"Take shape" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... yourself on either side of them. We hear talk of sanctified selfishness, of the adorable expansion of one race across the others, of noble hatreds and glorious conquests, and we see these ideals trying to take shape on all hands. This capricious multiplication of what ought to remain one leads the whole of civilization into a malignant and thorough absurdity. The words "justice" and "right" are too great in stature to be shut up in proper nouns, any more than Providence can be, which every royalty ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... apprehensively about him, as though fearing to see take shape out of the air the intangible force with which, on that other night three weeks before, he had fought to the utmost of his strength, only to be overcome at last. The memory of that fierce struggle was upon him now, chilling his veins and clutching his heart with terror. And he would ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... seemed to take shape in the kitchen (the time had been when Oleron would have said that a cloud had passed over the unseen moon). The low illumination on the blind at his elbow grew dimmer (the time had been when Oleron would have concluded that the lamplighter going his rounds had turned low ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... conference. Here I looked at sketches, plans, and working drawings until my eyes swam. Four more months passed which I utilized to the full. I then went to Kiel and saw a remarkable framework of steel slowly take shape upon the stocks across the way at Gaarden. Rotund, snug, and harmless the thing lay there. Inside it were hidden all the countless, complicated, and powerful features of those sketches and working drawings. I cannot boast that ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... words of a self- seeking man—a man of low ambitions. But they are the words of a man filled with a great purpose, inspired with a great thought, ready to do and to bear and to wait, so the purpose can be accomplished and the thought take shape. All is summed up by him in a single sentence: "Believe me, there is nothing that is not base that I would not do, nor any risk that I would not run, nor any inconvenience to myself that I would not encounter, to carry this business into ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... reassured now that a definite plan of action had been decided upon, Tom resumed work on his sketches. Although both the problem and the solution were still hazy in his mind, a few ideas began to take shape. ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... above, I spent some time in the morning of the 6th with the 1st Corps, but it was not before noon that the possibility of a German retirement began to take shape in my mind. The conviction that such a retirement was actually taking place was increased as the day wore on and after my visits to the 2nd ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... irritability were a constant torment to himself and his devoted wife. Many entries in his journal tell of his "dismal continual wrestle with Friedrich,"[24] perhaps the most characteristic of which is this: "My Frederick looks as if it would never take shape in me; in fact the problem is to burn away the immense dungheap of the eighteenth century, with its ghastly cants, foul, blind sensualities, cruelties, and inanity now fallen putrid, rotting inevitably towards annihilation; to destroy and extinguish ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... two ladies (themselves shockingly astray in their grammar) laughed at the absurdity of the thing, Marcus Wilkeson thought it was a capital idea. A plan which he had been idly revolving in his mind for the education of Miss Minford, began to take shape. The inventor (he reasoned) would not be likely to object to a strictly private school for his daughter, if the teacher were a lady of correct principles, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... party struggles did not take shape until well after the War of 1812. At the founding of the colony the people had been very much of one temper and one condition. In time, however, divergences appeared and gradually hardened into political divisions. A governing class, or rather clique, ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... Ideas take shape by some hidden, subtle skill at work within the poet. This creative power is the origin of poetry. Perceptions, feelings, or language, are only raw material. One may be gifted with feeling, a second with language, a third with both; but he who has ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... seemed endless, rising out of the black beyond only to take shape at the rifle muzzle. Thought and action were simultaneous. Each rifle was pressed tight into the shoulder, while the hot barrel hurled its billet of death deep into the ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... the two continents begin to take shape, and that as the result of Magellan's voyage is not generally known, North America is placed ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... washed out bottles. It had all been written, as fact, before he thought of any other use for it; and it was not until several months later, when the fancy of David Copperfield, itself suggested by what he had so written of his early troubles, began to take shape in his mind, that he abandoned his first intention of writing his own life. Those warehouse experiences fell then so aptly into the subject he had chosen, that he could not resist the temptation of immediately using them; and the manuscript recording ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... poem; and poet and critic passed the nights in hot if unproductive debate. On the whole, it seemed likely that the critic would win the day, and the essay on "The Rhythmical Structures of Walt Whitman" take shape before "The Banished God." Yet if the light in the cave was less supernaturally blue, the chant of its tides less laden with unimaginable music, it was still a thronged and echoing place when Undine ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... at the Strattons'. It had pleased him to see how they all liked her, but pleased him most of all that she could talk as an equal with these people, to him so brilliant and clever. The faint thought of her which had been unconsciously with him for years began to take shape. How pleasant it would be to be like the Strattons, to live with Nellie always, and have friends to come and see them on a Saturday night! How a man would work for a home like that, so full of music, so full of song, so full of beauty, so full ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... Balcarres afterwards declared that his friend had no intention of making for the Highlands till he learned that warrants were out for his apprehension. Yet it is probable that the idea of a Highland campaign had already begun to take shape in Dundee's mind before Mackay's advance forced him over the Grampians. His orders were, in the event of the Estates declaring for William, to keep quiet till the arrival of a regular force from Ireland should enable ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... the hills wore mystic colors, the sun shone passionately in a setting of tender blue. Words seemed a presumption just then, too much of a time or nation or age that passes. That which may or may not take shape in words remained the untied power of silent prayer. That morning among the many-colored hills I looked to sight the faith that can remove such as these. And I prayed there quietly, in prayer that seemed to need no words, ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... the work had been laid down on paper more than a dozen years ago. During that interval (as also for several years before it) the materials had been accumulating; but still, when the work actually began to take shape, the writer was standing, as it were, at one end of a coil, of which he could not see the other; the windlass was letting down a chain into depths which his eye could not penetrate, nor his knowledge ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... was seized by a vague dread of the unknown. She had closed the door behind her on entering, and as she stood alone in the long, silent, shadowy room, her dread seemed to take shape and sound, to be there audibly breathing and lurking among the shadows. Her short-sighted eyes strained through them, half-discerning an actual presence, something aloof, that watched and knew; and in the recoil from that intangible propinquity ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... But a saner feeling was awakening here and there, in various parts of the world. At last, under the stress of the devastation and misery caused by the reproductive relapse of the industrial era, this feeling, voiced by a few distinguished men, began to take shape in action. ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... look into the mind of Amroth and see his thought take shape, as I could look into a stream, and see a fish dart from a covert of weed. But with those still in the body it is different. And I will therefore proceed to describe a single experience which will ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to take shape, Mr. Hite. The pieces are beginning to fall into place. I believe that the next act in this tragedy will take place at or hear Justice Higginbotham's camp. If there is nothing further to keep me here, I should like to go back. Is Mr. Hale going to continue his vacation ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... on, the world outside was not altogether indifferent to affairs in Dalton Hall. In the village and in the immediate neighborhood rumor had been busy, and at length the vague statements of the public voice began to take shape. ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... in the air, A flutter of wings, a sound, and then a silence? I am too old for love; I am too old To flatter and delude myself with visions Of never-ending friendship with fair women, Imaginations, fantasies, illusions, In which the things that cannot be take shape, And seem to be, and for the moment are. [Convent ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... laws as the physical world, and all the power of man being impotent to suppress a single molecule of the spaces required for the gravitation of the universe, it is still less able to prevent the generation of the ideas that take shape in the mind and strive to attain to fruition in the field ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... Aphrodite, of Love, as it is known to men and women who, being human, have it laid upon them that they must hand on the torch of Life in their little hour. Also you would know that such Principles can seem to take shape and form and at certain ages of the world appear to their servants visible in majesty, though perchance to-day others with changed names wield their sceptres and work their will. Now you are answered on this ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... man will never be rid of the fallacy that words obey thought, that one thinks first and phrases afterward. There must first, it is true, be the intention, the desire to utter something, but the idea does not often become specific, does not take shape until it is phrased; certainly an idea is a different thing by virtue of being phrased. Words often make the thought, and the master of words will say things greater than are in him. A remarkable example is a paragraph from Miss Keller's sketch in the Youth's Companion. Writing ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... should hang about the rocky island jutting up from the sea. All this he talked of, while the sun shone through his long yellow hair and revealed its streaks of silver.... At last he stood in the sunlight, with his arms outstretched, as though he were evoking his vision from the heavens to take shape upon ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan |
