"Literal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... own,' might, on the worst view of the case, have suggested greater diligence at home; but on a wider view English book-work is by no means a 'poor thing.' Its excellence at certain periods is as striking as its inferiority at others, and it is a literal fact that there is no art or craft connected with books in which England, at one time or another, has not held the ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... not share his beliefs. She was a stern realist, a sneering sceptic, in the most literal ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... place; and he was so loved and trusted by the firemen of his district, that no mayor, however beset by applicants for office, had ever dreamed of removing him. In all of Uncle Ith's limited relations with the world, he was esteemed an honest man; and his word would have possessed the literal novelty of being as good as his note, had necessity ever required him to borrow money. But Uncle Ith was frugal, and made his small salary suffice for himself and a family of ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... occasions, was always ascribed by distant hearers to an outbreak of hostilities. If either speaker had addressed the other by name, the advent of the Sergeant-at-Arms would have been the next thing looked for. On this occasion Laetitia's literal transmission of "Are you going to help the tongue or not, papa?" recalled his wandering mind to his responsibilities. Sally's liver-wing—she was the visitor—was pleading at his elbow for its complement ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... own person, the literal meaning of the overworked phrase, "frozen with amazement." Before him stood the most dangerous man in Europe; a man who had done murder and worse; a man only in name, a demon in nature. His long black eyes half-closed, his perfectly chiselled ivory face ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... His favourite political picture was a joking, profligate, careless king, nominally absolute—the heads of great houses paying court to, but in reality governing, that king, whilst revelling with him on the plunder of a nation, and a set of crouching, grovelling vassals (the literal meaning of vassal is a wretch), who, after allowing themselves to be horsewhipped, would take a bone if flung to them, and be grateful; so that in love with mummery, though he knew what Christianity was, no wonder he admired such a church as that of Rome, and ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... painting is an art which merely addresses the eye; it does not in any particular exercise the moral sense. And second, painting, in common with all the other arts, implies the dangerous quality of imagination. A man of imagination is never moral; he outsoars literal demarcations and reviews life under too many shifting lights to rest content with the invidious distinctions ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... after a time. "You care for me, don't you? You don't think I'd sit here and plead with you if I didn't care for you? I'm crazy about you, and that's the literal truth. You're like wine to me. I want you to come with me. I want you to do it quickly. I know how difficult this family business is, but you can arrange it. Come with me down to New York. We'll work out something later. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... happiness before her; but the picture he drew of her prospects justified his misery, at being only able to goad her on, instead of drawing her back. He was absolutely amazed at himself. He had spoken only the literal truth, when he said that he had been unconscious of the true nature of the feelings that always drew him towards her, though only to assert his independence, and make experiments by teasing in his ironically courteous ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mean that!" Elizabeth never could get accustomed to this literal streak in the small maiden's character; and, in consequence, her little preachments often received an unexpected shower-bath. "I meant not to promise to do favors for other folks unless we can and will ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... few pages of a very close literal translation, which will enable the reader to form some idea of the nature and style of the original, and to see how far it has been departed from in ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... of the boy and the wolf, had then a literal application. Every child in the days of our fathers knew the story of Putnam, and the she-wolf which he dragged from its den. This and similar tales go far to make up the popular reputation of the hero, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... will not show how Shakespeare did it, and in the second place, if it does, it will show that he did not do it by analysis. In the third place,—to say nothing of not doing it by analysis,—if he had analysed it before he did it, he could not have analysed it afterward in the literal and modern sense. In the fourth place, even if Shakespeare were able to do his work by analysing it before he did it, it does not follow ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... years—composes an oil painting, as it were, from the hints and suggestions of a water-colour sketch long since designed and long since half forgotten—is essentially different from the mere verbal and literal trick of repetition which sciolists might think to detect in the present instance. Again we must needs fall back on the inevitable and indefinable test of style; a test which could be of no avail if we were foolish enough to ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... prisoner's side, were illegal; but Monseigneur de Beauvais was well aware that anything would be legal which effected his purpose, and that once Jeanne was disposed of, the legality or illegality of the proceedings would be of small importance. I have thought it right to give to the best of my power a literal translation of these examinations, notwithstanding their great length; as, except in one book, now out of print and very difficult to procure, no such detailed translation,(8) so far as I am aware, exists; and it seems to me that, even at the ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... Tale, as Byron perceived, is superior to the execution. The style is laboured and involved, and the narrative long-winded and tiresome. It is, perhaps, an adaptation, though not a literal translation, of a German historical romance. But the motif—a son predestined to evil by the weakness and sensuality of his father, a father punished for his want of rectitude by the passionate criminality of his son, is the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... that he complains of. There may have been a want of the form of giving notice; but perhaps this may have been an excuse for the want of that notice—namely, that the resolutions of this day fortnight were proposed by the founder of this Association, as simply and entirely the literal and the sole reiteration of the resolutions upon which he founded this Association. He had no doubt upon the subject. It is a maxim that all pledges and tests are to be taken in the sense and in the spirit of the person ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... from his experience of Wang's profession, which he followed for some years,—until he became too large to go in a hat, or be produced from his father's sleeve. The money you left with me has been expended on his education. He has gone through the Tri-literal Classics, but, I think, without much benefit. He knows but little of Confucius, and absolutely nothing of Mencius. Owing to the negligence of his father, he associated, perhaps, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... with him when he tells us the impossible. And then his style, in its ardent and luminous simplicity, flexible to every bend of the spirit which it clothes with flesh, helps him in the idiomatic translation of dreams. The visions of Swedenborg are literal translations of the imagination, and need to be retranslated. Coleridge is equally faithful to the thing seen and to the laws of that new world into which he ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... Bullen's 'Old Plays,' vol. ii.). The first performance of the tragedy we may thus assign to a day immediately preceding the 27th of August, 1619. When we remember that Barnavelt was executed on May 13th of the same year, we have in this play another striking instance of the literal interpretation given by dramatists of the day to Hamlet's definition of the purpose ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... l. 229. stifling: partly literal, since the widow's weed is close-wrapping and voluminous—partly metaphorical, since the ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... in her own apartment. She longed to converse with him at her ease—to hear his tale from his own lips—to sympathize with and console him. Oh! who could blame her if in so doing she departed from the strict and literal meaning of that vow which had bound her to consider her relations as dead to her? But the fault—if fault it were—was so venial, that to justify it is to invest it with an importance which it would not have possessed ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... matter to Fothadh, his poet and adviser. The learning and piety of the bard were well known; and a decision favourable to the clergy was the result. This decision was given in a short poem of four quatrains which is preserved in the preface to the "Martyrology" of Aengus. The following is a literal translation:— ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... about joyously on his communistic errand. But bees, one must remember, have heavy bodies and relatively small wings: in the rarefied air of mountain heights they can't manage to support themselves in the most literal sense. Hence their place in these high stations of the world is taken by the gay and airy butterflies, which have lighter bodies and a much bigger expanse of wing-area to buoy them up. In the valleys and plains the bee competes at an advantage ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... "purpose"), and, when so "acquired," then began to serve the "purpose" assigned, the argument would not have involved the fallacy which we are now considering. But, as it stands, the argument reverts to the teleology of pre-Darwinian days—or the hypothesis of a "purpose" in the literal sense which sees the end from the beginning, instead of a "purpose" in the metaphorical sense of an adaptation that is evolved by the very ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... eye against his gun, which he was carrying before him; and after a minute's rueful look he joined heartily in the shouts of laughter of his father and brother at his expense, "Ah, Charley, brag is a good dog, but holdfast is a better. I never saw a more literal proof of the saying. There, jump up again, and I need not say look ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... are followed by their English equivalents. Literal translations have been followed, excepting a few instances where preference is shown for a clearer or more ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... I had not reflected on the nature of war. I merely knew it to be a science, cultivated chiefly by the human race, and that in its practice explosives are largely used. To "blow-up" effectively, whether in a literal or figurative sense, is difficult. To improve this power in war, and in the literal sense, I set myself to work. I invented a torpedo, which seemed to me better than any that had yet been brought out. To test its powers, I made a miniature fortification, ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... rejoined Willoughby, bowing gaily to me. Then taking up the whip—Dixon was a virtuoso in whips, and always carried one with six feet of handle and twelve feet of lash—he aimed at the team, collectively, a clip which, in the most literal sense, recoiled on himself. And so the officer's son and the sojer's son took their way together; to become, as I afterward learned, the most attached and mutually considerate friends on the track. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... point again to the fact that we are more likely to have made upon us, by an interpretative translation, an effect more nearly like that made upon the listener contemporary to the time of the making of the story than if the translation were literal. We are always forgetting the so obvious fact that the kind of metaphor or descriptive epithet of this sort or that, which would make a certain effect on the listener of the tenth century, will make a very different effect ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... a mixed dream and is due to more than one cause. The first part is literal in its fulfilment, and belongs to the spiritual class; the other part of the dream is subjective, and therefore allegorical in meaning. Together with the letter, it ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... terrific Scythe of Time (for I now discovered the literal import of that classical phrase) had not stopped, nor was it likely to stop, in its career. Down and still down, it came. It had already buried its sharp edge a full inch in my flesh, and my sensations grew indistinct and confused. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... back. Democracy like that was too much for her. The deacon himself left our church a few months later because he discovered that I did not believe in a literal hell of "fire ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... way. The meek will he guide in judgment; and the meek he will teach his way." But if men will undertake to explain scripture in their own strength and wisdom, what must we expect but to have them mangled and made havoc of, or explained in a mere mystical or literal sense? "The natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." See ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... no need to be so literal," returned Mrs. Challoner, reprovingly; for she was a gentlewoman of the old school, and nothing grieved her more than slipshod English or any idiom or idiotcy of modern parlance in the mouths of her bright young daughters: to speak of any young man except Dick without ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... however, in imitating Christianity. A few years ago Dr. D.C. Greene attended the preaching services of a modern Shinto sect, the "Ten-Ri-Kyo," the Heaven-Reason-Teaching, and was surprised to hear almost literal quotations from the "Sermon on the Mount"; the source of the sentiment and doctrine was not stated and very likely was not known to the speaker. Dr. Greene, who has given this sect considerable study, is satisfied that the insistence ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... indulged? These vices of youth are varnished over by the saying, that there must be time for 'sowing the wild oats,' and that 'wildest colts make the best horses.' These figurative oats are, however, generally like the literal ones; they are never to be eradicated from the soil; and as to the colts, wildness in them is an indication of high animal spirit, having nothing at all to do with the mind, which is invariably debilitated and debased by ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... style which has reference to the words and phrases used in speaking and writing. The secret of literary skill from any standpoint consists in putting the right word in the right place. In order to do this it is imperative to know the meaning of the words we use, their exact literal meaning. Many synonymous words are seemingly interchangeable and appear as if the same meaning were applicable to three or four of them at the same time, but when all such words are reduced to a final analysis it is clearly seen that there is a marked difference in their meaning. ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... you, preserve for me always the honor of your good graces; and believe, my charming Sister, that never brother in the world loved with such tenderness a sister so charming as mine; in short, believe, dear Sister, that without compliments, and in literal truth, I am yours ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the tendency to over-resolve, becomes unsatisfying to the impatient, who want results to come as they walk. Probably this is a reason that it is occasionally said that Emerson has no vital message for the rank and file. He has no definite message perhaps for the literal, but messages are all vital, as much, by reason of his indefiniteness, ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... the signs can never be realized until actually witnessed, and their beauty is much heightened by the free play to which the arms of these people are accustomed, and the small and well-shaped hands for which they are remarkable. Among them can seldom be noticed in literal fact— ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... the Body. Intelligent people who are also reverent and good, in their anxiety to be faithful to the letter of dogma as well as to its spirit, prefer to cling to these words rather than confess, what is quite certain, that an absolutely literal sense was attached to these words by the framers of them; they were scientifically ignorant of the fact that matter is disintegrated and disseminated so rigorously that there may be component particles of a hundred of his predecessors in one human body now existent. No symbolical ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... quite certain, and even those who contend for the literal interpretation of this part of the Bible will generally admit, that the purpose of the revelation is not to teach Science at all. It is to teach great spiritual and moral lessons, and it takes the facts of nature as they appear to ordinary people. ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... of the State indicates the early troubles through which it went, the literal interpretation being "To the stars (and stripes) through difficulties." The State is generally known now as the "Sunflower State," and for many years the sword has given place to the plowshare. But the very existence of Fort Riley shows that t ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... enough to brain a wild beast, and his staff to lean upon or to touch his sheep, while the ancient shepherd without firearms would surely still more require both. They will comfort me—a very beautiful verb, the literal meaning of which is to help another, choked with grief or fear, to breathe freely, and ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith
... of our readers a bad compliment. It is enough to say that a fund was raised for Flanagan's defence, and a threatening notice written to be pasted on the Bodagh Buie's door—of which elegant production the following is a literal copy:— ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... by a blue-and-white handkerchief knotted under her chin. The forehead was freely lined; and the lips opened, when they did open, on dark, unfrequent teeth. These observations Swan made as he moved forward to speak to her; for there was no special expressiveness or animation to relieve the literal stamp of her features. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... the thoroughly immature mind be made to realise the discomfort and misery that would inevitably attend wrong-doing. It was a truth, although not a literal truth. Many literal truths convey a false impression to the immature mind, whilst a symbolic truth may convey as true an impression as such a mind is capable ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... Batoche? But her intuitions were crystal clear. There were no breaks, no obscurations in her spiritual vision. It was evident that she had studied and communed direct with nature, and that her soul had grown in literal contact with the winds and the flowers, the trees and the water courses, and the pure untrammelled elements ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... most popular collection of English prose stories which had been translated from the Latin at the end of the fifteenth century, 'human beings are mere puppets, inhabiting the great fabric of mediaeval thought and mediaeval institution.... It was the work of the Renaissance to recover the literal and obvious sense of human life, as it was the work of the closely-allied Reformation to recover the literal sense of ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... account of Henry Morgan's deeds at Maracaibo is taken from the narrative of John Esquemeling, but no attempt has been made to give a literal translation of his words. Morgan had passed through the Gulf of Venezuela, captured the town of Maracaibo and made his way through the narrow passage into the lake of the same name, where he captured ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... [Sidenote: Deut. 32. v. 21. Rom. 10. v. 19.] I will prouoke them to enuy (namely such as keepe not his Law) by a people, which is no people, and by a foolish nation will I anger them. This prophecie is fulfilled, according to the literal sense thereof, vpon all nations which obserue not the Law of God. All this which I haue written concerning the land of Pascatir, was told me by certaine Friers prdicants, which trauailed thither before euer the Tartars ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... to a third reason why, under the stress of war, English Christianity is hardly in revival, namely, Bible difficulties. The Prayer Book comes down to us from men who were held by a belief in the literal truth of the whole Bible. In so far as it has been an effective manual for ordinary people, it has been on the strength of an absolute dogma in their minds as to the "Word of God." That dogma has in a vague and somewhat ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... will translate them for you. The Greek hymns are all in rhythmical prose, like the Te Deum and the Gloria. A literal translation can be sung as well as the originals. You will then enter into the mind and spirit of the ancient Eastern Church before the days of ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... is! It may seem brutal of me to put a literal construction upon what you have used as a figure of speech, but let the truth come out. You are poor, unprotected, alone, and you ask me to go and leave you so! God knows it is little enough that I have it in my power to do, ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... went home with him—a long half-hour on the trolley, then up three flights into "light housekeeping" rooms in the back. There was cold meat on the table, and bread. The janitor's wife, good soul, had made a pot of coffee. "Light housekeeping" is a literal expression, let me tell you, and doctor's bills make it lighter. I followed him into the last room of the three. It looked different from the way I remembered it the afternoon before. When he turned the gas higher I saw why—the bed was gone—one of those stretcher things takes less room. ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... chief impression made on a near observer. In politics the Americans are first and foremost jurists, and indeed in a narrower and more literal sense than the English Imperialists, with whom, according to their old traditions, justice only serves as a cloak for their political ambitions. I cannot judge how far the Americans have become full-blooded Imperialists since their entry into the war, i.e., ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... bull by the horns in a literal as well as figurative sense, the lad began gradually to develop into that terrible embodiment of unrest—a boy. He exhibited no very marked peculiarities up to this time to distinguish him from other youths; but just grew into the conglomerate mass of good, bad and indifferent qualities ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... abounded on the seafloor: various isis coral, cornularian coral living in isolation, tufts of virginal genus Oculina formerly known by the name "white coral," prickly fungus coral in the shape of mushrooms, sea anemone holding on by their muscular disks, providing a literal flowerbed adorned by jellyfish from the genus Porpita wearing collars of azure tentacles, and starfish that spangled the sand, including veinlike feather stars from the genus Asterophyton that were like fine lace embroidered by the hands of water ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... lighted hall, when the lack of clear light adds to the horror of the scene. Note the Rembrandtesque effects in such phrases: 'aux tremblantes clartes,' 'l'ombre indistincte,' 'a travers l'ombre, on voit toutes les soifs infames,' and it ends in 'le triomphe de l'ombre,' a phrase in which the literal and the figurative are subtly blended together. On the other hand, how everything sparkles and gleams in Le Mariage de Roland! Olivier's sword-point glitters like the eye of a demon, while Durandal shines as he falls on his foeman's head; the sunshine is all ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... maids? Do they meet the smiles of parents with feigned tears? They weep copiously within the very threshold of the nuptial chamber. No, so the gods help me, they do not truly grieve."—Catullus, lxvi. 15.]— [A more literal translation. D.W.] ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... by the merest accident, intercepted the enclosed prescription. As it seems rather a sorry jest, and tends to attract attention to Miss Dodd and her movements, he has ventured with some misgivings to send it back with a literal translation, on reading which it will be for Miss Dodd to decide whether it ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... superior to every man who makes you laugh, whether by making faces or verses? Are you aware that you have a pleasant sense of patronizing him, when you condescend so far as to let him turn somersets, literal or literary, for your royal delight? Now if a man can only be allowed to stand on a dais, or raised platform, and look down on his neighbor who is exerting his talent for him, oh, it is all right!—first-rate performance!—and all the rest of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... called and seemed much excited by the fact that he had received a despatch from Berlin in which the German Government—which, of course, means the Emperor—had strongly and finally declared against everything like an arbitration tribunal. He was clearly disconcerted by this too literal acceptance of his own earlier views, and said that he had sent to M. de Staal insisting that the meeting of the subcommittee on arbitration, which had been appointed for this day (Friday), should be adjourned on ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... little further this "babble of green fields" and of bare nature in general as superior to artificial imagery, for the poetical purposes of the fine arts. In landscape painting the great artist does not give you a literal copy of a country, but he invents and composes one. Nature, in her natural aspect, does not furnish him with such existing scenes as he requires. Everywhere he presents you with some famous city, or celebrated ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... himself from joviality during the time of his preparation, but he judiciously combines study with amusement—never stirring without his translation in his pocket, and even, if he goes to the theatre, beguiling the time between the pieces by learning the literal order of a new paragraph. Every school possesses circulating copies of these works: they have been originally purchased in some wild moment of industrious extravagance by a new man; and when he passed, he sold them for five shillings to another, who, in turn, disposed of them ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... of letters, in the transition from hieroglyphical to literal expression, it is not to be wondered if the custom of expressing ideas by personal images, which had so long prevailed, should still retain its influence on the mind, though the use of letters had rendered the practical ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... profess to speak in the name of religion? At the same time, though we bring support to the New Testament, it would, indeed, be a misconception if these, or any such remarks, were quoted as sustaining its literal accuracy—an idea from which so much harm has come in the past. It would, indeed, be a good, though an unattainable thing, that a really honest and open-minded attempt should be made to weed out from that record the obvious forgeries and interpolations ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... constitution, and in the subservience of the individual to the institution. This was temperamental. Behind them were many much larger groups of those needed either the interpretation or the protection of the law for their private interests. These were of all sorts from honest literal-minded dealers, through shady contractors and operators, down to grafters and the very lowest type of strong-arm bullies. The tone and respectability came from the first, the practical results from the second. The first class had a genuine intellectual contempt for men whose minds ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... nine times in the New Testament, and with the single exception of Acts 17:29, refers every time to the mark of the beast. We are not, of course, to understand in this symbolic prophecy, that a literal mark is intended; but the giving of the literal mark, as practiced in ancient times, is used as a figure to illustrate certain acts that will be performed in the fulfillment of this prophecy. And from the literal ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... that the body is in a literal sense of the word, a chemical laboratory. The foods we eat, the fluids we drink, the gases we breathe are complex chemical compounds which the body must take apart and put together again in such a way that ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... I; odious mono-literal; thinnest, feeblest, most insignificant of letters, I dread your egotistic influence as my bane; they will not suffer you, nor bear with a book so speckled with your presence. Still, world, hear me; ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... our [10] ideas; their sentiments are not our sentiments their ethical life represents for us regions of thought and emotion yet unexplored, or perhaps long forgotten. Any one of their ordinary phrases, translated into Western speech, makes hopeless nonsense; and the literal rendering into Japanese of the simplest English sentence would scarcely be comprehended by any Japanese who had never studied a European tongue. Could you learn all the words in a Japanese dictionary, your acquisition would not help you in the least to make yourself understood in speaking, ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... government, like the most perfect of religions, taken in a literal sense, is a contradictory idea. The problem is not to discover how we shall be best governed, but how we shall be most free. Liberty commensurate and identical with Order,—this is the only reality of government and politics. How shall this absolute liberty, synonymous with order, ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... husband, and him, and the Chief. Tell him I love my friend. Tell him I think he deserves to be in Rome. Tell him—' Enter Countess Ammiani to reprove her for endangering the hopes of the house by fatiguing herself. Sandra sends a blush at me, and I smile, and the countess kisses her. I send you a literal transcript of one short scene, so that you may feel ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... only that. You mustn't be so literal about everything. I mean let's not become baggy-minded. Take Flora again. Flora was her class poetess and I don't believe she has a literary thought or a book in her head now except her account book. Let us improve ourselves, Albert. Read evenings and subscribe to the Symphony and the Rubinstein ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... (tom. ii. l. xvii. p. 225,) instead of pounds, uses the more classic appellation of talents, which, in a literal sense and strict computation, would multiply sixty ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... sides, and looks of astonishment were cast in my direction. Certainly my entrance to Natondre could not have been more dramatic, and I believe that they almost thought that I had fallen from the skies, which is the literal meaning ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... had a decent man to manage it. It came to nothing this year. She told me so. You see it just is a literal new castle. Mr. Argenter is too busy in town to look after it; and they've been cheated and disappointed right and left. They're not to blame for being new," he continued, seeing the least possible little lifted look about Amy's delicate lips and eyebrows. "I hate that ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... she is worse. With her complaint, being worse may be only a preliminary to being better. Don't take my words for more than their literal meaning.' ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... law of the flesh, live with Christ to the law of the mind. To live with Christ after death is to rise with Him. It implies Resurrection. Here again Arnold is constrained to admit the validity of Catholic interpretation. He cannot deny that Paul believed absolutely in the physical, literal, and material fact of Christ's bodily Resurrection. But he insists that, while accepting this fact, Paul lays far more stress upon the spiritual interpretation of it. For Paul, death is living after the flesh; life is mortifying the flesh by the spirit; "resurrection is the rising, ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... fashion. It is no wonder that the heart of a female, unimproved by reason, and untinctured with natural good sense, should flutter at the sight of such a gaudy thing, among the number of her admirers: this impression is enforced by fustian compliments, which her own vanity interprets in a literal sense, and still more confirmed by the assiduous attention of the gallant, who, indeed, has nothing else to mind. A Frenchman in consequence of his mingling with the females from his infancy, not only becomes acquainted with all their customs ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... showed up vividly the elements of Mormon life that were most repulsive to her, the broad assumptions of ignorance, the fierce beliefs born of isolation, and the growth by indulgence of such animal characteristics as were not kept under by a literal morality or enforced by privations. She was going to see a man who could speak with the voice of the sober past, whose tones would bring back to her the intellectual delicacies of Ephraim's conversation, the broad, pure vision of ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... the literal reproduction of sights and scenes which our natural instinct and our better informed taste and judgment teach us to avoid, art has been far in advance of literature. It is three hundred years since Joseph Ribera, more commonly known as Spagnoletto, was ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... found free from that grossness which is unavoidable in a strictly literal translation of the original into English; and which has rendered the splendid translations of Sir R. Burton and Mr. J. Payne quite unsuitable as the basis of a popular edition, though at the same time stamping ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... cramping weight of shoes and the freedom of their minds from the restraints of school. With the approach of maturity came routine and responsibility for the whites, routine alone for the generality of the blacks. Some of the males of each race grew into ruffians, others into gentlemen in the literal sense, some of the females into viragoes, others into gentlewomen; but most of both races and sexes merely became plain, wholesome folk of a ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... organise themselves on communistic principles. The Christians shared all things; those who had property realised it, and pooled the proceeds in a common fund, which was distributed to individual members as need arose. It is impossible not to recognise in this action consistent and literal obedience to the teaching of Jesus. The disciples had followed Jesus to the end of his journey in Jerusalem; they were waiting for his manifestation in glory, and sold all that they had and gave to the poor. But in terms of political ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... was the idealist historian of the poet, and that the adventures which he related of him were not to be taken in the literal ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... Mrs. Procter. What was it Suzanna had once said? "Mrs. Procter cuddles all children in her heart." And Suzanna and Maizie stood watching her, asking a literal translation of a principle laid down for ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... into practicality when he desires his friend to 'study the mother,' and take notes of all that passed, as it might have the effect of fixing the fate of the lover. Temple, it may be imagined, did not interpret his commission in such a literal spirit, and inconstancy and insanity could hardly be recommendations in Miss Blair's eyes. That such should be the case,—outside the confessions of Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre,—would appear to the ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... inaccuracies they are merely literal accidents, and the books reflect credit on author, publishers, and stereotyper. We ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... has his difficulties with all the poets. Homer is too literal, Milton too literary, and there is too much of the whooping savage in Whitman. He seems to think the real poet is yet to appear; a poet on new terms, the reconciler, the poet-priest,—one who shall unite the whiteness and purity of the saint with the power and unction ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... excellent objection. You might also, with some propriety, object to the term equilibrium being applied to a body that is without weight; but I know of no expression that would explain my meaning so well. You must consider it, however, in a figurative rather than a literal sense; its strict meaning is an equal diffusion. We cannot, indeed, well say by what power it diffuses itself equally, though it is not surprising that it should go from the parts which have the most to those which have ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... be the theological history of a soul, so I shall not attempt to decide upon the exact proportion of literal acceptance of Christian dogma underlying the young pastor's sermons. I doubt if he could have told you himself, and I am sure he would have considered the point as unimportant as I do. His was a message of humanity delivered in terms of Christianity. The message ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... boat, making a winter passage. There were very few cabin passengers. No second cabin, but plenty of steerage. She sailed, you remember, from Naples. He had been doing some work, some very important work, in the Aquarium. The only other person of consequence—I am speaking in the most literal and un-snobbish sense—in the first cabin, was Benson. No" (with a lifted hand), "don't interrupt me. Benson, as we all know, was an international figure. But Benson was getting old. His son could be trusted to carry on the House of Benson. In fact, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... chamber, though it often boast The grateful presence of a literal toast, Can hardly claim, amidst its various wealth, The right unchallenged to propose a health; Yet though its tenant is denied the feast, Friendship must launch his sentiment at least, As prisoned damsels, locked from lovers' ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... you with a clever air why the servile wars were always the most fierce, desperate and atrocious of all wars. And you may make such answer as you can—even the eminently feminine one, if you choose, so typical of the women's literal mind "I don't see what this has to do with it!" How many arguments have been knocked over (I won't say knocked down) by these few words! For if we men try to put the spaciousness of all experiences into our reasoning and would fain ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... eagerness to do something which will pass as a settlement, either China's—and Siberia's—interests will be sacrificed in some unfair compromise, or irritation and friction will be increased—and in the end so will armaments. In any literal sense, it is ridiculous to suppose that the problems of the Pacific can be settled in a few weeks, or months—or years. Yet the discussion of the problems, in separation from the question of armament, may be of great use. For it may further that publicity which is a pre-condition of any ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... Rupert, stamping about between cold and anger, and slapping himself like a cabman, "he doesn't seem to have been very literal or truthful in this case, nor you either. Why the deuce, may I ask, have you brought us ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... possess a particle of that mysterious, yet in his calling priceless, gift termed magnetism for the lack of a better definition. All respected him, few warmed toward him or thought of opening to him their hearts. His mind was literal, and within it the doctrines were like labelled and separate packages, from which he took from time to time what he wanted as he would supplies from a store-room. God was to him a Sovereign and a Judge who would save a few of the human race in exact accordance with ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... works were suspended, having got leave of absence from Mr. Taylor, who commanded the Bell Rock tender, and had in his possession one of the Protection Medals. Unfortunately, however, for Dall, the Regulating Officer thought proper to disregard these documents, as, according to the strict and literal interpretation of the Admiralty regulations, a seaman does not stand protected unless he is actually on board of his ship, or in a boat belonging to her, or has the Admiralty protection in his possession. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the conquest of the air, its significance is symbolic rather than literal, and, like Pindar checking the steeds of his song, Hugo ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... the katobolism generally. Volubility is almost regularly increased, and is, indeed, one of the most sensitive and constant of the correlations in emotional delight.... Pleasantness is correlated in living organisms by vascular, muscular and glandular extension or expansion, both literal and figurative." (G. Dearborn, "The Emotion of Joy," Psychological Review Monograph Supplements, vol. ii, No. 5, p. 62.) All these signs of joy appear to occur at some stage of the process ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... with Evelyn. She had attracted him strongly when he was in her visible presence; but now he thought he understood her better than he had ever done then. He had, he felt, not grasped the inner meaning of much that she said. Words might convey but little in their literal sense and yet give to a sympathetic listener an insight into the depths of the speaker's nature, or hint at a thought too finely spun ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... for his first friend a comrade who knew exactly his own limits. Guynemer could save Jean Krebs from his excess of literal honesty by showing him the enchantment of his own ecstasies, but Jean Krebs furnished the motor for Guynemer's ambitious young wings. Without the technical lessons of Jean Krebs, could Guynemer later have got into the aviation field at Pau, and won so easily ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... amazing tale. It pleased him to reflect that if she could see him at the Walker table with Red Leary and the Governor, that most accomplished of villains, eating hot biscuits which had been specially forbidden by his physician, she would undoubtedly decide that he had made a pretty literal interpretation of her injunction to throw a challenge ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... "breath of life" and, by means of the wand which he called "the great magician,"[78] could enable the dead to be born again. The wand is supposed by some scholars[79] to be a conventionalized representation of the uterus, so that its power of giving birth is expressed with literal directness. Such beliefs and stories of the "magic wand" are found to-day in scattered localities from the Scottish Highlands to ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... the existence of which he admits as fully as any Darwinian, Mr. Booth tells men whose evil case is one of those consequences that envy is a corner-stone of our competitive system." Mr. [287] Cunningham's physiological studies will have informed him that the process of "shutting the eyes," in the literal sense of the words, is not always wilful; and I propose to illustrate, by the crucial instance his own letter furnishes, that the "shutting of the eyes" of the mind to the obvious consequences of accepted propositions may also be involuntary. At least, ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... sheet, and as he compared the constructed renderings with the literal translation, the ghost of a smile stole across ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman |
