"Allegory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mysteriously doomed to spend one-third of the year with her husband in Hades, though for the remainder of the year she is permitted to dwell with Ceres and the gods. This is one of the very few mythological fables of Greece which can be safely interpreted into an allegory. Proserpine denotes the seed-corn one-third of the year below the earth; two-thirds (that is, dating from the appearance of the ear) above it. Schiller has treated this story with admirable and artistic ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... 'a fabulous or imaginary statement or narrative conveying an important truth, generally of a moral or religious nature: an allegory, religious or historical, of spontaneous growth and popular origin, generally involving some supernatural or superhuman claim or power; a tale of some extraordinary personage or country that has been ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... fantasy George Mac Donald has very few equals, and his rare touch of many aspects of life invariably gives to his stories a deeper meaning of the highest value. His Princess and Goblin exemplifies both gifts. A fine thread of allegory runs through the narrative of the adventures of the young miner, who, amongst other marvellous experiences, finds his way into the caverns of the gnomes, and achieves a final victory ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... romance about men growing as tall as trees; and that here, again, he seems to me to have been a victim of this vague relativism. "The Food of the Gods" is, like Mr. Bernard Shaw's play, in essence a study of the Superman idea. And it lies, I think, even through the veil of a half-pantomimic allegory, open to the same intellectual attack. We cannot be expected to have any regard for a great creature if he does not in any manner conform to our standards. For unless he passes our standard of greatness we cannot even ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... English characters, maturing just in time for the ordeal that has tested and (one is proud to think) triumphantly approved the spirit of our country. In fact these memoirs of Hugh Frothingham are something more than an idle romance; there is an allegory in them, and some touch of propaganda, cunningly introduced in the fine character of Torrance, the great surgeon who married one of the Frothingham girls and was bombed in the hospital raids. Through the varied activities of the family, as they develop, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... rude tribe north of Mexico. Yet even they have an allegory to the effect that when the first man came up from the ground under the figure of the moth-worm, the four spirits of the cardinal points were already there, and hailed him with the exclamation, "Lo, he is of our race."[79-1] It is a poor and feeble effort ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... expressing firm outline is better adapted to such works as his wall-paintings in the Rathhaus, or Town-hall. They are executed on the north wall of the grand saloon, and are divided by the principal door leading from the gallery; on one side of which is an allegory of the "Unjust Judge" (which formed one of the series of moral broadsheets published by Hans Sachs); and a group of musicians in a gallery, probably representing those that belonged to the town; on the other side of the door the entire length of the wall ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... sister, the idea of his great systematic work was already formulated, and that in his imagination it had assumed colossal proportions. He says: "'La Peau de Chagrin' is the formula of human life, an abstraction made from individualities, and, as M. Ballanche says, everything in it is myth and allegory. It is therefore the point of departure for my work. Afterwards individualities and particular existences, from the most humble to those of the King and of the Priest, the highest expressions of our society, will group themselves according to their rank. In ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... mighty ones of an impious and godless world. No. XLL, line 4: concerning Taida, Sinon, Giuda, ed Omero, Adami says: 'These are the four evangelists of the dark age of Abaddon.' Thais is a symbol of lechery; Sinon of fraud; Judas of treason; Homer of lying fiction. So at least I read the allegory. No. XLII., lines 9-14 are noticeable, since they set forth Campanella's philosophical or evangelical communism, for a detailed exposition of which ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... OBSERVER.—"An allegory of love's meaning, clear as a pool in the sunshine. It was written, we are told, twenty-five years ago.... Even then Mr. Tagore had that calm intensity of vision which we have all come to love in his later work. We find in him that for ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... day gave my mind employment for the whole night; so that I fell insensibly into a kind of methodical dream, which disposed all my contemplations into a vision, or allegory, or what else the reader shall please to ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... given a fantastic account of the Pre-Adamitical world, and explained with elaborate unconvincingness how the manuscript of the book came into existence, the tale commences like a moral allegory, but soon lapses into mere extravagant adventure. Capable at all times of using a deus ex machina as the readiest way of solving a situation, Mrs. Haywood here makes immoderate use ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... ochre-red colour which is interesting only when the sun shines on it, or when wet and sparkling with rain, in the midst of its lovely old trees. I almost gasped with joy and surprise, however, when we entered, for the interior is wonderful. It is as if the builders had had in mind an allegory about a plain body and a ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Bixby," by Stephen Vincent Benet, and "The Duke's Opera," by "Jacques Belden" (the first an allegorical fantasy and the second a poetic-romance) are at the head of this division. With these should be included Don Marquis's "Death and Old Man Murtrie," for its sardonic allegory, and "The Designs of Miramon," by James Branch Cabell, for its social satire. Individual members of the Committee would have liked to include these—different members preferring different ones of the four—but the Committee ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... entered the first room, where conceive my surprise to see, fantastically dressed, and reclining in Eastern fashion on skins and cushions, a galaxy of beauty. They were silent, too, except one, who, in a hushed, mysterious, voice, was improvising an allegory." ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... beside them—that sort of thing—the obvious road to the heart. The second is hitting the superior kind of idiot in the eye—inventing a cheap new formula—putting a goblin upside down in one corner, an immoral-looking woman in another, and passing the arrangement off as an allegory. Then up jumps an interpreter and booms you. The third is slowly making your name by the sweat of your brow, and selling your pictures when you are fifty-five to people who never recognized their merit till they had been told you ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... was sober. But my souls, the life he led that poor girl! Yes, when a man's got that tiger in him, there ought to be some quiet little war round for puttin' him out of his misery." Staniford listened silently, waiting for the mate to make the application of his grim allegory. "I s'pose I'm prejudiced; but I do hate a drunkard; and when I see one of 'em makin' up to a girl, I want to go to her, and tell her she'd better take a real tiger out the show, ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... I interrupt the allegory of my mate, no matter how startling its structure. He adventures orally when and in the manner the spirit calls, without rote, form, or tone production. Therefore I kicked my blistered heels in the air and ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... Celebres. See also the Letters of Madame de Sevigne during the months of January and February 1680. In several English lampoons Luxemburg is nicknamed Aesop, from his deformity, and called a wizard, in allusion to his dealings with La Voisin. In one Jacobite allegory he is the necromancer Grandorsio. In Narcissus Luttrell's Diary for June 1692 he is called a conjuror. I have seen two or three English ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... tomb and threatening me with his dart, if he is a Death of the seventeenth century; but I do very much mind the heavy presence of the Fames or Britannias of the earlier nineteenth century celebrating in dull allegory the national bereavement in the loss of military and naval heroes who fell when the national type was least able to inspire grief with an artistic expression. The statesmen, the ecclesiastics, the jurists, look all ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... allegory—an allegory of English and American life. I am quite aware that with you the sexes have reversed positions, that the man has sunk into a money-making machine, who slaves so that his wife may spend, while the woman devotes her whole life to ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a specially large piece in one of grandma's quaint little china plates, Polly added the flowers and handed it to Tom, with a look that said a good deal, for, seeing that he remembered her sermon, she was glad to find that her allegory held good, in one sense at least. Tom's face brightened as he took it, and after an inspection which amused the others very much he looked up, saying, with an air of relief, "Plums all through; I 'm glad I had a hand in it, but Polly deserves the credit, and must wear the posy," and turning ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... audacity, often with a touch of grotesque exaggeration, but always with almost wearying minuteness. Sometimes this great writer finds that a description of actuality fails to give the true spiritual key to a situation, and he overflows into allegory, or Swendenborgian mysticism, just as Bastien-Lepage resorts to a coating of actual gilt, in depicting that radiant light in his Jeanne d'Arc which flat pigment could ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... the waits, came along the bridge toward the town-hall a device prepared by the good rector, who, standing by, acted as showman, and explained anxiously to the bystanders the import of a certain "allegory" wherein on a great banner was depicted Queen Elizabeth herself, who, in ample ruff and farthingale, a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other, stood triumphant upon the necks of two sufficiently abject ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... holes that were homes, along the edge of the chasms that were streets, everywhere we have seen flowers and vegetables springing up in freshly raked and watered gardens. My pink peonies were not introduced to point the stale allegory of unconscious Nature veiling Man's havoc: they are put on my first page as a symbol of conscious human energy coming back to replant ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... somewhat from Mrs. Jameson—the allegoric origin of certain legendary stories. She calls the story of the fiend, under the form of a dragon, devouring St. Margaret, and then bursting at the sign of the cross while the saint escaped unhurt, "another form of the familiar allegory—the power of Sin overcome by ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Witness, you will confine yourself to a plain statement of the facts in this case, and refrain from the embellishments of metaphor and allegory as ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... not appear to have had any very strong attachment to Paganism as a matter of dogmatic belief. To say nothing of the enlightened classes, who saw in this vast hierarchy of divinities only an ingenious allegory, the populace even was mainly concerned with the processions and songs and dances, the banquets and spectacular shows and all the external pomp and splendour of a cult the magnificence and varied rites of which amused its curiosity. But serious faith, ardent devotion, dogmatic discussion, is there ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... sorry for Reinaldo; but death was peace; this was hell in living veins. The memory of the world beyond the forest grew indistinct. She recalled her first dream and turned in loathing from the bloodless selfishness of which it was the allegory. Superstition and tradition slipped into some inner pocket of her memory, there to rattle their dry bones together and fall to dust. She saw only the figure, relaxed for the first time, the profile of a man with his ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... eagerly. He fancied he read relenting softness in her gaze; a flash of memory into a past, where glamour and romance, and the heart-history of the rose made up life's desideratum. Wherein existence was but an allegory of love's quest, and the goal, its consummation. Had she not bent sedulously over the rose of the poet? Had not her breath come quickly, eagerly? Could he not feel it yet, sweet and warm on his cheek? Into the past, having gone so far, he stepped now boldly, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... finally—those dear good people at home—putting as brave a face as they could upon it, and hoping for the best. My father assured my mother, though with trembling lip and tearful eye, that "God would temper the wind to the shorn lamb." I smiled at the part I was meant to play in this cheerful allegory, though it seemed to me rather inappropriate, as I had a new ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... crippled battleships, had at length begun to find a market. Within the past two weeks three landscapes and an allegorical painting had sold for good prices; and under the influence of success he expanded like an opening floweret. When Epstein, the agent, wrote to say that the allegory had been purchased by a Glasgow plutocrat of the name of Bates for one hundred and sixty guineas, Sellers' views on Philistines and their crass materialism and lack of taste underwent a marked modification. He spoke with some ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... which the primitive cults of India gave it? Did it enunciate an oblation of virginity to the senile Herod, an exchange of blood, an impure and voluntary wound, offered under the express stipulation of a monstrous sin? Or did it represent the allegory of fecundity, the Hindoo myth of life, an existence held between the hands of woman, distorted and trampled by the palpitant hands of man whom a fit of madness seizes, seduced by ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... here in contrast with Chaucer, is said to have lived between 1332 and 1400. His Vision of Piers the Plowman (who is partially identified with our blessed Saviour), with some added poems, forms an allegory on life in England, in Church and State, as it appeared to him during the dislocated and corrupt age which followed the superficial glories of ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... of it is unchangeable; the allegory, subtle and profound and yet simple, is cast into the form of a dramatic narrative, which moves with unconventional freedom to a finely impressive climax; and the reader, who began in idle curiosity, finds his intelligence more and more engaged until, ...
— Makers of Madness - A Play in One Act and Three Scenes • Hermann Hagedorn
... there will be little hope, that common wits should escape; and accordingly we find, that besides the universal and acknowledged practice of copying the ancients, there has prevailed in every age a particular species of fiction. At one time all truth was conveyed in allegory; at another, nothing was seen but in a vision; at one period all the poets followed sheep, and every event produced a pastoral; at another they busied themselves wholly in giving directions to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... characters stand, if we take the poem as an allegory? What is the significance of the ugly heads of the monsters? of the glass of liquor? of the remarkable courage of the Lady in the face of danger? What is the central idea of ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... allegorical figures, whose attitude, as if they were twirling their burden, suggests a vague waltz measure, a marvel of equilibrium which perfectly produces the illusion of the earth's revolution; and there are arms raised as a signal, bodies of heroic size, containing an allegory, a symbol that brings death and immortality upon them, gives them to history, to legend, to the ideal world of the museums which nations visit from ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... as being so closely interwoven that he could not have had one without the other, and if the objectionable passages in his poetry were expurgated, the life and genius of it would go with them. His story of "The Birth-mark" is an allegory of the same description. He did not agree with Shakspeare, that the best men are moulded out of faults, but believed that as we are in the beginning, so we remain essentially till ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... under Wat Tyler and Jack Straw. This state of things is reflected in the Vision of Piers Plowman, written as early as 1362, by William Langland, a tonsured clerk of the west country. It is in form an allegory, and bears some resemblance to the later and more famous allegory of the Pilgrim's Progress. The poet falls asleep on the Malvern Hills, in Worcestershire, and has a vision of a "fair field full of folk," representing the world with its various conditions of men. There were pilgrims ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... of the myth be, or be not, founded on solar phenomena, the yearning Greek mind formed on it an unconscious allegory of the course of the Victor, of whom the Sun, rejoicing as a giant to run his course, is another type, like Samson of old, since the facts of nature and of history are ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his nature. To all this, his birthright as a painter, a different element was added. A keen desire for knowledge, guiding his action in life, spurred him onward. Conscious of this dominant impulse, he has fancifully described himself in a Platonic allegory. He had passed beneath overhanging cliffs on his way to a great cavern. On bended knees, peering through its darkness, fear and desire had overwhelmed him,—fear for the menacing darkness of the cavern; and desire {xi} to ascertain ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... allotted quarry; and any assistance you may render me in procuring it will not, of course, affect in any way our bargain. On this point"—she spoke with a break of laughter—"I am as headstrong as an allegory on the banks ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... religious; one finds their drama saturated with religious feeling, hedged about with tabu, loaded down with prayer and sacrifice. They were poetical; nature was full of voices for their ears; their thoughts came to them as images; nature was to them an allegory; all this found expression in their dramatic art. They were musical; their drama must needs be cast in forms to suit their ideas of rhythm, of melody, and of poetic harmony. They were, moreover, the children of passion, sensuous, worshipful of whatever lends itself to pleasure. ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... the impression on Flora's mind that one day or another two young people would arrive in her house on a visit; but she had begun a poem called 'Dionysus at the Well,' and Felix himself had plunged into a satiric allegory entitled 'The Last of the Laborers.' Nedda, therefore, walked alone; but at her side went always an invisible companion. In that long, imaginary walking-out she gave her thoughts and the whole of her heart, and to be doing this never surprised her, who, before, had not given ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Psyche is the purest, daintiest, most poetic of fancies; in essence a fairy tale that might be told of an evening by the fire-light in the second century or the nineteenth, but embodying also a high and beautiful allegory, and treated with a delicate art which is in extreme contrast with the body of the 'Golden Ass.' The difference is almost as striking as between Gray's lampoon on "Jemmy Twitcher" and his 'Bard' or 'Elegy'; or between Aristophanes's revels in filth and his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of their style, but in the allegoric form and purpose which, pervade them. This characteristic is plain enough in Tricotrin and Folle-Farine, but finds its most marked expression in Pascarel. "Only an Allegory" would be a more expressive sub-title for the book than "Only a Story," for the story is the mere thread which sustains and binds together a series of parables and crystallized truths. Most of these, indeed, she has embodied in former works, but nowhere as in Pascarel is the author's design ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... journey, I neither saw nor heard any thing, consequently took no notes, which my readers will rejoice at, because they will be spared that inexhaustible supply to the trunk makers, "A Tour through France and Switzerland." I travelled night and day; for I could not sleep. The allegory of Io and the gad-fly, in the heathen mythology, must surely have been intended to represent the being, who, like myself, was tormented by a bad conscience. Like Io, I flew; and like her, was I pursued by the ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Pretiosa Margarita the following allegory. In the palace sits the king decorated with the diadem and in his hand the scepter of the whole world. Before him appears his son with five servants and falling at his feet implores him to give the kingdom to him and ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... that this story is an Allegory. They have probably read other stories of a similar nature, and may be asked to frame a simple definition. An Allegory is a story, not literally true, containing incidents that have a deeper meaning than is apparent on the surface. Its purpose is to teach some moral truth or universal ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Bacon,—no less than that of having taken the fundamental principle of his philosophy from his name-sake, Roger, and claimed it as his own. Bunyan, I am fully persuaded, was too honest and too righteous a man to be guilty of any such baseness. He was in a beaten path of Allegory,—a name, a hint he may have taken, but I think nothing more. You will judge from this, sir, how very far from my intentions or inclination, it would be, in the slightest respect, to depreciate John Bunyan, whose book I have loved from ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... occupying the stage now, it was true, but there was something warm and human and ragged about the performance. Flint was not a mere spiritless allegory in red-satin doublet and hose to give flame to his conventionality. Instead, she saw sitting opposite her a ponderous, quick-breathing, drunken male, handsome in a coarse, rough-hewn way, speaking in the quick, clipped speech of passion and striking her ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... is an allegory of this eternal story, of the man who wished to act for himself, to substitute himself for God, to emancipate himself from Him, and to create. Whereupon he fell into impotence, slavery ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... like all her projects, bears the stamp of greatness. The name of the artist is Falconet: "he was a Frenchman; but," adds Sir R.K.P. "this statue, for genius and exquisite execution, would have done honour to the best sculptors of any nation. A most sublime conception is displayed in the design. The allegory is finely imagined; and had he not sacrificed the result of the whole to the prominence of his group, the grand and united effect of the statue and its pedestal striking at once upon the eye, would have been unequalled ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... earnestly fixed upon her, may have been the old favourite ecclesiastical story of Susannah and the elders; the other, which represents a Saracen with a European female between him and a Christian soldier, is, perhaps, an ecclesiastical allegory, descriptive of the Saracen and the Christian warrior contending for the liberation of the Church. These sort of allegorical stories were common among monastic ornaments, and the famous legend of St George and the Dragon ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... was John Bunyan, not so influential or learned, but equally worthy. He belonged to the sect of the Baptists, and stands at the head of all unlettered men of genius—the most successful writer of allegory that any age has seen. The Pilgrim's Progress is the most popular religious work ever published, full of genius and beauty, and a complete exhibition of the Calvinistic theology, and the experiences of the Christian life. This book shows the triumph of genius over learning, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... 26—An Allegory on the Dispute respecting Precedency between the Belles Lettres and the Fine Arts. By Mr. Klopstock. ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... Narses gained victories, and Bunyan wrote the "Pilgrim's Progress;" but pestilent demagogues and mutilated guardians of Eastern zenanas have not always been successful in war, nor the great and useful profession of tinkers written allegory. As men without knowledge have at all times usurped the right to criticise campaigns and commanders, they will doubtless continue to do so despite the protests of professional soldiers, who discharge this duty in a ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... the same powers that you call good and wise, and who have also robbed me of my eyesight, my friend, and all else that was dear. I thank you for your kind intention, and you, too, Daphne, for recalling the beautiful allegory. How often we have argued over its meaning! If we continued the discussion, perhaps it might pleasantly shorten the next few hours, which I dread as I do my whole future existence, but I should be obliged in the outset to yield the victory to you. The great ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... language of those who use it, according to the particular country, though invariably in a meaning differing more or less from the usual and received one, and for the most part in a metaphorical sense. Metaphor and allegory, indeed, seem to form the nucleus of this speech, notwithstanding that other elements are to be distinguished; for it is certain that in every country where it is spoken, it contains many words differing from the language of ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... see how all this harmonized with the mediaeval allegorical element in religion and literature. A century earlier Langland had scourged wickedness in high places in his famous allegory, Piers Plowman. A century later Spenser was to weave the most exquisite verse round the defeats and triumphs of the spirit of righteousness in man's soul. Nor had allegory yet died when Bunyan wrote, for all ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... the law, do ye not hear the law? For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond-maid, the other by a free-woman. But he who was of the bond-woman was born after the flesh; but he of the free-woman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... and bawling orders here, there, everywhere, through a gigantic megaphone; bawling them in a lingua franca to which these mighty puppets moved obediently, weaving English history as upon a tapestry swiftly, continuously unrolled. "Which things," quoted Copas mischievously, "are an allegory, Philip." ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this strange weird tale that is almost like a romance of Oppenheim and is yet like an old-world allegory? Is he laughing at anarchists that they are but policemen in disguise? Is he saying that policemen are really only anarchists? Or does he mean that the Devil masquerades as the spirit of the Holy Day of the week 'Sunday,' or is 'Sunday' ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... in Universal History," by Bunsen (second edition), and specimens in almost every museum of Europe. There are other theological remains, such as the Metamorphoses of the gods and the Lament of Isis, but their meaning is disguised in allegory. The hymns and addresses to the sun abound in pure ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... The ancient allegory of Cupid and the arrows has never been improved upon: of Cupid, who should never in the world have been trusted with a weapon, who defies all game laws, who shoots people in the bushes and innocent bystanders generally, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... from this work, as from the "Battle of the Books," "The Spider and the Bee," and other of his writings, that Allegory was still ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... bas-reliefs, others (once famous, but now forgotten generals or admirals, these) by ponderous tombs that aspired towards the roof of the aisle, or partly curtained the immense arch of a window. These mountains of marble were peopled with the sisterhood of Allegory, winged trumpeters, and classic figures in full-bottomed wigs; but it was strange to observe how the old Abbey melted all such absurdities into the breadth of its own grandeur, even magnifying itself by what would elsewhere have been ridiculous. Methinks it is the test of Gothic ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... as true as it seemed novel. LYDGATE'S "Fall of Princes," says Mr. Campbell, "probably suggested to Lord SACKVILLE the idea of his 'Mirror for Magistrates'." The "Mirror for Magistrates" again gave hints to SPENSER in allegory, and may also "have possibly suggested to SHAKSPEARE the idea of his historical plays." When indeed we find that that great original, HOGARTH, adopted the idea of his "Idle and Industrious Apprentice," from the old comedy of Eastward Hoe, we easily conceive that some of the most ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... to imprint their mark on the author of Eros in Eruption; and so he has given us a real epic, whose very title, Ad Astra, is symbolic of the high altitudes in which he so triumphantly and so securely navigates. Outwardly it is a story of the War, but there is little difficulty in probing the allegory; and those who follow the hero's vicissitudes as a private in the Gasoliers, right through to his victorious advancement to the rank of Acting Lance-Corporal, unpaid (and there is a symbolism even in the "unpaid"), will readily ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... called "the true Church of Christ," but who, nevertheless, looked upon the Bible as merely the history of the Jews. He then showed that the Book of Genesis was considered by many doctors of divinity as a mere symbol or allegory. He took up the defense of Gibbon against Kennedy's insinuation that the great historian had maliciously and intentionally kept back the truth; he quoted Warburton as a man whose ingenious theories have found much favor with many learned ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... not a more beautiful, nor a more frequently applicable allegory than that of the famous Amreeta Cup—I know not whether devised by Southey, or borrowed by him from the rich store of instructive fable hidden in oriental tradition. It is long, long, since I read it; but yet every word is remembered whenever ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... discovery, and we who live, are identical. From that moment we both live, and know that we live. Moreover, such is the essential unity of our natures that our living must now express our knowing, and our knowing guide and illuminate our living. Consider the allegory of the centipede. From the beginning of time he had manipulated his countless legs with exquisite precision. Men had regarded him with wonder and amazement. But he was innocent of his own art, being a contrivance of nature, perfectly constructed to do her bidding. ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... the Puranas you consistently get the fact on the higher plane described in terms of the lower, with the result that it seems unintelligible, seems incomprehensible; then you have what is called an allegory, that is, a reality which looks like a fancy down here, but is a deeper truth than the illusion of physical matter, and is nearer to the reality of things than the things which you call objective and real. If you follow that line of thought at all you will read the Puranas with more intelligence ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... walnut. His study table had pen and ink and paper upon it, just as if he had stepped out of the room. The queen's apartments were very elegantly plain, and her oratory is as pretty a little thing as you can imagine. In all these apartments are fine pictures, and one is superbly frescoed with allegory and history. The room in which the Queen of England and Prince Albert lodged, in 1845, was shown us, and the state bed was still in it. The dining hall was finely ornamented with carvings, old armor, &c. But a room devoted ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... Allegory dramatised with no little skill. The piece is full of the shrewdest hits at our human failings, aimed, however, with no ill-nature. Aristophanes' power of characterisation here shows no falling-off. Fortune's fickleness is proverbial and has received ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... simple response: important, with other passages, to show how naturally it came to them (i.e. the Hellenes and Xenophon) to give a spiritual application to their rules of bodily and mental training. These things to them are an allegory. The goal is lofty, if not so sublime as St. Paul's or Comte's, the Christians or Positivists (there has been an alteration for the better in the spiritual plane, and Socrates helped to bring it about, ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... architect and a poet. Orcagna, or, to give him his right name, Andrea di Cione, for Orcagna was an abbreviation of Arcagnolo, flourished in the middle of the fourteenth century. Among his best-known works in painting are the Dantesque frescoes in the Strozzi chapel at S. Maria Novella, and that terrible allegory of Death and Judgment in the Campo Santo at Pisa, in which the gay riding party come upon the three open graves. Orcagna put all his strength into the tabernacle of Or San Michele, which is a most sumptuous, beautiful and thoughtful shrine, yet owing to the darkness of ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... met. We could hear each other's blood singing. And was not the play itself an allegory of our coming lives? Did not Galatea symbolise all the sleeping beauty of the world that was to awaken warm and fragrant at the kiss of our youth? And somewhere, too, shrouded in enchanted quiet, such a white white woman waited ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... doubt, took a fair view of Rossetti's theory when he said: "Rossetti's view of Dante's meaning is in great part just, but he has pushed it beyond all bounds of common sense. How could a poet—and such a poet as Dante—have written the details of the allegory as conjectured by Rossetti? The boundaries between his allegory and his pure picturesque are plain enough, I think, at first reading." It was, doubtless, due to his devotion to studies of the Florentine that Gabriele Rossetti named ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... few days after, anxious to learn the true meaning of this allegory, * * * I requested him to explain to me the meaning of his ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... sublime expression, which has been so often quoted, [Genesis, ch. 1, ver. 3.] is perhaps a barbarous flight; or rather the grand conception of an uncultivated mind; for it is contrary to nature and experience, to suppose that this account is founded on facts—It is doubtless a sublime allegory. But a cultivated mind would not thus have described the creation—for, arguing from analogy, it appears that creation must have been a comprehensive plan, and that the Supreme Being always uses second causes, slowly and silently to fulfil his purpose. ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... middle classes, we look to the same class in France, what a difference do we find! Humble cafe's in country towns have their walls covered with pleasing picture papers, representing "Les Gloires de l'Armee Francaise," the "Seasons," the "Four Quarters of the World," "Cupid and Psyche," or some other allegory, landscape or history, rudely painted, as papers for walls usually are; but the figures are all tolerably well drawn; and the common taste, which has caused a demand for such things, is undeniable. In Paris, the manner in which the cafes and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... disillusioning experience, by respect for her ideals. There she loomed, seeming monolithic in her solidity, a part of the rock on which she was built, her windows sending out shafts of light into the surrounding darkness, an allegory ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... He slowly went up to the statue, lifted the wreath and handed it to Delfina. In the exaltation of their spirits, this simple little episode had all the mysterious significance of an allegory—was in some way symbolical. One of his own lines ran persistently ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... and the most rational religion of all. All that we read about religion that does not seem expressly to agree with it, you may consider as an allegory." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... robins fly the air in twos, and that the fish swim the water in twos, and that the lions walk the fields in twos, and in the warm redolence of that Saturday afternoon he falls off into slumber; and as if by allegory to teach all ages that the greatest of earthly blessings is sound sleep, this paradisaical somnolence ends with the discovery on ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... flatulencies, and all other symptoms of indigestion; which more frequently proceed from intemperance in eating and drinking than any other cause. The benefits arising from temperance are set in a striking light in the following allegory, which may be ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... history of the early settlement of Mount Wollaston, or Merry Mount. In the slight sketch here attempted the facts recorded on the grave pages of our New England annalists have wrought themselves almost spontaneously into a sort of allegory. The masques, mummeries and festive customs described in the text are in accordance with the manners of the age. Authority on these points may be found in Strutt's Book of English ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... transitory life there should be an innkeeper for the refreshment and rest of the souls that go journeying to the everlasting abode of God. This innkeeper of souls is the Holy Mother Church, the table is the altar, the fare the emblems of the Passion. And this allegory is the theme of the ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... draw him into its own eternal evil and pride and passion of degraded power. But Julian stretched his arms towards the flame which drew its brightness and its force from Cuckoo sleeping. That was a last battle of souls, and the allegory of it came clearly ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... knowledge of history and elegance of allegory in this singular lyric: it was first printed ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... outside the town which tradition said had been built by Gregory himself. He had lost his wife and one of his children on the way from Fulneck; he had lost his post as teacher and minister; and now, for the sake of his suffering Brethren, he wrote his beautiful classical allegory, "The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart."55 For historical purposes this book is of surpassing value. It is a revelation. It is a picture both of the horrors of the time and of the deep religious life of the Brethren. As Comenius fled from Fulneck to Brandeis he saw ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... Emperor. The AEneid is upon the whole a sneaking sort of a poem. The identity of AEneas with Augustus, and the studied personification of every leading character, is too apparent to be denied. It is therefore less an epic than an allegory; and—without questioning the truth of Hazlitt's profound apothegm, that allegories do not bite—we confess that, in general, we have but small liking to that species of composition. For in the first place, the author of an allegory ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... dialectic discussion the oral tradition into a vast system of religious ritual and legal jurisprudence; on the other, weaving around the law, by way of adornment to it, a variegated fabric of philosophy, fable, allegory, and legend. Simultaneously the Alexandrian preachers—they were never quite the same as the rabbis—were emphasizing for the outer world as well as their own people the spiritual side of the religion, elaborating ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... wuz. If he hadn't boasted so over its bein' gin to him on account of his bein' so smart and popular and etcetery, he wouldn't have felt so cut up. But as it was, it bowed down his bald head into the dust (allegory). ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... always as relief or recovery, and always in strong contrast with the rough-hewn mass in which it is kindled—is in various ways the motive of all his work, whether its immediate subject be Pagan or Christian, legend or allegory; and this, although at least one-half of his work was designed for the adornment of tombs—the tomb of Julius, the tombs of the Medici. Not the Judgment but the Resurrection is the real subject of his last work in the Sistine Chapel; and his favourite ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... "It's an allegory," said Clarence. "Man captures the beautiful princess of his dream, and sets her to drudging in his kitchen. I think there is something sad but sweet, as Shaw would say, ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... observe an angel weighing the good works of the deceased against his evil deeds; and, as the former are far exceeding the avoirdupois upon which Satan is to found his claim, he is endeavoring most unfairly to depress the scale with his two-pronged fork.—This allegory is of frequent occurrence in the monkish legends.—The saint, who was aware of the frauds of the fiend, resolved to hold the balance himself.—He began by throwing in a pilgrimage to a miraculous virgin.—The devil pulled out an ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... interfering in the least with the traffic, when she came along like a steam-roller, knocked me down, crushed me, and rolled me out flat. I shall never recover my natural shape; and as for the camp-stool and the portable easel—these things are an allegory. But I love her ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... on Iliad, xx. 67. Dindorf (1877), vol. iv. p. 231. "This manner of apologetics is as old as Theagenes of Rhegium. Homer offers theological doctrine in the guise of physical allegory." ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... as thou wilt in allusions to allegory and fable; but bear always in thy most serious mind this truth, that men hold under an awful responsibility the talents with which they are entrusted. Kings have not so serious an account to render as they who exercise an intellectual influence ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... unruffled complacency, 'that I aimed at an allegory rather than a pedantic narrative of facts. I was endeavouring to explain Clarice Le Mesurier on the fashionable ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... music]; a new arena (CARRIERE) came to open itself,—and one must have been either without address, or else buried in stupid somnolence (ENGOURDISSEMENT), not to profit by an opportunity so advantageous. I had read Bojardo's fine Allegory: [Signifies only, "seize opportunity;" but here is ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... poem is an allegory. In reading it try to get a clear picture of the scene described, and at the same time remember that everything in it has a hidden meaning; to understand it fully, you must find out what the pictures represent. The title gives you ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... aware that the obvious astronomical allegory, which lurks in Chaucer's "Complaint of Mars and Venus," has been pointed out, or that any attempt has been made to explain it. In Tyrwhitt's slight notice of that poem, prefixed to his glossary, there is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... a monumental aquatic composition expressing in exuberant allegory the triumph of Energy, the Lord of the Isthmian Way. It is the central sculptural feature of the South Garden, occupying the great quatrefoil pool in front of the tower. The theme is Energy, the Conqueror - the Over Lord - the Master; Energy, mental and physical; ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... prepared to admit, with the liberal opinion of the time, that ancient mythology 'was a system of nature concealed under the veil of allegory', a system in which 'a thousand fanciful fables contained a secret and mystic meaning': [Footnote: Edinb. Rev., July 1808.] he was prepared to go a considerable step farther, and claim that there was no essential difference between ancient mythology and the theology of the Christians, that both ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... representative of the Maremma and Family returning thanks to the Grand Duke Leopold III. of Tuscany for his goodness in causing her swamps to be drained. The Maremma and her children are arrayed in the scant draperies of Allegory, but the Grand Duke is fully dressed, and is shown looking down with some surprise at their figures, and with a visible doubt of the propriety of their public ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... modes of activity or functions of the One Eternal, internal Principle, called God. According to the Bible, God said, "Let there be light," and through the power of this outspoken "Word," the world came into existence. This allegory, expressed in modern language, means that by the active Will of the universal First Cause, the images existing in its eternal memory were thrown into objectivity and thus produced the germs from which the worlds with all things existing therein were evolved and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... and to change our allegory, "on the banks of the Nile," as Mrs. Malaprop would have pervertingly put it, with "a nice [xviii] derangement of epitaphs," we invite our many guests to a simple "dinner of herbs." Such was man's primitive food in Paradise: "every green herb bearing seed, and every tree in the ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... impressive, after so much browsing among massive and battered and decaying fanes that rest upon ruins, and those ruins upon still other ruins, and those upon still others again. It was a sermon, an allegory, a symbol of Instability. Those creations in stone were only a kind ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... which follows. The text of 1842 became the permanent text, and in this no subsequent material alterations were made. The poem is more purely fanciful than Tennyson perhaps was willing to own; certainly his explanation of the allegory, as he gave it to Canon Ainger, is not very intelligible: "The new-born love for something, for some one in the wide world from which she has been so long excluded, takes her out of the region of shadows into that of realities". Poe's commentary is most ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... additions which every legend would receive in its progress from tribe to tribe—and the constant embellishments the most homely inventions would obtain from the competition of rival poets, rapidly served to swell and enrich these primary treasures of Grecian lore—to deduce a history from an allegory—to establish a creed in a romance. Thus the early mythology of Greece is to be properly considered in its simple and outward interpretations. The Greeks, as yet in their social infancy, regarded the legends of their faith as a child reads a fairy tale, credulous of all that is ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... very widely practised in Japan, and it is extremely popular. No doubt, the more educated and intellectual Buddhist,—and the distinction thus suggested needs constantly to be insisted on,—would explain the Paradise of the West as being a mere allegory, and regard Amitabha, as he was originally conceived to be, as merely an ideal personification of boundless light. But to the people generally the Undefiled Ground and its presiding ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... the stalk. Was it her own mood she told me in the allegory? Or was it the mood she knew to be in me? There had been an echo of sorrow in the laugh, of pity, kindness, and regret: and the laugh that she uttered in giving the fresh bloom to the King had seemed pure derision. It was my ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... nibble at the superfluities and excrescences of books, which the learned at length observing, took warning of their own accord to lop the luxuriant, the rotten, the dead, the sapless, and the overgrown branches from their works. But now all this he cunningly shades under the following allegory: That the Nauplians in Argia learned the art of pruning their vines by observing that when an ass had browsed upon one of them, it thrived the better and bore fairer fruit. But Herodotus holding the very same hieroglyph, speaks much plainer ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... avarice is intended to be conveyed in the tale, or rather apologue, or perhaps we should consider it as a sort of allegory, related by the sagacious bird on the 47th Night, according to the India Office MS., but the 16th Night of Kadiri's abridgment. It is to the following ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... very clearly defined as "critical in a grammatical way." "Allegory is writing highly colored, as Pope's works"; "allegory is writing of something that never happened, but it is purely imaginary, often a wandering from the main point." A common mistake regarding the meaning of the word bibliography results in such answers as "bibliography—a study ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... ambitions of the hour, full charged with familiar and neighbourly associations. All this with Dr. Hake is by no means inevitable. He loves to symbolise; he does not always care that the symbol shall be appropriate and plain. He prefers to work in allegory and emblem; but he does not always see that, however representative to himself, his emblems and his allegories may not be altogether representative to the world. His imagination is at once quaint and far- reaching—at once peculiar and ambitious; ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... yet is made to conform itself in action to real and every-day life, in such a way that the understanding is not shocked, because it reassures itself by referring the supernatural to the regions of allegory. Shall we call this a kind of bastard-allegory? Jericho, when he first appears, is a common man of the common world. He is a money-making, grasping man, yet with a bitter savour of satire about him which raises him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... to die and if he found that he had another life he would do all that he could to prove its existence, they referred to the old Platonic myth. In the communications of the so-called George Pelham allusion was made to the allegory, and that justifies me ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... is one of the many stories in which the names are symbolical. We have another example in 'Dicky Random,' and, I suppose, in 'Captain Murderer' too, while in 'Prince Life,' to which we soon come, which is frankly an allegory, the habit is carried beyond Bunyan, who made his attributes very like men and called them Mr. or Lord to increase the illusion or diminish the cheat. The drawback to this kind of nomenclature is that it weakens the realism of the story. It also perplexes one a little when one thinks of later ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas |
