"Trope" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pierces through obstruction down to the abstrusest depths. And the important fact is that this abstruseness is not verbal, any more than it is the abstruseness of fog and cloud. His epithet, or image, or trope, shoots like a sunbeam on to the matter, throwing a transfigurating light, even where it fails to pierce to ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... was not 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 ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... in the use of figurative language. Learn first to distinguish and then to use its varied forms. When used with restraint, nothing can be more effective than the trope; but once let extravagance creep in by the window, and power will flee by ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... object is simply to give what may be called the natural history of metaphor, comparison, image, trope, and the like, whether imagery be employed by an uneducated husbandman, or by a great orator and writer. Many readers may recollect the anecdote of the New Hampshire farmer, who was once complimented ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... accordance with the moral[I] meaning, from trope, i.e. a turning[J] or application, when we apply our words to the shaping ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... scientific theory is made to rest upon a metaphor as its sole support. Agency is the employment of one intelligent being to act for another; force and power are applicable only to will; they are characteristic of volition. It is a violent trope to apply either of these words to senseless matter. Chemical affinities are spoken of, as if material elements were united by family ties, and manifested choice, and affection ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... 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 hope ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... Augustan Days Of formal courtesies and formal Phrase; That like along the finish'd Line to feel The Ruffle's Flutter and the Flash of Steel; That like my Couplet as Compact as Clear; That like my Satire sparkling tho' severe, Unmix'd with Bathos and unmarr'd by trope, I fling my Cap ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... which somebody has done! Thinkest thou there were no poets till Dan Chaucer? 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 ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... his plots and plans, 70 And larger destinies seem man's; You conjure from his glowing face The omen of a fairer race; With one grand trope he boldly spans The gulf wherein so many fall, 'Twixt possible and actual; His first swift word, talaria-shod, Exuberant with conscious God, Out of the choir of planets blots The present earth with all ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... if a metaphor started up, the poor thing was coursed up hill and down dale, and torn limb from jacket; even in Parliament, a trope was sometimes hunted from one ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... lady was to be considered a saint, and how the camels were to be laid upon the altar?" With greater pungency, Sheridan defended himself by saying, "This is the first time in my life that I ever heard of special pleading on a metaphor, or a bill of indictment against a trope; but such is the turn of the learned gentleman's mind, that when he attempts to be humorous no jest can be found, and when serious no fact is visible."[31] To the last Law delighted to point the absurdities of orators who in aiming at the sublime only achieved the ridiculous. "My lords," ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... lies Master Payne's strength. Hence his last scene was deeply affecting. Though we could well have spared that KEMBLEIAN dying trope, his rising up and falling again. It is because we seriously respect Master Payne's talents that we make this remark: clap-traps and stage trick of every kind cannot be too studiously avoided by ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... 83-4 (footnote taken from the divine. And this appeareth sufficiently in | Vert translation) that there is no proceeding in invention | of knowledge but by similitude; and God is | only self-like, having nothing in common | with any creature, otherwise than as in | shadow and trope. Therefore attend his | will as himself openeth it, and give unto | faith that which unto faith belongeth{16}; | 16. St. Matthew 22, 21: for more worthy it is to believe than to | Authorized Version: ... Then saith he think or know, considering that in | unto them, ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon |
