The Hudson Valley began early to be occupied by New Englanders bringing with them their pastors. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... characterize more precisely our natural attitude towards Becoming, this is what we find. Becoming is infinitely varied. That which goes from yellow to green is not like that which goes from green to blue: they are different qualitative movements. ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... fore-closing the mortgage, and ejecting Mr. Nelson's family. He was actuated not alone by mercenary motives, but also to gratify an ancient grudge. In early life Mrs. Nelson, Tom's mother, had rejected the suit of the wealthy squire, and this insult, as he chose to characterize it, he had never forgotten ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... convinced me that the regulations of the house, the work of the sisters, and the devotion to duty that characterize the mother-houses in Germany rule also in this home in the New World. The imposing entrance hall with the great stair-way, the floor and stairs of white marble, the wide halls and spacious reception-rooms and offices seemed at first almost ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... at the head of feminine writers, and her verses and essays are more widely copied and read than those of any other American literary woman."—New York World. "Power and pathos characterize this magnificent poem. A deep understanding of life and an intense sympathy are ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... as elegy; but an elegy is a sustained train of connected imagery and reflection. The "Rubaiyat" is, on the other hand, a string of quatrains, each of which has all the complete and independent significance of an epigram. Yet there is so little of that lightness which should characterize an epigram that we can scarcely put Omar in the same category with Martial, and it is easy to understand why the author should have been contented to name his book the "Rubaiyat," or Quatrains, leaving it to each individual to make, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... came near losing my life by the bayonet of one of them, because he could not understand a request that I made of him. The house was infested by insects whose name I will not call; but the reader will recognize their nature when I characterize them as malodorous, and blood-sucking. We could expel them from our bunks, but not from the walls and the ceiling, from the holes and the cracks of which they swarmed at ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... this. We are afraid to state some of the estimates which have been given of the number of women in this country who suffer from these maladies; nor do we intend to give in detail the long train of symptoms which characterize them. Such a sad rehearsal would avail little or nothing to the non-medical reader. It is enough to say, that the woman who finds herself afflicted by manifold aches and pains, without obvious cause; who suffers with her head and her stomach and her nerves; who discovers that, in ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... the Valley the productions, and the modes of cultivation and living are such as to characterize a large proportion of the population as farmers. No country on earth has such facilities for agriculture. The soil is abundantly fertile, the seasons ordinarily favorable to the growth and maturity of crops, and every farmer in a few years, with ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... and sickly Louis Willems—who rolled a glass inkstand, solid with dried ink, about the floor, and tottered after it with the portentous gravity of demeanour and absolute absorption by the business in hand that characterize the pursuits of early childhood. Through the half-open shutter a ray of sunlight, a ray merciless and crude, came into the room, beat in the early morning upon the safe in the far-off corner, then, travelling against the sun, cut at midday the big desk in two with its solid and clean-edged ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... time after its erection by careful examination. Hardly had the public recovered from the shock of this terrible disaster when the Tariffville calamity added its list of dead and wounded to the long roll already charged to the ignorance and recklessness which characterize so much of the management of the public works ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose
... believes, moreover, that those of the Southern parts of the American continent approximate more nearly to the Pyrenean wolves, as he has seen in the tropical forest of Mexico some that possessed all that "gaunt" form and "sneaking" aspect that characterize ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... picture of idyllic days in Italy, enjoyed in the impromptu excursion and trip, reveals the delicacy of feeling and the sunny kindness that characterize the contadini and which imparts to any social contact with them a grace and sweetness peculiar to Italian life. There are parts of Italy where it is still the Middle Ages and no hint of the twentieth century has yet penetrated. The modern spirit has almost taken possession of Rome; it is largely ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... arrest Nick Ellhorn was released on bail. He came out thoroughly sobered, and when he learned what had been the result of his drunken trick his vocabulary of abusive epithets ran dry in his effort to characterize his conduct. ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... their unpromising circumstances the people as a rule are surprisingly cheerful. It is true there are never any signs in the valley of that almost festive temper, that glad relish of life, which, if we may believe the poets, used to characterize the English village of old times. Tested by that standard of happiness, it is a low-spirited, mirthless, and all but silent population that we have here now. Of public and exuberant enjoyment there is nothing whatever. And yet, subdued though they ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... ERUPTIONS OF THE SKIN characterize every case of syphilis. They occur in all degrees from the mild rash to the foul ulcer. The ulcerative process is very ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... years old when he became King of the Salian Franks of Tournay. Five years afterwards his ruling passion, ambition, exhibited itself, together with that mixture of boldness and craft which was to characterize his whole life. He had two neighbors: one, hostile to the Franks, the Roman patrician Syagrius, who was left master at Soissons after the death of his father AEgidius, and whom Gregory of Tours calls "King of the Romans;" the other, a Salian-Frankish chieftain, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot |
