"Trait" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a bad lot. I cannot help being wounded, though, by your niece's indifference, and in jealousy of a rival I might do things that otherwise would not enter my head. This is—eh—not a threat—but it is a family trait—the Scorpas stop at nothing once their hearts are aflame! Think it over, my friend, before you ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... also regarded by him as an authentic account of the transactions which it relates; and it will be a proof of these points a thousand years hence, or as long as the books exist. Quintilian having quoted as Cicero's, (Quint, lib. xl. c. l.) that well known trait of dissembled vanity:—"Si quid est in me ingenii, Judices, quod sentio quam sit exiguum;"—the quotation would be strong evidence, were there any doubt, that the oration, which opens with this address, actually came from Cicero's pen. These instances, however ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... friend who was quivering with feeling, "I understand it all; you think the Lord has put you into a niche where you do not belong, for which you have no fitness. Are you sure you know more than your Maker? Perhaps He sees that, by clipping a bit here, or adding a trait there, you will be exactly the one for this niche. Why don't you try and help this beautiful plan, instead of hindering it?" Then, with a quick change of tone, "Well, good-night, daughter; remember the first meeting of our circle next Thursday: I shall depend upon you!" and she hurried in, not giving ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... after I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also had been deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance, however, only endeared it to my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed, in a high degree, that humanity of feeling which had once been my distinguishing trait, and the source of many of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... some extent he pursues it in his two marriages, just as he never ceases to repeat it throughout his works. There is always something both of Isabella and of Helen in the women whom Rubens painted from either one of them. In the first he puts a sort of preconceived trait of the second; into the second glides a kind of ineffaceable memory of the first. At the date of which we treat, he possesses the first and is inspired by her; the other is not yet born, and still he divines her. The future already ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... reproached by those who would see his pages a remorseless mirror of human weakness and vice—it is his purity and cleanness; his abstention from the unsavoury subjects which form the principal stock-in-trade of the French humorist. This trait was Thackeray's delight. "As for your morality, sir," he wrote to Mr. Punch, "it does not become me to compliment you on it before your venerable face; but permit me to say that there never was before published in this world so many volumes that contained so much cause for laughing, and ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... northern royalties, for Ethelred II. who had lost the Anglo-Saxon throne, was there as well, with his wife Emma the daughter of the Duke. It seems in fact to have already become the fashion for princes of the royal house of Britain to complete their education by a little tour in France. A curious trait of the manners of the time is recorded by Wace, who describes one of the many banquets that must have been given so often during all these royal visits. He speaks of the long sleeves and white shirts of the barons, and relates the first instance ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... ready to sacrifice to the uttermost on the altar of friendship. It was this trait of character which made him throw himself with enthusiasm into Freemasonry, whose affiliations he sought to widen by drafting the constitution of a community which he called "The Grotto." He probably hated only one man in the world,—the Archbishop ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... this her principal means of support, she had recourse to the rector, in whose prayers she had implicit faith, and humbly besought his reverence to visit her cow, and pray for her recovery. The worthy man, instead of being offended at this trait of simplicity, in order to comfort the poor woman, called in the afternoon at her cottage, and proceeded to visit the sick animal. Walking thrice round it, he at each time gravely repeated: "If she dies she dies, but if she lives she lives." ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... thereby their wondering admiration. Some of these tales he wrote down, and thus he became an author in a small way while he was yet a very small boy. His making believe to be the characters out of books shows another trait which clung to him all his life—his fondness for "play-acting." It was, in fact, often said of the mature Dickens that he would have made as good an actor as he was a novelist, and Dickens's father seems to have recognized ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Another trait in the Boer character is his wonderful resourcefulness and his ability to cope with difficulties. It was as much this phase of his character as his patriotism, religiosity and valour which enabled him to continue the struggle so long. If the Boers had not been ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... that both Tommy and Nick contributed to his income. She ought to have comprehended from that avowal more than she, in fact, had comprehended. And now the first hopes of worldly success were strongly developing that unsuspected trait in the young man's character. Audrey was aware of a great fear. Could he be a genius, after all? Was it conceivable that an authentic musical genius should enter up daily in a little ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... seen our good king?" was his first question. "Lord help the anointed one! he is then as vigorous and active as ever—my good King Frederik!" And now he must relate a trait which had touched his heart, and which, in his opinion, deserved a place in the annals of history. This event occurred the last time that the king was in Jutland; he had visited the interior of the country and the western ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... become talkative if I had a comfortable chair for him to sit in, and if he found a bottle of Benedictine and plenty of the kind of cigarettes he liked, at his elbow. He was, I had discovered, parsimonious about small expenditures—a trait absolutely inconsistent with his general character. Sometimes when he came he was silent and moody, and after a few sarcastic remarks went away again, to tramp the streets of Lincoln, which were almost as quiet and oppressively domestic as those of Black Hawk. Again, he would ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... might gall, yet could scarce be openly resented, betrayed that he was one who affected to free himself from the polished restraints of social intercourse. He had once been too scrupulous in not wounding vanity; he was now too indifferent to it. But if sometimes this unamiable trait of character, as displayed to others, chilled or startled Evelyn, the contrast of his manner towards herself was a flattery too delicious not to efface all other recollections. To her ear his voice always softened its tone; ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Jerd. The boy came running. Venters sent him for meat, bread, and dried fruits, to be packed in saddlebags. His own horse he turned loose into the nearest corral. Then he went for Wrangle. The giant sorrel had earned his name for a trait the opposite of amiability. He came readily out of the barn, but once in the yard he broke from Venters, and plunged about with ears laid back. Venters had to rope him, and then he kicked down a section of fence, stood on his hind legs, crashed down and fought the rope. Jerd returned to ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... did understand this subtle trait in the wild man, and she rejoiced to be able to give ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... He who wishes to be on good terms with his lord and to sit beside him on his right, as is now the use and custom, must feign to pluck the feather from his lord's head, even when there is no feather there. But here we see an evil trait: when he flatters him to his face, and yet his lord has in his heart either baseness or villainy, never will he be so courteous as to tell him the truth; rather he makes him think and believe that no one could be a match for ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... her father would not allow a copy of their books to come freely into his home, and Gracie was much too honorable to read them in private. But it is also true that while professing to admire this trait in her, as charming in a young daughter, the professor had also, pityingly and gently, told this young daughter that these things were her father's concessions to the narrow age and trammelled profession to which he belonged; ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... he, as an American, gage such a blank lack of character, individuality? How different was this trait from that which was exhibited by the energetic prosecution of her talents where her personality, shining forth so steadily, held his admiration almost undimmed! This was a baffling interrogation that furnished another evidence to Kirtley of a gaping chasm separating the Teutons from other ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... retire; that he should be looked on as a child if he receded from his purpose." Selfishness and love of ease blunted Charles's judgment; they did not interfere with that obstinacy which was a dominant trait in the family character. Only two days later he took the decisive step, and sent Secretary Morrice with a warrant under the sign manual, to demand the seal.[Footnote: The seal was entrusted to Sir Orlando Bridgeman, as Lord Keeper.] The Chancellor delivered it "with all expressions ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... occurred to them, who had so proved himself weak, cowardly, and faithless, to one set of friends, could scarcely be trusted as brave and sincere by those to whom he then joined himself. There are no virtues esteemed by the Romans like courage and sincerity. This trait in their character is a noble one, and is greatly in our favor. For, much as they detest our superstitions, they so honor our fortitude under suffering, that a deep sympathy springs up almost unconsciously in our behalf. Half of those who, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... my perfect reliance on the relater's private character for integrity, gives a zest to every anecdote he tells—a specific weight to every word of conversation which he repeats—appropriate value to every trait of wit or humour characteristic of the person he describes. Without such belief, the characters would not have to me, as they now have, all the power, and charm, and life, of nature and reality. They are all now valuable as records of individual varieties that have positively so existed. While ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... the light of more than a hundred years of peace between the two great branches of the English-speaking race. More conscious of their differences than anything else, no doubt, these eight peacemakers at Ghent nevertheless spoke a common tongue and shared a common English trait: they laid firm hold on realities. Like practical men they faced the year 1815 and not 1812. In a pacified Europe rid of the Corsican, questions of maritime practice seemed dead issues. Let the dead past bury its dead! To remove possible causes of future controversy ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... an able combatant. He had studied Christine in action and in repose, in society, and when alone under his protection at Scheveningen, and at home, and he prided himself that he knew at least one woman thoroughly. She loved art, flowers, music, and fine dress, and was very ambitious. The latter trait was doubtless inbred from her ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... manners of the Germans, their attachment, it might almost be called their passion, for home, has been a marked and meritorious feature of their character. To Fatherland first, and then to whatever country fate or fortune may draw them, their devotion is proverbial. This admirable trait seems altogether wanting in Mr. Schurz. When he left Germany he lived for three years in other countries of Europe,—first in Switzerland, then in France, then in England. In 1852 he came to America, and resided first in Pennsylvania, then in Wisconsin, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... silence to the Bishop's gentle flow of conversation; but this was a trait the Bishop had observed in him before; and, after all, a lapse into silence could be easily understood when a man had travelled far, on meagre fare, and found himself ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... who had come as settlers since 1842. They were a rough lot with both the virtues and the defects of the pioneer. Nevertheless among their most marked characteristics were their honesty and their kindness. Hittell gives an incident that illustrates the latter trait very well. "It was a little camp, the name of which is not given and perhaps is not important. The day was a hot one when a youth of sixteen came limping along, footsore, weary, hungry, and penniless. There were at least thirty ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... blessings held out to the savage by civilization, and they are only some of them. The picture is neither fanciful nor overdrawn; there is no trait in it that I have not personally witnessed, or that might not have been enlarged upon; and there are often other circumstances of greater injury and aggression, which, if dwelt upon, would have cast a still darker shade upon the prospects ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... rumble of the trolley-car, for more light and room, for house space, for the accommodation of friends who loved to make their home with a genial host and his loving companion, and to indulge in that hospitality which was a lifelong trait, Mr. and Mrs. Coffin began looking for a site whereon to build in Brookline. No yokefellows were ever more truly one in spirit than "Uncle Charles and Aunt Sally." Providence having denied them the children for ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... round the room for a moment as she did so, as if to ensure that no stranger saw her in the act of using them. Here a weakness was uncovered at once; it was a small, pretty, and natural one; indeed, as weaknesses go in the great world, it might almost have been called a commendable trait. She then began ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... horse, but he is not fond of horses, as I understand the term. He has no idea of making a pet of his charge. A horse is to him merely something to get about upon, and he cannot understand our fondness for our equine friends. I have noticed the same trait in the Boer character. To a Boer a horse is usually merely a means of transit from spot to spot; not a comrade, not a companion. I was not astonished to find this feeling amongst the niggers, because I have noticed it among the natives in every colony in Australia, and even amongst ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... que vous voyiez la une plainte de ma part. Je serais un ingrat si je me plaignais; car il me disait souvent: 'Quel bon Francais vous faites!' Et il m'aimait a cause de cela, quoiqu'il semblt n'ainier pas la France. C'etait la un trait de son originalite. Il est vrai qu'il s'en tirait en disant que je ne ressemblai pas a mes compatriotes, ce a quoi il ne connaissait rien! - Tout cela etait fort curieux; car, moi-meme, je l'aimais quoiqu'il en ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his colouring is adequate—he always asserted that a sense of proportion was success in art. His tone is peculiarly personal; he paints expressions, the fleeting shades that cross the face of a man, a woman, a child. He patiently awaits the master trait of a soul and never misses it, though never displaying it with the happy cruelty of Sargent and always judging mercifully. Notwithstanding his humble attitude in the presence of nature, he is the most self-revealing of painters. Few before him ever interpreted maternity ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... an entire consciousness that he had never seen any society that deserved the name before this very night, but he was supported in giving his opinions by that secret sense of his qualifications to fill any station, which formed so conspicuous a trait in his character, and his answer was given with an aplomb that would have added weight to the opinion of the veriest elegant of ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... power, she had never felt a wish of inquiring. His countenance, voice, and manner had established him at once in the possession of every virtue. She tried to recollect some instance of goodness, some distinguished trait of integrity or benevolence, that might rescue him from the attacks of Mr. Darcy; or at least, by the predominance of virtue, atone for those casual errors under which she would endeavour to class what Mr. Darcy had described as ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the fellow was not without some redeeming trait, for he made a clean breast of it. "It is dis way," he began remorsefully, "when I'm tak de job for cook to-day I'm tink, for sure, I know de way for do it. De reason I get idea like dat, is this way: When I'm be little boy and ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... impress, But not too roughly, lest she should transgress: We may conjecture if he were at ease; What victory! to see her stoop to please; A beauty so renowned for charms and pride, 'Twould take a week, to note each trait described; No other fault than paleness he could trace, Which gave her (causes known) still ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... somewhere in the middle, he was a great hand to forage. Few choice morsels escaped him. He confided absolutely in his rider in the matter of bad country, and would tackle anything I would put him at. It seemed that he trusted me not to put him at anything that would hurt him. This was an invaluable trait when an example had to be set to the reluctance of the other horses. He was a great swimmer. Probably the most winning quality of his nature was his extreme friendliness. He was always wandering into camp to be petted, nibbling ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... knowledge, very much more. Still, the main thing for me was that in the first great and wholly modern poets that I made acquaintance with, Byron and his intellectual successors, Lermontof and Heine, I recognised again the very fundamental trait that I termed daemonic, the worship of one's own originality, under the guise of an ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... was watchful of himself and of everyone with whom he came into the slightest contact. He was very clever. He had an immense amount of personal charm, I think, at any rate for me. He was very human, passionately interested in humanity. He was—and this was specially part of him, a dominant trait—he was savagely, yes, savagely, eager to be happy, and when he came to live in the hotellerie he was savagely unhappy. An egoist he was, a thinker, a man who longed to lay hold of something beyond this world, ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... is much alone, not being greatly given to social intercourse even with other hobbledehoys—a trait in his character which I think has hardly been sufficiently observed by the world at large. He has probably become a hobbledehoy instead of an Apollo, because circumstances have not afforded him much social intercourse; and, therefore, he wanders about in solitude, taking long walks, in ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... it was a revolt. Gerard Petit left France, and Teague Poteet remained away from Gullettsville. Otherwise there was scarcely a trace of his lineage about him, and it is a question whether he inherited this trait from France or from the ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... a "Yankee," though his long residence in the Western States had rubbed the Yankee out of him to a great extent. At all events he had few of their characteristics about him. He was neither staid, sober, nor, what is usually alleged as a trait of the true bred Yankee, "stingy." On the contrary, our doctor was full of talk and joviality—generous to a fault. A fault, indeed; for, although many years in practice in various parts of the United States, and having earned ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... individuity|; particularity, peculiarity; idiocrasy &c. (tendency) 176[obs3]; personality, characteristic, mannerism, idiosyncrasy; specificness &c. adj[obs3].; singularity &c. (unconformity) 83; reading, version, lection; state; trait; distinctive feature; technicality; differentia. particulars, details, items, counts; minutiae. I, self, I myself; myself, himself, herself, itself. V. specify, particularize, individualize, realize, specialize, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... be seen that these promises overlap, the same thing being put now positively, now negatively, and being repeated in differing words to different groups. Each promise touches the characteristic trait of the group spoken of. The Ephesians, who had many things but lacked the vital thing, are wooed with the promise of life itself, which is only through touch with ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... power that he had acquired. It may be that he had no desire to perpetuate the power in his family; and it is certain that this could not have been accomplished. Sulla had only one son, and he was now a child. But it is certainly a striking trait in this man's character that he descended to a private station from the possession of unlimited power, and after, as Appian observes, having caused the death of more than one hundred thousand men in his Italian ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... trait of Afghan character, I must mention that whenever the Jezailchis could snatch five minutes to refresh themselves with a pipe, one of them would twang a sort of a rude guitar as an accompaniment to some martial song, which, ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... trait of his youth—a strong desire to make every thing in which he engaged respectable. A few years later he manifested a feeling in the same direction, when he was made captain of the fire company. He introduced rules to guard against those vices that are so likely to find ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... preceded him to the grave by only a few months. Seven children was the result of this union. In youth and early manhood Colonel Stackhouse was noted for his strict integrity and sterling qualities, his love of truth and right being his predominating trait. As he grew in manhood he grew in moral worth—the better ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... lovely girl at his side, whose very imperfection and need won more upon him than any display of conscious strength and advanced spirituality? Her frankness, her humility and severe self-condemnation, appealed to every generous trait of his large, charitable nature. He now believed, as never before, that she was "capable of the noblest things," and he began to suffer from the torturing thought that his course was a mistaken one, and that he wronged her ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... another trait of the poor devil of an August, full of good-humor after all, That he and his Royalties and big Lordships having dined, he gave the still groaning table with all its dishes, to be scrambled for by "the janizaries." Janizaries, Imitation-Turk valetaille; who speedily made ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... will never meet the average Englishman anywhere; only individual Chinamen will meet individual Englishmen. Now among Chinamen will be found a range of variety as extensive as among Englishmen, and there is no single trait presented by all Chinamen and no Englishman, or vice versa. Even the oblique eye is not universal in China, and there are probably many Chinamen who might have been "changed at birth," taken away and educated into quite passable Englishmen. Even after we have separated out and allowed for ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... enough for arduous enterprises Renouard was inclined to evade the small complications of existence. This trait of his character was composed of a little indolence, some disdain, and a shrinking from contests with certain forms of vulgarity—like a man who would face a lion and go out of his way to avoid a toad. His intercourse with the meddlesome journalist was that merely outward intimacy without ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... This trait gives you an idea of her character and manner, and of the astonishment of Sir Culling at her want of sympathy with his really liberal and philanthropic views for Ireland, while she is full of her tail, her father's fifty-miles-long avenue, and Aeschylus ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... need of proving that these both lie in 'beneficium', which there is not, for in Wiclif's translation of the Bible the distinction is still latent (1 Tim. vi. 2), one might adduce a singularly characteristic little trait of Papal policy, which once turned upon the double use of this word. Pope Adrian the Fourth writing to the Emperor Frederic the First to complain of certain conduct of his, reminded the Emperor that he had placed the imperial crown upon his head, and ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... "The most unpleasing trait in the Boer character is his callousness, amounting to brutality, in the case of ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... reader will do my heroine the justice to remember that she set out with only three, consequently her wish that another had been added, arose from a motive purely affectionate and characteristic. This benevolent trait, ingeniously insinuated, excites the interest of the reader for her, and ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... twinkling eyes, was greatly pleased. Von Moll was evidently another Steinwitz in seriousness and pompous dignity. It was a delightfully amusing trait in the German character. ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... Albanian influence, partly to their own struggle for existence and partly to other causes, the Montenegrins had shown themselves defective in straightforwardness. Undoubtedly they had deteriorated under the example of Nikita, but this unfortunate trait can also be discerned between the lines of the great poem, the "Gorski Venac," written in the first half of the nineteenth century. There used to be a certain amount of what we call theft in Montenegro, but the natives of that country, as of Albania, cherished rather communistic ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... able to bring his winging thoughts down from the clouds to earth, it was to discover still another unsuspected trait in the woman who had become his all; for Smiles, eager and excited, was still dwelling in a world of romance, and she insisted upon recounting what had happened, almost verbatim, and in a dramatic manner quite unlike the simplicity which ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... of the conservation movement to rebuke and correct this national trait, and the resources of science are now concentrated in this mighty effort in ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... them is either before the leaves are out or after they have fallen, when a flock will sometimes sit for half an hour in a bare tree, exchanging civilities, stroking each other's feathers, and passing food around. This trait has given them the reputation of being the most polite birds in all Birdland. One will find a dainty morsel and offer it to his next neighbor, who passes it on—hunt-the-slipper fashion—until some one makes up his mind to eat it, or returns it to ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... him and made him an easy victim to the enemy, who administered a severe drubbing and procured for his adversary a birching for fighting—it was before caning days—and a long series of impositions for obstinacy, a trait the doctor said that he absolutely abhorred—Dominic's obstinacy consisting in a stubborn refusal to confess who had beaten him. This his schoolfellows called honourable; but Green had other opinions, and set it down to the fear of getting another thrashing ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... thought it amazing that people could go into a room and not notice the pattern of the carpet, the color of the curtains, the objects on the walls; these being details which he could not help observing and retaining. This trait comes out in his copious ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... in most of whose rivers he had killed salmon. As an angler he was a thorough artist, as a woodsman he was an expert, and as a companion he was most agreeable. Among the Indians, who have the habit of naming every person from some personal trait, he was known as "the Kingfisher," and by that name I shall call him. The second of our party, who procured the right of fishing the Restigouche, and made up the party, I shall call Rodman, which suits him both as fisherman and in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... her duty in this world in the manner in which that duty showed itself to her. He liked her because she was fond of the Daughter of the House. He liked her because she considered her husband to be the handsomest, best, and cleverest man in the world. Perhaps John would have liked this trait best of all if he had not clearly seen that she held in reserve an opinion that this husband would move on a still higher plane if he would place more value on her ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... Lord Fitzjocelyn. I wish I could testify my gratitude in any better manner than by speaking of him to his face; but I am sure you will all drink his health more heartily, if possible, for knowing one more trait in addition to your own personal experience of ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... during childhood, remarkably fond of reading, and was distinguished among his friends and associates for uncommon perseverance in accomplishing anything he undertook, a trait which peculiarly marked him through life; his disposition is said to have been unusually amiable and docile, so as to endear him very strongly to his ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... they waved their hands and smiled continually, showing flashing, white teeth. They were evidently well pleased with the turn of events which had led them to this wondrous, new world, where was plenty of opportunity for killing—this reputed trait, however, was quite belied by their ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... conscientious explorer is to study his own neighbourhood, so we set off to familiarize ourself with Vesey Street. This amiable byway (perhaps on account of the proximity of Washington Market) bases its culture on a solid appreciation of the virtue of good food, an admirable trait in any street. Upon this firm foundation it erects a seemly interest in letters. The wanderer who passes up the short channel of our street, from the docks to St. Paul's churchyard, must not be misled by the character of the books the bibliothecaries ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... example I want you first to recognise that, apart from its physical qualities, every material body has certain, what may be called, traits of character, which belong to it alone; there is generally one special trait or "partial," namely, the characteristic which it is easiest for the particular body to manifest, but I shall show you that by sympathetic action others can be developed. I have several pieces of ordinary wood, ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... footprint, on the plastic face, As the swift record of a raindrop stands, Fixed on the tablet of the hardening sands. On every face as on the written page Each year renews the autograph of age; One trait alone may wasting years defy,— The fire still lingering in the poet's eye, While Hope, the siren, sings her sweetest strain,— Non omnis moriar is its ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... are careless possess a trait that will seriously mar their individuality as musicians and artists. Carelessness is so often taken for "abandon" in playing. "Abandon" is something quite different and pertains to that unconsciousness of technical effort which only comes ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... at himself. If she had loved another, the wound of loneliness must have bled inwardly until it sapped his life. Oh, how daintily sweet she was! Every day he found some new trait. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... morning, therefore, I found him gone, the strollers looking glum, and the good-wife and her girl between tears and reproaches. I could not but feel, on my part, that I had somewhat stooped in the night's diversion; but before I had time to reflect much on that an unexpected trait in the strollers' conduct reconciled me to this odd experience. They proposed to leave when I did; but a little before the start they came to me, and set before me very ingenuously that the woman of the house might suffer through our jest; if I would help her therefore, they would ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... "Eliminate every trait or deed which does not help peculiarly to make the character's part in the particular story either intelligible or open to ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... cheerful women whom one could possibly meet. Anything attractive and genuinely happy delighted her. Even the faculty of being pleased with the sight of young people enjoying themselves (it is only in the best-natured of elderly folk that one meets with that TRAIT) she possessed to the full. On the other hand, her daughter was of a grave turn of mind. Rather, she was of that peculiarly careless, absent-minded, gratuitously distant bearing which commonly distinguishes ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... get, but that magnificently imperious way of looking with those large eyes always disconcerted me. I could not brace myself enough to meet them with any show of impudence, though the old lady had not ceased to regard that as the chief trait of my character. As Mrs. Pinkerton trod with stately step the rude piazza of that summer hotel, she put her eye-glasses on and surveyed its occupants with a look that made them shrink into themselves and feel ashamed to be sitting about in that idle way. I believe the old lady's eyesight was good ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... of his class, but never quite sinking to the bottom. Indeed, if he had not been careless in the matter of incurring demerits from small infractions of the rules, he might have attained respectable, if not high rank in the corps, for he was a clean living, clean spoken boy, without a vicious trait of any kind. Even as it was, he became a sergeant, but inattention to details of discipline finally cost him his promotion and reduced him again to the ranks. At no time, however, did he acquire any real love for the military profession. His sole ambition was ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... trait—gratitude. I did have plans for Carey—plans built on the basis of 'family'; but I have learned from you that there are other things, like the trait I mentioned, for instance, that count more than lineage. Before we went abroad I knew Carey was interested in you, with the first flutter ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... countries meekly endure. To suit his fastidious requirements he is allowed to meander carelessly along at the end of a twenty-foot string, and he is decorated all over with gay and fanciful trappings. A very peculiar trait of his character is that of showing fight at anything he doesn't like the looks of, instead of scaring at it after the orthodox method of horse-flesh in other countries. This peculiarity sometimes makes it extremely interesting for myself. Their usual manner of taking exception to me and the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... of them have this trait developed to a remarkable degree. George's motions attracted the man. Then he leaned forward, and removed the knife from the loop. He held it up, exactly like a magician would exhibit some article that ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... under a series of incidents which are flung together with no more regard to the unities than a pack of shuffled playing-cards. I can do nothing better than let him picture himself, for it is impossible not to recognize the portrait. It is of little consequence whether every trait is an exact copy from his own features, but it is so obvious that many of the lines are direct transcripts from nature that we may believe the same thing of many others. Let us compare his fictitious hero's story with what we have ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... one of the pseudo-Radical calumniators of Lavengro and its author; were the writer on his deathbed he would lay his hand on his heart and say, that he does not believe that there is one trait of exaggeration in the portrait which he has drawn. This is one of the pseudo-Radical calumniators of Lavengro and its author; and this is one of the genus, who, after having railed against jobbery for perhaps a quarter of ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... about Ian, even though he is sometimes passionate and stubborn, and will probably have lots of trouble with himself by and by, there isn't a drop of sneaky cur blood in him, which is the only trait that need ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... observations are so intermingled with knowledge drawn from books that it is difficult to distinguish the one from the other. Nor does this greatly matter, for whether as closet-student or field-naturalist, Pliny's trait of mind is essentially that of the compiler. He was no philosophical thinker, no generalizer, no path-maker in science. He lived at the close of a great progressive epoch of thought; in one of those static periods when numberless observers piled up an immense mass of details ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... to hear, or to care. He was afar, wandering from it. "Ever notice that he has only one thumb? Same way with his father. Probably a family trait. I wish there were more families like 'em. This house is full of trollops and rascals. So is Newport. The house at Newport is full of rapscallions. Believe I'll offer it to the Government for a hospital. I wish to God Sally would come over ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... trait me! Whan I gang to my sheep-fold, an' tak the best an' the fittest, my ears are deavt an' my hert torn wi' the clamours—the bleatin', an' ba'in' o' my sheep—my ain sheep! compleenin' sair agen me;—an' me feedin' them, an' cleedin' them, an' ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... One could forgive their being dirty and stupid and noisy and rude; one could forgive their ugliness, the ineffable banality of their faces, their goggle-eyes, their protruding teeth, their ungainly motions; but the trait one can't forgive is their venality. They're so mercenary. They're always thinking how much they can get out of you—everlastingly touching their hats and expecting you to put your hand in your pocket. Oh, no, believe me, there's no health in the People. Ground down under ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... weather. They rejoice in the coming of each morning; they are sorrowful with the advent of each evening. They echo the distress of their kind in a readier way than any other forms. He is indeed a poor naturalist who overlooks this trait; for however deeply he may have delved, he has not won the jewel unless he appreciates this element of an unending joy which the bird-life continually offers him. From that life we may well believe that man is hereafter to derive some great and ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... his strange cry—the one Gale considered involuntary, or else significant of some tribal trait or feeling. It was incomprehensible, but no one could have doubted its potency. Yaqui pointed down the lava slope, pointed with finger and arm and neck and head—his whole body was instinct with direction. His whole being seemed to have been animated ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... reminiscences. And then some one asked him what he considered the most striking and prominent trait of New Yorkers. ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... professed in none. You find it scarcely otherwise than in his manner of treating his material. But there you may find it: the silent, majestic homage that he pays to every real grace and spiritual accomplishment of man or woman. Any smallest trait of this is delineated with a heed that makes no account of time or pains, with a venerating fidelity and religious care that unutterably imply its preciousness. Indeed, it is one point of his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... wove fabrics, and performed other manual operations; yet their reason and intelligence has not advanced, even pari passu in any degree with the progress of European civilisation; nor have the natures of their female population become modified with the slightest trait of the humanities and tendernesses which are the brightest attributes of the women of ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... the evil effects of inheritance on the mind, education plays a very important part. A child born with a tendency to some vice or intellectual trait, may have this tendency entirely overcome, or at least modified, by training. So, also, virtues implanted by nature may be lost during the plastic days of youth, in consequence of bad associations ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... be tried again and again, till it succeeds. With respect to the person in whose hands it has failed, I may say to you (in our confidence) that my opinion does not very much differ from yours, if indeed it does at all. Since he has been in Ireland I have seen no one trait of that character which I thought he had displayed in former situations of great difficulty, and for which I still gave him credit, though a nearer view of his mind had certainly diminished the impressions which I once entertained on the subject. Sorry I am to confess that I concurred heartily ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... at the thought of being abandoned by their comrades, and left to the mercy of their enemies. Yet, in their apprehension of evil treatment from the Americans, the event proved that they had done injustice to that people; who were found to possess at least one generous trait in their character, namely, that of behaving kindly and ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... inequalities of life, its flagrant and rank injustices, he seemed for the first time to wholly realise. A Banquo amongst the gay stream of people who brushed lightly against him every moment. He lost for the time that admirable gift of sympathetic interest in his fellows which had once been his chief trait. His outlook upon life was changed. To the world which had misused him so he showed an altered front. He scowled at the men, and kept his face turned from the women. What had they done, these people, that they should be well-dressed and merry, whilst the aching in his bones grew ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... less, we have, every one of us, felt something of this kind. Homer's men are, at first sight, unlike any men that we have ever seen; and it is not without a shock of surprise that, for the first time, we fall, in reading him, across some little trait of humanity which in form as well as spirit is really identical with our own experience. Then, for the moment, all is changed with us—gleams of light flash out, in which the drapery becomes transparent, and we see the human form ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... about Theodosia. I like to think and speak of her. She is my life, my soul, my ambition, my joy. Theodosia has no fault that I can see, no trait which I do not admire and love. ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... parties; he now began to be lionised at serious dinners. He was thought much of in Carlton Gardens, and his name figured at official banquets in Downing Street. The Duchess of Dovedale considered it a nice trait in his character that, although he was so much in request, and worked so hard in the House, he never missed one of her Thursday evenings. Even when there was an important debate on he would tear up Birdcage Walk in a hansom, and spend an hour in the Duchess's amber ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... portrayed, with here and there a happy trait of grace or humour beyond the wording of the text, the very scene and people. Each of the illustrations has a charm and freshness of ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... pas dans leur place originaire, mais encore qu'il ne sont arrives la par aucune des causes naturelles qui agissent dans les montagnes; savoir, la pesanteur, la pente, et le cours des eaux. Ce sont donc de violentes explosions qui ont disperse ces blocs; et alors ils deviennent un nouveau trait cosmologique de quelque importance: car rien ne se meut, ni ne paroit s'etre mu depuis bien des siecles, dans ces lieux qui montrent tant de desordre: un tapis de verdure couvre tout, en conservant les contours baroques du sol. Le betail ne ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... trait was one attaching to the corners of her mouth. Before she made a remark these often twitched gently: not backwards and forwards, the index of nervousness; not down upon the jaw, the sign of determination; but palpably upwards, in precisely the curve adopted to represent mirth in the broad ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... having been admitted to the bar, he abandoned practice and went to teach in a girls' school. That was the early sign in him of that sense of unfitness for the more arduous contacts of life which was so conspicuous a trait during his presidency. He could not endure meeting men on an equal footing, where there was a conflict of wills, a rough clash of minds, where no concession was made ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... mother had told him that delicate finger tips were daintily polished by an hour's knitting a day. He was—though he wouldn't have admitted it—proud of her slender hands—they looked exactly as his wife's had looked. It was the only trait she had inherited from that particular ancestor and he had been inordinately vain of his wife's hands. Mademoiselle had been ordered never to let the child "spread her hand by opening door knobs or touching the fire-stones—or—er— ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... through very much the same purgatory years before. Indeed it was very much like a coffee room in purgatory, if the reader can imagine such a thing, for every one of the patrons had this distinguishing trait—they were shackled and tortured and seared by the lack of a little money. The mangy old waif who asked for a cup of tea and furtively fished out of a little black oil-cloth bag a couple of thick sandwiches; the middle-aged ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... we can do, Eric—before we start something that no human power can stop? Something to make us sure—to give us a clincher? That's all I ask. You say I'm cursed with too much of the milk of human kindness. Perhaps I am—perhaps that's what makes me no better detective than I am—but it's a trait—good or bad—that I'll never get over. And until every possible doubt as to that woman's complicity has been removed, I am opposed to any such course as arrest and public announcement ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... distinguishing trait was gaiety, a cheerfulness that, while not exactly joy itself, was constant and unalterable; it might be said that she was born a flower, and that her ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... to the Duke of Argyle. Grandeur of his grace's seat. The authour possesses himself in an embarrassing situation. Honourable Archibald Campbell on a middle state. The old Lord Townshend. Question concerning luxury. Nice trait of character. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... charged Taft with being a reactionary, a friend of the "bosses" and with using the patronage in order to secure a renomination. And he grated on the sensibilities of the nation by referring to his influence in getting Taft elected in 1908 and remarking, "it is a bad trait to bite the hand that feeds you." The result of the presidential preference primaries in the few states that held them was overwhelmingly in favor of Roosevelt; in the states where conventions chose the delegates, Taft obtained a majority; in the case of over 200 delegates, ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... we are reminded both of Thackeray and Dickens. But when the Squire, coming down to the Small House to discuss his niece's marriage, just avoids a quarrel with his sister about the propriety of early fires, we acknowledge, that, as it stands, the trait belongs to Trollope alone. Dickens would have eschewed it, and Thackeray would have expanded it. The same remark applies to their pathos. With Trollope we weep, if it so happen we can, for a given shame or wrong. Our sympathy in the work before us is for the ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... emotions; and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined organization, but they can colour all that they combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the representation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... against this, we must suppose we are wrong, according to the fundamental law of every society, the lex majoris partis, to which we are bound to submit. And should the majority change their opinion, and become sensible that this trait in their constitution is wrong, I would wish it to remain uncorrected, as long as we can avail ourselves of the services of our great leader, whose talents and whose weight of character, I consider as peculiarly necessary to get the government so under way, as that ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Juvinell that we might venture to pronounce more charming than another, it is the smile of mingled fun, good-humor, and love, with which his countenance never ceases to shine, save when he hears the voice of pain and his breast with pity burns. Touching this same trait of his, a lady once said in our hearing, that she verily believed a cherub, fresh from the rosy chambers of the morning, came at the opening of each day to Uncle Juvinell's chamber, just on purpose to dash a handful of sunbeams on his head; and, as there ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... Alfred, "else on me this doom had come. "This seals my faith in deep and dark unfaith! "Now Katie, are you mine, for Max is dead— "Or will be soon, imprison'd by those boughs, "Wounded and torn, sooth'd by the deadly palms "Of the white, trait'rous frost; and buried then "Under the snows that fill those vast, grey clouds, "Low-sweeping on the fretted forest roof. "And Katie shall believe you false—not dead; "False, false!—And I? O, she shall find me true— "True as a fabl'd devil to the soul "He longs for with the heat of all hell's ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... envies your finger-nails, and the trunk, doubtless, was upset in travelling. Besides, I don't think she's malignant. Like most underbred persons, she is curious, and she has cultivated the trait until it has become ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... being a perfect woman, had sundry small faults; she was proud, after a certain fashion of her own; slightly sentimental, which is rather a failing than a fault; but her worst trait was a brooding, fault-seeing, persevering tact at making herself miserable, scarce ever equalled. The smallest bit of vantage-ground was enough for a start, and on that foundation Lizzy took but a few hours of suspicion and imagination to build up a whole Castle Doubting. The cause she had to-day ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various |
