"Characteristic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be presented from the Mosaic laws to prove that this prohibition was only of a temporary character. It is in entire harmony with the spirit of helpfulness and especially the protection of the weak, that is so characteristic of ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... appeal he wrote a most informing and characteristic article for The Times of India (July 19, 1899), which threw a flood of light on the subject of the habits and characteristics of the Indian rat as found in town and country. He was the first to show that Mus rattus, the old English black rat, which is the common house rat ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... have seldom heard the corncrake, and never once the grasshopper lark. These two birds are so characteristic of the meadows in southwestern counties that a summer evening seems silent to me without the "crake, crake!" of the one and the singular sibilous rattle of the other. But they come to other places not far distant ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... Burton. She had scant sympathy and could make but slight excuse for the neurotic persons who have no fortitude with which to meet life's inevitable disasters but expend all their energy in compassion for themselves. Especially did she resent this characteristic in a young girl, having grown accustomed to the sanity and the outdoor spirit engendered by the Camp Fire life. Moreover, one has at present no time or pity save for ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... understand their aspirations, and sympathise with their lives, while at the same time we have no wish (not to say hope) to put back the clock, and start from the position which they held. For, indeed, it is characteristic of the times in which we live, that whereas in the beginning of the romantic reaction, its supporters were for the most part mere laudatores temporis acti, at the present time those who take pleasure ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... permit this thing in pantaloons and whiskers, this brainless, un-ideaed cub, whom a thousand years will not suffice to lick into a bear, longer to impose upon your good-natures? If so, we shall conclude you have lost all of that spirit so characteristic ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... under the hardships of his terrible existence. One day while sweeping the streets he ruptured a blood-vessel and died there, with no mourners save his fellow-criminals.—See Hubner ii., pp. 583-591. "Characteristic and Historical Anecdotes of Joseph II." "Friedel's Letters from ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... a characteristic feature of the slowness of legal process in those days that though the notice of action was sent on August the 28th, 1827, the case was not ripe for trial until February 14th of the next year—nearly six months having elapsed. It is difficult ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... had finished reading this remarkable letter, the first thing he did was characteristic of the boy—he reached out his ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... the more serious thinkers among us are used, as far as they dare form an opinion, to regard the spirit of Liberalism as the characteristic of the destined Antichrist? In vain does any one clear the Church of Rome from the badges of Antichrist, in which Protestants would invest her, if she deliberately takes up her position in the very quarter, whither we have cast them, when we took them off from her. Antichrist ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... persecute us. The high standard of righteousness which Jesus teaches here and throughout this chapter is the standard of sanctification. The love of God must be perfected in us, which destroys every element of the old nature, of which hatred is a prominent characteristic. ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... country, as the other, grows strong and brave men. These barren mountain districts of the Cevennes have bred a race of heroes; and the men are as simple and kind as they are brave. Hospitality is a characteristic of the people, which never fails to strike the visitor accustomed to the exactions which are so common ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... should be considered as giving the average of cases, from which deviations are to be expected. Many matters can only be treated statistically and by the methods of Probability. Our ordinary beliefs are adopted without any methodical examination. But it is the aim, and it is characteristic, of a rational mind to distinguish degrees of certainty, and to hold each judgment with the degree of confidence that it deserves, considering the evidence for and against it. It takes a long time, and much self-discipline, to ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... 1846, though not an official member of the Commune, was one of its most powerful champions. He was founder and principal editor of the Pere Duchesne, a poor imitation of the journal, published under the same title, by Hebert, in the time of the first Revolution. This paper, one of the most characteristic of the Commune, was filled with trivialities, in the vilest taste and slang, which cannot be rendered in English. The first number of Vermesch's journal was published on the 6th of March, but was suppressed by General Vinoy; it re-appeared, however, on the eighteenth of the same month, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... manifestation of his ignorance; anything is possible where love is concerned! It was characteristic of the man that in his mind he had abandoned, for the present at all events, his own pain. He still loved Stephen with all the strength of his nature, but for him the selfish side ceased to exist. He was trying to serve Stephen; and ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... which no one seeks to deny, we shall find that the socialists themselves are among our most interesting witnesses, affording in what they assert a solitary and signal exception to that looseness of thought and observation which is otherwise their distinguishing characteristic. The motive here in question as ascribed to the exceptional wealth-producer, the director, the man of business ability—the motive which in his case the socialists propose to supersede, but which is ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... be employed only by the rich, and even judges were venal, so that the poor did not easily find adequate redress. But all this is the necessary attendant on a factitious state of society, and by many is regarded as being quite as characteristic of modern, civilized Christian England and America as it was of Pagan Rome. Material civilization leads to an undue estimate of money; and when money purchases all that artificial people desire, then all classes will prostitute themselves ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... quickly sold. "Judges on the bench and boys in the street, gravity and folly, the young and the old"* all alike read it and laughed over it. Dickens above everything is a humorist, and one of the chief features in his humor is caricature, that is exaggerating and distorting one feature or habit or characteristic of a man out of all likeness to nature. This often makes very good fun, but it takes away from the truth and realness of his characters. And yet no story- teller perhaps is remembered so little for his stories and so much for his characters. In Pickwick there is hardly any ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... shall think about some more of the great poetry that was made before the Norman Conquest, and we shall first take one of the finest and most characteristic poems which remain to us, a poem founded on Bible story; the great poem, of which we have unfortunately only ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... directly we're back in town." They had been back in town ten days, he knew, but he had not yet obeyed her summons. The thought crossed his mind that the contrast between her two letters was an odd parallel to Dick's description of the puzzling demeanour of his brother Jimmy. Was it a characteristic of the man's to produce these sudden and startling changes of mood towards himself? Marchmont was puzzled at the notion; he was too little able to sympathise with the attraction to find himself capable of understanding the force and extent of the ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... Anthony, the undulating aspect of the country ceases, and we enter upon an almost unbroken plain. A leading characteristic of the scenery is the thin forests of oak, commonly called oak openings. The ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... This story, characteristic as it is of Greene's style when he means to be euphuistic, can scarcely be taken as a fair sample of the improbability he is able to crowd into a single novel. Most of his tales (and in this he greatly differs from Lyly) ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... outward characteristic was that she looked delightfully fresh and clean. Her fair skin helped to this effect, and the trim suitability of her clothes accentuated it. And yet there was nothing challenging or particularly noticeable in ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... proposing extreme measures is characteristic: Egyptians hold, and justly enough, that their women ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... "till" or "hard-pan" are found some strange and characteristic stones. They are bowlders, not water-worn, not rounded, as by the action of waves, and yet not angular—for every point and projection has been ground off. They are not very large, and they differ ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... characteristic of the race the qualities I find among these people are, nor can I, for lack of experience, be sure in what degree they are absolutely different from those of any class in the States. For example—this craving to own one's home. Almost no one here pays rent. There ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... It was characteristic of Jewdwine that in this courting of Opportunity there had been no violent pursuit, no dishevelment, no seizing by the hair. He had hung back, rather; he had waited, till he had given himself value, till Opportunity had come to him, with ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... tall, very dark, and very thin, with regular, well-cut features indicating little to the physiognomist unless it be the great gift of self-possession. His hair was cut short, and he wore no beard beyond an absolutely black moustache. His teeth were perfect in form and whiteness,—a characteristic which, though it may be a valued item in a general catalogue of personal attraction, does not generally recommend a man to the unconscious judgment of his acquaintance. But about the mouth and chin of this man there was a something of softness, perhaps in the play of the lips, perhaps in the ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... of the freedman—the very embodiment of all he had expected to find in a genuine Alexandrian—so far won his confidence that he bade him speak without fear. He hoped to hear something sufficiently characteristic of the manners of the provincial capital to make an anecdote for Caesar's table. Then, when he understood that the matter concerned Melissa's brother, and a distinguished artist, he smiled expectantly. Even when he learned that Alexander was being hunted down for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... jesting mood, glowing with wild exultation. The money he had in his pocket, the treachery he was preparing, the conviction that he had sold himself at a good price—all filled him with the self-satisfaction characteristic of vicious people who naturally became merry and scornful amidst their evil practices. Of all his talk, however, aunt Dide ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... visit from Lady Olivia and Lady Maffei. Our conversation was in Italian and French. Lady Olivia and I had a quarter of an hour's discourse in private: you may guess at our subject. She is not without that tenderness of heart which is the indispensable characteristic of a woman. She lamented the violence of her temper, in a manner so affecting, that I cannot help pitying her, though at the instant I had in my head a certain attempt, that makes me shudder whenever I think of it. She regrets my going to Northamptonshire so ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... and gave us, not only glimpses of other worlds, but disclosed another side of himself. If the new man I was seeing in Page Hanaford captivated me the revelation of the undiscovered woman in Zura mystified and amazed me. Till now her every characteristic was so distinctly of her father's race, everything about her so essentially Western, that I was beginning to think she had tricked a favorite law of Nature and defied ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... original in idea is "Modern Daughters." Mr. Black has written some exceedingly clever conversations, which give us verbal pictures, so to speak, of some characteristic types of American womanhood. The chapters called "With a Gym Girl" and "With a Club Woman" are specially successful. There is a perception and a sense of humour about them which make them not only delightful to read, but worth thinking about afterwards. The illustrations, ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and flavour of rudeness was altogether characteristic of Theresa, and somebody resented it by reminding her that SHE was the hostess. "Of course," she replied, "that is why I said it: what shall I do?" One of her gifts was memory, and her friends cried out at once that ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... black and brown, but four or five pieces being in black. The decorations of the cream-white group present some four general types—those represented by Figs. 359, 363, 364, and ——, in which the uncolored circular space forms the distinguishing characteristic; those of which Fig. 360 may be considered a representative, of which type there are but two specimens in the collection; those represented by Fig. 361, and those distinguished by the rosette (see Figs. 366, 367, ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... poor, dispirited, and, worst of all, demoralized. His meeting-house had been used as a barrack for soldiers; pulpit and pews had been destroyed; the very bell had been stolen. Refusing, with his characteristic denial of self, a call to settle in a more advantageous position, he sat himself down once more in the midst of his reduced and impoverished parishioners, and, with no regular salary, dependent entirely on such free-will offerings as from time to time were made ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... better service, marched more cheerfully, or fought harder than this veteran seaman. The men on the forecastle generally agreed with him in his propositions, but the obstinate old carpenter, with the characteristic tenacity of the ancient tar, maintained the discussion forward, until the sharp voice of the officer of the deck sent all hands to the braces. The ship was brought to the wind on the starboard tack, a manoeuvre which was followed in succession ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... modify the construction of steam boilers, to augment their heating surface, to diminish their residue of water, and to gradually construct so-called inexplosible apparatus, of which the Belleville boiler forms one of the most characteristic prototypes. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... to measure worth and progress by the outward results that are produced will inevitably spring up and assert itself. In this tendency we have the whole examination system in embryo. When Israel, with characteristic thoroughness, had embodied in Pharisaism the logical inferences from his religious conceptions, a merciless examination system came into being, in which every one was at once examiner and examinee, and ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... himself a good turn by his obliging deference to the opinion of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He has been in office ever since. It must be acknowledged of all our leading statesmen that gratitude for such services is their characteristic. It is said that he spends much of his eloquence in endeavouring to make his wife believe that the air of County Mayo is the sweetest in the world. Hitherto, since his marriage, this eloquence has been thrown away, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... may be in high sculptural relief, its characteristic manifestations are in low relief. The situations show to better advantage when they seem to be paintings ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... have been deemed less responsible to the public. During Walpole's administration there is no doubt that members of parliament were paid in cash for votes; and the memorable saying, that every man has his price, has been preserved as a characteristic indication of his method of government. One of the forms in which administrative corruption is most difficult of eradication is the appointment to office. It is sometimes maintained that the purity which characterizes the administration of justice is here unattainable, because in giving a judgment ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... diminish the numbers of the Visiting Committee. My dear friend Hymen planned it, in years gone by, on a war footing; and even so I remember suggesting to him at the time that the scale was somewhat—er—grandiose. But it was characteristic of him, and we have clung to it for that reason, in a spirit perhaps too piously conservative. Forty-two ladies! My good fellow"—he turned to the patient—"I really think— if your leg is equal to it—a short stroll in the fresh air may be permitted. Pray do not ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... acquaintance, Madame Gironac, in Leicester Square, stating what had occurred, and what my ideas and intentions were, requesting her to give me her advice and opinion as to the best plan I could follow. In a few days I received from her the following reply, which I insert as characteristic of ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... first crops of nuts. This is determined by several factors, but perhaps one of the most important is the amount and kind of pruning the trees receive during the first four or five years they are in the orchard. One reason for the importance of type of pruning is the characteristic habit of the species to form branches low on the trunk, so that low-headed and spreading tops result if trees are ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... legend is one of the most pregnant and characteristic in the Grecian Mythology; it explains, according to the religious ideas familiar to the old epic poets, both the distinguishing attributes and the endless toil and endurances of Heracles, the most renowned ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... coal-measures, for immediately above this bed in the Salt Range there occur sandstones containing fossils which have affinities with the Upper Carboniferous formations of Australia, and on these sandstones again there lie alternations of shales and limestones containing an abundance of fossils that are characteristic of the Permo-Carboniferous rocks of Russia. These are succeeded by an apparently conformable succession of beds of still younger age, culminating in a series of shales, sandstones, and limestones ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... into two of the plagal modes. Moreover, he constantly combines both unrelated scales and antagonistic motives, and invests the combinations in astounding orchestral colors, so that the hearer, unaccustomed to such bold experimentations, is quite lost in the maze. Here, for example, is a characteristic passage for solo French horn ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... characteristic of Sheridan, as an orator and a writer, was the great degree of labor and preparation which his productions in both lines cost him. Of this the reader has seen some curious proofs in the preceding pages. Though ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... the united Republic. In the circumstances, had he been really loyal, it was his duty either to resume his warfare or resign his appointment as Prime Minister and go into retirement. He did neither. In a thoroughly characteristic manner he sought a middle course, after having vaguely advocated a national convention to settle the matter. By specious misrepresentation the widow of the Emperor Kwang Hsu—the Dowager Empress Lung Yu who had succeeded the Prince Regent Ch'un in her ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... never, reappear among their colleagues. It thus comes about that despite the fact that nominally the House of Lords is one of the largest of the world's law-making assemblies, the chamber exhibits in reality little of the unwieldiness ordinarily characteristic of deliberative bodies of such magnitude. The efficiency of the chamber is more likely to be impaired by paucity of attendance ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... between John's account of the entry into Jerusalem and those of the Synoptic Gospels is very characteristic. His is much briefer, but it brings the essentials out clearly, and is particular in showing its place as a link in the chain that drew on the final catastrophe, and in noting its ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... two began a series of questions that were answered in the characteristic fashion of childhood, but from which the friends succeeded in extracting something like a clear explanation of her presence on board the Coral—so many miles from the steamer on which she had set ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... of a projected treatise on Ethics were drafted at Edinburgh in the spring of 1879. They are unrevised, and must not be taken as representing, either as to matter or form, their author's final thoughts; but they contain much that is essentially characteristic of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by the wisest and most practical advice. The baron did not even think of attempting to do so. He had known Madame d'Argeles for years; he had seen so many proofs of her invincible energy and determination. She possessed the distinguishing characteristic of her family in a remarkable degree—that proverbial Chalusse obstinacy which Madame Vantrasson had alluded to in her ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... this be the relation of faith to reason, we see the explanation of what seems at first sight to the philosopher to be the most irritating and hypocritical characteristic of faith. It is always shifting its intellectual defences. It adopts this or that fashion of philosophical apology, and then, when this is shattered by some novel scientific generalisation of faith, probably after a passionate struggle to retain the old position, suddenly and gaily ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... a subject of more curious investigation in after ages, than the coincident development of the Critical faculty, and extinction of the Arts of Design. Our mechanical energies, vast though they be, are not singular nor characteristic; such, and so great, have before been manifested—and it may perhaps be recorded of us with wonder rather than respect, that we pierced mountains and excavated valleys, only to emulate the activity of the gnat and the swiftness of ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... read in an old letter—from a gifted friend who died too young—these words: "In everything, in science, art, morals and religion, there MUST be one system that is right and EVERY other wrong." How characteristic of the enthusiasm of a certain stage of youth! At twenty-one we rise to such a challenge and expect to find the system. It never occurs to most of us even later that the question 'what is THE truth?' is no real question (being irrelative to all conditions) and that the whole notion of THE truth is ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... in a graver reflection which he makes upon the prevailing philosophy of Swift, viz., that 'all his views were directed towards what was immediately beneficial, which is the characteristic of savages.' This is undeniable. The meanness of Swift's nature, and his rigid incapacity for dealing with the grandeurs of the human spirit, with religion, with poetry, or even with science, when it rose above the mercenary practical, is absolutely appalling. His own yahoo is not ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... men psychology may play a part as important as in a campaign between two opposing armies, or so at least Calvin Gray believed. That, in fact, was one of his pet theories and from the first he had planned to test it. It was characteristic of Henry Nelson, on the other hand, that he put no faith whatever in "imponderables," hence Gray's reference to morale, on that day of their first meeting, had amused him. Morale, indeed! As if a man of his tough fiber could be affected ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... took for a gillie, but who introduced himself as "MacLure of Drumtochty." It seemed as if the East had come to meet the West when these two stood together, the one in travelling furs, handsome and distinguished, with his strong, cultured face and carriage of authority, a characteristic type of his profession; and the other more marvellously dressed than ever, for Drumsheugh's topcoat had been forced upon him for the occasion, his face and neck one redness with the bitter cold; rough and ungainly, yet not without some signs of power in his eye and voice, the most heroic type of ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... Anyhow, I am going to have three guineas' worth. The only question is, what sort of picture will most thoroughly "get" my personality before a third of the population once a week? The moment when I am most characteristic is when I am lying in a hot bath, and to-morrow is Sunday; but I doubt if even a sixth of the population would be really keen on that. I don't mind writing a letter or two, only, if it meant an extra reel every time I decided to write it to-morrow instead, it would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... for rockwork. It should be so planted that its densely-branched stems can fall over the face of a light-coloured stone; in this respect it forms a good companion to the dwarf phloxes, but it is otherwise a superior rock plant, being more characteristic and prolonged in its flowering. It should be allowed to grow to a large size, which will require several years, or the object may be sooner gained by planting half-a-dozen specimens in a group; this should be done ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... only a small college and could not be expected to be good at everything, but Nina evidently thought that it was large enough to have eight men who could row, and she was not inclined to be pleased with either Fred or me when we went to the Rudolf and lunched with Mrs. Faulkner on the Monday. It was characteristic of Mr. Faulkner that he had not been able to come to Oxford, and his chief function in life, as far as I ever discovered it, was to get out of accompanying his ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... the most interesting that I have yet seen. Its curious old paintings carry one back to the wretched times of the middle ages, when nothing but superstition and the night-mare of hell could influence predatory man to humanity on civil order. A picture of the Last Judgement is characteristic of the religious notions of those early times. In this, Christ is represented as sitting on one rainbow and resting his feet upon another. To his right stands a beautiful castle, into which numbers of beautiful persons are going. ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... tourist to the remains of the humble Mexican village which was the forerunner of the present city. There he will find the inevitable Plaza with its little park and fountain, without which no Mexican town is complete. There, too, is the characteristic adobe church, the quaint interior of which presents a curious medley of old weather-beaten statues and modern furniture, and is always pervaded by that smell peculiar to long-inhabited adobe buildings, and which is called by Steele, in his charming "Old California ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... another figure, carrying luggage, descend the steps and enter the car. He was still close enough to know that not a word was spoken nor a sound made; there was not even the familiar and usual bang of the automobile door. But a certain characteristic swing of the person with the luggage, as he passed one bag and then the other into the car, showed Tom that the figure was that of young Roscoe Bent. Then the car rolled away, leaving him gaping and speculating in the concealment of ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... beauty requires a certain clarity, which is characteristic of glory: whereas the honest regards honor. Since then honor and glory differ, as stated above (Q. 103, A. 1, ad 3), it seems also that the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... power and accept the scepter, which, as prime minister, he had so long successfully wielded. Boris affected the most extreme reluctance. The populace of Moscow, whose favor he had purchased, surrounded the convent in crowds, and with vehemence, characteristic of their impulsive, childish natures, threw themselves upon the ground, tore their hair, beat their breasts, and declared that they would never return to their homes unless Boris would consent to be ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... word water, and the substance represented by this word. In Chapter IV., I gave illustrations of the different meanings which have been given to this word; it is sometimes used to represent a material substance, sometimes a quality more or less characteristic of that substance, and sometimes a process to which that substance, and many others like it, may be subjected. But when the word water is used with a definite and exact meaning, it is a succinct expression for a certain group, ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... its wider meaning of general benevolence. So under another phase of its primary sense we find the epithet used to express the excellence and characteristic qualities proper to the idea or standard of its subject, to wit, genuine, thrifty, well-liking, appropriate, not abortive, monstrous, prodigious, discordant. In the Litany, "the kindly fruits of the earth" ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... of Mrs. Swiggs. "I thought I'd just haul my tacks aboard, run up a bit, and see what sort of weather you were making, Tom," says he, touching clumsily his small-brimmed, plait hat, as he recognizes the young man, whom he salutes in that style so frank and characteristic of the craft. "He's a bit better, sir-isn't he?" inquires Spunyarn, his broad, honest face, well browned and whiskered, warming with a ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... to be judged, so this great political critic appears to have viewed the Constitution of England as the standard, or to use his own expression, as the mirror of political liberty; and to have delivered, in the form of elementary truths, the several characteristic principles of that particular system. That we may be sure, then, not to mistake his meaning in this case, let us recur to the source from which the ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... appeared to be the elder, and whom his companion addressed by the characteristic appellation of "Legs," was at the same time much the taller of the two. He might have measured six feet and a half, and an habitual stoop in the shoulders seemed to have been the necessary consequence of an altitude ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Folkestone' and the 'Passage in the Life of Henry Harris,' both half-serious tales of mediaeval magic; the thoroughly Ingoldsbian 'Legend of Sheppey,' with its irreverent farce, high animal spirits, and antiquarianism; the equally characteristic 'Lady Rohesia,' which would be vulgar but for his sly wit and drollery. But none of these are as familiar as the versified 'Legends,' nor have they the astonishing variety of entertainment found in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... points of difference between the Poets of the present age and those of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries—Wish expressed for the union of the characteristic merits of both ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... class there was another, composed of friends, whom Garrison's denunciatory style offended. To Charles Pollen and Charles Stuart, and Lewis Tappan, this characteristic of the writings of the great agitator was a sore trial. To them and to others, too, his language seemed grossly intemperate and vituperative, and was deemed productive of harm to the movement. But Garrison defended his harsh language by pointing to the state of the country on the subject of ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... wise thought and characteristic of Tom, but the other man was quite beyond human aid. He lay, mangled out of all semblance to a human being, amid the tangled wreckage of ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... wholly in the hands of your excellency. You and you alone will be held responsible for all that shall happen. The hour of clemency for Greece is past; the sword alone can decide the contest. Courage is a characteristic of men who deserve to be free. Let then the conduct of a few atrocious individuals yesterday be effaced by a march direct to Athens, at least to relieve the women and children now doomed to destruction, if ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... therefore only guess at what transpired, from the vague descriptions of the two men themselves. They are characteristic enough: "I never had more prejudices against anyone than against him," said Alexander afterwards; "but, after three-quarters of an hour of conversation, they all disappeared like a dream"; and later he exclaimed: "Would that I had seen him sooner: the veil is torn aside and the time of error ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... that her happiness would in some way or other be enhanced by his brief and fickle love. For, as a rule, men do not understand love. They understand desire, amounting sometimes to merciless covetousness for what they cannot get,—this is a leading natural characteristic of the masculine nature—but Love— love that endures silently and faithfully through the stress of trouble and the passing of years—love which sacrifices everything to the beloved and never changes or falters,—this is a divine passion ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... small surviving amount, and the almost completely second-hand character, of Anglo-Saxon literature have combined to frustrate what might have been expected from another characteristic of it—the unusual equality of its verse and prose departments. We have only one—not quite entire but substantive—prose tale in Anglo-Saxon, the version of the famous story of Apollonius of Tyre, which was to be afterwards declined by Chaucer, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... of high technology, and a comparatively small defense allocation (1% of GDP) helped Japan advance with extraordinary rapidity to the rank of second most technologically-powerful economy in the world after the US and third-largest economy after the US and China. One notable characteristic of the economy is the working together of manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors in closely-knit groups called keiretsu. A second basic feature has been the guarantee of lifetime employment for a substantial portion of the urban labor force. Both features ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... abusive language towards him, but rebuke him with conciliatory words, whether he be in the company of friends or alone. Moreover, she should not be a scold, for says Gonardiya, "there is no cause of dislike on the part of a husband so great as this characteristic in a wife." Lastly she should avoid bad expressions, sulky looks, speaking aside, standing in the doorway, and looking at passers-by, conversing in the pleasure groves, and remaining in a lonely place for a ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... quiet delicious calm of my happiness, is a new experience for me. Heretofore, I had supposed that happy women must be vivacious and voluble, from the very effervescence of their happiness. Now I know that it is not so. Your characteristic words of praise, for the one I have chosen as a husband, have made me very proud of him and deeply grateful to you! In him, I have found the promised friend, counselor and protector; also, an ideal ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... since his mental powers and vision were necessarily limited by his language. Language must apparently have begun by pointing at animals or plants and making some sound, probably at first an imitation of the cry or other characteristic of the animal, which came to connote it. We have to suppose that language was at the commencement a help in the struggle for life, because otherwise men, as yet barely emerged from the animal stage, would never have made the painful mental ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... machine." By emphasizing that the Army could not afford to differ greatly in customs, traditions, and prejudices from the general population, Baldwin explained, Bradley was only underscoring a major characteristic of any large organization of conscripts. Most import, Baldwin pointed out, the Chief of Staff considered an inflexible order for the immediate integration of all troops one of the surest ways to break down the morale of the Army and ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... almost rigid aspect of the ancient basilica—the Roman business-hall, compounded of Greek elements, and transformed into a Grecian temple—is ever at work repressing that devotional ecstasy which is the characteristic of the Gothic church. The Italian language in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was like the Italian architecture of the same period. The different intellectual manifestations, subjected to the same influences, obeyed one general law. The conquering German ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... of election and predestination early troubled me. I could not reconcile it with the loving kindness which the Sacred Scriptures proclaim as characteristic of our Heavenly Father. ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... have suggested that one can no more generalize about it in relation to inheritance with any hope of effective application than one can generalize about, say, "lumpy substances" in relation to chemical combination. By reasoning upon quite parallel lines nearly every characteristic with which Mr. Galton deals in his interesting and suggestive but quite inconclusive works, can be demonstrated to consist in a similar miscellany. He speaks of "eminence," of "success," of "ability," of "zeal," and "energy," for example, and except for the last two items I would submit that these ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... easily against the wall, and peered round to make out her surroundings. The only result could be to give her the impression that she was cooped up like a rat in a trap, but with characteristic indifference for herself, she ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... a novel experience at first. Though there always had been negro servants in the house, and though on the streets colored people were more numerous than her own people, and though she was so familiar with their dialect that she might almost be said to speak it, barring certain characteristic grammatical inaccuracies, she had never been brought in personal contact with so many of them at once as when she confronted the fifty or sixty faces—of colors ranging from a white almost as clear as her own to ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... not get very far in the work of bird study without discovering that certain movements are characteristic of various families; and when the observer is able to recognize this difference in manner a long step has been taken in acquiring the power ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... Spronck classifies the sensation in writing about the verbal sensitivity of the Goncourts and Flaubert. The latter, you may remember, said that Salammbo was purple to him, and L'Education Sentimentale gray. Carthage and Paris—a characteristic fancy! But why is it that these scientific gentlemen who account for genius by eye-strain do not reprove the poets for their sensibility to the sound of words, the shape and cadences of the phrase? It ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... Chicago—the space assigned to the United States has been increased from the absolute allotment of 157,403 square feet reported by Mr. Handy to some 202,000 square feet, with corresponding augmentation of the field for a truly characteristic representation of the various important branches of our country's development. Mr. Peck's report will be laid before you. In my judgment its recommendations will call for your early consideration, especially ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... she answered with characteristic straightforwardness. "My life has been a very uneventful one. I have never been rich, or very well educated, but—it used to be different from now. I had some chance ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Brulot could not speak English, nor could Mr. Ormond express himself in French; so we wasted the time till breakfast was served in discussing his cargo and prospects, through my interpretation. Fine samples of gaudy calicoes, French guns, and superior brandy, were exhibited and dwelt on with characteristic eloquence; but the Gaul closed his bewitching catalogue with a shout of joy that made the cabin ring, as he announced the complement of his cargo to be five hundred doubloons. The scent of gold has a peculiar charm to African ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... greatly tempted to mend a word in these exquisite verses. George Herbert was maladroit in using the word "rest" in two senses. "Peace" is not quite so characteristic a word, but it ought to take the place of "rest" in the last line of the second stanza; so then the first line of the last stanza would not have this rather distressing ambiguity. The poem is ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... find Maxwell recognized by the old man in charge as having authority to do so; and she made as much of the strange interior as the obscurity and her preoccupation would allow. There was that immediate bareness and roughness which seems the first characteristic of the theatre behind the scenes, where the theatre is one of the simplest and frankest of workshops, in which certain effects are prepared to be felt before the footlights. Nothing of the glamour of ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... my sworn friend. With characteristic directness she had cut the Gordian knot of our misunderstanding by telling me, against Dicky's protests, all about the old secret which her past and that of my husband shared. After her story, with all that it revealed of her sacrifice and her fidelity to her own high ideals, ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... occasion the State chairman, who was always accustomed to be in Albany during the closing day of the legislature, to prevent in the haste and confusion, characteristic of legislation at this time, the passage of bad or unpopular measures, bade the governor good-by at midnight, as the legislature was to adjourn the following day with the understanding that ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... years old he went to California, where he engaged in various employments. He was a teacher, was employed in government offices, worked in the gold mines, and learned to be a compositor in a printing office. In 1868 he started the "Overland Monthly," and his original and characteristic poems and sketches soon made it a popular magazine. Mr. Harte has been a contributor to some of the leading periodicals of the country, but ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... said Jake, with characteristic gallantry. "There's nothin' but monopoly everywheres in the world. She got all the looks and I got you. I ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... legation, the French citizens and officers who are with him, were compelled to retire to a room where they are waiting further developments with the undaunted courage characteristic of the republicans. The ambassador repeats his demand that the necessary passports be sent for him and for all the French who desire to accompany him. The transmission of these passports is the more urgent, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... shirt-sleeves, a hand on his hip, the other in his pocket, his neck bare, the pose that of a nonchalant workman—though in actual practice he was always opposed to work of any sort; on his head is a slouch-hat, and you recall his line: "I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out." The picture is characteristic, even to the sensual mouth and Bowery-boy pose. You almost hear him say: "I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones." Altogether a different man from the later bard, the heroic apparition of Broadway, Pennsylvania Avenue, and Chestnut ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... so and think so still; his manner was changed to-day; before, he had that restless, nervous, excitable look that is the indication of one phase of insanity; to-day there was the gloomy, brooding sort of look that is equally characteristic ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... first they had ever tasted. It contained arsenic, and had been placed where they found it by the father of some of the children, with a view of poisoning a supposed enemy. But with that want of forethought, so characteristic of the negro race, he did not think of the greater probability of his own children finding and drinking the poison than the enemy ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... inclined gracefully her small head with the glossy hair. The Incubus, his thin hands clasped on his knee, his sallow face twisted in one of its customary wry smiles, held to the edge of his chair with characteristic pertinacity. ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White |
