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Lifelike   /lˈaɪflˌaɪk/   Listen
Lifelike

adjective
1.
Evoking lifelike images within the mind.  Synonyms: graphic, pictorial, vivid.  "Graphic accounts of battle" , "A lifelike portrait" , "A vivid description"
2.
Free from artificiality.  Synonym: natural.  "A natural reaction"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Lifelike" Quotes from Famous Books



... in proportion. [65] The writings of this period give curious details. Thibaudeau, in his Memoirs, speaks of sugar as 500 francs a pound, soap, 230 francs, candles, 140 francs. Mercier, in his lifelike pictures of the French metropolis at that period, mentions 600 francs as carriage hire for a single drive, and 6,000 for an entire day. Examples from other sources are such as the following:—a ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White

... on lutes and tambourines behind them, and accompanying the instruments with their voices. While this was going on a puppet-show was introduced, in which the figures acted a play and danced almost in as lifelike a manner as performers on a stage. The nautch-girls continued their performances throughout the whole evening, but the other entertainments were varied. The puppet-show was succeeded by a band of tumblers, who tied themselves into knots, walked on their ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston

... and brightness of his Pilots of Pomona.... It is a capital story. The characters are marked and lifelike, and it is ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... of life in a girl's college that has ever been written. It is bright, whimsical and entertaining, lifelike, laughable and ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton

... warred successfully against twelve revolted kings, whose remains were interred at Camelot by his order. There Merlin erected a marvelous castle, containing a special hall for the reception of the Round Table. This hall was adorned with the lifelike statues of all the conquered kings, each holding a burning taper which the magician declared would burn brightly until the Holy Grail should appear. Hoping to bring that desirable event to pass, Arthur bade Merlin frame laws for the knights of the Round Table. As distinctive ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... have already said somewhat; but he is so lifelike that it seems as if he must have been studied from one of the younger members of the Brook Farm association; perhaps the one of whom Emerson tells us, [Footnote: Lecture on Brook Farm.] that he ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... foreshortening of the figures. And without the Porta Vercellina, near the Castle, in certain stables now ruined and destroyed, he painted some grooms currying horses, among which there was one so lifelike and so well wrought, that another horse, thinking it a real one, lashed out at ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari

... boating, had married a connexion of my own, who had been a Maid of Honour in Queen Victoria's first household. Theirs was the most hospitable house in Oxford, and a portrait of Mrs. Cradock, not quite kind, but very lifelike, enlivens the serious pages of Robert Elsmere. Dr., afterwards Sir Henry, Acland, with his majestic presence, blandly paternal address, and ample rhetoric, was not only the Regius Professor of Medicine, but also the true and patient friend ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... the physical outlines of this peculiar property. Indeed, the art must have been studied attentively for practical purposes. When the advertisements were received in advance of arrivals, which was always the case, the descriptions generally were found so lifelike, that the Committee preferred to take them in preference to putting themselves to the labor of writing out new ones, for future reference. This we think, ought not to be complained of by any who were so unfortunate as to lose wayward servants, as it is but fair to ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... is even more rare than the cat painters. Thousands of readers recall those wonderfully lifelike cats and kittens which were a feature of the St. Nicholas a few years ago, accompanied by "nonsense rhymes" or "jingles." They were the work of Joseph G. Francis, of Brookline, Mass., and brought him no little fame. He was, and is still, a broker on State Street, Boston, and in his ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... host's chalice and paten, and ran away with them to the Land's End. Why not? Before we knew anything about the action of icebergs and glaciers, that is, until the last eighty years, that was as good a story as any other; while how lifelike these boulders are, let a great poet testify; for the fact has not escaped ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

... which too many are disposed to crowd. The story is most happily conceived, and is narrated in a style highly finished and attractive. There is nothing insipid or over-wrought, in the frame-work or filling up; but all is natural and lifelike. The witty, the lively, the startling, are finely interwoven with the more grave and instructive. A fertile and vivid imagination has enabled the author to bring characters upon his stage which represent almost every ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee

... once at a museum a small black ant preserved in amber, and he looked so natural and lifelike, so like the ants we see running about to-day, that it was hard to realize that he came to his death so long, so very long ago; in fact, before this earth of ours was ready for the creation of man. ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning

... marble, as large as life. The expression of each face is admirably given, especially those of John, who leans upon Jesus' bosom, and of Judas, seated the last in the group, and grasping the bag in his hand. It was so real and lifelike, that I could with difficulty understand that the genius of man had fashioned it out ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society

... grew in his fancy, until she became very lifelike. He could remember how he had closed her darkened eyes, and smoothed her yellow hair, how he had buried her on a dark winter's day, among the fir trees, and how through long years he had mourned for her, while Hilda was a little child at his ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... don't see any harm in the book so far. It is by a famous author, wonderfully well written, as you know, and the characters so lifelike that I feel as if I should really ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... without hurry or exertion. Gradually as we read we become conscious of the novelist's characters, whom he introduces with a veil of mystery around them. They are interesting, as dreams and other mysterious things always are, but they are seldom real or natural or lifelike. At times we seem to be watching a pantomime of shadows, rather than a drama of ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... was so lifelike that I must tell it to you, for I am convinced it is no common warning, but one full of ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... mediaeval society to us under the influence of chivalry. Suitably enough, we have beside each other most lifelike pictures of the base and superstructure of the system. This, the man— free, generous; that, the serf—vile, ungrateful, kept in order by fear alone, but the necessary counterpart of the splendid figure of his master. One of our writers today has regretted ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele

... black art, and for witness showed her back and shoulders covered with wales, some blue and others freshly bleeding; and further, in the midst of their interrogatories cast herself into a trance, muttering and offering faint combat to divers unseen spirits, and all in so lifelike a manner that, notwithstanding they could discover no evident proof of guilt, these wise gentry were overawed and did commit the woman Janet Burns to take her trial for witchcraft at Paisley. There, poor soul, as she was escorted to the prison, the town rabble met her with sticks and ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... she; "you are to see nothing till you see a triumph in the portrayal of feeling and lifelike earnestness that even your critical ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... either from stone or marble and encrusted with phosphorous, stood lowering in their path. It was that of a winged beast with a human head. Its features were negroid in character; and so malignant was the expression of the staring face, so lifelike the execution of the whole statue, that a chill of fear ran through their veins. It was in Ward's mind that this gigantic carving was akin to the ones he had seen in Egypt, and as old, if ...
— The Heads of Apex • Francis Flagg

... skeletons in lifelike attitudes, the relation of the different bones can best be shown, but these of course are only two of the attitudes commonly taken by the creatures during life. Mechanical and anatomical considerations, especially the long straight shafts ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew

... speech the argumentative and ethical portions are highly elaborated, but the descriptive and personal are, comparatively speaking, absent. Yet in nothing is Cicero more conspicuous than in his clear and lifelike descriptions. His portraits are photographic. Whether he describes the money-loving Chaerea with his shaven eye-brows and head reeking with cunning and malice; [50] or the insolent Verres, lolling on a litter with eight ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... expense of his soul—to him the holiest things are no longer holy; to him God and man are alike indifferent, and both worlds are as nothing. Of such a monster I have endeavored to sketch a striking and lifelike portrait, to hold up to abhorrence all the machinery of his scheme of vice, and to test its strength by contrasting it with truth. How far my narrative is successful in accomplishing these objects the reader is left to judge. My conviction ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... Madame Ratignolle, surveying the sketches one by one, at close range, then holding them at arm's length, narrowing her eyes, and dropping her head on one side. "Surely, this Bavarian peasant is worthy of framing; and this basket of apples! never have I seen anything more lifelike. One might almost be tempted to reach out a ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... routed, absolutely demoralised. "They told me to put in lots of flying talk," he murmured abjectly, "and tons of local colour to make it lifelike." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various

... a very small boy I went to visit my uncle, who, in his young days, had been quite a hunter. Before the fireplace in his library was a huge tiger skin with a particularly lifelike head. The first time I saw it I screamed, and ran and hid. I refused then even to go into the room again. My cousins urged, scolded, pleaded, and laughed at me by turns, but I was obdurate. I would not go where I could see the fearsome ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter

... her head. She's gettin' hysterics again. And when you've told 'em, you go up to the grounds and tell Blake and Skinny to unpack the Petrified Man. Tell 'em I'm goin' to use him again to-day, and if he's lookin' shop-worn, have one of the men go over his complexion and make him look nice and lifelike." ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler

... has her gentle place in Greek art, from the Siren tomb, suckling her young there, as the type of eternal rejuvenescence, onwards to the procession of the Elgin frieze, where, still breathing deliciously of the distant pastures, she is led to the altar. We feel sorry for her, as we look, so lifelike is the carved marble. The sculptor who worked there, whoever he may have been, had profited doubtless by the study of Myron's famous work. For what purpose he made it, does not appear;—as [286] an architectural ornament; or a votive ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... loud voice: "Hither, ye satans, Solomon has come to undo you." Suddenly there arose great noise and tumult among the statues. Solomon pronounced the Name, and quiet was restored. The statues were overthrown, and the sons of the satans ran into the sea and were drowned. From the throat of the lifelike statue he drew a silver plate inscribed with characters which he could not decipher, but a youth from the desert told the king: "These letters are Greek, and the words mean: 'I, Shadad ben Ad, ruled over a thousand thousand provinces, rode on a thousand ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... strict accuracy of statement, to which Bower, Wynton, Hailes, Pinkerton, Jamieson, and Sir Walter Scott all bear testimony; for the picturesque force of its natural descriptions; for its insight into character, and the lifelike spirit of its individual sketches; for the martial vigour of its battle- pictures; for the enthusiasm which he feels, and makes his reader feel, for the valiant and wise, the sagacious and persevering, the bold, merciful, and religious character ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... Shakespeare. He sees his characters and realizes their sensations so vividly that his brain and feelings become the brain and feelings of his creations; and thus only does his Lear say with such perfect naturalness, "Pray you, undo this button." Hence, too, all the distinctness of character in his lifelike men and women, be it Hamlet or ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... next, one lingers over the beauty with a calmer enjoyment. Very beautiful this book is! I thank you for it again and again. The legendary part is all the better for being vague and dim and shadowy, all pervading, yet never tangible; and the living people have a charm about them which is as lifelike and real as the legendary folks are ghostly and remote. Phoebe, for instance, is a creation which, not to speak it profanely, is almost Shakespearian. I know no modern heroine to compare with her, except it be Eugene Sue's Rigolette, who shines forth amidst the iniquities ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... good pictures. It would be absurd to suppose that the one bears any resemblance whatever to the other, for they differ as a living person differs from his portrait, which, however well drawn, cannot be lifelike, for it is plain that it is a dead thing. But let this pass, though to the purpose, ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... motion are so conspicuous in the immense spectacle presented by Jupiter that they impart to it a powerful suggestion of life, which the mind does not readily divest itself of when compelled to face the evidence that Jupiter is as widely different from the earth, and as diametrically opposed to lifelike conditions, as we comprehend them, as a ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... doing? A wood? Ah, yes, I recognize the trees. Very lifelike indeed—most creditable. What's the price of it, if I ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston

... examples of pins, brooches, and shrines, each worthy to rank with the finest productions of the metalworker. The Shrine of St. Moedoc (date uncertain) ought perhaps to be mentioned. On it are found several figures, including three nuns, men with books, sceptres, and swords, and a lifelike figure ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... respect to persons in whom the reasoning power is absent, the figurative imagination of crowds is very powerful, very active and very susceptible of being keenly impressed. The images evoked in their mind by a personage, an event, an accident, are almost as lifelike as the reality. Crowds are to some extent in the position of the sleeper whose reason, suspended for the time being, allows the arousing in his mind of images of extreme intensity which would quickly be dissipated could they ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... not life. Wax-works, being so near to life, having the exact proportions of men and women, having the exact texture of skin and hair and habiliments, must either be made animate or continue to be grotesque and pitiful failures. Lifelike? They? Rather do they give you the illusion of death. They are akin to photographs seen through stereoscopic lenses—those photographs of persons who seem horribly to be corpses, or, at least, catalepts; and... You see, I have failed to cheer myself up. Having taken up ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... with indignation, continuing to give a lifelike imitation of a rumpled parrot. "I 'ad trouble enough wif you at Bermondsey Ol' Stairs, hover that quid you promised, didn't I? ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... with these commonplace images, and demanded a less conventional treatment of body for the double of him whom they had lost, there were always some among the assistants to be found capable of entering into their wishes, and of seizing the lifelike expression of limbs ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... branches of which were hanging in the water, was pulled from its bed, dragging part of the island with it. One long vine struggled to right itself against the current, to gain the shelter of the island again. It seemed most lifelike, and suddenly Piang realized with a shudder that it was alive. A python had been knocked from the falling tree and was being dragged along. Only the end of its tail was twined about a log; desperately it strove to work its way back, and Piang watched with dread. ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart

... completely at Bayreuth, both as regards the actors and the dramatic effects. Fantastic creatures like Alberich and Mimi, who seem to be out of their element in France, are rooted deep down in German imaginations. The Bayreuth actors surpassed themselves in making them startlingly lifelike, with a trembling and grimacing realism. Burgstaller, who was then making his debut in Siegfried, acted with an impetuous awkwardness which accorded well with the part. I remember with what zest—which seemed in no way affected—he played the hero smith, labouring like a true workman, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... Desjardins, better known as Mme de Villedieu, hastened to supply the popular demand for romantic stories. In drawing their subjects from the histories of more modern courts than those of Rome, Greece, or Egypt they endeavored to make their "historical" romances of passion more lifelike than the heroic romances, and while they avoided the extravagances, they also shunned the voluminousness of the romans a longue haleine. So the stories related in "La Belle Assemblee" by Mme de Gomez, translated by Mrs. Haywood in 1725 and often reprinted, are nearer the ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... possessed of a scruple of honesty is discomfited, and that the greatest scoundrel of all is approved in the end and rewarded. The comedy is so admirably written and contrived, the personages stand out with such lifelike distinctness in their several kinds, and the whole is animated with such verve and resourcefulness that "The Alchemist" is a new marvel every time it is read. Lastly of this group comes the tremendous comedy, "Bartholomew Fair," less clear cut, less definite, ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson

... form is no more than the slightest of advances towards probability on the strict lines of the Scribe tradition; the 'common order of things' is there, in subject, language, and in everything but the satirical intention which underlies the whole trivial, stupid, and no doubt lifelike talk and action. Two elements are still in conflict, the photographic and the satirical; and the satirical is the only relief from the photographic. The stage mechanism is still obvious; but the intention, one sees clearly, is towards realism; ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... hear no beating from the region of the heart. For a moment as he gazed upon the result of following the instructions set down by the hakim, Mr. Middleton felt a little clutch of fear. But he was reassured by the lifelike appearance of the learned jurisconsult and by the fact that the induction into his present state had been attended by none of the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... made a mistake, didn't you—coming while I was here?" said the reformer, with a very lifelike replica of his father's grim smile. "I suppose you have an immediate engagement to go somewhere else, or to do something that will give you a chance ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... of Robert Burns that have been written, most of them laboriously and carefully, perhaps not one gives so luminous and vivid a portrait, so lifelike and vigorous an impression of the personality of the poet and the man, as the picture the author has given of himself in his own writings. Burns's poems from first to last are, almost without exception, the ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... Mowatt, as Ariadne the first, paced the shore, and received the agonising intelligence of the desertion of Theseus. A ballet-girl, as Ariadne the second, climbed the rocks of the Island of Naxos, reaching the highest peak to catch the last glimpse of the vanishing vessel. The third Ariadne was a most lifelike lay figure, which, on a given signal, was hurled from the cliff, and seen to fall into ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... much entertained by what he believed to be the romance which Angelica was weaving about his interesting personality. He suggested that she should write it just as she told it. "I have not seen anything like it anywhere," he said; "nothing half so lifelike." ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... crimson peony, it is true, but at any rate he was not suffocated, unless—Kitty stepped quickly forward and touched his cheek. It almost made her sick with dread to do so; but the red cheek was very, very hot and lifelike to the touch, and at the same moment Tony opened a y pair of large sleepy eyes, and stared up at his ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... evidently been taught her part, stepped forward, and removed the cloth which concealed the unknown object. It was a lifelike marble bust of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... something not less dainty and fine, full of the archaisms and curious felicities in which that generation delighted, quaint terms and images picked fresh from the early dramatists, the lifelike phrases of some lost poet preserved by an old grammarian, racy morsels of the vernacular and studied prettinesses:—all alike, mere playthings for the genuine power and natural eloquence of the erudite artist, unsuppressed by his erudition, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... and a rather incompetent father, and sixteen dollars a month rent! The experiences of a score of shops, and the motley crew of people she had worked with in these busy years, Bessie in her careless, simple narrative had the power to invest with lifelike reality. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... of Oscar as a schoolboy is astonishingly clear and lifelike; but I have another portrait of him from another contemporary, who has since made for himself a high name as a scholar at Trinity, which, while confirming the general traits sketched by Sir Edward Sullivan, takes somewhat more notice of ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... over the story, and after awhile I got out of bed and wrote down on a piece of paper the sort of stuff the men might be supposed to scratch on their oars with the edges of their handcuffs. It seemed to make the thing more lifelike. It is ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... experience; and Bob Jakin is a grotesque caricature, which would have been far better done by Mr. Dickens, who is undeniably great in the production of grotesques, although we do not remember that throughout the whole of his voluminous works he has ever succeeded in embodying a single natural and lifelike character. But, with a very few exceptions, "George Eliot's" personages have that appearance of reality in which those of Mr. Dickens are so conspicuously wanting. And while Mr. Dickens's views of English life and society ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... questions frankly, and she told all the story of her visions and of her experiences with the angels and what they said to her; and the manner of the telling was so unaffected, and so earnest and sincere, and made it all seem so lifelike and real, that even that hard practical court forgot itself and sat motionless and mute, listening with a charmed and wondering interest to the end. And if you would have other testimony than mine, look in the histories and you will find where an eyewitness, giving sworn testimony ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... who cannot yet eat his bread and jam without smearing his face all over, takes a delight in fashioning clay into little figures that are astonishingly lifelike for all their artless awkwardness. He takes a knife and makes the briar root grin into all sorts of entertaining masks; he carves boxwood in the semblance of a horse or sheep; he engraves the effigy of his dog on sandstone. Leave him alone; and, if Heaven second his ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... corner on the stairs—he makes of that place a theatre, in which he is the sole audience. Before his eyes—to him alone—the drama is played, with scenery complete and costume correct, by such actors as never yet played upon any other stage, so natural, so lifelike—nay, so godlike, and for that very ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant

... brilliant ray of light beat down on it. Glancing up, Simpkins saw that it shone from a crescent moon in the arched ceiling above the altar. Then his eyes came back to the statue. There was something so lifelike in the pose of the figure, something so winning in the smile of the face, something so alluring in the outstretched arms, that he involuntarily ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer

... The third course was offered to me first by a handsome serving-maid lately from the country, with a clear face, bright dark eyes, dark hair, and rosy cheeks. Admiring her, I cast only a brief and doubtful glance on the large plate she bore, at one side of which were two lifelike sheep three or four inches high, with little red ribbons around their necks and standing in the midst of greenery. "This is confectionery," I thought, "and these are sugar sheep for ornament." Disposed on other parts of the plate were sundry rounds and triangles which looked peculiar; but my ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... The witty and ferocious critic whom your fancy had painted as a literary cannibal with a morbid appetite for tender young poets—the writer of those caustic and scholarly reviews which you never neglect to read—destroys the un-lifelike portrait you had drawn by appearing before you as a personage of slender limb and deprecating glance, who stammers and makes a painful spectacle of himself when you ask him his opinion of "The Glees of the Gulches," by Popocatepetl Jones. The slender, dark-haired novelist of your imagination, ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... once finikin and lax; it wants breadth, and it wants decision. Moreover, the material, having little power of resistance, retains but ill what the chisel once impressed; the more delicate markings and the more lifelike touches that it once received, it loses easily through friction or exposure to rough weather. A certain number of the sculptured figures found by M. Di Cesnola at Athienau were discovered under conditions that were quite peculiar, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... Milly hurried over to the West Side, and was taken to her grandmother's room. The little old lady seemed extraordinarily lifelike in her death—perhaps because there had been so little outward animation to her life. Her thin, veined hands were folded neatly over her decent black dress, as she had sat so many hours, perfectly still. The neat bands of white hair curved around the well-shaped ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... and her arm was about his neck. It was such a natural attitude that she had taken it while waiting for the photographer to be ready. The daisy-wreathed hat hung from her hand, and she had not known when the picture was taken. It was remarkably lifelike, and the broker regarded it with a satisfaction none the less keen because he let the others do all ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham

... of Syracuse had imitated on earth the laws of the heavens, the order of nature, and the ordinances of the gods. Some hidden influence within the sphere directs the various courses of the stars and actuates the lifelike mass with definite motions. A false zodiac runs through a year of its own and a toy moon waxes and wanes month by month. Now bold invention rejoices to make its own heaven revolve and sets the stars [planets?] in ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price

... more Of sickness, than that amber is its work, And pearls, when it resides in trees or oysters. My word, they both are here. And here are birds, Quite lifelike, woven into gleaming silk, If it be worth thy while to ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... found himself mistaken. Whether because his fancy was not sufficiently lively, or his mind was not in tune, he was unable to produce the effect he desired. The faces which he successively outlined were all stiff, and though beautiful in feature, lacked the great charm of being expressive and lifelike. ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... excellent portraits, wonderfully lifelike heads of the painter's friends and of himself; but when one has looked at the little picture of his mother, he is compelled to shut the portfolio for a moment, because the unbidden tears ...
— Rembrandt • Josef Israels

... over and looked in. Frozen with horror, he was fascinated by those great holes for eyes, large as teacups, which seemed to fix him. Dead of leprosy, gnawed and torn by beasts, the face presented a sight unforgettable. The holes torn in the flesh twisted the features into a lifelike, though ghastly, sardonic grin, full of the pains of the hell in which Kwaiba had suffered and now suffered. A stench arose from the box which made the hardened bearers hold their noses and draw away. Yet the priest bent down all the closer. In his corruption the lips of the ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... armchair. Beside him was a dog, in the attitude of an animal seated on its haunches, but lying on its side, one fore leg sticking straight out. Darrow touched the man and stooped over to peer in his face. The attitude was most lifelike; the color was good. A deadly chill ran from Darrow's finger ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White

... vindictiveness, and excoriates without malice. In strict ratio, however, to the verisimilitude of the performance, must be esteemed the talents of the non-Oriental writer, who was responsible for so lifelike a creation. No man could, have written or could now write such a book unless he were steeped and saturated, not merely in Oriental experience, but in Oriental forms of expression and modes of thought. To these qualifications ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... centerpiece—one of those silver-plated whirligigs fitted with a glass salt-and-pepper shaker, a toothpick holder, an unpleasant oil bottle, and a cruet intended for vinegar, but now filled with some mysterious embalming fluid acting as a preservative of numerous lifelike insect remains. Here, facing an elderly man in a wide gray-felt ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... with the various courses with a greater degree of savoir faire, so to speak, than she had thought probable. She dismissed forthwith all fears she had entertained regarding Wotherspoon's prediction that "among the features of the dinner would be a lifelike imitation of a towboat skipper swallowing ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... only to look at the common, so-called Elzevirian, volume of thirteenth-century nouvelles to see the Frenchman as he saw himself. The story of "La Comtesse de Ponthieu" is the more Shakespearean, but "La Belle Jehanne" is the more natural and lifelike. The plot is the common masculine intrigue against the woman, which was used over and over again before Shakespeare appropriated it in "Much Ado"; but its French development is rather in the line of "All's Well." The fair Jeanne, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... elementary questions; and on his third refusal she answered, "Weel, weel, sir, I may na', an' I dinna, ken sae muckle as mony; but when ye preach a sermon aboot my Lord and Saviour, I fin' my heart going out to Him, like lintseed out of a bag." Any one who has observed the process will know how lifelike the illustration was, and will not wonder that Mr. Gibb admitted her, and that she lived to be one of the fairest members ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... pictures of English country life at its most comfortable, and in particular with some comedy scenes, excellently done, turning upon the often delicate relationship of Hall and Parsonage. There are a couple of clerical portraits in the book that seem to me as lifelike as anything of the kind since Barchester. Apart from this the outstanding virtue of the Graftons is the reality of their dialogue. Precisely thus do, or did, actual people speak in the quiet old times before the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various

... Eve came and the children flocked into the Mayor's mansion, whether it was owing to the Costumer's art, or their own adaptation to the characters they had chosen, it was wonderful how lifelike their representations were. Those little fairies in their short skirts of silken gauze, in which golden sparkles appeared as they moved with their little funny gossamer wings, like butterflies, ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... near the pancake-house, and they knew very well who the witch was! Now and again she would pop up out of the cellar and scatter the whole crowd with her kitchen tongs! It was almost a little too lifelike; even the smell of pancakes came drifting down from where the well-to-do Olsens lived, so that one could hardly call it a real fairy tale. But then perhaps the dwarf Vinslev would come out of his ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... connatural[obs3], congener, allied to; akin to &c. (consanguineous) 1 1. approximate, much the same, near, close, something like, sort of, in the ballpark, such like; a show of; mock, pseudo, simulating, representing. exact &c. (true) 494; lifelike, faithful; true to nature, true to life, the very image, the very picture of; for all the world like, comme deux gouttes d'eau[Fr]; as like as two peas in a pod, as like as it can stare; instar omnium[Lat], cast in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... the side, and Brace glanced after it, to see it for a few moments as the line was allowed to run, the silvered unfishlike piece of metal beginning to spin and, as it receded farther from the boat, to assume a wonderfully lifelike resemblance to a good-sized ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn

... for olives. The bulls are rendered with amazing spirit and understanding. True, there are palpable defects, if one examines closely. For example, the position of the bull in the net is quite impossible. But in general the attitudes and expressions are as lifelike as they are varied. Evidently we have here the work of an artist who drew ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... clothes were of every color of the rainbow, and he had silver buckles on his shoes, and brass buttons on his coat, and he was varnished to such an extent that you could hardly look at him without winking. Then his hair and his whiskers were so red, and his legs were so pink and so fat and so lifelike, that it seemed as if you could almost hear him speak; and, what was more, he had been standing for years at the door of the shop, proudly holding up a preposterous wooden watch that gave half-past three as the correct time at all hours ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl

... "Lister's portrait of Barbara was lifelike and his own was pretty good. I think he drew himself and her better than he knew, and perhaps it's lucky we have to deal with fellows like these. A good Canadian is a fine type. However, ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss

... echoed "Most," at which Grandmama eyed her with a twinkle, knowing that it bored her, like all the Russians. Mrs. Hilary cared nothing for style ("Literature!" said Lady Adela. "Give me something to read!"); she liked nice lifelike books about people as she believed them to be, and though she was quite prepared to believe that real Russians were like Russians in books, she felt that she did not care to meet either of them. But Mrs. Hilary had learnt that intelligent ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... could convince him that his sorrow had not unbalanced his mind, for with the other members of the party he had been so thoroughly convinced that the ape-man was dead it was a problem to reconcile the conviction with the very lifelike appearance of Jane's "forest god." The old man was deeply touched at ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... ourselves that it is the ignorant and uncultured who feel the indecency of statues and thus betray their sense of the sexual appeal of such objects. We have to remember that in Greece statues played a very prominent part in life, and also that they were tinted, and thus more lifelike than with us. Lucian, Athenaeus, AElian, and others refer to cases of men who fell in love with statues. Tarnowsky (Sexual Instinct, English edition, p. 85) mentions the case of a young man who was arrested in St. Petersburg ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... head and neck like those of a deer." One Flockton during the last half of the eighteenth century was the prince of puppet showmen, and he called his puppets the Italian Fantocinni. He made his figures work in a most lifelike style. He was a conjurer too, and the inventor of a wonderful clock which showed nine hundred figures at work upon a variety of trades. "Punch and Judy" always attracted crowds, and we notice the handbills of Mr. ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... work rearranging the little houses and figures, till he succeeded in giving quite a lifelike air to the creche, and Lady Elinor fairly ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith

... his brow and fled from the stage. There were cries of "Call him back!" But John explained that this was part of the drama, and no encores would be allowed; whereupon the audience fell to hissing the villain, who now sat alone with the most lifelike expression of malignity. ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Thus, in "Othello," altho that is, perhaps, I will not say the best, but the least bad and the least encumbered by pompous volubility, the characters of Othello, Iago, Cassio, Emilia, according to Shakespeare, are much less natural and lifelike than in the Italian romance. Shakespeare's Othello suffers from epilepsy, of which he has an attack on the stage; moreover, in Shakespeare's version, Desdemona's murder is preceded by the strange vow of the kneeling Othello. Othello, ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... the most vivid and lifelike representation of a specimen family of poor South-Carolina whites we have ever read."—E.P. WHIPPLE, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... took up was a very impressive sketch, in which the artist had jotted down her rough ideas for a picture of Jael driving the nail through the temples of Sisera. It was dashed off with remarkable power, and showed a touch or two that were actually lifelike and deathlike, as if Miriam had been standing by when Jael gave the first stroke of her murderous hammer, or as if she herself were Jael, and felt irresistibly impelled to make her bloody ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... was justified to the full. The doors yielded to the blow, and, opening wide, revealed the tall and commanding figure of the goddess; her face, thanks to Leander's pigments, glowing lifelike under her hood, and the gold ring gleaming ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey

... breaking in upon her musings came the very voice of her day-dream, so suddenly, sounding so natural and lifelike that she almost screamed, so startled ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... be acknowledged that the most successful portrait was incontestably that of Master Jup. Master Jup had sat with a gravity not to be described, and his portrait was lifelike! ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... looked down upon a scene that to the eye unskilled in these things was as confusion worse confounded. Cow-boys dashed from nowhere in particular and did amazing things with a bit of rope, sending it through the air with snaky undulations after flying cattle. The rope, taking on lifelike coils, would pursue the flying beast like an aerial reptile, then the noose would fall true, and the thing was done. A second later a couple of cow-boys would be examining the disputed ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... tomb two forms they sculptured, 105 Lifelike in the marble pale— One, the Duke in helm and armour; One, the Duchess ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... morning and removed to the morgue. They were not very much injured, considering the weight of lumber above them. In many instances they were wedged in crevices. They were all in a good state of preservation, and when they were embalmed they looked almost lifelike. In this central part of the city examination is sure to result in the unearthing of bodies in every corner. Cottages which are still standing are banked up with lumber and driftwood, and it is like mining to make any kind of a clear space. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... actress, Sarah Siddons, by Mrs. Nina Kennard. To most of the present generation the great woman is only a name, though she lived until 1831; but the present volume, with its vivid account of her life, its struggles, triumphs, and closing years, will give to such a picture that is most lifelike. A particularly pleasant feature of the book is the way in which the author quotes so copiously from Mrs. Siddons's correspondence. These extracts from letters written to friends, and with no thought of their ever appearing ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... over him; ridiculous in his gewgaws of office. When you looked at the picture close to, it was a meaningless mass of coloured smudges, but when you stood fifteen feet away from it the portrait was absolutely lifelike, amazing, miraculous. It was so wondrously lifelike that some of the inhabitants of the Five Towns burst out laughing. Many people felt sorry—not for Sir Jee—but for Lady Dain. Lady Dain was beloved and genuinely respected. She was a simple, homely, sincere woman, ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... and stuck them together in such a way that, when they were thrown on the water, they looked just like a half dozen flies floating down the stream. He got out his smallest leader and fastened a hook among the flies. When he had finished, it looked very lifelike and Pierre was proud of his handiwork. Carefully approaching the stream without making any noise or permitting any shadow to fall on the water, he threw his semi-artificial fly far out on the stream, so that the back eddy would ultimately bring it into the ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton

... company is led by Mme. Jeanne Granier, an actress who could not be better in her own way unless she acquired a touch of genius, and she has no genius. She was thoroughly and consistently good, she was lifelike, amusing, never out of key; only, while she reminded one at times of Rejane, she had none of Rejane's magnetism, none of ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons

... curve and twist in the manner of trenches, and I came upon a corner in the first line known as "Three Dead Men," because after the capture of the wood, three dead Germans were found there in mysterious, lifelike attitudes. The names of trenches on the French front often reflect that deep, native instinct to poetry possessed by simple peoples—the instinct that created the English ballads and the exquisite mediaeval ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... supposed that the scene at the opening of the sepulchre must have been a very impressive one. There, in that solemn chapel of white and black marble which the genius of Michael Angelo prepared for the repose of his sovereigns and patrons, with his lifelike and immortal presentations of the forms of the dead who have filled all story with their names, looking down on the deed with sad and solemn faces, who would not, while thus forcing the prison-house of the tomb to render up its terrible and long-concealed secrets, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... artificial flies against the opening of the trout season next month. With bits of feather, hair, and thread he was turning out wonderfully lifelike specimens—not according to the conventional varieties, but as a result of his own half-century's experience on neighbouring streams. A row of the completed product was stuck in a smooth stick, ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... to be buried. Her lips could then just faintly return the kiss, and no more—a film came over the now dim blue of her eyes—the father listened for her breath—and then the mother took his place, and leaned her ear to the unbreathing mouth, long deluding herself with its lifelike smile; but a sudden darkness in the room, and a sudden stillness—most dreadful both—convinced their unbelieving hearts at last—that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various

... heather the freshness of the wind; the moon shines on the lake, over which a boat is skimming; the sun glitters on the breast-plates; the rain falls over leafy huts. Without having any knowledge of the models, they thought these pictures lifelike and the ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the lifelike velocity with which they flew careering from all points against each other, without passing away into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this—yet we had no glimpse of the moon or stars—nor ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... nation ain't dead, though it's been givin' a lifelike imitation of a corpse for several years. It can't die while it's got Tammany for its backbone. The trouble is that the party's been chasm' after theories and stayin' up nights readin' books instead of studyin' human nature and actin' accordin', as I've advised in tellin' how to ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt

... should get from his toys a bare suggestion of the object, and not a lifelike representation that will be of interest to the critical adult. Refinement of finish and realistic representation are entirely wasted on the child. A massive wooden dog or bird is better than a furry or feathery one. It is enough of a dog or bird, so far as ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... "every which way," as Marjorie said, picking them up and shaking them out with housewifely care. Francis's pajamas and a shabby brown terry bath-robe lay about the floor, the bathrobe in a ridiculously lifelike position with both its sleeves thrown forward over the pillow, as if it were trying to comfort it for ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer

... taught me to embroider in a frame with silk? And to draw and design the wild and tame Beasts of the forest and field? Also to picture on plain surface: Round about to place golden borders, A narrow and a broader one, With stags and hinds lifelike." ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison



Words linked to "Lifelike" :   pictorial, unaffected, natural, graphic, realistic



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