"Characteristically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... before his "dear wife," whom he mentions, died. In it his estate is appraised at L837:19:6. One handles reverently this old piece of yellow paper, perhaps ten by twelve inches in size, with red lines, on which is written in a clear handwriting the last will of this dear old man. He characteristically begins it thus:— ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume I, No. 2, February, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... employed in the construction of the buildings of the Casa Grande were thoroughly aboriginal and characteristically rude in application. A fair degree of adaptability to purpose and environment is seen, indicating that the Casa Grande was one, and not the first, building of a series constructed by the people who erected it and by their ancestors, but the degree of skill exhibited and amount of ingenuity ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff
... up stupid and mad to just the extent to which we have not been artistically educated; and the fact that this taint of stupidity and madness has to be tolerated because it is general, and is even boasted of as characteristically English, makes the situation all the worse. It is becoming exceedingly grave at present, because the last ray of art is being cut off from our schools by ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... current events are preserved in the notes or in the memories of his friends. Sometimes these were characteristically cynical. He ridiculed the newspaper parade of national sympathy with the Prince of Wales's illness: "We are represented as all members of the royal family, and all in family hysterics." Dizzy's orientalization of Queen Victoria into ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... among merchants and seamen. Yet some feelings, unallied to the dross of human nature, beat even in these rugged bosoms. My lieutenant, for instance, is a man of wonderful courage and enterprise; he is madly desirous of glory, or rather, to word my phrase more characteristically, of advancement in his profession. He is an Englishman, and in the midst of national and professional prejudices, unsoftened by cultivation, retains some of the noblest endowments of humanity. I first became acquainted with him on board a whale vessel; finding that he was unemployed in this ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... special work in California, threw herself eagerly into the kindergarten movement in New York, and it was in this interest that she was drawn into the semi-public reading of her own stories. Her interpretation of them is full of exquisite taste and feeling, but she has declared most characteristically that she would rather write a story for the love of doing it, than be paid by the public for reading it; hence her readings have always been given purely for philanthropic purposes, especially for ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... last illness, with characteristic distinctness: "If I die, you may inscribe on my tomb stone, Died of the Mahoning Railroad;" so great had been his devotion to the interests of the road, and so severe the personal exposures which its supervision had required of him, who was characteristically more thoughtful of every interest confided to his care, than of his ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... Moliere." And Sherringham repeated that it was all right—the place was familiar with mirth and passion, there was often wonderful talk there, and it was only the setting that was still and solemn. It happened that this evening—there was no knowing in advance—the scene was not characteristically brilliant; but to confirm his assertion, at the moment he spoke, Mademoiselle Dunoyer, who was also in the play, came into the room attended ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... petitions had been granted to build noon-houses, it was found necessary, in 1764, to place some restrictions as to the location of the buildings, which had hitherto evidently been placed with the characteristically Puritanical indifference to general convenience or appearance. While the town still permitted the little log-huts to be erected, and though they could be placed on either side of the highway, it was ordered that the builders must ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... not satisfying the remonstrants, the controversy went on with considerable vigor for three or four years. Both parties to it were characteristically Unitarian in their attitude and in their demands. Both sought the truth with an attempt at unbiassed judgment; and neither wished to disfellowship the other, or to put any restrictions upon its expression of its opinions. ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... within the range of possibility was romantic. The Vicar succeeded quite unexpectedly to a large inheritance; the news reached him and his wife, who was away from home at the time, simultaneously. The letters they wrote to each other on their good fortune crossed in the post, and characteristically each wrote "Badsey Church must now be restored." Soon afterwards the Vicar came to my house and, sitting down at my table, wrote me a cheque for L500 to ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... he said; and lifting me gently by the seat of my pantaloons he carried me upstairs and deposited me, before I could apologize, on the sofa. I looked around the room. It was a bachelor's apartment, characteristically furnished in the taste of the proprietor. A few claymores and battleaxes were ranged against the wall, and a culverin, captured by Sir Ralph Heavystone, occupied the corner, the other end of the room being taken up ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... return the diplomatic negotiations, which had commenced with an allegro con brio, for a time changed under the baton of the Imperial Conductor into a more peaceful andante, until the Kaiser made one of his characteristically sudden changes of purpose and precipitated the war by an arrogant ultimatum to Russia, which that country could not possibly accept without a fatal sacrifice of its self-respect and prestige as ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... thus preserved in a formal way a right which shewed to all the world that they were not subjects but sovereign allies. When it was represented to Bismarck that this right might be the source of intrigues with foreign States, he answered characteristically that if Saxony wished to intrigue nothing could prevent her doing so; it was not necessary to have a formal embassy for this purpose. His confidence was absolutely justified. A few months later Napoleon sent to the King of ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... wanted that appointment to the Municipal Art Commission, of course, characteristically, he wanted it at once, by fair means or foul. I warned him not to do anything underhanded and he told me to mind my own affairs. I told him I'd show him up if he dabbled in any unscrupulous methods. But he ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... he flamed out, bringing his clenched hand down upon the table as if he had been in a public house dicing with blackguards—"my view of it is that it was a characteristically dastardly assassination by that damned traitor, Washington, ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... communion. At the Restoration he rejoices to see the return of the comely Anglican order in old episcopal Norwich, with its ancient churches; the antiquity, in particular, of the English Church being, characteristically, one of the things he most valued in it, vindicating it, when occasion came, against the "unjust scandal" of those who made that Church a creation of Henry the Eighth. As to Romanists—he makes no scruple to "enter their ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... proprietor of the well-known group of American hotels justly celebrated for their great height and poisonous cuisine; while Sir Horace Tipton alike as sportsman, globe-trotter, and soap manufacturer, is characteristically British. Of General Sir Francis Payne I need only say that his home services during the war did incalculable harm to our prestige ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... While the characteristically English love of compromise and devotion to conventions kept the bulk of the population loyal to the established Forms of religion, acquiescent but not enthusiastic, their normal conservatism also disposed them more favourably ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... the day following his luncheon at Papps's, Garth, in his room at the hotel, was packing in a characteristically masculine fashion, preparatory to his start for the North ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... the beneficent necessity which shines through all laws. Human nature expresses itself in them as characteristically as in statues, or songs, or railroads; and an abstract of the codes of nations would be a transcript of the common conscience. Governments have their origin in the moral identity of men. Reason for one is seen to be reason for another, and for every other. ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Characteristically, Marshall nowhere cites Fletcher vs. Peck in his opinion, but he builds on the construction there made of the "obligation of contracts" clause as clearly as do his associates, Story and Washington, who cite it again and again in their concurring ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... pickets shudderingly shrank away from the weird light that was streaming out to them and tinting their faces with a ghastly, greenish pallor, Farmer Burns' small boy, moved by some imp of perversity, did a characteristically childish thing. He picked up a good-sized stone and flung it straight at the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... purpose, and a good purpose—the promotion of a better understanding between the united nations. He never had a better opportunity for preaching from his favourite text of Peace and Union, and he used it characteristically, championing the cause of the Scotch Presbyterians, asserting the firmness of their loyalty, smoothing over trading grievances by showing elaborately how both sides benefited from the arrangements ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... delightful actual conversation re-set, and had the key we lack to their surprises, their capricious turns and lapses.—Well! Montaigne had opened the letter, had forthwith passed his genial criticism on the writer, and then, characteristically, forgetting all about it, turned to the bearer as if he had been intimate with him from childhood. And the feeling was mutual. Gaston in half an hour seemed to have known his entertainer all ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... Characteristically his first thought after that was of David himself. Whatever David had done, his motive had been right. He would have to start with that. If David had built for him a false identity it was because there was a necessity for it. Something shameful, something he ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the whole ranks chuckling and up soared the high spirit barometer. There was, too, in these repeated silent visits to the dump a possibility of discovery that appealed to that venturesome spirit so characteristically a trait of the Ten Hundred. They chuckled gleefully at each nefarious trip, almost wished some interfering N.C.O. would appear from an R.E. depot and originate by his unpleasantries something ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... asseverated he. "Cryptic, enigmatic, esoteric to the last degree. To begin with, how does the Signora Brandi, being an Austrian, come by so characteristically un-Austrian a name? Is that mysterious? And in the next place, why does an Austrian Signora Brandi so far forget what is due to her nationality as to live, not in Austria, but in Lombardy? And—as if that were ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... For the rest, Flanders was certainly still far ahead of her future rival in wealth, and in mercantile and industrial activity; as a manufacturing country she had no equal, and in trade the rival she chiefly feared was still the German Hansa. Chaucer's "Merchant" characteristically wears a "Flandrish beaver hat;" and it is no accident that the scene of the "Pardoner's Tale," which begins with a description of "superfluity abominable," is laid in Flanders. In England, indeed the towns ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Entfuehrung' is so thoroughly and characteristically German, that at first sight it may be thought surprising that it should have succeeded so well in a city like Vienna, which was inclined to look upon the Singspiel as a barbarian product of Northern Germany. But ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... She replied characteristically. She began very soberly to say that she should be the last to advise a marriage between persons of different conditions in life. "But then," said she, "this Mercy is altogether an exception. If a flower grows on a dunghill, 't is still ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... to Ulysses, as seems likely, "Phaeacian" would have been the right word, since the Phaeacians did convey Ulysses to Ithaca. Poe may have had that idea in mind and used the wrong word, or this may simply be a characteristically vague suggestion of antiquity. Point out similar examples of ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... may be taken for granted that this is simply AEsop's fable in Chinese dress. The manner of presentation is characteristically Chinese. For "the wisdom of Laotzse" compare, p. 30, "The Ancient's Book of Wisdom and Life": "Who sees his light, yet dwells in darkness." Master Dsong was King Dsi's most faithful pupil, renowned for his piety. The raven is known ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... the martyrs of Jesus." The twofold statement is seen to cover the two great periods, before Christ and since. And it covers also the two great powers through which the spirit of evil has chiefly worked in those two periods. But the name given first in the plains of Shinar, and used characteristically of the God-defying power of evil, is given here, Babylon. It will be Babylon again at the very end after the Church system ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... the indications of a man whose soul was absorbed in money-getting. The reverence they failed to yield to his religious isolation they were willing to freely accord to his financial abstraction. But Mr. McGee was not so deceived. Overtaking him one day under the fringe of willows, he characteristically chided him with absenting himself from Mrs. McGee and her house since ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... less careful attention to details of construction. A frequent departure from Greek models is found in the restriction of the rows of pillars to the front of the building, while the sides and rear are lined with "engaged" columns to give the idea of a colonnade. [34] More characteristically Roman are vaulted temples, such as the Pantheon, [35] where the circular dome is faced ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... hurriedly cast about for other succour, and alighted on one William Wood, printer, who lent money, but whose agreement as a whole was not executed, as it was considered "either usurious or exorbitant" by their solicitors, who characteristically concluded their bill thus:—"Afterwards attending at the office in Wellington Street to see as to making the tender, and to advise you on the sufficiency thereof, but you were not there; afterwards attending ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... She can't settle down after four years of perpetual thrills and excitement. But if she'd had a husband fighting"—Kitty's gay little face softened incredibly—"she'd be thanking God on her knees that the war is over—however beastly," she added characteristically, "the peace ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... why so called; its nature and use —use of its pres. tense —do. of its form of the pluperf. in lieu of the pot. pluperf. —wherein differs characteristically from the subj.; the two moods continually confounded by writers —Indic. mood, format, and inflec. of its tenses shown in the verb LOVE, conjug. —employed to express a conditional circumstance assumed ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... classes of utensils associated closely with the ceramic art, there are none so characteristically marked by constructional features as nets and wicker baskets. The twisting, interlacing, knotting, and stitching of filaments give relieved figures that by contact in manufacture impress themselves upon the plastic clay. Such impressions come in time to be regarded as pleasing features, ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes
... the admiral get assistance from O'Hara, the governor of Gibraltar, who would have at his disposal one thousand to fifteen hundred men? More would be better, but still with that number success would be probable. "Soldiers," regretted Nelson characteristically, "have not the same boldness in undertaking a political measure that we have; we look to the benefit of our Country and risk our own fame [not life merely] every day to serve her: a soldier obeys his orders ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... other students, whom he knew, were going in to dances, the whole winter he was socially as quiet, but for the Vostrands, as at the Mid-year Examinations. Westover could not resent the neglect of society in his case, and he could not find that he quite regretted it; but he thought it characteristically nice of Mrs. Vostrand to make as much of the friendless fellow as she fitly could. He had no doubt but her tact would be equal to his management in every way, and that she could easily see to it that he did not become embarrassing to her ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... direction from that of atheism. To Prodicus it was evidently the conception of utility that mattered: if these objects came to be regarded as gods it was because they "benefited humanity." This too is a genuinely sophistic view, characteristically deviating from that of the naturalist Democritus in its limitation to the human and social aspect of the question. Such a point of view, if confronted with the question of the existence of the gods, may very well, ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... big store, but all the black calico in stock must have been cleaned out on that occasion. As I understand at the time, the fences of Judge Dick, Postmaster White, Col. Keogh, Judge Settle and Judge Tourgee were all decorated. The last named, characteristically, sought to make capital out of the episode, which was only ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... the check. There was a big fight on between Gould's company and the Western Union, and this caused more litigation. The electrician, on account of the testimony involved, lost his glory. The judge never decided the case, but went crazy a few months afterward." It was obviously a characteristically shrewd move on the part of Mr. Gould to secure an interest in the quadruplex, as a factor in his campaign against the Western Union, and as a decisive step toward his control of that system, by the subsequent merger that included not only the Atlantic & Pacific ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... after his return to the apartment, when—Caroline having gone to her own room to remove her wraps—he and the butler were alone, he characteristically unburdened ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... resembling each other as to merit the description of parallels, all the circumstances of agreement—all those which compose the resemblance for the very reason that they are common to both periods of time, specially and characteristically belong to neither. It is the differential, and not the common—the points of special dissimilitude, not those of general similitude—which manifestly must be looked to, for the philosophic valuation of the times or the people—for the adjudication of their peculiar claims in a comparison ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... into the little chamber. Indeed, while Ruthven was threatening, the man (says James) was trembling, and adjuring the Master not to harm the King. James, having sworn to Ruthven that he would not open the window himself, now, characteristically, asked the man to open the window 'on his right hand.' If the King had his back to the turret door, the window on his right opened on the courtyard, the window on his left opened on the street. The man readily opened the window, says the King, and the person claiming to be the ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... silent concerning the matter. He and his wife met at the dinner-table that evening as if nothing unusual had occurred, both having concluded to ignore all that had transpired, if possible. Mrs. Arnot saw that her husband had only acted characteristically, and, from his point of view, correctly. Perhaps his recent experience would prevent him from being unduly harsh again should there ever be similar cause, which was quite improbable. Since it appeared that she could minister to his happiness in no other ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... interesting than those from the Icelandic. There is, however, one poem from the Danish, which I transcribe as an instance how very clearly the ancient popular ballad of that country corresponds with our own." So we see him drawing from all sources fuel for his favorite fire—the study of ballads. Very characteristically also Scott suggests that the author should extend his researches to the popular poetry of Scandinavia, "which we cannot help thinking is the real source of many of the tales of our minstrels."[95] It seems probable that Scott's acquaintance with northern ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... certain extent lost the simple faith and religious fervor of the peasants, but the keynote of popular ideals has been faithfully preserved by this class. It is still characteristically humanitarian in its view of the world and in its aims. A book like that of Gen. von Bernhardi would be impossible in Russia. If anybody were to publish it it would not only fall flat, but earn for its author the reputation of a bloodhound. Many deeds ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... angles of position and elevation with correctness, and to draw outlines with approximate fidelity, there are a series of problems of the highest interest to be worked out on the southern edge of the Swiss plain, in the study of the relations of its molasse beds to the rocks which are characteristically developed in the chain of the Stockhorn, Beatenberg, Pilate, Mythen above Schwytz, and High Sentis of Appenzell, the pursuit of which may lead them into many pleasant, as well as creditably dangerous, walks, and curious discoveries; ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... of the Middle Ages is that they were so intensely human. A naive spirit appears in their formal literature, as in Chaucer's account of the Canterbury pilgrims, in their decorated religious manuscripts, in their thought, and very characteristically, in their architecture, which combines a simple naturalness with a bold and daring ingenuity. From columns, the constructional motive of which is so simple and natural, and walls pierced with windows, they erected systems ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... may have wounded your characteristically haughty, shrinking, and Sclavic susceptibilities in rendering so public a tribute to your artistic skill, forgive me! The high moral worth and manly rectitude which distinguish you, and which alone render even the most sublime genius truly illustrious ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... Anglo-Catholic position, he joined the Roman Catholic Church. It is notable, in connection with the general argument, that while the deeper reasons for such a change do not concern such a sketch as this, he was again characteristically amused and annoyed with the sentimentalists, sympathetic or hostile, who supposed he was attracted by ritual, music, and emotional mysticism. He told such people, somewhat to their bewilderment, that he had been converted because Rome alone could satisfy the ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... quite characteristically, the Germans broke their "treaty" concerning visits to prisoners, and refused to permit us to speak to prisoners out of hearing. Von Jagow told me that this was because of the trouble made among Russian prisoners by the visits of Madam Sazonoff, ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... combat in the dissolution. Another factor is the kind of person to whom dissolution "comes." And the last factor is the influence of circumstances on the patient undergoing mental dissolution. All factors should, of course, be considered in each case, or, as Dr. Jackson characteristically puts it, "insanity is a function of four variables." I refer to these opinions to show the direction in which some modern speculation on the nature of insanity tends, that thus tracing the course of thought in recent years we may see how, step by step, certain views have ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... wood striking against wood as Smain closed the gate. Androvsky turned quickly and looked behind him. His demeanour was that of a man whose nerves were tormenting him. Domini began to dread telling him of the presence of the priest, and, characteristically, did without hesitation what ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... the gulping of short syllables, and the abbreviation of syllables ordinarily long by the rapid pronunciation of eagerness and vehemence, are not so much a license as a law,—a faithful copy of nature, and let them be read characteristically, the times will be found nearly equal. Thus, the three words marked above make a choriambus — u u, or perhaps a paeon primus - u u u; a dactyl, by virtue of comic rapidity, being only equal to an iambus when distinctly pronounced. I have no doubt ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... for the most part in technical products only. The tendency was to become herdsmen, farmers, and traders. As a division were classed the aborigines of India and of Egypt, with an average 80 cubic inches of brain, a very large cerebellum, and a cerebrum comparatively small. Their intellect was as characteristically statical as that of the other yellow races, the dynamic impulse manifesting itself only in symbolism, mysticism, and the like. At the head of all stood the white races, Aryans for the most part, but with the Semites—Chaldeans, Phoeniceans, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... far had characteristically carried out his plans to "kill time." Thoroughly convinced of his comparative superiority, he had been good-naturedly tolerant of the slow recognition accorded to it by Marian. Yet he believed he was ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... Characteristically enough, the doughty cobbler describes how the first execution that took place was the lopping off the long-peaked toes of the boots that the gentlemen wore chained to their knees, and which would have impeded them on foot; since ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... placed veracious declamation of the poetic idea very much to the front in his conception of the art of the song-writer. They explain in part, also, the fact that MacDowell himself wrote the words of many of his songs, though, quite characteristically, he did not avow the fact in the printed music. The verses of all the songs of op. 56, save one, op. 58, and op. 60 (the last three sets that he wrote), of the "Slumber Song" of op. 9, of "The Robin ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... all so characteristically employed that she could not help smiling as she looked. Archie and Charlie, evidently great cronies, were pacing up and down, shoulder to shoulder, whistling "Bonnie Dundee"; Mac was reading in a corner, with his book close to his near-sighted eyes; Dandy was arranging his ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... all know what English plum pudding is—it is served at many American tables on Christmas day. But nothing is more characteristically English, unless, indeed, it is the roast beef, not turkey, which the tailor was planning to have for ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... to the ancient Myrobolam ink, which was characteristically the same in color phenomena as those which Montfaucon mentions. These "tawny" colored inks I estimate were products obtained from the "thorn" trees spoken of by the monk Theophilus. The thorn trees were of two species. The pomegranate, anciently ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... houses, of the old castle of Luzon and a noisy cascading river, and for a foreground the dim, stuffy room whose windows both the religieuse and hostess conspired to shut, with its waxed floor, its four-poster bed, its characteristically French chairs and fireplace, its champagne bottles and dirty basins and used towels and packets of Somatose on the table. And in the sickly air of the confined space in behind the curtains of the bed lay my little uncle, with an effect of being enthroned and secluded, or sat up, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... stood on small tables before them; nearly all were drinking and smoking. They comprised fifteen or twenty men, some of whose faces were familiar to him elsewhere as Southern politicians; a few, he was shocked to see, were well-known Northern Democrats. Occupying a characteristically central position was the famous Colonel Starbottle, of Virginia. Jaunty and youthful-looking in his mask-like, beardless face, expansive and dignified in his middle-aged port and carriage, he alone retained some of the importance—albeit ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... Archdeacon Farrar had in his story of "Darkness and Dawn" a scene, "Onesimus and the Vestal," which corresponds very closely to the scene, "Agias and the Vestal," in this book; but the latter incident was too characteristically Roman not to risk repetition. If it is asked why such a book as this is desirable after those noble fictions, "Darkness and Dawn" and "Quo Vadis," the reply must be that these books necessarily take and interpret the Christian point of ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... disciple, who was on terms of acquaintanceship with the high priest. That other disciple was in all probability John, as may be inferred from the fact that he is mentioned only in the fourth Gospel, the author of which characteristically refers to ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... in all his work a vast love of erudition and a vast faith in its efficacy. He is always attempting to incarnate in the flesh of his music law abstracted from classical works. Even Tchaikowsky, who was a good deal of an intellectualist himself, and dubbed "perfect," in a characteristically servile letter, every one of the thirty practice fugues that Rimsky composed in the course of a single month, complained that the latter "worshiped technique" and that his work was "Full of contrapuntal tricks and all the signs of a sterile pedantry." It was not that Rimsky ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... friend had reproached him, before he left France, with infidelity to the principles so long espoused by his family, he is reported to have replied, characteristically enough, that 'he had pawned his principles to Gordon, the Chevalier's banker, for a considerable sum, and, till he could repay him, he must be a Jacobite; but when that was done, he would again return to the Whigs.' It is as likely as not that he borrowed from Gordon on the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... of educated men and women who have visions—people who are characteristically looking beyond the present and trying to plan for the development of a great democratic state and for the welfare of a free people, I know of no line of thought more appropriate or suggestive. This is true ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... to dig out of our Mousterian caves in Jersey. As the stock phrase has it, it is, as far as it goes, a "human document." The individuality, in the sense of the intimate self-existence, of the speaker and his group—for, characteristically enough, he uses the first person plural—is disclosed sufficiently for our souls to get into touch. We are the nearer to appreciating human ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... passion's ally. His senses speak with unparalleled directness, as in those elegies which must remain the model in English of masculine sensual sobriety. He distinguishes the true end of such loving in a forcible, characteristically prosaic image: ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... hai prosepitoutois epistolai Paulou tou hosiou andros]), which is found in the Acta Mart. Scillit. anno 180 (ed. Robinson, Texts and Studies, 1891, I. 2, p. 114 f.), and tempts us to make certain conclusions. In the later recensions of the Acta the passage, characteristically enough, is worded: "Libri evangeliorum et epistolae Pauli viri sanctissimi apostoli" or "Quattuor evv. dom. nostri J. Chr. et epp. S. Pauli ap. et omnis ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... on that eventful night who were not members, but who were moved by an irrepressible anxiety to learn the truth as to what had happened. Among these I remember Abraham Hayward, Q.C., the essayist and Society rattle, who, characteristically enough, proclaimed to us all the fact that the gentleman who accompanied him was my Lord So-and-so. But it was outside the club that I witnessed the most extraordinary scene I ever saw in London. Rumours of the tragedy had spread through the clubs, but the ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... hero home. You won't get much of the Romance of War out of this strong piece of work, except the jolly sort of romance of the little Cockney, Bill, who, when the regiment in reserve was crouching in the trench under heavy shelling, cheered it by delivering himself characteristically as follows: "If I kick the bucket don't put a cross with ''E died for 'is King and Country' over me. A bully beef tin at my 'ead will do, and—''E died doin' ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... General George B. McClellan, the Democratic candidate for the Presidency in opposition to the Westerner in 1864. McClellan was nominated by the Democratic National Convention, which assembled at Chicago, but after he had been named, and also during the campaign, the military candidate was characteristically slow in coming to ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... example of the fallacy of enlargements and of sequels. Neither Raspe nor the baron can be seriously held responsible for a single word of it. It must have been written by a bookseller's hack, whom it is now quite impossible to identify, but who was evidently of native origin; and the book is a characteristically English product, full of personal and political satire, with just a twang of edification. The first continuation (chapters one and seven, to twenty, inclusive), which was supplied with the third edition, is merely a modern rechauffe, with "up to date" allusions, of Lucian's ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... possible— took their adventure the instant that it came, and each with a complete assurance that it was unique. To no one else in the world could such a thing have happened, least of all to the other two. Each took it characteristically, according to his or her individual nature —Judy, with a sense of Romance called deathless; Tim, with a taste for Poetic Drama, a dash of the supernatural in it; and Maria, with a magnificent inactivity that ruled the world by waiting for things to happen, then ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... Pontenals and Henrico Henriquez. The black hussars of Lazarus Schwendi and the Flemish gendarmes came next. Behind these was the infantry, divided into three nations, Spanish, German, and Flemish, and respectively commanded by Carvajal, Monchausen, and Bignicourt. Egmont, having characteristically selected the post of danger in the very front of battle for himself, could no longer restrain his impatience. "The foe is ours already," he shouted; "follow me, all who love their fatherland:" With that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... voice and kindly manner attracted Rosa immediately, and, characteristically impulsive, not waiting for Mr. Dawson's reply she ran up to the ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... made of waiting," she returned, sadly—"woman's life always is." Then with a characteristically quick change of mood, she added, laughingly: "I know a woman who says that all her life, before she was married, she was waiting for her husband, and that since her marriage, she has ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... as firmly as if we were still in the age of Renaissance. Yet, surely, the present intellectual relations of the modern and the ancient worlds are profoundly different from those which obtained three centuries ago. Leaving aside the existence of a great and characteristically modern literature, of modern painting, and, especially, of modern music, there is one feature of the present state of the civilized world which separates it more widely from the Renaissance than the Renaissance was separated from ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... as have Rodney's bombardment of Havre and interception of coastwise communications; all directed to the same general end of confounding designs against England, but no longer as mere diversions in favor of Frederick. Howe was still a private captain, but he bore a characteristically conspicuous part in the stormy final scene at Quiberon, when Hawke drove Conflans before him to utter confusion. When the French fleet was sighted, the Magnanime had been sent ahead to make the land. ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... feet, and how jealous Spanish husbands were in this matter. At this time, when Spanish influence was considerable, the fashion of Spain seems to have spread to other countries. One may note that in Vandyck's pictures of English beauties the feet are not visible, though in the more characteristically English painters of a somewhat later age it became usual to display them conspicuously, while the French custom in this matter is the farthest removed from the Spanish. At the present day a well-bred Spanish woman shows as little as possible of her feet in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... terms, or facing the consequence of a public assertion of her existence in a court of law. Mr. Kyrle, to whom he turned for help, told him plainly that he must decide the question then and there. Characteristically choosing the alternative which promised soonest to release him from all personal anxiety, he announced with a sudden outburst of energy, that he was not strong enough to bear any more bullying, and that we might ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... smooth a little. His face had lost something of its hint of gauntness, even before his chief engineer had swung down from the saddle. Elliott had been exhibiting scant appetite for the cold food half buried in the pile of papers on his desk top; and though he smiled his characteristically courteous, mildly abstracted greeting when Steve loomed in the doorway, his attitude was still very patently that of a man who attempts to conceal his own perplexities lest they compound those of another whose perplexities are already more than enough. He rose and held ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... commonly attributed to the Romans, but it is not easy to see what part of a Roman building they can ever have formed. The truth is that they bear no resemblance to known classical features, while they are on the other hand, characteristically Saxon. The nearest parallel to them is to be found in the imposts of the chancel arch at Worth in Sussex, a place far away from Roman sites. The Worth imposts, like the bases at Bosham, are huge and ungainly, testifying both to the general ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... almost certainly be demoralised by having to choose a sovereign, and there is no certainty, nor any great likelihood, indeed, that they would choose a good one. In France the difficulty of finding a good body to choose the Governor of the Bank has been met characteristically. The Bank of France keeps the money of the State, and the State appoints its governor. The French have generally a logical reason to give for all they do, though perhaps the results of their actions are not always so good as the reasons for them. The Governor ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... personally injured by her antics. I went several times to the office of her agents, one of the big English trading firms, to inquire how the wreck was getting along, and what the prospect was for a return to Capiz before Christmas. The man at the desk did not look characteristically English, and on my first appearance I addressed him tentatively in Spanish. He answered in that language, and we continued to use it. On one of the later visits this gentleman was not visible, but in his place a red-headed, freckled youth, with the map of Scotland outlined on his rugged ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... nature, and written with much sophistication in the choice of words. There were dramatic studies often intensely subjective, lit with the moods of Ben himself, not of the things dramatized. There were self-revelations characteristically frank and provokingly debonaire. There was comment upon everything under the sun; assaults upon all the idols of antiquity, of mediaevalism, of neo-boobism. There were raw chunks of philosophy, delivered with gusto and sometimes with inaccuracy. There were subtle jabs at well-established Babbitry. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... Targum, the serpent has even become the devil, i.e. Satan. The period of syncretism has fully come, and Zoroastrianism in particular, more indirectly than directly, is exercising an attractive power upon the Jews. For all that, the theological thinking is characteristically Jewish, and such guidance as Jewish thinkers required was mainly given by Greek culture. On this subject see further EVE, sec. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... as they are characteristically called by the country people LIVRES DE BEURRE, from Grand-Pressigny, have been picked up in the bed of the Seine, at Limagne in Auvergne, in Brittany, at Saint Medard near Bordeaux, on the banks of the Meuse, and even as far north as the Shetland Islands. ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... thing. And this I say not empirically, but a priori, on the ground that without the idea of holiness and unfleshliness, eternity cannot rise buoyant from the ground, cannot sustain itself. But waive this, and what becomes of the other things? If he were characteristically distinguished as young, then, by a mere rebound of the logic, the others were not so honoured, else where is ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Though none of them are in German or by Germans, not the least interesting pieces in the volume are those (docs. no. 43, no. 48, and no. 49) which show a curious connection of American colonial history with the very first (and characteristically illegal and unscrupulous) exploits of the ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... the cold—it was a jump from the Tropics to the Pole—he felt afresh the force of what he had just been saying; that if it weren't for the fact of Mrs. Ash's good letter of welcome, despatched, characteristically, as soon as she had, like the faithful sufferer in Fiftieth Street, observed his name, in a newspaper, on one of the hotel-lists, he should verily, for want of a connection and an abutment, have scarce dared to face the void and the ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... replaced by a keen sense of excitement. She realized immediately that at last Garstin had finished his picture, that at last he had satisfied himself. She had not seen Garstin since the day when she had heard of her father's death. Nor had she seen Arabian. Characteristically, Garstin had not taken the trouble to send her a letter of condolence. He never bothered to do anything conventional. If he had written he would probably had congratulated her on coming into a fortune. Arabian's sympathy ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... pragmatism echoes of various popular moral forces, like democracy, impressionism, love of the concrete, respect for success, trust in will and action, and the habit of relying on the future, rather than on the past, to justify one's methods and opinions. Most of these things are characteristically American; and Mr. Russell touches on some of them with more wit than sympathy. Thus he writes: "The influence of democracy in promoting pragmatism is visible in almost every page of William James's writing. There ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... theory as lifting Christian doctrine and practice to a higher plane, with suggestions for a new theology, see two Sermons by Archdeacon Wilson, of Manchester, S. P. C. K.. London, and Young & Co., New York, 1893; and for a characteristically lucid statement of the most recent development of evolution doctrines, and the relations of Spencer, Weismann, Galton, and others to them, see Lester F. Ward's Address as President of the Biological ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... is useless to tell them that such a sentiment does not spring up suddenly in the heart; that, on the contrary, its development is due to the process of a constant and almost insensible growth; being characteristically modest, calm, reserved, and even timid; having God for its first confidential friend, and pure souls for its tutors. It is labor in vain to point out to them that an affection, unaccompanied by the necessary precautions, should be repelled by ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... Characteristically Steve lost no time. He went to her father the day after she had sailed, having sent her a veritable washtub of flowers for bon voyage—and said briefly: "I have loved your daughter ever since I first saw her. I'm as poor as you were once, but if I see my way to making a fortune and can give her ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... of a first-hand investigation made in a city in the Northeast, describes a condition which he says "I know by fairly authoritative reports does exist in a considerable number of cities and towns—not merely in a school here and there, but generally and characteristically. ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing |
