"Literal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... action of the succeeding Legislature. No change whatever was made by the supplemental act in that section of the original act, the bonds were issued and sold in precise conformity with its provisions, and, indeed, these bonds, thus actually issued and sold, are a precise and literal copy of the form of the bonds as given in the original act, as before quoted. The supplemental act changed only some of the 'details' of the charter of the Bank, but made no alteration whatever in the 5th section. This supplemental ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the main theme upon the hearer by definite repetitions on various degrees of the scale.[18] For an elaborate example of Transposition nothing can surpass the opening movement of Cesar Franck's D Minor Symphony, the entire first part of which consists of a literal repetition in F minor of what has been previously ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... increased in volume. Beneath it we began to hear the long, rolling crash of thunder. Overhead the stars, already dimmed, were suddenly blotted from existence. Then came the rain, in a literal deluge, as though the god of floods had turned over an entire reservoir with one twist of his mighty hand. Our fire went out instantly; the whole world went out with it. We lay on our canvas cots unable to see a foot beyond ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... Defoe's life, which clears up much that might otherwise have been disputable in his character, the world is indebted solely to Mr. William Lee. Accident put Mr. Lee on the right scent, from which previous biographers had been diverted by too literal and implicit a faith in the arch-deceiver's statements, and too comprehensive an application of his complaint that his name was made the hackney title of the times, upon which all sorts of low scribblers fathered their vile productions. Defoe's secret services ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... that tends to disclose that background is welcome. It has to be noted, however, that though many learned Japanese commentators have sought to rationalize the events described in the Records and the Chronicles, the great bulk of the nation believes in the literal accuracy of these works as profoundly as the great bulk of Anglo-Saxon people believes in the Bible, its cosmogony, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Mr. Errol says—I do wish he were a Churchman, he is such a thoughtful, clever fellow—he says prejudice, imperfect induction, a wrong application of deductive logic, and one-sided interpretation, down't you know, literal, figurative, and all that sort of thing, are causes of false ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... lived for, his literal daily bread. I suppose what would be prosperity to him would be miserably insufficient for some other people. I wonder how we can help being conscious, in the midst of our comforts and pleasures, of the lives which are being starved to death ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... two-score moving-vans and motor-trucks, and added substantially, each year, to his real-estate holdings. Mr. Denny let fall an Irish syllable from time to time, regularly took his little "nip o' spirits," and ate proverbially long and often. Year after year passed, with the hardy man a literal cheer-leader in the Denny household, till his gradually hardening arteries began to leak. Then came the change which brought Clara home from college—home, first to companion, then to nurse, and finally through ugly ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... humblest aspect of life. They brought out with marvellous accuracy all its traits, except, indeed, the underlying strain of poetry, which, while it redeems plainness, sordidness, and even coarseness, is as true to life as is its veriest prose. With those who ask a literal copy of life, whether high or low, and ask no more, the Teniers and their school must always be in the highest favour; and to those who are wearied and sceptical of blunders and failures in seeking that underlying strain of life, the mere rugged ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... ourselves to it; and it is because our outflow towards things is usually so perfunctory and so languid, that our comprehension of things is so perfunctory and languid too. The great Sufi who said that "Pilgrimage to the place of the wise, is to escape the flame of separation" spoke the literal truth. Wisdom is the fruit of communion; ignorance the inevitable portion of those who "keep themselves to themselves," and stand apart, judging, analysing the things which ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... the literal beloved, but the purified stainless image of her,—surely this would be to ascend into the region of spiritual love, a love unhampered and ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... Koa'e-kea, Pueo hulu-nui. Steep declivities, pali, on the side of Waipio valley, Hawaii. Instead of inserting these names, which would be meaningless without an explanation, the author has given a literal translation of the names themselves, thus getting a closer insight ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... my dear Major; and it is something at all events, to have the exact latitude. The French document is decidedly the most complete of the three; but it is plain enough that each is the literal translation of the other, for they all contain exactly the same number of lines. What we have to do now is to put together all the words we have found, and translate them into one language, and try to ascertain their most probable ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... to allow of the literal carrying out of Tatiana Markovna's promise that Mark should not wait for Vera in the arbour. An hour after her conversation with Vera she had descended the precipice, accompanied by Savili and five peasants with axes, and within two hours the ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... allow it. We require every possible help and attraction of sound, in our language, to smooth the way for the admission of things so remote from our present concerns. My own notion of translation is, that it cannot be too literal, provided three faults be avoided: baldness, in which I include all that takes from dignity; and strangeness or uncouthness, including harshness; and lastly, attempts to convey meanings which, as they ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... they enclose Latin words, they indicate the lemmata of Anglo-Saxon words in glosses or glossaries etc., or the Latin equivalent of such words in the Latin texts from which they are translated. The Latin is especially so given when the Ags. word seems to be merely a blindly mechanical and literal equivalent. ...
— A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary - For the Use of Students • John R. Clark Hall
... whose inhabitants dwell on the tops of trees like rooks." Thus spake Erasmus; and this literal fact makes Amsterdam a most curious as well ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... been taken in the endeavour to make the translation a faithful reproduction of the meaning of the original, whilst literal accuracy has been aimed at ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele
... Franklin, much angered at the thwarting of his humane and reasonable scheme, said that they had "given up all pretensions to equity and honor." In his disappointment he went a little too far; if he had said "liberality and humanity" instead of "equity and honor" he would have kept within literal truth. To meet this last action on the part of England he suggested to Congress: "Whether it may not be well to set apart 500 or 600 English prisoners, and refuse them all exchange in America, but for our countrymen now confined ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... goodness and unity of an intelligent First Cause. He reads an essay to prove that we can form a notion of inspiration which does not involve dictation. He thinks it 'more agreeable to right reason' to explain the Biblical account of the creation by literal interpretation than 'on scientific principles,' but adds the rider, 'so far as it can be reconciled with geological facts.' He denies that the Pentateuch shows 'traces of Egyptian origin.' He thinks that Paley's views of the 'essential doctrines of Christianity' ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... them in all times of joy, in marriages and festivals; by day, and in the night vigils, &c. His eight homilies, On the three first Chapters of Ecclesiastes, are an excellent moral instruction and literal explication of that book. He addressed his fifteen homilies, On the Book of Canticles, which he had preached to his flock, to Olympias, a lady of Constantinople, who, after twenty months' marriage, being left a widow, distributed a great estate to the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... derivations from the original, preserved till lately at the Palazzo Massimi in Rome. Here, the vigorous head also, with the face, smooth enough, but spare, and tightly drawn over muscle and bone, is sympathetic with, yields itself to, the concentration, in the most literal sense, of all beside;—is itself, in very truth, the steady centre of the discus, which begins to spin; as the source of will, the source of the motion with which the discus is already on the wing,—that, and ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Francis Woodcock, preaching Oct. 30, was even more decided. His sermon, which was on Rev. xvi. 15, is a very untastefully-worded discourse on the propriety of always being on the watch so as not to be taken by surprise without one's garments; and, among the rather ludicrous images which his literal treatment of the subject suggests, we come upon a passage describing one of four pieces of raiment which the State ought never to be caught without. He calls it the "Robe of Justice," and adds, "Would God this robe were often worn, and dyed ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... A literal prose translation of Homer, by Mr. T. A. Buckley, has just appeared in London. No prose version will cause any just notion of the spirit of Homer. Of the half dozen metrical translations published recently, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... part of all his far-reaching Roman studies. More recent writers of credit and ability have followed his lead, and stress has been laid on the legal side of religion at Rome; it has been described over and over again as merely a system of contracts between gods and worshippers, secured by hard and literal formalism, and without ethical value or any native principle of growth. Quite recently, for example, so great an authority as Professor Cumont has written of ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... direct and obvious appeal of Rose Stribling would be victorious. He could discern pink and white and blue and gold; but the indeterminate shades, the subtleties and mysteries of charm were enigmatical to him. His emotions would be as literal as his convictions or his oratory. Yet there must be some faculty in him which did not appear on the surface, some primitive grasp of realities in his understanding of men. Why should the influence of this sanguine, loud-talking demagogue, ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... indeed, in the literal sense. At all times he was a man who had but few necessities; and Ottilie's presence seemed to be to him in the place of all delicacies. When he was working for her, it was as if he required no sleep; when he was busy about her, as if he could do without food. Accordingly, by the hour of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... translated was the History written by a Spanish priest called Orosius, a disciple of St Augustine's (of Hippo), which "was looked upon as a standard book of universal history." Alfred by no means gave a literal translation, but used great freedom, and omitted some things and put in others which he judged of greater interest and importance for Englishmen. Alfred enlarged the account of Northern Europe, which he knew a great deal of. He also added the accounts of the ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... by the horns in a literal as well as figurative sense, the lad began gradually to develop into that terrible embodiment of unrest—a boy. He exhibited no very marked peculiarities up to this time to distinguish him from other youths; but just grew into the conglomerate mass of good, bad and ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... noble avenue of trees, making the highway like the main road of a private park, we turned into a literal paradise of gardens. The air was balmy with their wealth of odours. "Oh! yes, sir," said the coachman, with an air of sympathetic pride, "our lady is just the greatest lady in ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... vale of Ajalon, to say nothing of other improbabilities and incongruities. Every thing of this kind was now awakened; while, in order to master the Hebrew, I occupied myself exclusively with the Old Testament, and studied it, though no longer in Luther's translation, but in the literal version of Sebastian Schmid, printed under the text, which my father had procured for me. Here, I am sorry to say, our lessons began to be defective in regard to practice in the language. Reading, interpreting, grammar, transcribing, and the ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... him to me (a me lo 'ntrodussi); but Boccaccio here uses the word introdurre in its rarer literal sense to lead, to draw, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... creed. The force of representation plants her imagined figures before her; she treats them as real, and talks to them as if they were bodily there; puts words in their mouths such as they should have spoken, and is affected by them as by persons. Such creation is poetry in the literal sense of the term, and Miss King's dreamy and poetical nature enables her to create the persons of the drama, to invest them with appropriate figures, faces, costumes, and surroundings; to make them ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... right to wear their hats before the King in consequence of one of these legends, which represents him as the champion Knight of England, taken from, a dungeon to uphold her honour against a French challenger. Other tales as ill authenticated are founded on his career, which, however, in its literal truth, is unexcelled for hardihood and adventure, except, perhaps, by the cotemporaneous story of the lion-hearted Richard, whom he closely resembled. The title of Earl of Ulster, created for de Courcy in 1181, was transferred in 1205, by royal patent, to Walter de Lacy, whose only daughter ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... taught her wasn't so; if all that she had accepted so blindly wasn't the literal truth, inexorable for every individual (life was a too bitterly personal thing for her to concern herself with a doctrine which, accurate in the main, could be shrugged aside when it failed in isolated cases) then all the rest, all that ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... the light. Slowly, stubbornly, insolently, theology has fought Truth step by step—but always retreating, taking refuge first behind one subterfuge, then another. When an alleged fact was found to be a fallacy, we were told it was not a literal fact, simply a spiritual one. All of theology's weapons have been taken from her and placed in the Museum of Horrors—all save one, namely, social ostracism. And this consists in a refusal to invite ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... most solemnly asseverated the entire and literal truth of all these particulars, and declared that the island before us was the veritable cannibal Angatan, the singular black rock enabling him, as he said, to identify it beyond all doubt. To this story I was myself disposed to accord about the ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... this pass. Bunyan, we may be sure, took all that he preached in its most literal interpretation; he could never have made his book so interesting had he not done so. The interest of it depends almost entirely on the unquestionable good faith of the writer and the strength of the impulse ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... "are continually reminding me of an Englishman I knew when I was a girl. He was a very queer person to be attached to the Embassy,—not a courtier, but a serious, literal person like you, Mr. Ritchie, and he resembled you very much. I was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... again dips deep into the promise of God to Abraham and brings forth beautiful teaching which shows that, to him, God's promise to Abraham was spiritual as well as material, that there was to be a spiritual seed as well as literal seed, and that "faith" is as potent as natural birth in making men children of Abraham. Also in these verses Abraham is made the "father of us all," even of Gentiles, which of course could not be true except in ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... been so published that "almost the whole city came together to hear the Word of God; when the Jews saw the multitudes they were filled with envy, and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming." Then the literal fulfilment of this prophetic Parable followed. "Paul and Barnabas waxed bold and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you; but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... there is no Caspakian equivalent for that term; but I have to allow myself considerable latitude in the translation of Caspakian conversations. To speak always of a beautiful young girl as a "she" may be literal; but it seems ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... dwells beneath his visor? The modernized edition spoils one of the references to this office in which the Prince labors for Love and does a labor of love in whose disinterestedness some doubt is expressed. By changing Love to Jove (in II, i, 92) a literal correction is made in accord with the legend referred to, but in entire destruction of the point made by the Prince, if Shakespeare means to adapt the allusion to his special purpose. Note also Benedicke's name ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... to a traveler and literal man of the world is this confusion of tongues! There is no human being who can make himself verbally understood everywhere on this little globe. In the Russian empire alone there are more than a hundred spoken languages and dialects. The emperor, with all his erudition, has many ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... old Wagenseil's book on Nuremberg, {1} and intensified the vivid description of a mastersingers' meeting which the curious may read in August Hagen's novel "Norica." His studies have been marvellously exact and careful, and he has put Wagenseil's book under literal and liberal contribution, as will appear after a while. Now it seems best to tell the story of the comedy before ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... than with my father, because he walked faster, and talked with me while he walked, instead of being lost in his own thoughts and conversing only at intervals. A love of wandering seemed to possess him in the most literal sense; his rambles appeared to be without design, or any limit but my fatigue; and when I was "done up," he carried me home in his arms, on his shoulder, or pickback. Our communion was not always concord; as I have intimated, he took ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... letter in the gun-pit. It is in Dutch, and half-finished, scribbled by a Boer gunner to his sister in Pretoria. I give a literal translation:— ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... them. His poetry in form and material is all his own. He asserted the poet's claim to borrow from all science, and from every phase of nature, the associations and images which he wants; and he showed that those images and associations did not lose their poetry by being expressed with the most literal reality. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... herself. But shyness and a quaint disposition, dating from her childhood, to pause and hover on the threshold of discovery, thus prolonging a period of entrancing, distracting suspense, withheld her. She dared not ask—in any case dared not ask just yet; and therefore took up his words in their literal application. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the room, and as Margaret stood there, the focus of all eyes, the titter changed to literal shouts and shrieks of laughter. The boys doubled themselves up into knots, the girls staggered helplessly about, and Mrs. Danvers just sank into the nearest chair and laughed until the tears ran down her face. The room fairly rang with their laughter, ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... scattered about in fractions) made fight, or skirmish, against a Russian attacking party: Swedes, rather victorious on their hill-top, rushed down; and totally lost their bit of victory, their Wilmanstrand, their Wyborg, and even the War itself;—for this was, in literal truth, the only fighting done by them in the entire course of it, which lasted near two years more. The rest of it was retreat, capitulation, loss on loss without stroke struck; till they had lost all Finland, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 2. The literal act of this citation, as published formally in the Lateran, is extant in Hocsemius, (whence is borrowed, though not at all its length, the speech in the text of our present tale;) and in this document the Pope and his Cardinals are not named ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... may take the form of a literal battle between two individuals, or of the individual with inclemency of climate or other destructive agents. More usually it is a competition, no more noticeable and no less real than that between merchants or manufacturers in the ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... musical intervals can be distinguished but with difficulty, on account of the rapidity of their utterance. I have often attempted to transcribe some of their notes upon the musical scale, but I am persuaded that such sketches can be only approximations to literal correctness. As different individuals of the same species sing very differently, the notes, as transcribed from the song of one individual, will never exactly represent the song of another. If we listen attentively, however, to a number of songs, we shall detect ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... insure a favourable reception. We must remember that for half a century many of the Jewish people had been constantly looking for the arrival of the Messiah, and there can be little doubt that the entry of Jesus riding upon an ass in literal fulfilment of prophecy must have wrought powerfully upon the imagination of the multitude. That the believers in him were very numerous must be inferred from the cautious, not to say timid, behaviour of the ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the people of my country are so jealously exacting; and my dark origin always formed a barrier between me and my thoroughbred sisters. Whenever Don Benigno, or his family, addressed me as 'Mulatica,' 'Chinita,' or 'Negrita,' I sometimes thought of the literal ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... speaking and writing. The secret of literary skill from any standpoint consists in putting the right word in the right place. In order to do this it is imperative to know the meaning of the words we use, their exact literal meaning. Many synonymous words are seemingly interchangeable and appear as if the same meaning were applicable to three or four of them at the same time, but when all such words are reduced to a final analysis it is clearly ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... truth." He will accept only what is real; he will strive to get at facts; he will search for truth with an humble and unbiased mind, and cherish whatever he finds at any sacrifice. But the more literal translation of the Revised Version calls for just such a sacrifice for truth's sake here. For what Paul really meant is, as we there read, "Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth," a quality which probably no one English word—and certainly not sincerity—adequately defines. ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... captured from the savages were frail barks in the most literal sense of these words. They were made of the bark of the birch-tree, a substance which, though tough, was very easily split insomuch that a single touch upon a stone was sufficient to cause a bad leak. Hence the utmost care was required in their navigation. But although ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... added: "Speak not of South America to anyone out of your family, for there is treason in the very name." What did he mean by that? He spoke of "digging gold in South America," and clearly did not mean it in the strict literal sense. ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... The earliest characters inscribed upon it were the impressions of sense, which the Greeks called "phantasies." A phantasy was defined by Zeno as "an impression in the soul." Cleanthes was content to take this definition in its literal sense, and believe that the soul was impressed by external objects as wax by a signet ring. Chrysippus, however, found a difficulty here, and preferred to interpret the Master's saying to mean an alteration or change in the soul. He figured ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... 533. This literal version of the verse yields no sense. The meaning, however, is this: Atichccheda or Atichcchanda implies a hyperbolic statement, Ativaua means a paradox. It is said that by gift of even a palmful of water one may attain to a place ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... hundred and twenty-six marginal changes, a very large proportion, quite one-half, and we should think more, are mere insignificant literal changes or additions, such as an editor in supervising manuscript, or an author in reading proof, passes over, and leaves to the proof-readers of the printing-office, by whom they are called "literals," we believe. Such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... said of Robespierre, cet homme ira bien loin, car il croit tout ce qu'il dit, it was probably meant that he would attain the chief place in the State. It might have been said of Milton in the literal sense. The idealist was about to apply his principles of church polity to family life, to the horror of many nominal allies. His treatise on Divorce was the next of his publications in chronological order, but is so entwined with his domestic life that ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... of, follow in the wake of; take pattern by; follow suit, follow the example of; walk in the shoes of, take a leaf out of another's book, strike in with, follow suit; take after, model after; emulate. Adj. imitated &c. v.; mock, mimic; modelled after, molded on. paraphrastic; literal; imitative; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... be observed however that it often proves a very difficult matter to trace the connexion between the figurative and the literal sense of the stanza. The essentials in the composition of the pantun, for such these little pieces are called, the longer being called dendang, are the rhythmus and the figure, particularly the latter, which they consider as the life and spirit of the poetry. I had a ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... like that was too much for her. The deacon himself left our church a few months later because he discovered that I did not believe in a literal hell of "fire ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... to communicate Him, not merely to dazzle us with a vision, not merely to show us Him as from afar, not merely to make Him known to understanding or to heart; but to bestow—in no mere metaphor, but in simple, literal fact—the absolute possession of the divine nature. 'We beheld His glory' is a reminiscence that thrills the Evangelist, though half a century has passed since the vision gleamed upon his eyes; but 'of His fulness have all we received' is infinitely and unspeakably more. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... had no conscientious or doctrinal scruples about a third term. He had found the White House a congenial abode, had accepted the literal theory that his election in 1908 would not imply a third but a second term, and he wanted to remain. In point of fact I have an impression that, barring Jackson and Polk, most of those who have got there were loath to give it up. We know that Grant was, and I am sure that ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... elf-prompted reason or other, Jervis had told her nothing of his interview with Nick of the Woods, and whenever she had questioned him touching the moccasins he had answered that they had been sent to their boy from Fairyland, thus dodging the truth by telling the literal fact, knowing that she would treat it as a pleasantry. She was beginning to fear that the stroke had proved too much for the poor man's strength of mind, when, after remaining quite silent for some moments, ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... people who will not believe Matthew's story of three kings bringing costly gifts to the cradle of Jesus, believe Luke's story of the shepherds and the stable. I cannot tell why people, brought up to believe the Bible in the old literal way as an infallible record and revelation, and rejecting that view later on, begin by rejecting the Old Testament, and give up the belief in a brimstone hell before they give up (if they ever do) the belief in a heaven of harps, crowns, and thrones. I cannot tell why people ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... half-lengths) and translating it from the ideal into literalism, I doubt whether the unfortunate king was really a handsome or impressive-looking man: a high, thin-ridged nose, a meagre, hatchet face, and reddish hair and beard,—these are the literal facts. It is the painter's art that has thrown such pensive ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... by the very frightfulness and shadow of the deathlike army. Umbra may be taken of the literal shadows of the men in the night, with Rit., or with Doed. and Or., of the general image or aspect of the army. Feralis, as an adj., is found only in poetry and post-Augustan prose. ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... him understand. 'There will be no trouble. What I told you means nothing open—or disgusting. Your sister will notice nothing unless you tell her. But I was candid with you—I always am. I told you last night that I had no scruples. You thought it was a woman's exaggeration; it was the literal truth! If a man drinks, or is vicious, so long as he doesn't hurl the furniture at my head, or behave himself offensively to me, what does it matter to me! If he drinks so that he can't paint, and he wants to paint, well!—then he ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Warren Hastings did, in the said proposal, endeavor to circumvent and overreach the Council-General, by converting an apparent and literal compliance with their resolution into a real and substantial opposition to and disappointment thereof. For his first proposal was, to withdraw the Company's troops from the Vizier's country on the pretence ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a literal copy of the original grant, now (Sept. 25, 1880) on file at the United States Surveyor-General's office at Santa Fe, made to the inhabitants of the Indian pueblo of Pecos in New Mexico. The language of the document is not altogether clear, but the ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... were no casualties among the men. The last gale was the most severe; they said it was the tail of a cyclone. One is apt on land to regard such phrases as the "shriek of the storm," or "the roar of the waves," as poetical hyperboles; whereas they are very literal and expressive renderings of the sounds of horror incessant throughout a gale at sea. Our cabin, though very nice and comfortable in other respects, possessed an extraordinary attraction for any stray wave which might be wandering about the ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... literal copy of a specimen of this paper money, which varied in value from two shillings to ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... other (Politicus); nor can any inference be drawn from the description of the first state taken apart from the second, such as Aristotle appears to draw in the Politics. We should not interpret a Platonic dialogue any more than a poem or a parable in too literal or matter-of-fact a style. On the other hand, when we compare the lively fancy of Plato with the dried-up abstractions of modern treatises on philosophy, we are compelled to say with Protagoras, that the 'mythus is ...
— The Republic • Plato
... reader would not have forgiven me for placing before him a translation that was not Lady Charlotte Guest's. I have again ventured, however, after a careful comparison of the translation with the original, to put in the form of footnotes a more accurate or more literal rendering of passages which Lady Charlotte Guest did not read aright, passages which she has omitted, and passages the real meaning of which she seems to me to ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... the daily papers. Nowhere do I find selection, everything is reported, dialogues and descriptions. Take for instance the long evening talk between the farm people when Oak is seeking employment. It is not the absolute and literal transcript from nature after the manner of Henri Monier; for that it is a little too diluted with Mr. Hardy's brains, the edges are a little sharpened and pointed, I can see where the author has been at work filing; on the other hand, it is not synthesized—the magical word which reveals ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... been considered as physically the most remarkable country on the globe. It is a long and narrow valley of verdure and fruitfulness, completely insulated from the rest of the habitable world. It is more completely insulated, in fact, than any literal island could be, inasmuch as deserts are more impassable than seas. The very existence of Egypt is a most extraordinary phenomenon. If we could but soar with the wings of an eagle into the air, and look down upon the scene, so as to observe the operation of ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... pitches into him about you," said Lillie, not slow to perceive the true literal rendering ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... speedy justice in a very literal sense, and allowing only fifteen days for the examination of this important affair, she sent a citation to Lenox, requiring him to appear in court, and prove his charge against Bothwell.[*] This nobleman, meanwhile, and all the other persons accused by Lenox, enjoyed their full liberty;[**] ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... the imagination can mean this only, that the expression of the artist is suggestive, and kindles thought, and in fact conveys more than is found in its literal interpretation. Now, whatever is highest in art, and especially in poetry, is pre-eminently suggestive; and the highest expression does in fact leave most, or, in other words, suggest most, to the imagination. M. Girardin, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... as a prayer with God," quoted Deleah, unquestioning in her child's heart the literal truth of ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... strangely literal. An author gets no credit whatever for inventive faculty—his characters and stories are supposedly real people and real things. I am asked how I came to know so much about such and such a thing. I once wrote a love story with an unhappy ending ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... so thou wilt transmit it to the whole Future. It is thus that the heroic heart, the seeing eye of the first times, still feels and sees in us of the latest; that the Wise Man stands ever encompassed, and spiritually embraced, by a cloud of witnesses and brothers; and there is a living, literal Communion of Saints, wide as the World itself, and as ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... due, he behaved himself extremely well in all other Respects. It was in his Time, that a Design was laid of surprising Guardamere, a small Sea-port Town, in Murcia: But the military Bishop (for he was in a literal Sense excellent tam Marte, quam Mercurio, among his many others Exploits), by ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... sensation; but this is explicable by the fact that the strongest emotions are excited by ideas. Hence, on the hypothesis, the impression radiating downwards to the emotional centres from the cerebral hemispheres, would counteract a sensory impression radiating upwards from them, by a literal interference analogous to that observed in opposing waves of sound. But as the direction of the impression generating emotion coincides with that of the motor impulses, the latter would not be counteracted, ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... tells that a week or it might be ten days after his meeting with Florimel, Jurgen married her, without being at all hindered by his having three other wives. For the devils, he found, esteemed polygamy, and ranked it above mere skill at torturing the damned, through a literal interpretation of the saying that it is better to marry than ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... ideals of the French Revolution were strong in his heart. He saw the evils of life and was intent on changing them. The Catholic faith is an elastic one, both esoteric and exoteric, and those who are able can take the poetic view of dogma instead of the literal, if they prefer. Henry George and his wife took the spiritual or symbolic view, and moved steadily forward in the middle of the road. He was too gentle and considerate to quote Voltaire and Rousseau at inopportune times, and she sustained and encouraged his mental ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... an extraordinary case!' gasped Mrs. Bloss, as if she understood the communication in its literal sense, and was astonished at a gentleman without a stomach finding ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... investigation. We shall also, on the other hand, show that without them a drama becomes altogether prosaic and empirical, that is to say, patched together by the understanding out of the observations it has gathered from literal reality. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... AEsop, of the boy and the wolf, had then a literal application. Every child in the days of our fathers knew the story of Putnam, and the she-wolf which he dragged from its den. This and similar tales go far to make up the popular reputation of the hero, and it was as a man of the people that Putnam first ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... and touch and taste and handle every hour of our lives. It may, therefore, sound a rather startling paradox to say that matter—matter in the sense of the Materialist—is something which nobody has ever seen, touched, or handled. Yet that is the literal and undeniable fact. Nobody has ever seen or touched or otherwise come in contact with a piece of matter. For in the experience which the plain man calls seeing or touching there is always present another thing. Even if we suppose that he is Justified in saying 'I touch matter,' there is always ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... not be thought that faith comes overnight as a free gift. It is a long and slow process of many difficult steps. There may be first the actual literal crumbling, unknown in peace-time, of one's solid surroundings, to be repeated perhaps again and again until the old habit of reliance upon them is uprooted. Then comes the realization that this life at the front has but two possible endings. The first is to be so disabled that a man's fighting days ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... dust and sun and rain. The old cadet cap was older yet, the ancient boots as grotesquely large, the curious lift of his hand to Heaven no less curious than it had always been. He was as awkward, as hypochondriac, as literal, as strict as ever. Moreover, there should have hung about him the cloud of disfavour and hostility raised by that icy march to Romney less than three months ago. And yet—and yet! What had happened since then? Not much, indeed. The return of the Stonewall Brigade to Winchester, Loring's ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... give in each case an accurate bibliographical description of the volume, anotion of the value of the text used in making it, &c. But the emphasis given to these topics has necessarily varied from time to time. In discussing literal translations, for example, much attention has been paid to the value of the text, while little or nothing is said of the value of the rendering as literature. On the other hand, in the case of a book which is ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... then, taken as a whole, is the poem both of Personality and of Democracy; and, it may be added, of American nationalism. It is par excellence the modern poem. It is distinguished also by this peculiarity— that in it the most literal view of things is continually merging into the most rhapsodic or passionately abstract. Picturesqueness it has, but mostly of a somewhat patriarchal kind, not deriving from the "word-painting" of the litterateur; ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman |
