"Trope" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my flattering eye—not as a pudding, not as a case of confectionery even, but as a little sanctuary of images such as a pious heathen might make of his earthenware gods. Let us be serious: listen. The thing is Criticism; but some of it is criticism by trope and figure. I ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... Pantagruel; he never was an executioner. It was the Pantagruelion, manufactured and fashioned into an halter; and serving in the place and office of a cravat. In that, verily, they solecized and spoke improperly, unless you would excuse them by a trope, which alloweth us to posit the inventor in the place of the thing invented, as when Ceres is taken for bread, and Bacchus put instead of wine. I swear to you here, by the good and frolic words which are to issue out of that wine-bottle which is ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... there were no poets till Dan Chaucer?' asks our great Thomas; 'no heart burning with a thought, which it could not hold, and had no word for; and needed to shape and coin a word for—what thou callest a metaphor, trope, or the like? For every word we have, there was such a man and poet. The coldest word was once a glowing new metaphor, and bold questionable originality. 'Thy very ATTENTION, does it not mean an attentio, a STRETCHING-TO?' Fancy that act of the mind which all were conscious of, which ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... accounts and balance a ledger! Yet so it is; and the popular author finds it convenient to fill up the declared deficit by the emission of Christmas books—a kind of assignats that bear the stamp of their origin in the vacuity of the writer's exchequer." There is a trope for you! You rascal, you wrote because you wanted money! His lordship has found out what you were at, and that there is a deficit in your till. But he goes on to say that we poor devils are to be pitied in our ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... came, and were not sought, His words like casual atoms made a thought; Drew up themselves in rank and file, and writ, He wondering how the devil it were, such wit. Thus, like the drunken tinker in his play, He grew a prince, and never knew which way. He did not know what trope or figure meant, But to persuade is to be eloquent; So in this Caesar which this day you see, Tully ne'er spoke as he makes Anthony. Those then that tax his learning are to blame, He knew the thing, but did not know the name; Great Iohnson did that ignorance adore, And though he envied ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... is an inimitable bit of picturesque colouring. It is very telling, nobly hyperbolic, no man can misunderstand it, or forget it. The most practised hand will not find it easy to "go one better than" Macaulay in a swingeing trope. It is a fascinating literary artifice, and it has fascinated many to their ruin. In feebler hands, it degenerates into what in London journalistic slang is known as "telegraphese." A pocket encyclopaedia and a copious store of adjectives have enabled many a youth to ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison |
