"Figuratively" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cooperation of others under the same aberration makes a mania.[465] The explanation lies in autosuggestion or fixed ideas with the development loosely ranged under hysteria, which is the contagious form of nervous affection. The term "epidemic" can be applied only figuratively. "Mental disease occurs only on the ground of a specific constitutional and generally hereditary predisposition. It cannot therefore be spread epidemically, any more than diabetes or gout."[466] The epidemic element is due to hysterical imitation. In like ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Julius. You don't know your Bible, and you don't know the special force of figurative language. I'm sorry for you, Julius, but having begun I'll see it through. Having put my hand to the plough, which is also figuratively speaking, it's the eleventh hour, but if you'll get into your working clothes and whirl in, I'll give you ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... was forced to acknowledge that she did not, and under a hot volley of questions from Donna admitted further that not a soul in San Pasqual had even hinted to her of such a contingency. Too late the spinster realized that she had, figuratively speaking, placed all of her eggs in ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... sense is contained in the literal, for by words things are signified properly and figuratively. Nor is the figure itself, but that which is figured, the literal sense. When Scripture speaks of God's arm, the literal sense is not that God has such a member, but only what is signified by this member, namely operative power. Hence ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... in the purchase of a horse, and staked the remainder on him in a match, and was beaten. Disgusted with the horse, I sold him for half his purchase-money, and with that sum paid a bill to maintain my father's credit in the town. Figuratively speaking, I looked at my hands as astonished as I had been when the poor little rascal in the street snatched my cake, and gave me the vision of him gorging it in the flurried alley of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... diverted to the physical in a person when it is the moral that is in question," is a law we laid down in the first part of this work. Let us apply it to language. Most words might be said to have a PHYSICAL and a MORAL meaning, according as they are interpreted literally or figuratively. Every word, indeed, begins by denoting a concrete object or a material action; but by degrees the meaning of the word is refined into an abstract relation or a pure idea. If, then, the above law holds good here, it should be stated as follows: "A comic effect ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... "I was speaking figuratively, my young friend," said the missionary "I am not sure but I have acted unprofessionally, but when I saw those men of violence despoiling us, I felt the natural man rise within me, and I smote ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... were a matter of one," spoke up the big man, striking his breast in a way to make it perfectly apparent whom he meant by that word one. And having (if I may judge by the mingled laugh and growl of his companions) thus shown his hand both figuratively and literally, he relapsed into the calculation which seemed to absorb ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... authority of the Vedas, Dayanand made it possible for educated Hindus to join his sect without absolutely cutting themselves adrift from their old faith. But Dayanand's contention that the Vedas should be figuratively interpreted, and are so found to foreshadow the discoveries of modern science, will naturally not bear examination. The following instances of the method are given by Professor Oman: "At one of the anniversary meetings of the society a member gravely stated that the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... danger to herself, for if on investigation it turned out that "she has been uneconomical or a gad-about, that woman one shall throw into the water." Probably such penalty was not really carried out, but even if the expression be taken figuratively its significance in the degradation of woman is hardly less great. The position of the wife as subject to her husband is clearly marked by the manner in which infidelity is treated. The law provides that both partners may be put to death for an act of unfaithfulness, but ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... happy New Year!' little Elsie," he said, kissing her on both cheeks. "Now I have caught you figuratively and literally, my little lady, so what are you ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... to expect at least one wren's nest on our porch or elsewhere in our yard each year; so, as usual, we put our boxes this Spring with notices, figuratively: "For wrens ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... the main house is entirely closed twice over, by two pairs of full length batten shutters held in on the side of the main house by iron hooks eighteen inches long, two to each shutter. And yet it was through this doorway that the ghosts—figuratively speaking, of course, for we are dealing with plain fact and history—got into ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... Schloezer is bubbling over with joy, for he has the famous pianist, von Buelow, staying with him at the German Legation. He says von Buelow is most amiable about playing, and plays whenever he is asked. His technique is wonderful and perfect. The ladies in Washington are wild over him, and figuratively throw themselves at his feet. He is giving two concerts here, and everybody has taken tickets. M. de Schloezer gave last evening one of his memorable dinners, followed by music. I know two people who enjoyed it—Schloezer and myself. Schloezer was going to ask Julian Sturgis, but Julian ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... mood. He vividly recollected when the occurrence alluded to took place as well as yesterday, roughly some score of years previously in the days of the land troubles, when it took the civilised world by storm, figuratively speaking, early in the eighties, eightyone to be correct, when he was just ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... broad back fill the dimly-lighted doorway opposite and disappear, of two minds whether or not to turn tail and run. Suspicious enough in the beginning, the affair had now an exceeding evil smell—as repulsive figuratively as was the actual effluvium of the premises. He hung hesitant in doubt, with a heart oppressed by those grim and silent walls of blackness that loomed above him. With feet slipping on slimy flags he might be pardoned for harbouring suspicions of some fouler treachery. The yawning mouth of ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... human life and character. Metaphorically, but only metaphorically, we speak of the sub-conscious as a vast zone, an indefinable margin, surrounding the narrow focus of attention, and we may {xxix} figuratively, but only figuratively, call it the subliminal "region" where all our life-gains, and often the gains of the race, are garnered. The contributions from this mental underworld are inestimable—we could not be men without them—but this subconscious zone is a source of things bad as well as ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... quite plain and simple reasons, an 'interview' must, as a rule, be an absurdity. And chiefly for this reason: it is an attempt to use a boat on land, or a wagon on water, to speak figuratively. Spoken speech is one thing, written speech is quite another. Print is a proper vehicle for the latter, but it isn't for the former. The moment 'talk' is put into print you recognize that it is not what it was when you heard it; ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... with many newspapers to leap on a man and trounce him, figuratively speaking, and then to send reporters around to see how the ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... verbal reply, but figuratively thrust a worn and patched boot into the discourse. The ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... I," replied the lady, letting her eyes rest upon him with a certain intentness. This was true enough, physically speaking; the handsome boy was now a superb young man; but Archibald chose to interpret her words figuratively, and he ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... was the day after a festival, a tiresome day for every one, and above all for the magistrate who is charged with sweeping away all the filth, properly and figuratively speaking, which a festival day produces in Paris. And then he had to hold a sitting at the Grand Chatelet. Now, we have noticed that judges in general so arrange matters that their day of audience shall also ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... picked up facts and fancies about the merchants; got my cards and price-book handy; stuck four revolvers (samples) in my pockets; pulled my hat down solidly on my head, and started out. And every step I took I, figuratively, kicked myself for being there, and for being a blasted fool generally. "JOHN O. ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... yar[e]ach are masculine words; lebanah is feminine. But nowhere throughout the Old Testament is the moon personified, and in only one instance is it used figuratively to represent a person. This is in the case of Jacob's reading of Joseph's dream, already ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... last time. Here he had won his great victory over Fate, here he had put his enemies under his feet, and if innocent simpletons had wandered into the company of these foes, it mattered not a whit to him that they also had been crushed. Figuratively, he turned his back upon them now; he left them, slain and trampled, in the Board Room behind him. They ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... doubt all know, by intuition as it were, what Shakspeare meant; but "the great master of English," as MR. HICKSON very justly calls him, would never have used captious, as applied figuratively to a sieve, for capable of taking ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... unthinkable." In due time Aunt Jamesina arrived. Anne and Priscilla and Phil had awaited her advent rather dubiously; but when Aunt Jamesina was enthroned in the rocking chair before the open fire they figuratively bowed down ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... existed; signing off this asset and that; disposing of this thing and that; stripping himself bare of all the properties on his life's stage, in such a manner as might have been his had he been receiving gifts and not yielding up all he owned. He chatted as his belongings were, figuratively speaking, being carried away—as though they were mechanical, formal things to be done as he had done them every day of a fairly long life; as a clerk would check off the boxes or parcels carried past him by the porters. M. Fille could ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I am willing to tell where I have been shipwrecked, and who stole my clothes. "Don't tell me of your successes," said a great physician to his colleague, "tell me of your blunders; tell me of the people you've killed." I am ready to do this, figuratively of course, for they were all ladies; and more, I will make no attempt to screen myself from the ridicule that may attach to an absurd situation, nor conceal those experiences which ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... King, plac'd in a Balcony belonging to the House of the Earl of Peterborow, appear'd ready to honour the Show. The Ceremonial, to speak nothing figuratively, was very fine and grand: Those of the first Rank made their Appearance in decent Order, and upon fine Horses; and others under Arms, and in Companies, march'd with native Gravity and Grandeur, all saluting his Majesty as they pass'd by, after the Spanish Manner, which that Prince ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... I was to have the care of his memory. I've done enough for it to give me the indisputable right to lay it, if I choose, for an everlasting rest in the dust-bin of progress, amongst all the sweepings and, figuratively speaking, all the dead cats of civilization. But then, you see, I can't choose. He won't be forgotten. Whatever he was, he was not common. He had the power to charm or frighten rudimentary souls into an aggravated witch-dance in his honour; he could also fill the small souls ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... Bombay, talking figuratively with me, considers Kurua's stopping me something like the use the monkey turned the cat's paw to; that is, he stopped me simply to enhance his dignity, and gain the minds of the people by leading them ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Isian veil. The sun, taken as a symbol only, the symbol of life, death, and resurrection—phases which its rising, setting, and return suggest—was the deity, the one really existing god. Nominally, figuratively, even concretely, there were others; a whole host, a hierarchy vaster than the Aryans knew; a great crowd of divinities less grandiose than gaudy, that swarmed in space, strolled through the dawns and dusk, thronged the temples, eyed the quick, confronted ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... redeeming the pledge which the name of America gives to the expansive progress of humanity. The patriots of both Houses, as the exponents of the noble and loftiest aspirations of the American people, whipped in—and this literally, not figuratively—whipped Mr. Lincoln into the glory of having issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The laws promulgated by this dying Congress initiated the Emancipation—generated the Proclamation of the 22d September, and of January ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... prophet, they say, married a person who had formerly been chaste, and fell only after her marriage. This view is no doubt the correct one, as is obvious from the relation of the figure to the reality. According to ver. 2, it is to be expressed figuratively that the people went a-whoring from Jehovah. The spiritual adultery presupposes that the spiritual marriage had already been concluded. Hence, the wife can be called a whoring wife, only on account of the whoredom which ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... else the balance of the day, while doing some little work in the garden; and scores of times he figuratively hugged himself in congratulation over his ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... an Eastern mid-day you can sit with your feet figuratively or literally on the table, if it pleases you; it will but be accounted as one more eccentricity unto you; but in the shadows, an' you would retain the position of teacher to the world at large, keep the heels on the rail of your chair; for there are ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... in Hebrew means more than merely the supposed seat of the affections. It is figuratively the centre of the spiritual life, just as physically it is the centre of the natural. Thoughts and affections, purposes and desires are all included, and out of it are 'the issues of life,' the whole ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... conception some time after a prior one, by which two foetuses of different age exist together in the same female. Often used figuratively. ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... very nature stupid. It is stupid because the aim of life (I use the expression only figuratively, and I could just as well speak of the essence of life, or of the world) is to gain a knowledge of our own bad will, so that our will may become an object for us, and that we may undergo an inward conversion. Our body is itself our will objectified; it is one of the first and foremost of objects, ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplications, and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn." Jehovah speaks figuratively of the opposition shown to Himself and His servants as piercing Him with pain, just as we say of an insult that it cuts to the heart. But in the death of Jesus the figure became a fact: against the sacred person of the Son of God the spear was lifted up, and it ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... speaks for itself and does not need a special report. It has its seamy side, however, and little as people want to believe it, it is not merely the literary branch of the work. On the contrary, the editorial work of the Woman's Journal is, figuratively speaking, divided into sevenths. It is one part literary or journalistic, two parts business, and ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Look Forward and Back at the Woman's Journal, the Organ of the - Woman's Movement • Agnes E. Ryan
... but for their benefit? You know and have sworn to act after that knowledge. To bind the crowd to the faith and the institutions of the fathers is your duty—is the duty of every priest. Times have changed, my son; under the old kings the fire, of which I spoke figuratively to you—the poet—was enclosed in brazen walls which the people passed stupidly by. Now I see breaches in the old fortifications; the eyes of the uninitiated have been sharpened, and one tells the other what he fancies he has spied, though ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the road. Looking at the matter all round, I don't think we can come to any other conclusion than that Nature (or whatever you like to call It, Her or Him) is aiming at beauty all the time. So that we who are literally, if not figuratively, the children of Nature, had best ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... November day, the only cheerful thing I saw was the red cap of a messenger who was examining the slate that hung on a wall opposite my hotel. A tall man with gray hair and beard, one arm, and a blue army-coat. I always salute, figuratively at least, when I see that familiar blue, especially if one sleeve of the coat is empty; so I watched the messenger with interest as he trudged away on some new errand, wishing he had a better day and a thicker ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... figuratively speaking, stripped of my material here piece by piece, and I would finally stand before you with hardly a loin cloth of an idea which I could ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... Fenwick figuratively threw away the textbook the first time the professor's back was turned. Baker, Fenwick thought, never took his eyes from its pages. Fenwick distrusted everything that he could not prove himself. Baker believed ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... king situated. Will it be believed that the first thing he did was to destroy his Established Church, root and branch? He did indeed do that. To state the case figuratively, he was a prosperous sailor who burnt his ship and took to a raft. This Church was a horrid thing. It heavily oppressed the people; it kept them always trembling in the gloom of mysterious threatenings; it slaughtered them in sacrifice before its grotesque idols of wood and stone; it cowed them, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... exhausted his foreign vocabulary, he hurled at them some well shotted English phrases—but the heretics did not heed the damnatory clauses, even in plain English. Not a word could he get in reply from them. L'Isle literally and figuratively in the dark, grew impatient, and announced his intention to commence a pistol practice on them that would draw out some demonstration. He rode down to the water's edge, and was leveling a long pistol ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... psalmody, morality, apologue, allegory, legislation, ethics, carried through different books, by different authors, at different ages, for different ends and purposes. It is necessary to sort out what is intended for example, what only as narrative,—what to be understood literally, what figuratively,—where one precept is to be controlled and modified by another,—what is used directly, and what only as an argument ad hominem,—what is temporary, and what of perpetual obligation,—what appropriated to one state ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... words his interesting and convincing chapter on "Thomas Thorpe and Mr. 'W. H.'" "'Mr. W. H.,' whom Thorpe described as the 'only begetter of these ensuing sonnets,' was in all probability the acquirer or procurer of the manuscript, who, figuratively speaking, brought the book into being either by first placing the manuscript in Thorpe's hands or by pointing out the means by which a copy might be acquired. To assign such significance to the word 'begetter' was entirely in Thorpe's vein. Thorpe described ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... a kennel in Tunis, she had figuratively and literally fought her way to the upper reaches of the gutter, sleeping in filth, eating it, listening to it, living it; dancing for a meal, selling her strangely seductive body for a piastre or so, settling her quarrels with a ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... Dumouchel, they learned the secret of the various styles; how we get the majestic, the temperate, the ingenuous, the touches that are noble and the expressions that are low. "Dogs" may be heightened by "devouring"; "to vomit" is to be used only figuratively; "fever" is applied to the passions; "valiance" is beautiful ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... mind to risk it and ask her to marry him. But then, perhaps, she might refuse him, and that was a contingency which he did not quite appreciate. After their first youth few men altogether relish the idea of putting themselves in a position that gives a capricious woman an opportunity of first figuratively "jumping" on them, and then perhaps holding them up to the scorn and obloquy of her friends, relations, and other admirers. For, unfortunately, until the opposite is clearly demonstrated, many men are apt to believe that not a few women are by nature capricious, shallow, and unreliable; ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... is opened by the most distinguished person of the gathering, whose privilege it is to conduct the whole file of the dancers or to break it up. This is called in Polish rey wodzic, figuratively, to be the leader, in some sort the king (from the Latin rex). To dance at the head was also called to be the marshal, on account of the privileges of a marshal at the Diets. The whole of this form is connected with the memories and customs of raising the militia (pospolite), ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... "Literally and figuratively, my friend Roland has me on the hip, for my hip-pocket contains no money, and it is impossible for me to refund. I imagine, if the truth were told, we are all more or less in the same condition, for we have had equipment ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... of my impression. We were trotting past the lake at Maloja when this came upon me, and when I reflected that I owed it about equally to poppa and to Dicky Dod I felt that I could have personally chastised them—could have slapped them—both. What I longed to do with Mr. Mafferton was to hurl him, figuratively speaking, down an abyss, but that would have been to send him into Mrs. Portheris's beckoning arms next morning, and I had little faith in any floral hat and pink bun once its mamma's commands were laid upon it. I thought of my cradle companion—not tenderly, I confess—and ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... by a Portuguese war vessel, the "Marianna Flora," who mistook her for a pirate, and determined to capture her. But when the "Marianna" got near enough, and opened fire on the supposed pirate, she found that the work she had undertaken was very different from what she had expected. To speak figuratively, the "Alligator" lashed her tail, opened her jaws, and began to fight with such fury, that in twenty minutes the "Marianna" was beaten and captured. Stockton put her under the command of one of his ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... for her; Perugino leading his money-grubbing, morose life and painting ethereal saints and madonnas in his bottega, while the Baglioni filled the streets outside with slaughter; Lorenzo de' Medici bleeding literally and figuratively his fellow-citizens, going from that occupation to his Platonic Academy and disputing on the immortality of the soul, winding up with orgies of sensual depravity with his boon companion Pulci, and all the time making himself an historic name for statecraft; Pope Sixtus IV, at ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... corollary from these remarks is, that all causation is an exertion of mind, and is only figuratively applied to matter. It necessarily implies power, will, and action. An efficient cause—we are not speaking now of a mere antecedent—is that which is necessarily followed by the effect, so that, if it were known, the effect might be predicted antecedently to all experience. ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... but was otherwise naked. The bearers of the body were separated by an interval of thirty feet from the mourners. They, and also the mourners, were draped all in pure white, and each couple of mourners was figuratively bound together by a piece of white rope or a handkerchief—though they merely held the ends of it in their hands. Behind the procession followed a dog, which was led in a leash. When the mourners had reached the neighborhood of the Tower —neither they nor any other human ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the square head-covering worn by students in the English universities. Used figuratively to ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... did not undergo more in watching little John de Mohun's endeavours at waiting than he would have suffered from doing it himself. And not a few dissatisfied glances were levelled at the favoured stripling, besides the literally as well as figuratively sour glances of ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... last, but my first adventure,—I mean the first adventure of my life, my first fall,—for it is a moral fall after all, in the arms of Venus. Oh! I am not going to tell you my first—what shall I call it?—my first appearance; certainly not. The leap over the first hedge (I am speaking figuratively) has nothing interesting about it. It is generally rather a disagreeable one, and one picks oneself up rather abashed, with one charming illusion the less, with a vague feeling of disappointment and sadness. That realization of love the first time one experiences it is rather ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... word Palangana signifies a wash-hand-basin; but more especially the kind of basin used by barbers. Figuratively the term is used to ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... friends were in each other's arms, and Flemming received a kiss upon each cheek, and another on the mouth, as the pledge and seal of the German's friendship. They held each other long by the hand, and looked into each other's faces, and saw themselves in each other's eyes, both literally and figuratively; literally, inasmuch as the images were there; and figuratively, inasmuch as each was imagining what the other thought of him, after the lapse of some years. In friendly hopes and questionings and answers, the evening glided away ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... troubles to notice or care whether any subtle change was becoming manifest in the attitude of her fellow boarders. The worst, she felt sure, had already overtaken her. In reaction to the sensitive, shrinking mood of the previous day, a spirit of defiance had taken possession of her. Figuratively she declared that the world could go to the devil, and squared her shoulders ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... thankful for it. Ladies used to be fond of me: not all of them, but it happened, it happened. But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road—there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt. I am speaking figuratively, brother. In the town I was in, there were no such back-alleys in the literal sense, but morally there were. If you were like me, you'd know what that means. I loved vice, I loved the ignominy of vice. I loved cruelty; am I not a bug, am I not a noxious insect? In fact a Karamazov! ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... they sailed the currents, of local personality, and he mentally upbraided them for a set of gossiping ninnies. They conducted a conversation (if it could be dignified by a name) of which no stranger could possibly partake, and which, by a hideous coincidence, was making his friend writhe, figuratively speaking, for Harkless sat like a fixed shadow. He uttered scarcely a word the whole evening, though Meredith knew that his guests would talk about him enthusiastically, the next day, none the less. The journalist's silence was enforced by the topics; but what expression ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... was in the woods, Nick quickened his pace. He realized now that, figuratively, he had burned his bridges behind him, and that he must see the thing through ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... paths are bordered and screened, figuratively and literally, with bush and trees of his own selection, setting out and cultivation—shelters of the ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... produce a sequence of musical sounds or a tune. For the mechanism of such an arrangement in a clock and in a set of bells, see the articles CLOCK and BELL. The word is also applied to the tune thus played by the bells and also to the harmonious "fall" of verse, and so, figuratively, to any harmonious agreement of thought or action. (2) (From Mid. Eng. chimb, a word meaning "edge," common in varied forms to Teutonic languages, cf. Ger. Kimme), the bevelled rim formed by the projecting staves at the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... "Only figuratively, papa," she replied with a pensive smile stealing over her fine intellectual features. "Have no fear for me on that score, for depend upon it, with so much natural beauty to interest, it will be my own fault, if I suffer myself to be buried alive. ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... such, or so signal, a retribution. They who had taken to the sword had perished by the sword, not figuratively but in the literal meaning of the words. Stabbers by trade, they had fallen stabbed, by the hands of those whom they had destined to ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... Chantilly lace which had once been draped on mother's skirt but was destined, to-day, to become a "mantilla"; and a magnificent "willow plume" snipped from Aunt Nettie's Sunday hat. This plume, when tacked to Missy's broad leghorn, was intended to be figuratively as well as literally the crowning feature of ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... long silence now ensued, during which the clack of seven pairs of active jaws was the only sound that broke upon the ear. It might have been observed, however, that all eyes were fixed more or less wonderingly on the stranger. Big Waller in particular looked him, figuratively speaking, through and through. He did not remove his eyes off him for an instant, but devoured his food with somewhat the expression of a dog that expects his bone ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... steel armour. 'Steely' in Elizabethan times was used both literally and figuratively. Shakespeare, 3 Henry VI. ii. 3. 16, has 'The steely point of Clifford's lance,' and Fisher in his 'Seuen Psalmes' has 'tough and stely hertes.' For a modern literal example, see ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... off to the far end of the mantel, and began, figuratively, to kick himself. He had often declared that a man in love was the biggest mule on earth, and now here he was, the king of them all, a genuine descendant of Balaam's mount with all his asinine qualities, but lacking his common ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... on a philosophical plan were introduced. Ammon, in one of his works, tells the young people that the books of the Old Testament have no divine worth or character for us, except so far as they agree with the spirit of the gospel. As to the New Testament, much must be figuratively understood, since many things have no immediate relation to our times. Christ is a mere man. Dinter was a voluminous writer on theological subjects, and in his books tells children of imperfect notions of former times ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... uncomfortable on a camp-chair. It was a small cabin, boiling over with dresses, though the "Young Moon" had not yet been added to their number. Peter had never found his sister in a propitious mood for the gift, and had been keeping the "Moon," figuratively, up his sleeve till the right moment came. ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... of being bored. So lofty and forbidding had been his manner that no one had ventured to intrude even a casual good morning. A bachelor under thirty, with a competence of such dimensions that it had entailed incompetency, and a doting family that danced attendance upon his every whim, he was figuratively as well as literally at sea in this new environment. At times he faltered in his stern determination not to allow any one to become acquainted with him. It was only the fear that any leniency might result in undue liberty on the part of some aggressive ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... fact that I hope to deduce something. Now let's follow her, figuratively, to her little dressing room. This was a part of the living room where the rest waited. It is not a certainty, but yet rather a sure guess, that if she had received a scratch behind those thin silk curtains her cry would have been heard. What is even more plausible ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... knights, you know: You were going to tell me about them. A while back, you remember. Figuratively ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... for the fourth time. And lo! advancing to me eagerly along the causeway seemed the very sprite of Alastor himself! There was a star upon his forehead, and around his young face there glowed an aureole of gold and roses—to speak figuratively, for the star upon his brow was hope, and the gold and roses encircling his head, a miniature rainbow, were youth and health. His longish golden hair had no doubt its share in the effect, as likewise the soft yellow silk tie that fluttered like a flame in ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... personal comfort had not been distasteful to him. Personal comfort entered into no part of Lear's. To be alone filled the little pint-measure of his desire. He ensconced himself in a wretched shanty, and barred the door, figuratively, against all the world. Wealth—what would have been wealth to him—lay within his reach, but he thrust it aside; he disdained luxury as he disdained idleness, and made no compromise with convention. When a man cuts himself absolutely adrift from custom, what an astonishingly light ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... it, and that this gives them special privileges. We can measure the importance of such a personage in ancient days, by the noise which a first-class hero made in the primitive world. He became literally and figuratively immortal: he was regarded as a god, or at least godlike—the greatest of them were actually deified. He was seized upon by fable, myth, miraculous legend, and poetry—his name was handed down for centuries until the ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... "dispersed" of the ten tribes, there is no satisfactory evidence. We are in similar doubt as to the place from which it was written. The Church at Babylon is named in the last chapter; but there was a Babylon in Egypt, and another in Assyria, and Rome itself is thus figuratively designated. ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... naturally neuter, are, when used figuratively, or personified, converted into the masculine or feminine gender. Those nouns are generally rendered masculine, which are conspicuous for the attributes of imparting or communicating, and which ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... know the custom that prevailed in ancient times of putting the sins of the people, figuratively speaking, into a white cloth, dipping the cloth into blood, tying it to the horns of the scapegoat, and turning the animal loose in the wilderness till the sun, air and rain had bleached it white, we can not appreciate the expression, 'though thy sins be as ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... and developed the same view, and Luther especially showed himself equal to the occasion. With his usual boldness he declared, first, that Moses "spoke properly and plainly, and neither allegorically nor figuratively," and that therefore "the world with all creatures was created in six days." And he then goes on to show how, by a great miracle, the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... zenith of his fame, and the great men of the day sat at his feet, figuratively speaking, and would literally have done so had not his growl been so fierce that it kept them at bay. Of those who did "beard the lion in his den, the Douglas in his hall," many were immolated in his diary; and we see ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... the road, at the death of old T. A. Buck, to assume the secretaryship of the company which she had served faithfully for ten years, she had set an example for the entire establishment. She was the pacemaker. Every day of her life she figuratively pressed the electric button that set the wheels to whirring. At nine A.M., sharp, she appeared, erect, brisk, alert, vibrating energy. Usually, the office staff had not yet swung into its gait. In a desultory ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... sat up, preventingly. "I don't want to argue with you. You're a typical lawyer and always ride me down by pure force of mass." He smiled. "Gentlemen of the law are invariably that way, Darley. Figuratively, you fellows always travel horseback while the rest of us go afoot, and if we don't hustle out of the way you ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... except that they should be feudally subject to him henceforth. This is the third Hohenzollern whom we mark as a conspicuous acquirer in the Hohenzollern family, this Friedrich IV., builder of the second story of the House. If Conrad, original Burggraf, founded the House, then (figuratively speaking) the able Friedrich III., who was Rudolf of Hapsburg's friend, built it one story high; and here is a new Friedrich, his Son, who has added a second story. It is astonishing, says Dryasdust, how many feudal superiorities ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... certitudes that he had guessed nothing whatever. He might nevertheless have been so urbanely filling up gaps, at present, for the very reason that his instinct, sharper than the expression of his face, had sufficiently served him—made him aware of the thin ice, figuratively speaking, and of prolongations of tension, round about him, mostly foreign to the circles in which luxury was akin to virtue. Some day in some happier season, she would confess to him that she hadn't confessed, though taking so much on her conscience; but just now she was ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... leave this wondrous Gascon, this new 'Michael of the Mount,' this man who is 'consubstantial with his book,'—this 'Man of the Mountain,' as he figuratively describes it. Let us yield him this new ascent, this new triumphant peak and pyramid in science, which he claims to have been the first to master,—the unity of the universal man,—the historical unity,—the universal human form, collected from particulars, not contemplatively abstracted,—the ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... hand if those months could be blotted out," he said, vehemently. "You know the proverb, Mrs. Luttrell—'Give a dog a bad name, and hang him'—well, they were for hanging me, I mean figuratively, so I took the bit between my teeth ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the present instance does our Savior alter His language when He finds His words taken in the literal sense? Does He tell His hearers that He has spoken figuratively? Does He soften the tone of His expression? Far from weakening the force of His words He repeats what He said before, and in language more emphatic: "Amen, amen, I say unto you, Unless ye eat the flesh ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... remember that the experiment was tried in France with much formality, but somehow came to a speedy ignominious conclusion; the new era did not survive infancy. As Paulus thinks that Christ was only in a trance when he seemed to be dead, so it certainly often is (figuratively speaking) with his religion: it seems to be dead when it is only in a trance. It is apt to rise again, and be more active than ever; and never more so than when, as in the middle of the last century, our infidel undertakers were providing for its funeral. ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... But, figuratively speaking, she had just done so, and if she had seen the grieved look on Hugh's face as he groped his way out the front door, she would have realized that her slap had ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... juror was approached"; that is, overtures were made to him with a view to bribing him. As there is no other single word for it, approach is made to serve, figuratively; and being graphic, ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... stood in the porch for a moment to collect his faculties. The time was five minutes of ten, and he had been married about an hour and a half. He had just finished his second dinner, and for the guerdon of companionship with the charming and gracious girl whom fate had figuratively thrown into his arms he would cheerfully have tackled a third meal without any personal ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... and his mother lived under the same roof, she, figuratively, sat with folded hands as far as he was concerned; it was kindly Mrs. Malone who looked after his little comforts, saw that his socks were mended, and made him a hot drink when he had a heavy cold. Also, as a special honour, she invited him to her "den," gave him a cup of coffee, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... above all, to uphold the honour and dignity of my race? I was happy in the conviction that I should not disgrace myself by any exhibition of craven fear, but what I dreaded was that in the excitement of the moment I should get "nervy," lose my head (if only figuratively), and perhaps forget to do something that I ought to do, to miss some opportunity that I ought to see and seize. "Brace up, Paul!" I said to myself, "pull yourself together for the honour of the dear homeland; forget all about yourself, and think only of the ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... himself of everything in him—doubts, fears, passions—no matter whether he does harm thereby or good, the Misses Ponsonby would be considered intolerably dull and limited. They did not walk about without their clothes—figuratively speaking—it was not then the fashion. They were, on the contrary, heavily draped from head to foot, but underneath the whalebone and padding, strange to say, were real live women's hearts. They knew what it was to hope and despair; they knew what it was to reflect that with each of ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... strange practice of making Moses appear horned to a mistranslation in the Vulgate. I send you an extract from Coleridge which suggests something more profound the such an accidental cause; and explains the statement of Rosenmueller (p. 419.), that the Jews attributed horns to Moses "figuratively ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... impatient, captious, capricious in their sympathies and hysterical, just like old maid lady teachers. Now it is otherwise. But at that time the boys were left to themselves. Barely snatched away, speaking figuratively, from the maternal breast; from the care of devoted nurses; from morning and evening caresses, quiet and sweet; even though they were ashamed of every manifestation of tenderness as "womanishness," they were still irresistibly ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... destructive statesmanship and constitutional conventionality of the lower residential quarter embracing the timber-yard, Elijah Square, and Aunt Martha's Soda Fountain. Naturally Jabez Puffwater, whose modest store stood figuratively and literally at the crossing of the ways, was always in a somewhat uncertain state of mind as to which side he should ultimately pin his colours. Perhaps on a Tuesday St. John Eddle, a staunch upholder of the C. and P.P., would enter Jabez's store and hit him in the face because ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... date, that is to say in 1814, Mr. Cocking delivered his views as to the proper form of the parachute before the Society of Arts, who, as a mark of approval, awarded him a medal. This parachute, however, having never taken practical shape, and only existing, figuratively speaking, in the clouds, seemed unlikely to find its way there in reality until the success of the Nassau adventure stirred its inventor to strenuous efforts to give it an actual trial. Thus it came about that he obtained Mr. Green's co-operation in the attempt ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... the Gotham gloom reigned—literally, because the stage was wide and deep and was illumined only by a single electric light: and figuratively, because things were going even worse than usual with the "My Heart and I" number, and Johnson Miller, always of an emotional and easily stirred temperament, had been goaded by the incompetence of his male chorus to a state of frenzy. At about the moment when Otis Pilkington ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... figuratively termed the Supplements in one place "stage scenery," so I may with equal propriety term the "Verse Crown" the "rise" or the "fall" of the stage curtain. They separate the little Acts of the Rhymes into scenes. As an example read the comic little Rhyme "I Walked the Roads." The word ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... you grew weary of the amusement and dropped it, didn't you? Well, you dropped Linton with it into a Slough of Despond. He was in earnest: in love, really. As true as I live, he's dying for you; breaking his heart at your fickleness: not figuratively, but actually. Though Hareton has made him a standing jest for six weeks, and I have used more serious measures, and attempted to frighten him out of his idiotcy, he gets worse daily; and he'll be under the sod before summer, ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... believe only three,—though the young negro girl, whose loquacity made us aware of the fact, added, with a burst of commendable pride and gratitude, "Indeed, he is a father to us all!" Whether she spoke figuratively, or literally, we could not determine. So much for a three hours' shelter in ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... gold deposits, and a richer golden, sunshine, its golden spring poppy and its golden summer verdure, seems both literally and figuratively, a golden land golden and gay. It is a land full of contradictions however. For those amazing memorials from a prehistoric past give it in places a strange air of tragedy. I challenge this grey old earth ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... Figuratively, they licked each other's wounds awhile. Yorke had grown very silent. Chin in hands and rocking very slightly to and fro, all huddled up in his fur coat, he gazed unseeingly into the beyond. His face was clouded with such hopeless, bitter, brooding ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... If Mr Quilp spoke figuratively, and meant to imply that the air breathed by Miss Sally Brass was sweetened and rarefied by that dainty creature, he had doubtless good reason for what he said. But if he spoke of the delights of the atmosphere of Mr Brass's office in a literal sense, he had certainly a peculiar ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... which govern the appearance of fairies to mankind or their commerce with men and women seem to be conditioned by the ability of men to perceive them. The senses of men are figuratively speaking lenses coloured or shaped by personality. How are we to know the form and pressure of the great river Enipeus, whose shape, for the love of Tyro, Poseidon took? And so the accounts of fairy appearance, of fairy shape, size, ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... I guess I ain't agoin' to stand and hold this here heavy child!" and sat down in my lap. I had, like most people, often been "sat upon," figuratively, during my life, but never literally, and it was with some difficulty that I managed to extricate myself. The girl next proceeded, with the assistance of a dirty pocket-handkerchief and the tin drinking-mug belonging ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... would more gladly have cut off your head than your hair—that is, figuratively speaking,' sobbed ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... and desirable. A lack of libido is abnormal. And an excess of libido is also abnormal. But a good many men are possessed of an excess of libido; it is either congenital or acquired. Some men torture their wives "to death," not literally but figuratively. Harboring the prevailing idea that a wife has no rights in this respect, that her body is not her own, that she must always hold herself ready to satisfy his abnormal desires, such a husband exercises his marital rights ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... five-oared galley; and, coming along side of her ship, entered it without being seen by her."—Goldsmith's Rome, p. 160. "The sun, high as it is, has its business assigned; and so have the stars."—Collier's Antoninus, p. 138. But inanimate objects are often represented figuratively as having sex. Things remarkable for power, greatness, or sublimity, are spoken of as masculine; as, the sun, time, death, sleep, fear, anger, winter, war. Things beautiful, amiable, or prolific, are spoken of as ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... effect, of making its wearer a very efficient clergyman. By the aid of his mysterious emblem—for there was no other apparent cause—he became a man of awful power over souls that were in agony for sin. His converts always regarded him with a dread peculiar to themselves, affirming, though but figuratively, that, before he brought them to celestial light, they had been with him behind the black veil. Its gloom, indeed, enabled him to sympathize with all dark affections. Dying sinners cried aloud for Mr. Hooper, and would not yield their breath till he appeared; though ever, as he stooped to whisper ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... requisition to draw me, or my money, but without success; for Mr. Brown, as I very well knew,—it being just then the current topic in the best society on the road,—had very recently been involved in a tangled trouble with a stolen horse. This horse had been figuratively laid at his door, even as a "love-babe" is sometimes placed on the front steps of a virtuous and grave citizen,—at least, this is what White George averred,—and his very innocence and purity had, like a shining mark, attracted the shafts of the wicked. He had come out unscathed, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... I had closed this Letter when a person of confidence came in [the fact being, my Grumkow's Missive of instructions came in, or figuratively speaking, my Grumkow himself], and undertook to give me in a few days a thorough insight into the intrigues which are concealed under the sending of this new Minister,' Hotham, 'to Berlin; which, and how they have been concocted, he says, it will astonish ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... have been known to me earlier, but I remember him first as he swam vividly into my ken, with a volume of Macaulay's essays in his hand, one day. Less figuratively speaking, he came up into the printing-office to expose from the book the nefarious plagiarism of an editor in a neighboring city, who had adapted with the change of names and a word or two here and there, whole passages from the essay on Barere, to the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... ... figuratively, the highest point or culminating-point of anything; the zenith; as the meridian ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... in Mr. Moore's name;" and it was another form of the same liking when he took to himself the character and title of a Traveller Uncommercial. "I am both a town traveller and a country traveller, and am always on the road. Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human-interest Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancy goods way. Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and there from my rooms in Covent-garden, London: now about the city streets; ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... can anyone take Solomon's rod any more literally than she does the Savior's cross? We are bid, on a higher authority than Solomon's proverbs, to take up our cross and follow Him. This we all interpret figuratively. Would you dream, for instance, of binding heavy crosses of wood upon the backs of your children because you felt yourselves so enjoined in the literal sense of the Scriptures? Why, then, take the rod literally? It is as clearly used to designate any form of orderly discipline ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... whom and from whom are all things, is incomprehensibly infinite: but yet, when we apply to that first and supreme Being our idea of infinite, in our weak and narrow thoughts, we do it primarily in respect to his duration and ubiquity; and, I think, more figuratively to his power, wisdom, and goodness, and other attributes which are properly inexhaustible and incomprehensible, &c. For, when we call THEM infinite, we have no other idea of this infinity but what carries with it ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... we are to consider it as the strength of the parties brought man to man, and contending for the issue. The Bastille was to be either the prize or the prison of the assailants. The downfall of it included the idea of the downfall of despotism, and this compounded image was become as figuratively united as Bunyan's ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... precipices in rich abundance. Then, again, to see the caution observed in taking up their resting or abiding places for the day, where they may be warmed by the sun, listening to the roar of many waters, and figuratively, we may say, chewing the cud of contentment, and giving themselves up to the full enjoyment of their nomadic life and its romantic haunts. Usually before reposing one of the herd, generally an old doe, may be observed intently gazing below, apparently scanning every ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... expert was he in his antioptical vocation, that in a few moments he usually bored out an antagonist's eyes, or made him cry peccavi. Indeed, could he, on the present occasion, have laid hold of his unseen foe's head—spiritually we mean—he would—figuratively, of course—soon have caused him to ease off or let go entirely his metaphorical grip. So, however, thought one friend in the assembly—Bill's wife. For Bill was a man after her own heart; and she often said that "with fair play she sentimentally allowed her Bill could lick ary a man ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... Eastern quarters. One result is that a British army is fighting in Mesopotamia now. A Holy War is merely the full brother of the possible War of Colour. In East Africa the Germans used thousands of native troops against the British and Belgians. The blacks got a taste, figuratively, of the white man's blood and it did his system ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... of the love in it were of the sort. All I insist, however, on my reader's believing is, that it showed, in a youth like Robert, not less but more love that he could go against love's sweetness for the sake of love's greatness. Literally, not figuratively, Robert would kiss the place where her foot had trod; but I know that once he rose from such a kiss 'to trace the hyperbola ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... with all others, and assigned it an honorable place in their scheme of life. Katharine felt this beneath the roughness of his manner; and a world entrusted to the guardianship of Mary Datchet and Mr. Basnett seemed to her a good world, although not a romantic or beautiful place or, to put it figuratively, a place where any line of blue mist softly linked tree to tree upon the horizon. For a moment she thought she saw in his face, bent now over the fire, the features of that original man whom we still recall every now and then, although we know only the clerk, barrister, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... 'Sorceries of Sin', is an 'Auto Sacramental', or Morality, of which the actors represent Man, Sin, Voluptuousness, etc., Understanding, and the Five Senses. The Senses are corrupted by the influence of Sin, and figuratively changed into wild beasts. Man, accompanied by Understanding and Penance, demands their liberation and encounters no resistance; but his free-will is afterwards seduced by the Evil Power, and his allies reclaim him with difficulty. Yet the plan of the apologue ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... words: "The Democrats are vulnerable in the heel, but they are sound in the head and the heart." The first branch of the figure—that is, that the Democrats are vulnerable in the heel—I admit is not merely figuratively, but literally true. Who that looks but for a moment at their Swartwouts, their Prices, their Harringtons, and their hundreds of others, scampering away with the public money to Texas, to Europe, and to every spot of the earth where ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... insults and neglect which had been meted out to us at Beyrout, I expected in Damascus, where official position is everything, and where women are of no account, that I should be, figuratively speaking, trampled underfoot. I was mistaken. I can never describe the gratitude, affection, and respect which were showered upon me during my last days in Syria. The news of our recall spread like wildfire. ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... vii. p. 492, [edit. Casaub.] Most of the antlers are now broken off; or, to speak less figuratively, most of the recesses of the harbor are filled up. See Gill. de Bosphoro Thracio, l. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... What does he know about us?" It was here that she sniffed, not figuratively but actually. That is to say she held up her nose, on pretence of looking at me, and audibly ... well, sniffed. There's no other word for it. Then she cried triumphantly, "What is the use, Noll, of telling ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... though he always returned to her, still she resented his having been separated from her for a time. In the factory, too, Hoeflinger occupied a special and independent position: he served the iron saw, a giant of double a man's height. This had impaired his hearing; figuratively speaking, you had to use Gothic type in order to make him understand. On the other hand, this deficiency favored his tendency to accept the phenomena of life summarily and to survey things ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... acceptance of the atonement and mediation by the sinner is the appointed condition of salvation to him. Thus also when he says, "I am the true vine" John xv. 1; or "The field is the world," "The seed is the word," &c., he evidently is speaking figuratively and communicating important moral truth, by images drawn from physical nature, as is naturally done by nearly all writers and speakers of all ages ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... this retrograde march is in consequence of a movement made in Mexico by General Valencia—others that it has been caused by a message received from General Paredes. We paid a visit in the evening to the old curate, who was pretty much in the dark, morally and figuratively, in a very large hall, where were assembled a number of females, and one tallow candle. Of course all were talking politics, and especially discoursing of the visit of the president the preceding night, and of his departure in the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... She had accepted her role long ago. How scant the words with which we try to describe a single quality of a human being! When we reach the abstract we are lost. The nearer to Nature that the babbling of our lips comes, the better do we understand. Figuratively (let us say), some people are Bosoms, some are Hands, some are Heads, some are Muscles, some are Feet, some are ...
— Options • O. Henry
... Virgin Andromeda, the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, was the representative of Palestina; a long, narrow, rocky strip of land; figuratively called the daughter of Rocks and Mountains; because it is a country abounding with rocks and stones. And the Greeks, really supposing Cepha, a rock or stone, to have been the young ladies father, added their sign of the masculine gender to it, and it became Cepha-us. And mount Cassius ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various |
