"Perspective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vast amphitheatre of granite, curving away on either hand and reaching up, tier on tier, till the tiers melted in the grey sky overhead. The lowest tier stood twenty feet above my head; yet curved with so lordly a perspective that on the far side of the arena, as I looked across, it seemed almost level with the ground; while the human figures about the great archway yonder were diminished to the size of ants about a hole. . . For there were human figures busy in the arena, ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... and faithful in affection. Great want of plodding perseverance, doing many things with promise and nothing well. A fine ear for music: no execution; a good eye for drawing: no knowledge or practice in perspective; more critical than constructive. Very cool and decided with horses. Good nerve, good whip and a fine rider. Intellectually self-made, ambitious, independent and self-willed. Fond of admiration and love from both men and women, and able ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... past and future, the distant and the near, would seem to be brought into immediate perception, it does not therefore confer upon us a higher degree of spirituality. It may undoubtedly offer us a truer perspective than that we may derive from the ordinary circumstance of our lives, and may suggest good grounds for a more comprehensive ethical system, but it cannot compel one to do the right thing or to lead the virtuous life. Clairvoyance, indeed, is a faculty ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... die. A copy of the Jus Divinum held too close to the eyes could shut out the universe with its infinite chances and changes, its splendid indifference to our ephemeral fates. Cromwell, we should gather, had found out the secret of this historical perspective, to distinguish between the blaze of a burning tar-barrel and the final conflagration of all things. He had learned tolerance by the possession of power,—a proof of his capacity for rule. In 1652 Haynes writes: "Ther was ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... she was happy in knowing herself admired; and she was happy in having the two dances with Edmund still to look forward to, during the greatest part of the evening, her hand being so eagerly sought after that her indefinite engagement with him was in continual perspective. She was happy even when they did take place; but not from any flow of spirits on his side, or any such expressions of tender gallantry as had blessed the morning. His mind was fagged, and her happiness sprung from being the friend with whom it ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of one or more organizations, and it is clearly evident that this number is increasing. The scope of these associations is constantly broadening as women themselves are emerging from their narrow environment and seeing the needs of the world in wider perspective. They are slowly but certainly learning to devote their time and energy to larger objects, and they are awakening to a perception, above all else, of the strength that lies in combination, a knowledge which was a sealed book to the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... nervous tension that characterizes city life when the domestic scene is surrounded by open fields or an occasional bit of woodland. The placid calm soothes frayed nerves and works wonders in restoring balance and perspective toward family and business problems. The harassed come to realize the inner truth of "God's in his heaven, all's ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... most modern embellishments in the temples have an air of remote antiquity. The colours are tempered with gum; and but for their inferiority in drawing the human figure, as compared with the Egyptians, and their defiance of the laws of perspective, their inharmonious tints, coupled with the whiteness of the ground-work, would remind one of similar peculiarities in the paintings in the Thebaid, and the caves of ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... now even more keenly than he had at the time. Looking back at them, he gained a new perspective that emphasized each disagreeable detail. But he had only to think of Marjory as there with him and—presto, they vanished. Had she been with him at Davos—better still, were she able to go to Davos with him next winter—he ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... England and during the Revolution in France, he was in his proper place as the greatest citizen of his country. He was, first of men, broadly interested in all the colonies, and in his mind the future began to be comprehended in its true perspective and scale; and for these reasons to him properly belongs the title of "the first American." The type of his character set forth in the Autobiography (1817) was profoundly American and prophetic of the plain people's ideal ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... influence rested everywhere. Above the undulation of land on the horizon were the clouds, like heavenly hills, reflecting their radiance on those earthly elevations. The celestial mountains and valleys gave wondrous perspective to the outlook, and around them lay an ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... sometimes made sudden turns, sometimes narrowed into defiles as the boulders and cliffs drew closer or apart. The thoroughly dry atmosphere in these climates being perfectly transparent, there was no aerial perspective in this place of desolation. Every detail, sharp, accurate, bare, stood out, even in the background, with pitiless dryness, and the distance could only be guessed at by the smaller dimensions of objects. It seemed as though cruel nature had resolved not to ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... notion that judgments of living artists are impossible. They are bound to be corrupted, we are told, by prejudice, false perspective, mob emotion, error. The question whether this or that man is great or small is one which only posterity can answer. A silly begging of the question, for doesn't posterity also make mistakes? Shakespeare's ghost has seen two or three posterities, beautifully at odds. ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... the oak tree and the summer-house, the little lawn would even now have been as black as night; as it was, a sort of misty-gray twilight, increased, perhaps, by the thin vapors rising from the tranquil pool, filled all its precincts; and beyond these, stretching away in long perspective until the arch at the further end seemed dwindled to the size of a needle's eye, was the long aisle of gloomy foliage, as massive and impenetrable to any ray of light as the stone ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... the engraver whose works, not only according to his own judgment, but that of the most intelligent, deserve the first place among exemplars, and he attributes to him all perfections in highest degree, design, chiaro-oscuro, aerial perspective, local tints, softness, lightness, variety, in short everything which can enter into the most exact representation of the true and beautiful without the aid of color. Others may have surpassed him in particular things, but, according to the Italian teacher, he remains by common ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... signify any longer which way she took through the wilderness of this world? Diana's senses were benumbed; she no longer recognised the forms of things, nor their possible hard edges, nor the perspectives of time. Life seemed unending, long, it is true, to look forward to; but she saw it, not in perspective, but as if in a nightmare it were all in mass pressing upon her and taking away her breath. So what did points here and there amount to? What did it matter? any more than this snow which was beginning to come down ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... a drinking-shop perfumed with so strong a reek of kirsch and absinthe as took Servien's breath away. The room was long and narrow, while against the walls varnished barrels with copper taps were ranged in a long-drawn perspective that was lost in the thick haze of tobacco-smoke hanging in the air under the gas-jets. At little tables of painted deal a number of men were drinking; dressed in black and wearing tall silk hats, broken-brimmed ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... There were no Egyptian authorities in Gondokoro. It was a nest of robbers, and my men had just exhibited so pleasantly their attachment to me, and their fidelity! There was no European beyond Gondokoro, thus I should be the only white man among this colony of wolves; and I had in perspective a difficult and uncertain path, where the only chance of success lay in the complete discipline of my escort and the perfect organization of the expedition. After the scene just enacted I felt sure that my escort would give me more cause for ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... home no longer served to bound his ambitions, but offered only a mill-round of duties so petty, a horizon of opportunities so restricted, as to cause in his mind a feeling of distress equivalent at times to absolute abhorrence. The perspective of all things had changed. The men who had once seemed great to him in this little world now appeared in the light of a wider judgment, as they really were—small, boastful, pompous, cowardly, deceitful, pretentious. Franklin was himself now a man, and a man graduated ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... and brought me a stick rapier and Shelston a sugar-loaf, and had brought his wife who he said was a very pretty woman to the Ship tavern hard by for me to see but I could not go. Young Reeve also brought me a little perspective glass which I bought for my Lord, it cost me 8s. So after that my Lord in Sir H. Wright's coach with Captain Isham, Mr. Thomas, John Crew, W. Howe, and I in a Hackney to the Tower, where the barges staid for us; my Lord and the Captain in one, and W. Howe and I, &c., in ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Boston, in Philadelphia, ladies of seventy won't be old ladies any more; they're unwilling to wear their years avowedly, in quiet dignity by their firesides; they bare their bosoms and gallop egregiously to the ball-rooms of the young; and so we lose a particular graciousness that Kings Port retains, a perspective of generations. We happen all at once, with no background, in a swirl of ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... very agreeable in contrast to the bleakness of out-doors. She felt free and moved to exercise a looseness of tongue with the amiable old negress which was not common with her. The occurrences of the morning were gradually withdrawing themselves into a distant perspective that left her in the attitude of a spectator rather than that of an actor. And she laughed and talked with Marie Louise, and rocked, and rocked ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... kinds blended together, several of which the author wrote in Oliver's time, that were acted separately by stealth.—The History of Sir Francis Drake, expressed by instrumental and vocal music, and by art of perspective scenes, and the cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, were first printed in 4to. and make the third and fourth acts of this play. The second act consists of a French farce, translated from Mollier[e]'s Ganarelle, ou le Cocu Imaginaire, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... cheap fashion, a town of glass and stucco. The pungent odour of the eucalyptus trees, the light breeze stirred not the foliage, sheared into mathematical lines. It was like yards of baize dwindling in perspective; and between the tall trunks great plate-glass windows gleamed, filled with l'article ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... reached a point a few miles above Marietta, when an incident occurred to interrupt the resumed dialogue on the Spanish question. A skiff was seen to push off from the Ohio shore, and move rapidly in the direction of the flatboat, urged on by the long, powerful oar-strokes of a man who, even in distant perspective, appeared larger than life-size. Instead of hailing the crew of the passing vessel, as was customary, the man gave no sign that he was conscious of the existence of any other craft than his own fast-gliding skiff. However, he steered straight for the boat, hove alongside, sprang ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... were dark in the August night and the perspective of Beacon Street, with its double chain of lamps, was a foreshortened desert. The club on the hill alone, from its semi-cylindrical front, projected a glow upon the dusky vagueness of the Common, and as I passed it I heard in the hot stillness the click of a pair of billiard-balls. As "every one" ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... mother to select fascinating Bible biographies and stories, and tactfully to supervise the reading, is at least as wisely expended as that used in training a grape vine or sewing a lace edge on a ruffle. Is it not strange that there is such distorted perspective and false balance of values in regard to what is worth while? The cares of this world crowd out so many supreme things. Many a temptation in later life would have its antidote if the Holy Spirit could bring the needed ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... of this plot of ground rose the one-storied dwelling house, its length stretching into distant perspective, as it consisted of a single row of living and bedrooms. Almost every room had its own door, that opened into a veranda supported by colored wooden columns, and which extended the whole length of the garden side ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... laughed and loosened her furs. "It looks charmingly," she pronounced, ending her survey by an approach to the window, which gave, far below, the oblique perspective of a long side-street leading ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... with them. I used to wander among those rigid corpses, and peer into their austere faces, by the hour. The later the time, the more impressive it was; I preferred the late time. Sometimes I turned the lights low: this gave perspective, you see; and the imagination could play; always, the dim receding ranks of the dead inspired one with weird and fascinating fancies. Two years ago—I had been there a year then—I was sitting all alone in the watch-room, one gusty winter's night, chilled, numb, comfortless; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... celles des autres. Lorsque des malades indigens manquaient de secours, ou pecuniaires ou curatifs, il les leur procurait avec un plaisir qui lui faisait plus de bien que les eaux. Je me promenais un soir avec lui sur une hauteur couverte d'un massif de bois qui fait perspective de loin et pres duquel s'eleve un petit Hermitage. La, demeure un cenobite qui n'a de revenu que les aumones de ceux dont il recoit les visites. Nous acquittames chacun notre dette hospitaliere. En prenant conge de l'Hermite, M. le Baron d'Holbach me ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... remember that a wood is not an arbitrary assemblage of trees to be selected and disposed according to the caprice of its owner. "A forest," says Clave, "is not, as is often supposed, a simple collection of trees succeeding each other in long perspective, without bond of union, and capable of isolation from each other; it is, on the contrary, a whole, the different parts of which are interdependent upon each other, and it constitutes, so to speak, a true individuality. Every forest has a special character, determined by the form ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... aspirations of Henrietta had relieved Ferdinand from a depressing burthen. Inspired by her creative sympathy, a new scene opened to him, adorned by a magnificent perspective. His sanguine imagination sought refuge in a triumphant future. That love for which he had hitherto schooled his mind to sacrifice every worldly advantage appeared suddenly to be transformed into the very source of earthly success. Henrietta Temple was to be the fountain, not only of his bliss, ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... is the presentation in each number of a variety of the latest and best plans for private residences, city and country, including those of very moderate cost as well as the more expensive. Drawings in perspective and in color are given, together with full Plans, Specifications, Costs, Bills of Estimate, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... potatoes and Point. Here Severance and I made our summer home, basking in the delicious sunshine of the lovely bay. The bare outlines around Oldport sometimes dismay the stranger, but soon fascinate. Nowhere does one feel bareness so little, because there is no sharpness of perspective; everything shimmers in the moist atmosphere; the islands are all glamour and mirage; and the undulating hills of the horizon seem each like the soft, arched back of some pet animal, and you long to caress them with your hand. ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... arts are combined to produce a magical effect; where the most lofty and profound poetry has for its interpreter the most finished action, which is at once eloquence and an animated picture; while architecture contributes her splendid decorations, and painting her perspective illusions, and the aid of music is called in to attune the mind, or to heighten by its strains the emotions which already agitate it; the theatre, in short, where the whole of the social and artistic enlightenment, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... form of stencil pen invented by Mr. J. W. Brickenridge, of La Fayette, Ind. In Fig. 1 the entire apparatus is shown in perspective; Fig. 2 is a longitudinal section of the pen; and Fig. 3 is a vertical section of a portion of the driving apparatus. In this instrument compressed air is used as a motive force for driving the perforating needle. ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... very well educated for his time, whether self taught or not one cannot say; but that he was an excellent draughtsman, and had a complete knowledge of geometry, is evident from the wonderful drawings in his book, and the careful though rather verbose directions he gives for perspective drawing. Many of his numerous designs for furniture and ornamental items, are drawn to a scale with the geometrical nicety of an engineer's or architect's plan: he has drawn in elevation, plan, and minute detail, each of ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... from the ivy with which it was clad. Of the observer the station might be such that the owl, now emerged from the mantling, presented itself to his eye in profile, skirting with the Moon's limb. All this is well. The perspective is striking; and the picture well defined. But the poet was not contented. He felt a desire to enlarge it; and in executing his purpose gave it accumulation without improvement. The idea of the Owl's complaining is an artificial one; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... which will let no man pass, had begun to show itself a real fact upon the horizon of the future. Death looks so far away to the young, that while they acknowledge it unavoidable, the path stretches on in such vanishing perspective before them, that they see no necessity for thinking about the end of it yet; and far would I be from saying they ought to think of it. Life is the true object of a man's care: there is no occasion to make himself think about death. But when the vision of ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... Uinta. To the east I can see the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains, more than 150 miles distant. The air is singularly clear to-day; mountains and buttes stand in sharp outline, valleys stretch out in perspective, and I can look down into the deep canyon gorges and see ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... perspective of the commonwealth, whereby she foresees danger; or the traffic, whereby she receives every two years the return of a statesman enriched with eight years' experience from the prime marts of negotiation in Europe. And so much for the elections in the Senate that are ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... I thought ye To have a little breeding, some tang of Gentry; But now I take ye plainly, Without the help of any perspective, For that ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10) - The Humourous Lieutenant • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... seeming Narcissus-like intentness on his own manifold image, he could never have surmised that cruel blindness was its apology. He could never have guessed, from anything in their seeming, that the long perspective of gazing orbs, vanishing into nothingness, were not more ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of the house were pasted old newspapers, and calendars hung there such as the manufacturers of farm implements or grain merchants scatter abroad, and also prints of a religious character; a representation in crudest colour and almost innocent of perspective of the basilica at Ste. Anne de Beaupre—, a likeness of Pope Pius X.; a chromo where the palely-smiling Virgin Mary disclosed her bleeding heart ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... these beautiful transparencies of a West-India horizon gradually changed into murky-looking monitors, spreading gloom in the sombre perspective. The moon was in its second quarter, and was rising on the earth. The mist gathered thicker and thicker as she ascended, until at length she became totally obscured. The Captain sat upon the companion-way, anxiously watching the sudden change that was going on overhead; and, without speaking to any ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... meagre annals of that year tell us, six of the Earl of Tyrone's nearest kinsmen were put to death. Withal the people of Ulster were full of hope that O'Neill would return with forces to evict the evicters, but the farther they advanced into this agreeable perspective, the more rapidly did its ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... Around their lofty cornices hover flights of sculptured angels; and within the vault of the ceiling and the swelling interior of the dome, there are frescos of such brilliancy, and wrought with so artful a perspective, that the sky, peopled with sainted forms, appears to be opened only a little way above the spectator. Then there are chapels, opening from the side aisles and transepts, decorated by princes for ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... its own happiness. It needed to stand aside, so that the love given, and all given with that love—even these matters of house and gardens, of men-servants and maid-servants, of broad acres, all the poetry, in short, of great possessions—might be seen in perspective. For Katherine had that necessity—in part intellectual, in part practical, and common to all who possess a gift for rule—to resist the confusing importunity of detail, and to grasp intelligently ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... of mountains, for prudence prompted them to keep straight ahead. Another difficulty was added to these perils. The direction of the ship could not be accurately determined, as all the surrounding points constantly changed position, and thus failed to afford a fixed perspective. The darkness soon increased with the fog. Marie descended to her cabin, and the whole crew, by the captain's orders, remained on deck. They were armed with long boat-poles, with iron spikes, to preserve the ship from collision ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... others which are situated in the opposite part of the heavens. The proof of this fact is found in the observations which show that on one side of us the stars are apparently coming closer together, while on the other side they are going farther apart. The phenomenon, in a word, is one of perspective, and may be made real to the understanding by noting what takes place when we travel down a street along which there are lights. We readily note that these lights appear to close in behind us, and widen their intervals in the direction in which we journey. By such evidence astronomers ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... he had drawn—it revealed its true nature in the perspective of days. There was no mistaking what it was. It was The Abyss. It could widen and it could engulf. How much light would a Leadership Star cast in that ...
— In the Control Tower • Will Mohler
... events have adjusted and cleared our vision by giving us the true perspective and ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... in the contrary direction for this same order of currents. But, in both cases, and this is the important point, the direction of rotation changes when the order in the succession of currents; is inverted. Fig. 6 gives a perspective view of the registering apparatus, and Fig. 5 represents it in diagram. It will be at once seen that, the toothed wheel, r, is reduced to its simplest expression, since it consists of two teeth only. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... face, one voice, one habit, and two persons; A natural perspective, that is, and ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... when it was believed the fire had been checked, the full extent of the destitution and suffering of the people was seen for the first time in near perspective. While the whole city was burning there was no thought of food or shelter, death, injury, privation, or loss. The dead were left unburied and the living were left to find food and a place ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... Without doing any violence to human nature it sets it right with life, harmonizing it with all surrounding things, and restoring those who are jaded with the fatigue and dust of the world to a new grace of living. In the mere matter of altering the perspective of life and changing the proportions of things, its function in lightening the care of man is ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... make impossible actions possible, unheard of effects could be reached, all still remained in the outer framework of the stage. The photoplay showed a performance, however rapid or unusual, as it would go on in the outer world. An entirely new perspective was opened when the managers of the film play introduced the "close-up" and similar new methods. As every friend of the film knows, the close-up is a scheme by which a particular part of the picture, perhaps only the face of the hero or his hand or only a ring on ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... predominatingly economic social organization by frankly recognizing the economic as the basis of all things in the social life. Modern economic socialism is, therefore, rightfully judged as materialistic. It is really an expression of the industrial and commercial spirit of the present age. When the perspective of life becomes shifted again to the more important biological and spiritual elements in life, socialism will lose its prevailingly economic character, or it ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... spent her five-and-twenty years, shut in by the hills, and, more surely, by the iron bars of circumstance. To her the heights had always meant escape, for in the upper air and in solitude she found detachment—a sort of heavenly perspective upon the affairs ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... inaccurate; he says that tarsia was first introduced in the time of Brunelleschi and Paolo Uccello, "that, namely, of conjoining woods, tinted of different colours, and representing with these buildings in perspective, foliage, and various fantasies of different kinds." Both he and Lanzi say that Brunelleschi gave lessons in perspective and "tarsia" to architects and others, of which Masaccio in painting and Benedetto da Majano in his inlaid works availed themselves. Vasari held but a poor opinion of tarsia, ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... the forest was a high palisade built from tree to tree. Inside of the gate beside a small conical hut burned the sacred fires tended by Mungongo; before a green canvas tent stood the new idol, which differed from the original in having a better perspective and proportion of features and body, yet lacked the master touch of expression given by the subconscious ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... carried it down to the river's edge and hung it upon the bough of the weeping willow tree. His eyes were still upon it, he was still regarding it at long range, through the shack door, getting the foreshorten of it, getting the middle distance, getting the perspective, utterly unable to stop his ceaseless staring into the emptiness of it, stop wondering ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... of marriage. You look forward to a life of content and peace and honorable ambition—a life, with your wife at your side, which is to last forty or fifty years. You consider where you will be twenty years from now, at what point of your career you may become a judge or give up practise; your perspective is unlimited; you even think of the college to which you may send your son. It is a long, quiet future that you are looking forward to, and you choose my daughter as the companion for that future, as the one woman with whom you could live content for that length of time. And it is in ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... has, through quiet meditation and perspective, had a chance to develop the films of thought, he finds that he has brought back home pictures that one ought not to keep to one's self; especially in this day, when, what happens to Asia is so largely to ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... cherished, of making sketches of those places which interested me, from a defect of eye or of hand was totally ineffectual. After long study and many efforts, I was unable to apply the elements of perspective or of shade to the scene before me, and was obliged to relinquish in despair an art which I was most anxious to practise. But show me an old castle or a field of battle, and I was at home at once, filled it with ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... showered me with questions about you and father, which I answered as well as I could, but I soon found I couldn't keep my secret, so I just up and told him all. He was very grave, but not cross. 'You need time to think things over, and to get a right perspective,' he said, 'and our home will be yours until ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... her white face a little, and it was queer to hear her say these things. At that time of the morning there are comparatively few people out in that part of the town. The broad interminable perspective of the East India Dock Road, the great perspective of drab brick walls, of grey pavement, of muddy roadway rumbling dismally with loaded carts and vans lost itself in the distance, imposing and shabby in its spacious meanness of aspect, in its immeasurable poverty of forms, of colouring, of life—under ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... as it were, at a glance, and felt how terrible might be the result should they really fall into the hands of the warriors, excited to exercise their ingenuity in devising the means of torture; and he gazed into the frightful perspective with a manly steadiness that did him credit, even while ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... but still the hills are clearly defined, without the harsh outlines so characteristic of a moist air. The skies are bright, the sun powerful; and there is an almost imperceptible haze that seems to soften the landscape, and keep every object in true perspective. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... "The Bible in Spain," which was pieced together out of long letters to the Bible Society, and, moreover, was written within a few years of the events described. The events of his childhood and youth had retired into a perspective that was beyond his control: he would often be tempted to change their perspective, to bring forward some things, to set back others. In any case these things were no longer mere solid material facts. They were living a silent life of spirits within his brain. He took to calling the book ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... soon begins to appreciate the moral superiority of a system of law over one of capricious interference; and as the jumble of means and ends is brought into more intelligible perspective, partial or seeming good is cheerfully resigned for the disinterested and universal. Self-restraint is found not to imply self-sacrifice. The true meaning of what appeared to be Necessity is found to be, not arbitrary Power, but Strength and Force enlisted in the service ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... gardens. Its long avenue of green and flowery branches, that overtopped the heads of the neighboring fruit trees, was bordered on the south by a low and ancient wall over which grew roses and honeysuckles. The long leafy avenue gave the impression of great depth, and its perspective melted into a bower of vines and jasmine bushes that in turn became a great verdant place, which came to an end at a storehouse of ancient construction, whose gray stones ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... they swung around on the trend of the ridge, they came abreast a mighty gap in the mountains to the left, and there, far down, lay a valley as flattened by perspective as the ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... play'd the painter and hath stell'd, Thy beauty's form in table of my heart; My body is the frame wherein 'tis held, And perspective it is best painter's art. For through the painter must you see his skill, To find where your true image pictur'd lies, Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still, That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes. Now ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... an inspection of their productions convinced you of the contrary) that some tremendous outburst of Art was rivalling the Italian Renaissance. For those who were capable of tackling straight lines and the intricacies of perspective there were the steep cobbled streets of charming and irregular architecture, while for those who rightly felt themselves colourists rather than architectural draughtsmen, there was the view from the top of the hill over the marshes. There, but for one straight line to mark the horizon (and that ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... on some tuft of lilacs over a burn, and smoke innumerable pipes to the tune of the water on the stones. A bird will sing in the thicket. And there he may fall into a vein of kindly thought, and see things in a new perspective. Why, if this be not education, what is? We may conceive Mr. Worldly Wiseman accosting such an one, and the conversation that should ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dawn of day when, from his house, accompanied by the boy, Mr. Lang passed out in search of Bill. A light rain was falling, and in perspective he saw a dull, drizzly sort of a day,—a bad air for a low-spirited individual. The "blues" are contagious on such a day. Yet he strove to keep his spirits up, and to make the best of a ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... inherited, and into which she was guided by our Mother. Then she never thought she had learned enough, but throughout her whole life was constantly improving and adding to her knowledge. She owed to Mother's teaching the first principles of drawing, and I have often seen her refer for rules on perspective to "My Childhood in Art,"[20] a story in which these rules were fully laid down; but Mother had no eye for colour, and not much for figure drawing. Her own best works were etchings on copper of trees and landscapes, whereas ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... shopping thoroughfares of the metropolis, containing many fine stores for the sale of dry goods, millinery, china, glassware, and jewelry. These shops are generally quite open in front. Standing at the end, and looking along either of these thoroughfares, one gets a curious perspective view. The party-colored awnings often stretch entirely across the narrow streets, reminding one of a similar effect in Canton, where straw matting takes the place of canvas, forming a sort of open ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... passed; nor did she once opine How, better than all books, she had raised for me In swift perspective Europe's history Through the vast years of Caesar's ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... the lives he touches have worth, worth of pleasure, of humour, of patience, of wisdom painfully acquired, of endurance, of hope, even I will say of failure and despair. He doesn't blink anything, he looks straight at it all, but he sees it in the true perspective, under a white light, and seeing all the Evil says nevertheless with God, 'Behold, it is very good.' You see," he added, with his charming smile, turning to Audubon, "I agree with God, not with you. And perhaps if you were to read poetry ... but, ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... scraping and salting of fish. Under the cornice, hunters and dogs drive the gazelle across the undulating plains of the desert. Every row represents one of the features of the country; but the artist, instead of arranging the pictures in perspective, separated them and depicted them one ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... reading aloud to them; the distance from the ladies in the bow window being such, that they could receive no disturbance from her. At the next window were placed a group of girls, from the age of ten years old to fourteen. Of these, one was drawing figures, another a landscape, a third a perspective view, a fourth engraving, a fifth carving, a sixth turning in wood, a seventh writing, an eighth cutting out linen, another making a gown, and by them an empty chair and a tent, with embroidery, finely fancied, before it, which we afterwards found had been left by a young ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... of its local history being incorporated in the national story in its proper proportion and perspective cannot be overestimated. When in all the ten volumes of Thomas B. Reed's magnificent collection, entitled "Modern Eloquence," we find but one speech that was delivered in California, and that, while ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis
... this system to the people, a perspective view of the court, gorgeously painted, and finely illuminated from within, was exhibited to the gaping multitude. Party was to be totally done away, with all its evil works. Corruption was to be cast down from court, as Ate was from heaven. Power was thenceforward to be the chosen residence ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... have no perspective in their brains. Rachel understands me a great deal too well to make me explain what is ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the man who had shown his superiority under other difficult circumstances flinched beneath the weight of these. His talents were distempered, his lights danced about, he was, sustained only by the rectitude of his intentions and by vanity born of his hopes, for he had ever in reserve that perspective of confidence and esteem with which he believed the third estate to be impressed towards him; but the promoters of the revolution, those who wanted it complete and subversive of the old government, those men who were so small a matter at the outset, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... be said that any part had exactly fallen to decay, there were many rooms which had been long disused, in which the old frescoes and architectural designs in grey and white, and bits of bold perspective painted in the vaults and embrasures, were almost obliterated by time, and in which such furniture as there was could not survive much longer. About one-half of the state apartment, comprising, perhaps, fifteen or twenty rooms, large and small, had been occupied by Donna Francesca and her husband, ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... through the eye to the brain, and the colour inspires a genial train of ideas beyond reason's power instantly to banish. But the walls, if ruddy, were high, and the rows of small, remote windows, black as the eye-socket of a skull, stretched away in dreary iron-bound perspective where the sides of the main fabric rose upward to its chastened architectural adornments. Young Blanchard grunted to himself, gripped his stick, from one end of which was suspended his carpet-bag, and walked ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... surpassing technological triumph, men turned their thoughts toward home and humanity—seeing in that far perspective that man's destiny on earth is not divisible; telling us that however far we reach into the cosmos, our destiny lies not in the stars but on Earth itself, in our own hands, in our ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... book. With thee I knew All that a poet could desire, Oblivion of life's tempest dire, Of friends the grateful intercourse— Oh, many a year hath run its course Since I beheld Eugene and young Tattiana in a misty dream, And my romance's open theme Glittered in a perspective long, And I discerned through Fancy's prism ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... for a solitary walk in the evening light, and as he walked, suddenly his dead father became real to him. He thought of things far away down the perspective of memory, of jolly moments when his father had skylarked with a wildly excited little boy, of a certain annual visit to the Crystal Palace pantomime, full of trivial glittering incidents and wonders, of his father's ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... and above these are dolphins sporting in billowing waves. The body of the vase begins with wide flutings between the tops of which are shells and seaweed. These are surrounded by a ring of marine cable. On the front, a scene represents the lifesavers at work. In perspective some distance out, where the sea rises in mountainous waves, there is a wrecked vessel, and in the foreground lifesavers are carrying the rescued to the beach. The ornamentation that covers the top of the body of the vase consists of a ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... be said that there is method in this madness; since man's twofold blindness, his dogmatism and his scepticism, his immobility and his wantonness, tend in the long run to neutralize one another. But with the perspective required for such consolation, neither the agencies of destruction nor those of obstruction preserve the same heroic proportions which they are wont to assume in their day. They seem to be engaged in a sort of by-play, and wear an unmistakable aspect of childishness. Lo! Mankind ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... to live in London, as I shall tell you, when I was nearly twenty-two. Wimblehurst dwindles in perspective, is now in this book a little place far off, Bladesover no more than a small pinkish speck of frontage among the distant Kentish hills; the scene broadens out, becomes multitudinous and limitless, full of ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... about two by four inches, with embossed gilt paper covers—Newbery's own specialty as a binding. The sixty-five little illustrations at the top of its pages were numerous enough to afford pleasure to any eighteenth century child, although they were crude in execution and especially lacked true perspective. The first chapter after the "Address to Parents" and to the other people mentioned on the title-page gives letters to Master Tommy and Miss Polly. First, Tommy is congratulated upon the good character that his Nurse has given ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... wooden town with twinkling lights, to his left the black prairie, and above the crystal vast a moonless night, so clear that the upward glance almost saw the perspective between nearer and ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... expansion, and government. In the recognition of these social and economic tendencies the individual merges into the group; the group into the community; the community into a new society. In this clear perspective of historic development the spectacular hero at first sight seems to diminish; but the mass, the movement, the social force which he epitomizes and interprets, ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... [A natural perspective] A perspective seems to be taken for shows exhibited through a glass with such lights as make the pictures appear really protruberant. The Duke therefore says, that nature has here exhibited such a show, where shadows seem realities; where that which is not appears ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... do me good. So to the cutler's, and there did give Tom, who was with me all day, a sword cost me 12s. and a belt of my owne ; and sent my own silver-hilt sword agilding against to-morrow. This morning I did visit Mr. Oldenburgh, and did see the instrument for perspective made by Dr. Wren, of which I have one making by Browne; and the sight of this do please me mightily. At noon my wife came to me at my tailor's, and I sent her home, and myself and Tom dined at ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... through a long range of apartments, his mask was removed, and he looked round upon a splendid saloon, hung with crimson velvet, and blazing with mirrors which reached from floor to ceiling, while the dim perspective of a long conservatory was revealed at the farther end. His conductor rang a silver bell, which was immediately answered by a little page, richly dressed in scarlet. This boy entered into conversation in German with the cavalier, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... 10 below zero Fahr. at 2 a.m. on the 22nd. Some hours earlier we had watched a wonderful golden mist to the southward, where the rays of the declining sun shone through vapour rising from the ice. All normal standards of perspective vanish under such conditions, and the low ridges of the pack, with mist lying between them, gave the illusion of a wilderness of mountain-peaks like the Bernese Oberland. I could not doubt now that the 'Endurance' was confined for the ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... painting to illustrate scenes in the life of an important celebrity, who was childishly represented many times over having separate adventures in the space of a few square feet, and of a Brobdingnacian bulkiness compared to his perspective surroundings. ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... can't make you love me, or bring you to a realizing sense of it if you do. So before I saw that chest I had planned to harvest my big crop, and try with all my heart while I did it, and if love hadn't come then, I meant to get some one to stay with you, and I was going away to give you a free perspective for a time. I meant to plead that I needed a few weeks with a famous chemist I know to prepare me better for my work. My real motive was to leave you, and let you see if absence could do anything for ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... throughout the country—though not in Fredonia. Such of the big opposition papers as were not under our control sent reporters and raked out the whole story; and it was blown up hugely and told everywhere. Our organs retold it, giving the true color and perspective; but my blundering attempt to avoid publicity had put me ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... up and down the vast river, no object intervened till sky and water met, as on the ocean; while, on either side, the tall forest walls diminished in the perspective till they sank into thin lines. Even here, however, it is narrow, though already very deep, compared to the width it attains lower down. Our satisfaction at having escaped from the savages and arrived at the high road, along which we were to proceed, was counterbalanced ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... first, but soon the events that had come over my life began to weave themselves in wild disharmony through my restful visions, and the events that were to come cast their lengthening shadows before them. The world of past, present, and future thoughts, came into my soul, distorted, without perspective, nothing to help me to discern the good from the evil, the suffering gone and long-forgotten from the pain in store. The triumph of discrepancy over waking reason, the fancied victories of the sleep-dulled intellect over ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... it rained, drawing a wet shroud of gloom over the pavements, the granite walls of the buildings, and the adamant perspective of the streets. Standing in my office window, I could see the flow of black umbrellas moving up and down town, like two torpid snakes. But though I am ordinarily sensitive to the effect of a long drizzle, ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... was taking no notice of them. He was used to attentions of that kind; it was a little compliment—of hate—they all paid him. He was looking persistently down the ranked, narrowing perspective of the buttressed forest glade to where it faded in the blue-gray mist, southward, as if he expected something to come from there. Something was coming from there now; and there had been a faint, uneasy sort of whisper in ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... letters give but an incomplete picture; and that, while writing them, Balzac was throwing much energy into schemes, which he either does not mention to his correspondent, or touches on in the most cursory fashion. Therefore the perspective of his life is difficult to arrange, and ordinary rules for gauging character are at fault. We find it impossible to follow the principle, that because Balzac possessed one characteristic, he could not also show a diametrically opposite quality—that, for instance, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... daily life, of course, he lost sight of this Whole, blinded by the details seen without perspective, mistaking his little personality for all there was of him; but now, as he rose, whirling, soaring, singing in the body of this stupendous music, he understood with a rush of indescribable glory that he was part and parcel of this great ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... monsoon having begun, Captain Barker expected before long to sight the Indian coast. One morning, about two bells, the lookout reported a small vessel on the larboard bow, laboring heavily. The captain took a long look at it through his perspective glass, and made out that it was a two-masted grab; the ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... Royat. Royat is a little patch of hotels at the bottom of a valley, at the gate of Clermont-Ferrand. A great many people there. A large park full of life. Superb view of the Puyde-Dome, seen at the end of a perspective of valleys. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... with her finger, she looked to him for his interpretation. Joseph, thus erected into a Scripture commentator, looked at the passages first near, and then afar off, as if the true interpretation depended on perspective. Having thus gained a little time, he said, "Well, I think the meaning is clear enough. We are to hide our own light under a bushel. But it don't say an agent is to hide ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Champlain's journal, written and illustrated by his own hand, in that defiance of perspective and absolute independence of the canons of art which mark the ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Jehovah's dwelling-place. From the ridge of Olivet, the very spot afterward occupied by Titus and his army, He looked across the valley upon the sacred courts and porticoes, and with tear-dimmed eyes He saw, in awful perspective, the walls surrounded by alien hosts. He heard the tread of armies marshaling for war. He heard the voice of mothers and children crying for bread in the besieged city. He saw her holy and beautiful house, her palaces and towers, given to the flames, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... within a very recent period," says he, "it seemed that no man could discuss him [Napoleon] or his time without manifesting such strong personal feeling as to vitiate his judgment and conclusions. This was partly due to the lack of perspective, but in the main to ignorance of the facts essential to a sober treatment of the theme. In this respect the last quarter of a century has seen a gradual but radical change, for a band of dispassionate scientific scholars have during that time been occupied ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... can say that of himself? But when I look around me at the American-born I have come to know as my close friends, I wonder whether, after all, the foreign-born does not make in some sense a better American—whether he is not able to get a truer perspective; whether his is not the deeper desire to see America greater; whether he is not less content to let its faulty institutions be as they are; whether in seeing faults more clearly he does not make a more decided effort to have America reach those ideals or ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... California. Only several persons, strangers to his recollection, were abroad, and they favoured him with incurious glances. They were wrapped in an uncongenial and frosty imperviousness. His first impression was surprise at his surprise. Through the wide perspective of twelve years of Western life, he had consistently and steadily discounted the size and importance of East Falls; but this was worse than all discounting. Things were more meagre than he had dreamed. ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... shore. I could not tell what to think of it, so went and lay in my castle perplexed and discomforted. At length, becoming very impatient, I clambered up to the top of the hill and perceived, by the help of my perspective glass, no less than thirty men dancing round a fire with barbarous gestures. While I was looking, two miserable wretches were dragged from the boats. One was immediately knocked down, while the other, seeing himself a little at liberty, started ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... cloudless sky, gleamed and flashed and sparkled upon the waters of the Solent, which, ruffled by a gentle westerly breeze, shone like a sheet of liquid gold. On the further side of the strait, the Isle of Wight upreared its green and wooded slopes in fair perspective; its northern shore, from Nettlestone Point to Egypt, bounding the view. On Lucy's right lay the entrance to Southampton Water, with the further shore, about Stone Point and the mouth of the Beaulieu River, indistinctly seen through the quivering golden haze; whilst ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... shift, and present no central character of manhood who grows and furnishes standard of comparison. Milton's genius was cast in a cyclopean mold, and needed distances remote as heaven and hell to give right perspective to his figures, and his supreme art concerns itself with Satan, and ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... association which had been the parent of that passion, dependent now entirely upon its continuance—they had been content, and had never given themselves any concern to analyze its origin, or to find for it a name. A momentary doubt—the presages of a dim perspective—would have taught them better. Had there been a single moment of discontent in their lives at this period, they had not remained so long in such ignorance. The fear of its loss can alone teach ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... ladder, and clambered up to the top of the hill, by my two stages, as usual; standing so, however, that my head did not appear above the hill, so that they could not perceive me by any means. Here I observed, by the help of my perspective glass, that they were no less than thirty in number; that they had a fire kindled, and that they had meat dressed. How they had cooked it I knew not, or what it was, but they were all dancing, in I know ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... the night before, and I lay there for a long time with my eyes open, making a strong effort of the imagination to account for the vision by the dim shapes of the furniture, the lace curtains, and the suggestive and shadowy perspective. But, although the interior was weird enough, by reason of the dingy hangings and the diffused light, I was unable to trace the origin of the illusion to any object within the range of my vision, or to account for the strange illumination which had startled me. I went to sleep thinking of ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... would give him no answer. For as soon as she was presented with the issue, the destiny, she began to look round her anxiously. The first person to fill the perspective was Charley Steele. As her mind dwelt on him, her uncle gave forth his judgment, that she should never have a penny if she married Tom Fairing. This only irritated her, it did not influence her. But there was Charley. He was a figure, was already noted in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was swept by a weight of men across a stage, and jumped among the music racks in the orchestra. He caught a glimpse of the early morning sun shining on the tawdry hangings of the boxes and the exaggerated perspective of the scenery. He ran through corridors between two great statues of Comedy and Tragedy, and up a marble stair case to a lobby in which he saw the white faces about him multiplied in long mirrors, and so out to an iron balcony from which he looked down, panting and breathless, upon ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... the green carpet that is so evenly laid between the dark stonework. The late-Norman nave, with its solemn double line of round columns, the extremely graceful arches of the Chapel of the Nine Altars, and the magnificent vaulted perspective of the dark cellarium of the lay-brothers, are perhaps the most fascinating portions of the buildings. I might be well compared with the last abbot but one, William Thirsk, who resigned his post, forseeing the coming Dissolution, and was therefore called 'a varra fole and a misereble ideote,' ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... reason I have found it impossible to use up, in what I have written upon places and their genius, these notes about Rome. I cannot focus Rome into any definite perspective, or see it in the colour of one mood. And whatever may have happened there to my small person has left no trace in what I have written. What I meet in Rome is Rome itself. Rome is alive (only the more so for its occasional air of death), and one is too busy loving, ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... greater fulness of expression, and he is evidently working in a deeper and richer vein of thought. Purity of expression is still his polar star, and his writing is nowhere overloaded, but it has a warmer tone, a deeper perspective, and an atmospheric quality which painters call chi-aroscuro. He charms with pleasing fancies, while he ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... brought a drawing of the Alceste on board to-day for Captain Maxwell: it is about two feet by one and a half, and is altogether a most extraordinary production, in which perspective and proportion are curiously disregarded. The captain and officers are introduced in full uniform, and a number of the sailors on the rigging and masts. With all its extravagance, however, it has considerable merit; there is nothing ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... christen it by the name of Two. The first stroke was a simple 1. The second is not simply another 1, a mere iteration of the first. It is 1^{1}, where the coefficient represents the reverberating first stroke, still persisting in the mind, and forming a background and perspective against which the new stroke may be distinguished. The meaning of "two," then, is "this after that" or "this again," where we have a simultaneous sense of two things which have been separately perceived but are identified as similar in their ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... vigorous in movement, full of dramatic situations, true to historic perspective, this story is a capital one for ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... all the crusts in our house and every one else's. I bribed the children to deliver up all their crusts to me, and commenced eating them with a voracity that excited the surprise of all the nursery inmates. But already, in perspective, I beheld my head adorned with long, glossy curls, and I persevered, despite the laughter I excited. I devoured crusts by the wholesale, but alas! no waving locks rewarded my patient toil; and at length I had the pleasure of hearing that the crust ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... that! There is something else,—hard to put into words, but I feel it! You don't see it? Well, that only confirms a theory of mine, that people are often blind to the qualities of their nearest relations. We cannot get our own families into proper perspective. It ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... him, as if he expected to see some one there. But there was nothing but the straight, long street, in narrowing perspective. ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... ourselves amid ghaut-like hills, and wondered when the topmost point would be gained and the descent to Malaga begun. I think it is at Fuente de la Reina that the magnificent view of the Mediterranean, the port and city of Malaga, and the long perspective of zigzags down spurs of mountains is seen. Neither the French nor English Handbook speaks of this view with the enthusiasm it deserves. It is far finer than the view on the heights looking down on Trieste and the Adriatic.... ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... tapestry. The little babe stretches out his arms and fingers, as if to grasp or to fathom the many-coloured vision; and thus he gradually learns the connexion of part with part, separates what moves from what is stationary, watches the coming and going of figures, masters the idea of shape and of perspective, calls in the information conveyed through the other senses to assist him in his mental process, and thus gradually converts a calidoscope into a picture. The first view was the more splendid, the second ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... robins, in every direction—the noisy, vocal, natural concert. For undertones, a neighboring wood-pecker tapping his tree, and the distant clarion of chanticleer. Then the fresh-earth smells—the colors, the delicate drabs and thin blues of the perspective. The bright green of the grass has receiv'd an added tinge from the last two days' mildness and moisture. How the sun silently mounts in the broad clear sky, on his day's journey! How the warm beams ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... related and subordinate to sculpture, they say that they have many more than the sculptors, because painting embraces the invention of history, the most difficult art of foreshortening, all the branches of architecture needful for the making of buildings, perspective, colouring in distemper, and the art of working in fresco, an art different and distinct from all the others; likewise working in oils on wood, on stone, and on canvas; illumination, too, an art different from all the others; the staining of glass, mosaics in glass, the art of inlaying and ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... emphatic note, when those are the notes required, with a felicity beyond either the comma or the semicolon; though indeed a fine sense for the semicolon, like any sort of sense at all for the pluperfect tense and the subjunctive mood, on which the whole perspective in a sentence may depend, seems anything but common. Does nobody ever notice the calculated use by French writers of a short series of suggestive points in the current of their prose? I confess to a certain shame for my not employing frankly that shade of indication, a finer shade ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... I before observed, one private pocket, which escaped their search, wherein there was a pair of spectacles (which I sometimes use for the weakness of mine eyes,) a pocket perspective, and some other little conveniences; which, being of no consequence to the emperor, I did not think myself bound in honour to discover, and I apprehended they might be lost or spoiled if I ventured them ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... events which were to be chronicled. It is of course true that only after the lapse of time can students gain access to ample documentary material, rid themselves of partisan prejudice and attain the necessary perspective. Unhappily, however, the citizen who takes part in public affairs or who votes in a political campaign cannot wait for the labors of half a century. He must judge on the basis of whatever facts he can find near at hand. Next to a balanced ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... gives a perspective view of Ayrton's Dispersion Photometer. C is the standard candle, L the concave lens, R the rod for producing the two shadows on ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... conditions on which the First Consul offered him his step-daughter's hand. But Duroc looked forward to something better, and his ordinary prudence forsook him at a moment when he might easily have beheld a perspective calculated to gratify even a more towering ambition than his. He declined the proposed marriage; and the union of Hortense and Louis, which Madame Bonaparte, to conciliate the favour of her brothers-in-law, had endeavoured ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... from the top of the last hill he had surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to rest, scattered among the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from the long-hoped-for turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for the first time, the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of sunset—hours of peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of the arrival in the railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men, an equivalent,—in those days, I say, when there was ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... constructive channels. The girl who otherwise might have painted atrocious pictures is, in the Village, decorating delightful-looking boxes and jars, or hammering metals into quaint, original shapes that embody her own fleeting fancies. The man who wanted to draw but could never get his perspective right is carving wood—a work where perspective is superfluous—and achieving pleasure for others, and comfort and a livelihood for himself, at one and the ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... background represented an elegant circular temple built of sponge cake, strawberry ice and spangles; it stood at the end of a perspective of columns constructed of the same materials, and between the columns were green bushes in ornamental flower-pots—all very pretty and gay—"molto bellissimo," as the buffo said. The orchestra struck up a ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... murmur pour; The sky is veiled, and every cheerful sight Dark is the region as with coming night; Yet what a sudden burst of overpowering light! Triumphant on the bosom of the storm, Glances the fire-clad eagle's wheeling form; Eastward, in long perspective glittering, shine The wood-crowned cliffs that o'er the lake recline; Those Eastern cliffs a hundred streams unfold, At once to pillars turned that flame with gold; Behind his sail the peasant strives to shun The west, that burns like one dilated sun, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... an actual discord becomes music then and the least gentle listen with pathetic eagerness. A worn phonograph screeching the popular songs of a past decade holds the rapt attention of such. It reminds them of that world they left long ago, a world which in the perspective of waning years looks all song and laughter, good company, good clothes, good food, and ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... muttered indistinctly. He was a man of moderate desires; would have been quite content if there had been no other world in perspective. He had studied this one, and made it pay: did not desire a better; sometimes ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... fundamental characteristics of verse—those have already been discussed—but rather its sources of incremental beauty, of richness and, subtle power. To draw an illustration from another art, they add light and shadow, fullness, roundness, depth of perspective, vividness, to what ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... generalize, but suddenly he knew that he was a successful writer; that if he kept his head and worked, a future was before him. So he soberly put his own English by the side of that of a master or two from his book-shelves, to keep his perspective clear, and then he worked harder. And it came to be five ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... instalments—it was excusable that one's analogies should be somewhat professional—and the text was a style considerably involved, a language not easy to translate at sight. There were shades of meaning in it and a vague perspective of history which receded as you advanced. Two facts Paul had particularly heeded. The first of these was that he liked the measured mask much better at inscrutable rest than in social agitation; its almost convulsive smile above all displeased ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James |
