"Characterize" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... legitimate finish of the nave and aisles. A recent critic, defending the facade in spite of its architectural isolation from the building in its rear, points out that the chief objection to the west front is that it is wanting in that repose and refinement of detail which characterize the rest of the building, and that its design is entirely out of keeping therewith, and also complains that "the ragged outline at the angles produced by the high relief and rather clumsy sections of the decorative detail has a very bad effect." It has been ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... which the President has disposed of his third topic,—the Kansas difficulty,—we can scarcely characterize their disingenuousness and meanings. We have already spoken of the object of this part of the document as atrocious,—and we repeat the word, as the most befitting that could be used. That object is nothing less than an attempt to cover the enormous frauds ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... time. The contrast is between the new farmer and the mossback, for that is a question of men and of their relative efficiency as members of the industrial order. Then, of course, you must observe the individual traits that characterize the new farmer, such as keenness, business instinct, readiness to adopt new methods, and, in fact, all the qualities that make a man a success today in any calling. For the new farmer, in respect to his personal qualities, is not a sport, a phenomenon. ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... before this outline sketch of the manner of man's origin can be called complete. The psychical development of Humanity, since its earlier stages, has been largely clue to the reaction of individuals upon one another in those various relations which we characterize as social.[10] In considering the origin of Man, the origin of human society cannot be passed over. Foreshadowings of social relations occur in the animal world, not only in the line of our own vertebrate ancestry, but in certain orders of insects which stand ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... under Dushan this region was a part of the Serb empire as under Simeon and Asen it was part of the Bulgarian. If an appeal is made to anthropology the answer is still uncertain. For while the Mongolian features—broad flat faces, narrow eyes, and straight black hair—which characterize the subjects of King Ferdinand can be seen—I myself have seen them—as far west as Ochrida, they may also be found all over Northern Servia as far as Belgrade though the Servian physical type is entirely different. There is no fixed connection between the anthropological ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman
... cliff which Shakspeare has celebrated; and some time elapsed before we could distinguish the shores of France, which differ entirely from those of England, rising gradually from the water's edge, with the single exception of Scales Cliff, which seems to correspond with some of those bulwarks which characterize our coast from Dover to Portland, where, I think, chalk cliffs are succeeded by masses of ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... right, my dear, sir," says Mr. Croker, clearing his throat. "The government has assuredly been administered, from its very inception, in a manner which the most enthusiastic adherents of the Executive will scarcely venture to characterize as either judicious or constitutional. In the year which has just elapsed, things have been managed in a manner which must excite universal reprobation. Even the alleged performances of the army ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... connected with George's which Horace Walpole ought not to have destroyed. In telling a correspondent of the amusement with which he had been reading Shenstone's letters, he took occasion to characterize as vulgar and devoid of truth an anecdote told of his father, Lord Orford. This was the story that his father, "sitting in George's, was asked to contribute to a figure of himself that was to be beheaded by the mob. ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... from themselves, but from errors of the public authorities, disordering the circulating medium, over which they had no control, and which have, in fact, doubled and trebled debts, by reducing, in that proportion, the value of the property which was to pay them? If all these circumstances, which characterize the present case, have taken place in theirs also, then follow the precedent. Be assured, the cases will be so rare as to produce no embarrassment, as never to settle into an injurious habit. The single feature of a sixty years' service, as no other instance ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... deal of amusement, and some profit, in the perusal of those little items which characterize the manners and circumstances of the country. New England was then in a state incomparably more picturesque than at present, or than it has been within the memory of man; there being, as yet, only a narrow strip of civilization along the edge of a vast forest, peopled with ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and head, and all suggestion of self-sufficiency in attitude or manner should be guarded against. All the various instruments of expression should be made ready and responsive for immediate use, but are to be employed with that taste and tact that characterize the well-balanced man. Too much action and long-continued emotional effort lose force, and unless the law of action and reaction is applied to the preaching of the sermon the attention of the congregation may snap and the desired effect ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... factor of the dramatic problem, and fashioned entirely according to the requirements of the action. The continuous flow of beautiful melody takes the place alike of the dry recitative and the set musical forms which characterize the accepted school of opera. As the dramatic motif demands, this "continuous melody" rises into the highest ecstasies of the lyrical fervor, or ebbs into a chant-like swell of subdued feeling, like the ocean after the rush of the storm. If Wagner has destroyed musical forms, he has also ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... years in India also presents an anomalous type, proving how climate and mode of life may alter the original; for it is curious to contrast the round, rosy faces of the fresh English girls outward bound with the sharp, sallow faces and flashing, restless eyes which characterize those who are returning. The babel of tongues at these tables-d'hote, where conversations are being carried on in every European language, is most perplexing at first, though French and English predominate. Altogether, for the student of character there is no better field than one of these ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... circumstance, however, that interfered slightly with their enjoyment of that perfect freedom from care which ought to characterize a honeymoon. The people who owned the house and occupied the lower floor had rented the upper part to Mrs. Braboy in person, it never occurring to them that her husband could be other than a white man. When it became known that ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... deplorable excesses into which the highest and most honoured in that communion have been betrayed. On the present Pope's encyclical letter [A.D. 1840] we have already observed; and in this place I propose to examine only one more of those many excesses meeting us on every side, which characterize the public worship of the Virgin. The instance to which I refer seems to take a sort of middle station between the authorized enjoined services of the Church of Rome, and the devotions of individuals and family worship. It partakes on the one hand far ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... third, or thereabouts, of the continuous Woodland, where the deciduous forest trees begin to give place to evergreens, as they themselves replaced the conifers further north, that the minutely subdivided horticulture and arboriculture begins, which characterize the Mediterranean region. To call it agriculture would be to exaggerate its scale. It is more like a northerly extension of tropical Hackbau, as the Germans call those forms of plant-raising which dispense with plough and spade, and employ only ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... qualification perhaps may be not unfairly described as earthiness—never an agreeable trait, and one to which probably is due the depreciation of Courbet that is so popular even among appreciative critics. It is easy to characterize Courbet as brutal and material, but what is easy is generally not exact. What one glibly stigmatizes as brutality and grossness may, after all, be something of a particularly strong savor, enjoyed by the painter himself with a gusto too sterling and instinctive to be justifiably ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... elegy; but an elegy is a sustained train of connected imagery and reflection. The "Rubaiyat" is, on the other hand, a string of quatrains, each of which has all the complete and independent significance of an epigram. Yet there is so little of that lightness which should characterize an epigram that we can scarcely put Omar in the same category with Martial, and it is easy to understand why the author should have been contented to name his book the "Rubaiyat," or Quatrains, leaving it to each individual to make, if he chooses, a more definite ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... of these facts suffices. In the novel and drama, therefore, the personalities and life histories of men have a simplicity and singleness of direction not found in reality. The artist seeks everywhere the traits that individualize and characterize, ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... love; God, the Father of all men, loving them with an infinite passion and seeking them even unto death,—that is the message of the Christian Incarnation. And how strangely does it contrast with the moral obliquity and selfish indifference to human interest which characterize Hindu incarnations! In Christ do we find that God is the ever present, personal, loving Father, seeking to bring home again His lost children. He is supremely just and holy as Ruler and Provider; but His justice and holiness ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... even a simple problem of management, like the one concerning the order sheet, set forth above, is to reveal some of the difficulties of analysis which characterize all subject-matter having to do with human activity. This means that we should not expect results too quickly nor should we be disappointed if the first results of efforts at scientific analysis ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... predilection for Galen and Hippocrates, with whose writings he shows great familiarity. He makes use besides of Aristotelian notions, and is influenced by the Neo-Platonic treatise, known as the "Liber de Causis," and derived from a work of Proclus. It is for this reason difficult to characterize his standpoint, but we shall not go far wrong if we call him a Neo-Platonist, for reasons which will ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... it ran, "does filth, overcrowding, lack of privacy and domesticity, lack of ventilation and lighting, and absence of supervision and of sanitary regulation still characterize the greater number of the tenements; but they are built to a greater height in stories; there are more rear houses built back to back with other buildings, correspondingly situated on parallel streets; the courts and alleys are more greedily encroached upon and narrowed into unventilated, ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... polite reserve of the courtly poets of Japan is the simplicity of their style, which is, doubtless, in a large measure, due to the meagre range of spiritual faculties which characterize the Japanese mind. This intellectual poverty manifests itself in the absence of all personification and reference to abstract ideas. The narrow world of the poet is here a concrete and literal sphere of experience. He never rises on wings above the earth his feet are treading, ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... Drumsna. It was by the beautiful waters of this noble river that they first felt that impassioned glow that colors all the after life of man or woman, and which is as different from the feelings that characterize early boy or girlhood, as the noon-day solar blaze is from the cold and placid beams of the pale new moon. There is one point at which the true passion of love, in all great hearts, leaps into fierce and instantaneous existence. ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... small room referred to, she showed a neat bed, a chair, a wash-stand, and a few hooks from which clothing might be hung. It was plain enough, but there was an air of neatness which did not characterize his present room. ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... finches, as the hermit at the head of the thrushes. His song approaches an ecstasy, and, with the exception of the winter wren's, is the most rapid and copious strain to be heard in these woods. It is quite destitute of the trills and the liquid, silvery, bubbling notes that characterize the wren's; but there runs through it a round, richly modulated whistle, very sweet and very pleasing. The call of the robin is brought in at a certain point with marked effect, and, throughout, the variety ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... parent when he takes care of his child, from his selfishness when he only takes care of himself. For, according to this philosophy, as in both cases he only means to gratify a desire of his own, he is in both cases equally selfish. The term benevolent, in the mean time, is not employed to characterize persons who have no desires of their own, but persons whose own desires prompt them to procure the welfare of others. The fact is, that we should need only a fresh supply of language, instead of that which by this seeming discovery we should have lost, in order to ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... familiar with the South America of to-day to realize the New Granada of the Spanish colonial period. From Guiana westward along the northern coast was an extensive and, for the most part, unexploited stretch of territory, devoid of such arbitrary boundaries as characterize it to-day, and limited only on the north and west by the sea, and on the south by the Portuguese colony of Brazil and the great Spanish territory of Peru. Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador, and the sharply defined limits these names represent, are, of course, modern creations, comparatively ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... their situation than most of them seem to do; that they should look above and beyond the ranks of partisans for the light they need; that they should listen to those who will discuss their problem with the coolness, the disinterestedness, the unhesitating honesty which characterize the leading scientists of the day in other fields of inquiry. Such are the speakers and writers they should invite to their assistance. Instead of wasting their breath in expressions of self-admiration, in threadbare ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... practice of mud-coating all walls has in Cibola undoubtedly led to greater carelessness and a less rigid adherence to ancient methods of construction, the stone masonry may still be seen to retain some of the peculiarities that characterize ancient examples. Features of this class are still more apparent at Tusayan, and notwithstanding the rudeness of much of the modern stone masonry of this province, the fact that the builders are familiar with the superior methods of the ancient builders, is clearly shown ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... How shall we characterize the doctrine of endless torture as the destiny of most of those who have lived, and are living, on this planet? I prefer to let another writer speak of it. Mr. John Morley uses the following words: "The horrors of what is perhaps ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the soil in the river bottom near Fort Hall, which will be of assistance in enabling you to form some correct idea of its general character in the neighboring country. I characterize it as good land, but the analysis ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... of the great masters in language must lead to a discriminating taste for literature; and the effect upon the pupil's own habits of thought and expression will necessarily be to lift him above the insipid, commonplace matter and language that characterize much of the so-called ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... the freshness and verve which characterize all Mr. Fenn's writings and put him in the front rank of writers ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... powerful and useful properties of tea, and without which no plant would be recognized as tea, yet some of the stimulating or exhilarating influences of this plant are attributed to the volatile oils which contribute so largely to the flavors and odors which characterize tea. ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... to characterize a republic, we should say it was a state in which power, both theoretically and practically, is derived from the nation, with a constant responsibility of the agents of the public to the people—a responsibility that is neither to be evaded nor denied. That such a system is better ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and practically acquainted with affairs. Refined thoughtfulness and common sense combine to give value to all that Mr. Helps writes, and he is master of a style at once manly and elegant, quiet and strong. Two famous lines, which occur in a passage quoted in these volumes, serve well to characterize their merits:— ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... I mean to say very unprofessional!" exclaimed Mr. Shanks, "and let me say very hazardous too," rejoined the lawyer abruptly; but Mrs. Hazleton herself interposed, saying in a marked tone and with an air of dignity which did not always characterize her demeanor towards her "right hand man," as she was accustomed sometimes to designate Mr. Shanks, "We do not desire any interference at this moment, my good sir. I appointed you at twelve o'clock. It is not yet nine." "O I can see, I can see," replied Mr. Shanks, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... consciousness of the fact that he owes so much to the splendid qualities of his forbears. Such pride may be shared by every other progressive American of foreign birth or parentage who feels that he is bringing into our social and industrial life certain commendable traits that characterize the best sons and daughters of his fatherland, whatever that ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... characterize the nation of Israel:—They are compassionate, they are modest, and they are benevolent. Compassionate, as it is written (Deut. xiii. 18), "And show thee mercy, and have compassion upon thee, and multiply thee." Modest, as it is written (Exod. xx. 20), "That his ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... support themselves; yet the officers elected by the lodges or squads of such persons, Jews, Arabs, Chinamen, savages, infidels and Christians, become Most Eminent Grand Commanders, Thrice Illustrious Puissants, etc. Yea, since brotherhood and equality characterize these associations, the Jew, the Arab, the Chinaman, and the infidel are eligible to any office, and may become Most Worshipful Grand Commanders and Most Excellent ...
— Secret Societies • David MacDill, Jonathan Blanchard, and Edward Beecher
... may be, that their strength, and their dignity, and their happiness, lie in their seclusion from the rivalries, strifes, and public duties of life. The strength and depth of the respect and love for woman, as woman, which characterize this age, can not be overstated. But woman insists upon being respected, as a kindred intellect, a free competitor, and a political equal. And we have suspicions that she may surprise the conservative world by making her pretensions good. Only meanwhile ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... idle Englishmen call us Huns; you may, for all I care, characterize the warriors of our splendid Landwehr as sons of Attila; it is enough for us if this Landwehr can shatter into a thousand pieces the ring of our merciless enemies. Far better that you should call us ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... thousand francs, which with much difficulty I had induced Rochez—nay, forced him!—to hand over to me in anticipation of what I was about to accomplish for his sake. A thousand francs! Did this miserliness not characterize the man? Was it to such a scrubby knave that I, at risk of my life and of my honour, would hand over that jewel amongst women, that pearl above price?—a lady with a personal fortune amounting to two hundred ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... from other things only in certain particulars which may be numbered, while others differ in more than can be numbered, more even than we need ever expect to know. Some classes have little or nothing in common to characterize them by, except precisely what is connoted by the name: white things, for example, are not distinguished by any common properties except whiteness; or if they are, it is only by such as are in some way dependent on, or connected with, whiteness. But a hundred generations have not exhausted ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... trade, and when, instead of a horse a dog is involved, I think one never forgives as well. To that number of persons who, in their daily walks of life are fairly honest, but who, when it comes to a trade in dogs are apt to lose that fine sense of justice that should characterize all transactions, we would say with Shakespeare: "To thine own self be true. Thou canst not then be false to any man." Yea, we would repeat the command of a greater than Shakespeare, to whom, I trust, we all pay reverence, when He lays down for us all the Golden Rule: ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... stigmatizes the necromancy of his day as 'a terrible Plague of Evil Angels,' or, in still plainer speech, as 'a prodigious descent of devils upon divers places near the centre of this Province.' And how better can we characterize this confused and distracting babblement which gives no good gift ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... short, the fathers trespass against those affections which furnish to Christianity its moving powers, and against those truths which furnish to Christianity its guiding lights. Indeed, Milton's memorable attempt to characterize the fathers as a body, contemptuous as it is, can ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Markgrafen even unto the Agadir incident it has been characteristic of Prussia to extend her boundaries and interests under the plea of military necessity. Aggression is the only word to characterize Frederick's seizure of Silesia and part of Poland. South and East Prussia were added by the same forcible means (1793-1795). In the Napoleonic wars Swedish Pomerania fell as the booty of military necessity. Schleswig-Holstein was filched from ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... what has gone before might be uninterrupted. On the 16th of the previous July the King made a journey to Fontainebleau, where he remained until the 14th of September. I should suppress the bagatelle which happened on the occasion of this journey, if it did not serve more and more to characterize the King. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... concept that most abstractly describes reality, follows it through its countless conflicts and contradictions, and finally reaches the highest category which, including all the foregoing categories in organic unity, is alone adequate to characterize the universe as an organism. What these categories are and what Hegel's procedure is in showing their necessary sequential development, can here not even be ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... has done justice to that nobility, generosity, and humanity, which in many cases characterize individuals at the South. Such instances save us from utter despair of our kind. But, she asks any person, who knows the world, are ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... myself entitled to ask for a more determinate adjudication on their claims as works of art. At present, I feel authorized to make haughtier pretensions in right of their conception than I shall venture to do, under the peril of being supposed to characterize their execution. Two remarks only I shall address to the equity of my reader. First, I desire to remind him of the perilous difficulty besieging all attempts to clothe in words the visionary scenes derived from the world of dreams, where a single false note, a single word in a wrong ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... am most ready to admit that it could not be their intention so to characterize me; but it is the direct inference which others must gather from the first paragraph I have quoted from their Representation, and an inference which, I understand, has already been raised in public opinion. A departure, my dear Lord, on my part, from upholding the principle declared ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... Siberia. Magnificent crystals have been found in these localities in times long past, and from the fragments and sections of crystals found in the debris of early explorations we observed the wide range of color and the deep longitudinal striae which characterize the renowned beryls from the Altai Mountains, in Siberia. Lively sea- and grass-green, light and deep yellow, also blue crystals of various shades, have been ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... nature has been mirrored in the literature and art of the East. Its products lack the measure, the grace and symmetry, and the human interest, which characterize the creations of the European mind. In the mechanical arts, invention and discovery push on progress to a certain point, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... avoided in this edition. The philosophical analysis, the orderly arrangement of meanings, the simplicity, comprehensiveness, and precision of statement, the freedom from prejudice, crotchets, and dogmatism, the good taste and good sense, which characterize this portion of the work, are deserving of the fullest recognition ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... and as silly as they look. There is not a touch in them that has any truth to nature, not a line that has real beauty or expressiveness. They represent the human figure with the structure of a jellyfish and the movement of a Dutch doll; the human face with an expression I prefer not to characterize. If they be not the symptoms of mental decay, they can be nothing but the means of ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... reminiscent of Michelangelo Millet adds another in which he is allied to the Greeks. This is his tendency towards generalization. It is the typical rather than the individual which he strives to present. "My dream," he once wrote, "is to characterize the type." So his figures, like those of Greek sculpture, reproduce no particular model, but are the general type deduced from ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... Italian lyric poetry, and to compose very short biographical sketches of the authors. In these specimens, which as yet exist only in manuscript, he has shown the same critical knowledge of the Italian language, and admirable command of the English, that characterize his translations of Tasso. He had not advanced far in these exercises, when the obscure and contradictory accounts of many incidents in the life of Dante caused him much embarrassment, and sorely piqued ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... and modern Romanists, I would reckon it unworthy of notice; but it is received and uttered again as genuine at this day by grave and learned Protestant theologians of Germany, and notwithstanding the solidity and good sense which characterize his "Notes" generally, is formally reproduced in its boldest ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... To these advantages were added a seeming unconsciousness of his superiority to most around him, in the way of looks, and a humility of spirit that caused him often to deplore his deficiencies in those accomplishments which characterize the man of study and of intellectual activity. It was only among the hardy, active, and reckless, that Guert manifested the least ambition ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... Bonjem, I saw, by the nature of the country, that we were approaching the regions of rain, herbage and shrubs increasing on every side. The country also assumed a more even, though an undulating surface; and I lost sight of those low, dull, dreary, and monotonous ridges which characterize the desolations, of the African Wilderness. However, I expected to see the eastern terminations of the Tripoline Atlas. Continuing our six days' route, now west, now north-west, now north, and now north-east and east, wriggling in ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the curve. In reality, however, the apse is not so sharply curved internally as externally, and its walls are very thick, so that the square form could be imposed upon the round without much overlapping. The parapet shows the same wide merlons and cruciform piercings which characterize the other Decorated parapets of the church, and it may have been ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... more discrimination characterize the work of the senses than in Early Childhood. The impressions are richer in detail and meaning, because of the increased knowledge possessed by the child. It is a commonplace that we receive from anything in proportion to what we bring to it. The ear of the musician hears in an orchestra ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... must be admitted; his sight was still so good, that he could read without spectacles; his handsome oval face, framed in whiskers that were indeed too black, showed a brilliant complexion, ruddy with the veins that characterize a sanguine temperament; and his stomach, kept in order by a belt, had not exceeded the limits of "the majestic," as Brillat-Savarin says. A fine aristocratic air and great affability served to conceal the libertine with whom Crevel had ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... "gold does not occur continuously in payable quantities over that extent, the 'pay-ore' being found in irregular patches, and (less frequently) in well-defined 'pay-shoots' similar to those which characterize quartz-veins."[59] There are also a few scattered mines in other parts of the basin. On this line there are two principal reefs—the Main Reef, with its so-called "leader," a thin bed just outside, and parallel to ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... large white stork. The ash-colored herons were always in pairs, the white one always single, standing quiet and alone on the edge of the water, or half hidden in the green capim. The trees and bushes were full of small warbler-like birds, which it would be difficult to characterize separately. To the ordinary observer they might seem like the small birds of our woods; but there was one species among them which attracted my attention by its numbers, and also because it builds the most extraordinary nest, considering the size of the bird itself, that I have ever seen. It is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... for that day. It had come to this, now; to admitting frankly the charm which he was still calling sensuous, and which, in the moments of insight recurring, as often as they can be borne, to the imaginative, and vouchsafed now and then even to the wayfaring, he was still disposed to characterize as an appeal to that which was least ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... few lines characterize a certain set of people who pick up news from "good authority," and settle the fate of the nation over strong potations of brandy and water, or Calvert's porter, forgetting that "people who drink beer, think beer." Suppose a question of great public interest afloat:—"Reports are abroad, precisely ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... uncle, how can you speak so indifferently about my doing such an ungenerous act; to characterize it in the very mildest terms. I feel that Emily is as much my wife in the eyes of God, as if a thousand clergymen had united us. It is not my fault that we are not legally married; it is the fault of the laws. My father did not feel that my mother ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... gravity which should characterize a paper addressed to the Congress of the nation by the Chief Magistrate of the nation. Nor do I forget that some of you are my seniors, nor that many of you have more experience than I in the conduct of public affairs. Yet I trust ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... 4.6% in 2004 on the strength of rapid export growth. The government plans to boost infrastructure spending in 2005. Moderate inflation, low unemployment, an export surplus, and fairly equal distribution of income characterize this solid economy. ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... been so deeply impressed upon the imagination, that even at the distance of nearly three centuries, it is unnecessary to remind the most ignorant and uninformed reader of the striking traits which characterize that remarkable countenance, which seems at once to combine our ideas of the majestic, the pleasing, and the brilliant, leaving us to doubt whether they express most happily the queen, the beauty, or ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... that he has utterly failed in his effort to characterize the German people in the way Sterne treated the English and French; he confesses that the ninety-page autobiography which precedes the journey itself was intended to be Tristram-like, but openly stigmatizes ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... in which any human being can be a person. God alone fully realizes the ideal of Personality. The essence of Personality is something positive: it signifies to us the highest kind of being within our knowledge—not (as is too often supposed) the mere limitations {56} and restraints which characterize human conscious life as we know it in ourselves. If we are justified in thinking of God after the analogy of the highest existence within our knowledge, we had better call Him a Person. The word is no doubt inadequate to the reality, as is all the language that we ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... securing discipline is to compel it. This is to resort to the law of things. A certain amount of law should characterize both the home and the classroom. Obedience and order are the first laws of heaven and are essential to good social environment. But the law should be so administered that the obedience exacted rests upon ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... and objects upon it, it permitted their reflected images to pass beneath its boughs. The reflected form was that of the man she had seen further off, but being inverted, she could not definitely characterize him. ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... trust that a similar intelligent, manful, and, at the same time, charitable and patriotic adherence to principles, fundamental both in morals and politics, will characterize the people of Massachusetts, and all their representatives, by whatever experiences of danger or difficulty their devotion to truth and duty may hereafter ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... of the Peak have been very rare for two centuries past, and these long intervals appear to characterize volcanoes highly elevated. The smallest one of all, Stromboli, is almost always burning. At Vesuvius, the eruptions are rarer than formerly, though still more frequent than those of Etna and the Peak of Teneriffe. The colossal summits of the Andes, Cotopaxi and Tungurahua, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... horse and automobile stealing, burglary, hold-ups, train and street-car robbery, embezzlement, fraud, kidnapping, safe-cracking, shop and bank robbery. It is well for the reporter who has to cover a story of this class to acquaint himself with the distinctions that characterize the various kinds of robbery and the various names applied to the people who commit this sort of crime: e.g., robber, thief, bandit, burglar, hold-up man, thug, embezzler, defaulter, ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... in action, spends itself in words. The fluent boaster is not the man who is steadiest before the enemy; it is well said to him that his courage is better kept till it is wanted. Loud utterance of virtuous indignation against evil from the platform, or in the drawing-room, do not characterize the spiritual giant: so much indignation as is expressed, has found vent, is wasted, is taken away from the work of coping with evil; the man has so much less left. And hence he who restrains that love of talk, lays up ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... be chosen to characterize American life during the generation that followed the age of Douglas and Lincoln, it must be "business enterprise"—the tremendous, irresistible energy of a virile people, mounting in numbers toward ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... dependent mode of life on which their evil stars had cast them. Then, moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair. But, as respects the majority of my corps of veterans, there will be no wrong done, if I characterize them generally as a set of wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing worth preservation from their varied experience of life. They seemed to have flung away all the golden grain of practical wisdom, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... thorough knowledge; still less, to admit even to herself that Miss Arrowpoint each time they met raised an unwonted feeling of jealousy in her: not in the least because she was an heiress, but because it was really provoking that a girl whose appearance you could not characterize except by saying that her figure was slight and of middle stature, her features small, her eyes tolerable, and her complexion sallow, had nevertheless a certain mental superiority which could not be explained away—an ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... for regulating the reference to arbitration of the disputed points of boundary under the 5th article of the treaty of Ghent, the proceedings have hitherto been conducted in that spirit of candor and liberality which ought ever to characterize the acts of sovereign States seeking to adjust by the most unexceptionable means important and delicate subjects of contention. The first sentiments of the parties have been exchanged, and the final replication on our part is in a course of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... beyond comparison the finest dramatic bass on the stage. No Italian could have a more mellow and sonorous voice, and his method has all the conscientiousness, passion, and distinctness of enunciation that characterize the German style. His Wotan and his Hans Sachs, especially, are marvels of operatic impersonation. Herr Alvary, the second of the vocalists who unite Italian with German merits, is a young singer who has a great future before him, ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... brilliant, reflected, and spontaneous style, in which learning comes in to enhance and steady the flow of a lively and luxuriant imagination. To all the refinement and subtle divination common to Slavic genius, you ally the patient research and learned scruples which characterize the German explorer. You assume alternately the gait of the mole and of the eagle—and everything you do succeeds wonderfully, because amid your subterranean maneuvers and your airy flights you constantly preserve, as your own inalienable property, so much wit and knowledge, good sense ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... is now wholly inadequate—so much so, indeed, that the superintendent of the ninth census (1870) declared, "It is not possible for one who has had such painful occasion as the present superintendent to observe the workings of the census law of 1870 to characterize it otherwise than as clumsy, antiquated and barbarous. The machinery it provides is as unfit for use in the census of the United States in this day of advanced statistical science as the smooth-bore muzzle-loading 'queen's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... how about the east? You are kind enough to admit in your letter that "from this (the aforementioned) standpoint of course the appearance of Russia among the allies is an anomaly and must be explained on other grounds." Anomaly is a rather tame word to characterize the meaning of this appearance of Russia. I should hardly ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... country. There was a slender delicacy of limb, waist, neck, hand, foot, and bosom, which seemed to be the type that moulded every one of them. I saw none of the hanging breast; the flat, expanded nostrils; the swollen lips, and fillet-like foreheads, that characterize the Soosoos and their sisters of the coast. None were deformed, nor were any marked by traces of disease. I may observe, moreover, that the male Fullahs of Timbo are impressed on my memory by a beauty of form, which almost equals that of ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... existence of the political party now designated by this name, and is used by us, not in distinction from those born in foreign lands, but to designate those peculiarities of doctrine, discipline, and worship, which characterize the great mass of the churches of the General Synod, as the terms Danish Lutheran, or Swedish Lutheran, and German Lutheran, indicate the peculiarities of our church in those countries. Some of our best American Lutherans are ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... Thrushes. His song approaches an ecstasy, and, with the exception of the Winter Wren's, is the most rapid and copious strain to be heard in these woods. It is quite destitute of the trills and the liquid, silvery, bubbling notes that characterize the Wren's; but there runs through it a round, richly modulated whistle, very sweet and very pleasing. The call of the Robin is brought in at a certain point with marked effect, and, throughout, the variety is so great and the strain so rapid that the impression is as of two or three ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... is a writer of uncommon freshness and power.... Those who have read his brief but carefully written studies will value at their true worth the genuine critical insight and fine literary qualities which characterize his ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... few cases of difference in docility. Number 1000 learned to discriminate white from black more quickly and retained his habit longer than any other dancer with which I have experimented. I should characterize him as an exceptionally docile individual. Table 44 offers several examples. Numbers 403 and 407, though they were born in the same litter and were alike in appearance and in conditions of life, acquired the white-black habit with a difference ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... have been conceived, and our friend Signor Adamo Rossi was present. I had been reading an English magazine article in which, after the manner of a certain English school in literature and art, a great deal was said of the spirituality and piety of sentiment which are thought to characterize the great Umbrian painter's works, and I cited some of the remarks which I had been reading. I saw a somewhat wicked smile mantling on the learned professor's face and a merry twinkle shining in his eye, which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... post-classical period it is low and sometimes quite conical (Fig. 60). In general, the degeneracy of post-classical Greek architecture is in nothing more marked than in the loss of those subtle curves which characterize the best Greek work. Other differences must be learned from ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... and optimism that characterize the American people, San Francisco lifted her head from the ashes, and, as Kipling says, "turned her face home to ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... elder brother and younger brother, husband and wife, friend and friend. To his sovereign, or lord, he is bound to be faithful; to his parents, dutiful, and to his elder brother, respectful. Affection should characterize the relations of husband and wife and trust ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Many of the reactions given by insane subjects possess no obvious logical value whatever; but since any combination of ideas may represent a relationship, either real or imagined, it would be arbitrary to characterize such a reaction ...
— A Study of Association in Insanity • Grace Helen Kent
... the promise of this letter, and the memoir of Mrs. Gray then written is a genuine work of love, composed amid "environments," as he wrote, "conducive to the sincerity and the enthusiasm which should characterize such a noble task." Here is his picture of the surroundings, redolent of the incense of sunshine and flowers that fills that ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... "the difficulty, if not impossibility, of understanding experiments and comparing them with one another, which arises in general from incomplete descriptions of apparatus, and from the arbitrary and vague numbers which are used to characterize electric currents. Such a practice," he says, "might be tolerated in the infancy of science; but in its present state of advancement greater precision and propriety are imperatively demanded. I have therefore determined," he continues, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... length would be here a needless repetition. Let us rather attempt to glance at some of the historic disputes involving the character and acts of the great discoverer, to sketch briefly the sources of information about him, and to characterize some of the more important writings ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... already, while showing that a large class of subjects, where physical qualities are comparatively indifferent and of no account, were forced upon the artist by Christianity.[71] Humility and charity may be found alike in blooming youth or in ascetic age; nor is it possible to characterize saints and martyrs by those corporeal characteristics which distinguish a runner from a boxer, or a chaste huntress from a voluptuous queen of love. Italian sculpture abandoned the presentation of the naked ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... doubtless would set him down as a very domineering youth; some might even call him a bully, but they would change their minds eventually if the acquaintance continued. Perhaps the best way one could judge Cub, without being Cub himself, would be to characterize him as being fond of playing the bully just for fun. Indeed, it is quite probable that Cub carried a perpetual ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... what I cannot but characterize as astonishing effrontery, or (to use his own language with respect to Tischendorf) "an assurance which can scarcely be characterized otherwise than an unpardonable calculation upon the ignorance of his readers." (Vol. ii. ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... of the Valley the productions, and the modes of cultivation and living are such as to characterize a large proportion of the population as farmers. No country on earth has such facilities for agriculture. The soil is abundantly fertile, the seasons ordinarily favorable to the growth and maturity of crops, and every farmer in a few ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... of the Second Chamber might be, it could be overcome. At his dictation the Constitution was to fall. There was no escape; the Bill must surely pass. It rested with the Lords themselves whether they should bow their heads to the inevitable, humbly or proudly, contemptuously or savagely—characterize it as you will—or whether there should ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... pride of the humanists is, however, their modern Latin poetry. It lies within the limits of our task to treat of it, at least in so far as it serves to characterize the humanistic movement. ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... never was a purely prophetic dream. He would contend, no doubt, that your waking thoughts having been a good deal engaged with Western life, your dream carried the same train of thought straight through. He would probably characterize the incidents of the rich mines, the store and the relative as merely coincidental, yet as the writer of a text-book on mental philosophy observes, to call such dreams coincidences leaves the ...
— The Secret of Dreams • Yacki Raizizun
... extensive. The wigwam is not the type of native dwellings, which show as many differing forms as those of Europe. In color there is great variety, and even admitting that the term "race" is properly applied, no competent observer would characterize it as red, still less copper-colored. Some tribes differ from each other in all respects nearly as much as either of them do from the lazzaroni of Naples, and more than either do from certain tribes of Australia. It would therefore be expected, as appears to be the case, that the conventional ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... highest level in the Sumerian period, or at least not later than 2000 B.C. From that period onward to the first century B.C. popular religion maintained with great difficulty the sacred standards of the past." Although it has been customary to characterize Mesopotamian civilization as Semitic, modern research tends to show that the indigenous inhabitants, who were non-Semitic, were its originators. Like the proto-Egyptians, the early Cretans, and the Pelasgians in southern ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... only in its native habitat, where it may be observed at the proper season, indulging in the peculiar actions that characterize it. It has more arms than legs, and more hair than either. It moves with great rapidity, its gait being something between a wallop and a waddle; and as it comes (one of its peculiarities is that it always comes, and never goes), it utters ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... his hands into his pockets, looking down at the newspaper page. He had altered during the last year in a way difficult to characterize. It was not that he looked older or more hard, there was no bitterness in the strong face, but he looked like a man who stood in the shadow instead of in ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... was strung for Apollo, Undercontract to raise anerithmon gelasma With rhymes so hard hunted they gasp with the asthma, And jokes not much younger than Jethro's phylacteries, Is something I leave you yourselves to characterize. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... situation in the family had been less that of a domestic than of a humble companion, and the results were quite apparent in her attire, her language, her sentiments, and even in her feelings, though neither, perhaps, rose to the level of those which would properly characterize a lady. She had lost the less refined habits and manners of one in her original position, without having quite reached a point that disqualified her for the situation in life that the accidents of birth and fortune would probably compel her to fill. ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... describes it admirably. His picture of the riots themselves seems painted in pigments of blood and fire; and yet, through all the hurry and confusion, he retains the clearness of arrangement and lucidity which characterize the pictures of such subjects when executed by the great masters of the art—as Carlyle, for example. His portrait of the poor, crazy-brained creature, Lord George Gordon, who sowed the wind which the country was to reap in whirlwind, is excellent. Nor ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... sphinxes, and obelisks characterize this architecture. Everything is massive, compact, and, above all, immense. Hence these monuments appear clumsy ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... the report the majority of the Committee thus characterize the "invasion": "It was simply the act of lawless ruffians, under the sanction of no public or political authority—distinguishable only from ordinary felonies by the ulterior ends in contemplation ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... brilliant color. In the Forestry Court adjoining, Bernard Maybeck, the architect of the Palace of Fine Arts, has built a lumbermen's lodge of massive, rough-barked, redwood logs, but of the same charm of design and harmonious beauty of proportion which characterize his greater work. ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... Change sxangxi. Changeable sxangxebla. Channel kanalo. Chant kantado. Chaos hxaoso. Chaotic hxaosa. Chapel kapelo. Chaplain ekleziulo. Chapter cxapitro. Char bruleti. Character karaktero. Character (theatre) rolo. Characterize karakterizi. Charge (attack) atakegi. Charge (price) kosto. Chariot cxaro. Charitable bonfarada. Charity bonfarado. Charity (alms) almozo. Charlatan cxarlatano. Charm cxarmi. Charm ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... gentleness and softness to the material furnished by our cast-iron "man of facts" and our acrid poet, that was very agreeable. In speaking of Arnold, I was ineffably amused at hearing Mrs. Grote characterize him as a "very weak man," which struck me as very funny. The Esprit Forte, however, I take it, merely referred to his belief in the immortality of the soul, the existence of a God, and a few other similar "superstitions." ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... of the very fine texture and the even clipping that characterize the Sinna rugs. Thickly studding the dark blue field are minute designs in blue and rose hues, with which pale green, yellow, and a sapphire blue blend most harmoniously. All these small designs rest ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... compound of ethylene and hydrochloric acid.[11] Compound radicals came to be regarded as the immediate constituents of organic compounds; and, at first, a determination of their empirical composition was supposed to be sufficient to characterize them. To this problem there was added another in about the third decade of the 19th century—namely, to determine the manner in which the atoms composing the radical were combined; this supplementary requisite was due to the discovery of the isomerism of silver fulminate and silver cyanate ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... to enter here on the history of sculpture in all its phases, but to give the distinctive features which characterize the different styles of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman sculpture, as they are visible in statues of the natural or colossal size, in statues of lesser proportion, and lastly in busts ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... been concerned in the violent and illegal opposition which has been offered to your government." In parliament, Mr. Gladstone, who seems never to have been well-informed on the subject, went so far as to characterize the Rebellion Losses Bill as a measure for rewarding rebels, but both Lord John Russell, then leader of the government, and his great opponent, Sir Robert Peel, gave their unqualified support to the measure. The result was that an amendment proposed by ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... less than the economic solution of regality and aristocracy in Europe, and in Italy as elsewhere. It does not mean the old-fashioned revolution; it means simply the effacement of all social differences by equal industrial obligations. So far as the Socialists can characterize it, therefore, the actual municipal government of Rome is as antimonarchical as it is antipapal. But the syndic of Rome is a man of education, of culture, of intelligence, and he is evidently a man of consummate tact. He has known how to reconcile the warring elements, which made peace in ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... holding "him," as she chose to characterize it, in the hollow of her hand, the head between her thumb and forefinger, with the forefinger of her free hand petting it the while she laughed and kissed it. It was not so much bird-love as the artistry of life and of herself that was moving her. Hearing the parent bird chirping ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... in her quick, responsive fashion. One must go deeper, Harwood reflected, for Sylvia's charm, and it dawned upon him that it was in the girl's self, born of an alert, clear-thinking mind and a kind and generous heart. Individuality, personality, were words with which he sought to characterize her; and as he struggled with terms, he found that she was carrying ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... professions and craftsmen. The term became in time a mere courtesy title but originally carried with it standing. Already in the Code, when status is not concerned, it is used to denote "any one." There was no property qualification nor does the term appear to be racial. It is most difficult to characterize the muskinu exactly. The term came in time to mean "a beggar" and with that meaning has passed through Aramaic and Hebrew into many modern languages; but though the Code does not regard him as necessarily poor, he may have been landless. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... predominant; and he preferred setting church and churchmen at defiance to purchasing from them pardon and absolution at the price of treasure and of manors. Nor did the Templar, an infidel of another stamp, justly characterize his associate when he said Front-de-Boeuf could assign no cause for his unbelief and contempt for the established faith; for the baron would have alleged that the church sold her wares too dear, that the spiritual ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... have sometimes done, flies wide open; an old hag, like one of those who haunted the heath of Forres, enters with a frowning and incensed countenance, comes straight up to me with every demonstration of spite and indignation which could characterize her who haunted the merchant Abudah in the Oriental tale; she rushes upon me, says something, but so hastily that I cannot discover the purport, and then strikes me a severe blow with her staff. I fall from my chair in a swoon, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... augmenting his forces; while Cyrus, with the instinct of a conqueror, ventured to cross the Halys in pursuit, and to march rapidly on Sardis before the enemy could collect another army. Prompt decision and celerity of movement characterize all successful warriors, and here it was that Cyrus showed his military genius. Before Croesus was fully prepared for another fight, Cyrus was at the gates of Sardis. But the Lydian king rallied what forces he could, and led them out to battle. The Lydians were superior in cavalry; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... hill-top there is a good view along the extensive level surfaces and gentle, hilly outlines, covered with wood, that characterize the scenery of Concord. We have not so much as a gleam of lake or river in the prospect; if there were, it would add greatly to the value of the ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... hand, the passengers and people of the packet seized something near the truth, with that sort of instinctive readiness which seems to characterize bodies of men in moments of excitement. That the solitary boat which was pulling towards them in the dusk of the evening contained some one who might aid the attorney and his myrmidon, all believed, though in what ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... novelty, he re-sold to the printers, the paper presently died a peaceful death, and I was out of work again. I would not mention these things but for the fact that they so aptly illustrate the ups and downs that characterize life on the Pacific coast. A man could hardly stumble into such a variety of queer vicissitudes ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the most powerful instruments of the observatories of the whole world have been unable to solve it. All we know is that the diameter, surface, volume and mass of this planet, and its weight at the surface, do not differ sensibly from those that characterize our own globe: that this planet is sister to our own, and of the same order, hence probably formed of the same elements. We further know that, as seen from Venus (Fig. 39), the Earth on which we live is a magnificent star, a double orb more brilliant even than when viewed from ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... in a huge hill which carried him over great waters. The comprehensiveness of our thought, whether we are asleep or awake, no doubt depends largely upon our idiosyncrasies, constitution, habits, and mental capacity. But whatever may be the nature of our dreams, the mental processes that characterize them are analogous to those which go on when the mind is not held ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... Man, as depicted in the stories told of him by the Blackfeet, is a curious mixture of opposite attributes. In the serious tales, such as those of the creation, he is spoken of respectfully, and there is no hint of the impish qualities which characterize him in other stories, in which he is powerful, but also at times impotent; full of all wisdom, yet at times so helpless that he has to ask aid from the animals. Sometimes he sympathizes with the people, and at others, out of pure spitefulness, he plays them malicious tricks that are worthy ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... he would see, the following Sunday. Wade's inarticulate attempts to characterize the stranger had struck his friend. The human revelation had for Bernald a poignant and ever-renewed interest, which his trade, as the dramatic critic of a daily paper, had hitherto failed to discourage. And he knew ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... the form which usually characterize the operations of social workers. The laborers are cared for through the Y.M.C.A., the Y.W.C.A., the National Urban League and social settlement establishments. The attention of the welfare workers is directed to the improvement of living conditions ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... Himalaya from the plains without comparing its bold spurs enclosing sinuous river gorges, to the weather-beaten front of a mountainous coast; and in following any of its great rivers, the scenery of its deep valleys no less strikingly resembles that of such narrow arms of the sea (or fiords) as characterize every mountainous coast, of whatever geological formation: such as the west coast of Scotland and Norway, of South Chili and Fuegia, of New Zealand and Tasmania. There are too in these Himalayan valleys, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... that these are not so much absolute principles of criticism as the features which characterize that of the writer himself and the method which he has almost involuntarily pursued. Let us admit this, and in doing so we concede to him all the qualities that are rarest and most desirable in his art,—impartiality, sincerity, disinterestedness; freedom ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... some local disturbances, where basalt had broken through it. Those isolated ranges, such as Coxen's Range—the abruptness of which seemed to indicate igneous origin—were entirely of sandstone. The various Porphyries, and Diorites, and Granitic, and Sienitic rocks, which characterize large districts along the eastern coast of Australia, were missing; not a pebble, except of sandstone, was found in the numerous creeks and watercourses. Pieces of silicified wood were frequent in the bed of ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... contemplating a longer stay for the purpose of visiting others, the writer has thought that some general remarks might call attention to points often disregarded, and serve to give some insight into the nature of the institutions of learning of the country,—rather aiming to characterize the system of higher education as it now exists than to give detailed historical notices, including something of student-life, and the professors,—in fine, such observations as would not be likely to be made by a general tourist, and such as native writers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... adjustment before I was ushered into a large dim room, and confronted by a figure in a reclining chair by the window. Here, in spite of years and illness, were the same good looks and thoroughbred courage that seemed to characterize the women of this family. Mrs. Thornhill greeted me in Ina Vandeman's very tones, a little high-pitched for real sweetness, full of a dominating quality, and she showed a composure I had not expected. To Skeet, standing by, ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... combined with a verbal magic that re-creates what he has seen. Things are felicitously seen by Mr. Burroughs, and then felicitously said. A dainty bit in Sidney's "Apologie for Poetrie" seems to me aptly to characterize our author's prose: "The uttering sweetly and properly the conceits of the minde, which is ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... how to characterize, in any accordant and compatible terms, the Rome that lies before us; its sunless alleys, and streets of palaces; its churches, lined with the gorgeous marbles that were originally polished for the adornment of pagan temples; its thousands ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... could I keep them shut when I could not sleep? The same darkness brooded over me; the same unfathomable black eternity which my thoughts strove against and could not understand. I made the most despairing efforts to find a word black enough to characterize this darkness; a word so horribly black that it would darken my lips if I named it. Lord! how dark it was! and I am carried back in thought to the sea and the dark monsters that lay in wait for me. They would draw me to them, ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... and manual development, Miss Rankin's experiment offers social features of unusual suggestiveness, for the village provides a civic experience fairly comprehensive and free from the artificiality that is apt to characterize attempts to introduce civic content into school and ...
— A Catalogue of Play Equipment • Jean Lee Hunt
... state of rewards and punishments. His morality was elevated, but not supernal. We infer from his writings that his age was degenerate and corrupt, but, as we have already said, his reproofs were gentle. Blandness of speech and manners was his distinguishing outward peculiarity; and this seems to characterize his nation,—whether learned from him, or whether an inborn national peculiarity, I do not know. He went through great trials most creditably, but he was no martyr. He constantly complained that his teachings fell on listless ears, which made him sad and discouraged; but he never flagged in his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... head, draped like curtains from a central parting, is to be envied if she can do it and yet look young and pretty. She is the Madonna type and seems to possess all the attributes of gentleness, modesty, and meekness, and angelic sweetness that are supposed to characterize the distinctively feminine woman. This is the ideal style of coiffure much bepraised by man, because, according to a bright modern Amazon, "it makes ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... country has its prejudices, its maladies, its customs, its inclinations, which characterize them, and which pass away, and succeed to one another; often that which has appeared admirable at one time, becomes pitiful and ridiculous at another. We have seen that in some ages all was turned towards a certain kind of devotion, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... suffering, or who would not look without contempt upon such remuneration as seemed the height of good fortune to the destitute sisters and mother of this abolitionist. When we bear in mind the intelligence and sensibilities which characterize the wives and daughters of the poorest classes equally with the richest in New England, it is most amazing that men should overlook such misery at their own doors—nay, should forsake their own kith and kin who are suffering under it—the mother who bore them, ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... but he chafed at the restraint. His usual ease had undergone a serious disturbance. There was nothing calculated to upset him like the disregard of moral obligation. Crime he understood, folly he accepted as something belonging to human nature. But the moral "stunt," as he was wont to characterize it, hurt him badly. Just now he was regarding Murray McTavish with no very friendly eyes, and he deplored beyond words the doings of the boy who was Jessie ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... If we want to characterize the "Modern Times" by one concept, we would have to call this epoch the time of the emergence of a middle class, and it will be remembered that the growth of the middle class in Europe was also the ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... woods. Little Toohkees, the wood mouse that dies of fright in the author's hand; the mother otter, Keeonekh, teaching her little ones to swim; and the little red squirrel with his many curious habits,—all are presented with the same liveliness and color that characterize the descriptions in the first two volumes. The illustrations by Charles Copeland are unusually accurate in portraying animal life as it really exists ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... dinners; and here I must repeat with Archdeacon Coxe, that although the Russians have adopted many of the delicacies of French cookery, they "neither affect to despise their native dishes nor squeamishly reject the solid joints which characterize our own repasts." I was astonished, at one Russian dinner, which I was assured was thoroughly national in style, to meet with the homely roast leg of mutton and baked potatoes of my native land. ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... justified the preference. Minnetaunka—let us keep the old name which the child seemed to love so well—about twenty-five miles long, is full of islands kept in perfect order. Their natural beauties are developed with the taste and skill that characterize the American nation, by the inhabitants of the beautiful villas scattered along its shores. Tiny yachts and skiffs lay at anchor, or, with all sails set, skimmed the glistening water, bearing, no doubt, pleasure-parties from the pretty villa hotels, which could ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... itself the results of the past, transforms the human race into a colossal man, whose life reaches from the creation to the day of judgment. The successive generations of men, are days in this man's life. The discoveries and inventions which characterize the different epochs of the world, are this man's works. The creeds and doctrines, the opinions and principles of the successive ages, are his thoughts. The state of society at different times, are his manners. He grows in knowledge, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... miles to East Pass and Choctawhatchee Bay, and serves as a barrier to the sea. Behind this narrow beach island flow the waters of Santa Rosa Sound, the northern shores of which are covered with the same desolate forests of yellow pine that characterize the uplands of the Gulf coast. At the west end of Santa Rosa Island the walls of Fort Pickens rose gloomily out of the sands. It was the only structure inhabited by man on the long barren island, with the exception of one small cabin built on the site of Clapp's ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... no flatterer, it is true, but chivalrous in every sense of the word. A keen appreciator of all that is honorable and high-minded, he could not stoop to those petty meanesses, which too often characterize the conduct of those who flatter themselves with the name of gentleman,—a title which Tennyson forcibly ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... armory of platitudes or a forecast of punishments. It promised that it would stop this evil practice, drive out corruption here, and prosecute this-and-that offense. All that belongs to a moribund tradition. Abuse and disuse characterize the older view of the state: guardian and censor it has been, provider but grudgingly. The proclamations of so-called progressives that they will jail financiers, or "wage relentless warfare" upon social evils, are simply the reiterations of men who do not understand ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... classes, to the ecclesiastics, or to the members of the Parliaments; vaguely as yet, and retarded by apathy in the government as well as by disorder in affairs, it propagates and extends itself imperceptibly pending that signal and terrible explosion of good and evil which is to characterize the close of the eighteenth century. Decadence and progress are going on confusedly in the minds as well as in the material condition of the nation. They must be distinguished and traced without any pretence of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... purely of mythologic parentage. Now the luminiferous ether, upon which our authors make such extensive demands, may be physically "ethereal" enough, in spite of the enormous elasticity which leads Professor Jevons to characterize it as "adamantine"; but most assuredly we have not the slightest reason for speaking of it as "immaterial" or "spiritual." Though we are unable to weigh it in the balance, we at least know it as a transmitter of undulatory movements, the size and shape of which we can accurately ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske |
