"Characterization" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the material of memory, till no one has patience to spin from it a continuous thread of thought." We have the defects of our qualities. Nevertheless, I am struck with the likeness between a common attribute of the Greeks and Matthew Arnold's characterization of the Americans. Greek thought, it is said, goes straight to the mark, and penetrates like an arrow. The Americans, Arnold wrote, "think straight and see clear." Greek life was adapted to meditation. ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... dozen lines well contain a fuller description or more apt characterization of a bird than ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... full; and the same peculiarity, or rather want of peculiarity, attached itself to her countenance, which I before mentioned in the case of the president—that is to say, only one feature of her face was sufficiently distinguished to need a separate characterization: indeed the acute Tarpaulin immediately observed that the same remark might have applied to each individual person of the party; every one of whom seemed to possess a monopoly of some particular portion of physiognomy. With the lady in question this portion ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... The same characterization must have held in ancient times. And, after all, as Graetz himself admits, the poet of Canticles locates his shepherd in Gilead, the wild jasmine and other flowers of whose pastures (the "lilies" of the Song) still excite the admiration ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... from the beginning, ben in consideration of all perfect Philosophers. Anthropographie, is the description of the Number, Measure, Waight, figure, Situation, and colour of euery diuerse thing, conteyned in the perfect body of MAN: with certain knowledge of the Symmetrie, figure, waight, Characterization, and due locall motion, of any parcell of the sayd body, assigned: and of Numbers, to the sayd parcell appertainyng. This, is the one part of the Definition, mete for this place: Sufficient to notifie, the particularitie, and ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee
... many beautiful passages, is entirely lacking in movement. The Andreas is complete, and, if we except the long dialogue of Andrew and the Lord at sea, moves steadily towards the end with considerable variety of action. If the characterization is crude, the descriptions are vivid, the speeches are often vigorous, and the treatment of nature is throughout charming. It seems to me eminently suited by its subject and manner to stand as an example of ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... existence. Coppee possesses preeminently the gift of presenting concrete fact rather than abstraction. A sketch, for instance, is the first tale written by him, 'Une Idylle pendant le Seige' (1875). In a novel we require strong characterization, great grasp of character, and the novelist should show us the human heart and intellect in full play and activity. In 1875 appeared also 'Olivier', followed by 'L'Exilee (1876); Recits et Elegies (1878); Vingt Contes Nouveaux ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... as he never shone before and when Henry turns on his talk he is a wizard. Meredith Nicholson, who has heard Henry talk at a dinner, in a recent number of Scribner's magazine, said of him: "He's the best talker I've ever heard. It was delightful to listen to discourse so free, so graphic in its characterization, so coloured and flavoured with the very soil," and that night at the English dinner, all of Henry's cylinders were hitting and he took every grade without changing gears. But my ears were eager for the man on Henry's right. He told some stories; ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... affairs; and one of her great charms to men of mind was the clear, logical, and yet picturesque and piquant way in which she talked of men and events. Ellen listened and laughed as heartily as any member of the circle at her repartee, her brilliant characterization, her off-hand description. ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... heroine of the piece, take her place upon the platform beside him. Here the resemblance to reality ceased, for the heroine was dark and Aristide blonde and beardless, and yet this very discrimination on Olga's part seemed to point more definitely to Hermia even than if the characterization had been truthfully followed. The actors were professionals who had been well drilled in their parts and the plot developed quickly in the dialogue between Madeleine, the erring wife, and Aristide, the recreant ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... Hume" and that notorious book Buckle's "History of Civilization," but even a large collection of the writings of George Sand and Balzac—these latter in the original tongue; for who, indeed, would ever venture to publish an English translation? As for the reading-room, was it not characterization enough to state that two Sunday newspapers, reeking fresh from Fleet Street, regularly appeared on the tables? What possibility of perusing the Standard or the Spectator in such an atmosphere? It was clear that the supporters of law and decency must bestir themselves to establish a new Society. ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... back to the Oberland and up the St. Gothard; then back again to Lucerne and round by the Stelvio to Venice and Verona, and finally through the Tyrol and Germany homewards. The ascent of the St. Bernard was told in a dramatic sketch of great humour and power of characterization, and a letter to Richard Fall records the night on the Rigi, when he saw the splendid sequence of storm, sunset, moonlight, and daybreak, which forms the subject of one of the most impressive passages of ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... to his father. Concerning the composition of "Die Entfuhrung," Mozart delivered himself at greater length and more explicitly than about any other opera. From the above excerpt one can learn his notions touching musical characterization and delineation. ["Turkish" music, or "Janizary" music, is that in which the percussion effects of Oriental music are imitated—music utilizing the large drum, ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... soothfastnesse," they lack the sustained concentration of great work. From the drama, again, Chaucer was cut off, and it is idle to argue from the innumerable dramatic touches in his poems and his gift of characterization as to what he might have done had he lived two centuries later. His own age delighted in stories, and he gave it the stories it demanded invested with a humanity, a grace and strength which place him among the world's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... Seriously, this is a real request. I want your opinion, your impression. I want to see how she will affect you. I don't say I ask for your advice; that, of course, you will not undertake to give. But I desire a definition, a characterization; you know you toss off those things. I don't see why I should n't tell you all this—I have always told you everything. I have never pretended to know anything about women, but I have always supposed that you knew everything. You certainly have always had ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... finer artistic graces, also, and the structural subtilties of a more developed literary period, we must not, of course, look in 'Beowulf.' The narrative is often more dramatic than clear, and there is no thought of any minuteness of characterization. A few typical characters stand out clearly, and they were all that the poet's turbulent and not very attentive audience could understand. But the barbaric vividness and power of the poem give it much more than a merely historical interest; and ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... [1] This characterization applies to the Alaskan Eskimo only; so far as is now known the other Eskimo branches do not ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... to him of the old-time quality, but neither was such as he would himself have perhaps rejected if he had been editor. Then he plunged at the heap, and in a fifteen-cent magazine of recent renown he found among five poems a good straight piece of realistic characterization which did much to cheer him. In this, a little piece of two stanzas, the author had got at the heart of a good deal of America. In another cheap magazine, professing to be devoted wholly to stories, he hoped for a breathing-space, and was tasked by nothing less familiar than Swift's versification ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... To this characterization of Evelyn Lucy took opposing views. Her friend, as a matter of fact, wasn't in the least lonely, but was excellent company for herself, and led a full life. She was not the marrying kind. If she liked men it was only because they played the games she ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... matters of style and technique. And he does not criticize him, as does La Bruyere,[6] for paying too much attention to a man's external actions, and not enough to his "Thoughts, Sentiments, and Inclinations." Nevertheless his mind is receptive to the kind of individuated characterization soon to distinguish the mid-eighteenth century novel. The type is still his measuring-stick, but he calibrates it far less rigidly than a Rymer analyzing Iago or Evadne. A man can be A Flatterer or A Blunt ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... a play on words in the following epigrammatic characterization of a loud and violent speaker: "He mistakes ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... really getting to me, you see, with that characterization. It was as if I'd managed to go out and take a walk and sat down in the park outside and heard the President talking to himself about the chances of war with Russia and realized he'd sat down on a bench with its back to mine and only a bush between. You see, here we were, two females undignifiedly ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... Michael Angelo, Tasso, Dante, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, Chatterton, Keats, Byron, are all characterized as proud. The last-named has been especially kept in the foreground by following verse-writers, as a precedent for their arrogance. Shelley's characterization of Byron in Julian ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... the poem. And as a result, perhaps, of its essential unity 'The Rape of the Lock' bears witness to the presence of a power in Pope that we should hardly have suspected from his other works, the power of dramatic characterization. Elsewhere he has shown himself a master of brilliant portraiture, but Belinda, the Baron, and Thalestris are something more than portraits. They are living people, acting and speaking with admirable consistency. Even the ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... came when his dying father laid down the reins of government and told the officer of the day to take his orders from the new commander-in-chief of Prussia. How the Prince was judged by his political contemporaries we see from the characterization which an Austrian agent had given of him a short time before: "He is graceful, wears his own hair, and has a somewhat careless bearing; likes the fine arts and good cooking. He would like to begin his rule by something striking. He is a firmer ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... plagiarism from Massinger; in Addison's "Cato" the strict rules of the French stage were preserved, but its stately and impressive speeches cannot be called dramatic. The "Revenge" of Young had more of tragic passion; but it wanted the force of characterization which seemed to have been buried with ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... clearly. We rarely | last session we went marked B and D | cover the lesson. Some | to our book on respectively for the | topics go unexplained | literature and tried same work. Sometimes a | because during the next| to justify the a student who "cribbed"| hour the blackboard | characterization which his outline from | problems are based on | the author gives of another who actually | the lesson. If I | Chaucer. The class "worked it up" receives| understood the second | agreed with all in the a higher mark than was | half ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... story is to take rank above other stories. The true artist will seek to shape this living substance into the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skillful selection and arrangement of his material, and by the most direct and appealing presentation of it in portrayal and characterization. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of 837, and of 829, in a common line of descent. Although for 857-856, there are numerous verbal coincidences with the Balawat excerpts, it must be noted that not all the plus of our tablets appears in that document, and we can only assume a common source, a conclusion which well agrees with our characterization of the Balawat inscription as a series of mere extracts. That this common source was also the source of the Monolith seems proved by a certain similarity of phraseology as well as by the reference to Tiglath Pileser in connection with Pitru, but this ...
— Assyrian Historiography • Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead
... all the places he was to pass through, or to stop at on the trip, plainly marked. He was intelligent enough to observe everything of importance in the ports through which he passed, and it was interesting to hear him tell of the things he had seen, and his characterization of some of ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... in conclusion still one more fragment of self characterization: "A chief trait in my character was the need for love, not that everyday love which limits itself to a personal pleasure and delight, but that unbounded, overflowing love which feels itself completely one with the beloved.... The ideal of marriage was before me in youth, for this need for ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... the assiduous idolaters of stratified dogma he entertained a contempt which he was seldom at pains to conceal. North Carolina had many clergymen of the more progressive type; these men chuckled at Page's vigorous characterization of the brethren, but those against whom it had been aimed raged with a fervour that was almost unchristian. This clerical excitement, however, did not greatly disturb the philosophic Page. The hubbub lasted for several years—for Page's Greensboro ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... probable, but at best they functioned very ineffectively. The small number of methods used in the selection of the right box, and the slight variations from the chief method, that of choosing the first box at the right end and then the one next to it, apparently justify Doctor Hamilton's characterization of ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... also come over to us; among others, the characterization of the three German Emperors: the first William as "Der greise Kaiser," the Emperor Frederick as "Der weise Kaiser," and the second William as "Der Reise Kaiser"; and there were unpleasant murmurs regarding sundry trials for petty treason. But at the same time there was evident, in the midst of ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... all, this story is so rich in the essential elements of worthy fiction—in characterization, exciting adventure, suggestions of the marvelous, wit, humor, pathos, and just enough of tragedy—that it is offered to the American public in all confidence that it will be generally ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... by a story sent in to him by an unknown writer. It was, he told me, amazing from every purely literary point of view—plot, characterization, colour, and economy of language. It had so much that it seemed strange that anything at all should be lacking. He sent for the writer, and told him ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... is the story of James Schuyler Grim, (Jimgrim) a remarkable characterization, beginning as an American "Lawrence in Arabia" and evolving into a human but unapproachable high priest of the occult. There is Jeff Ramsden, the strong man and his closest friend, who with the Australian, Jeremy Ross, make up the triumvirate of Grim, Ross, and Ramsden, with ...
— Materials Toward A Bibliography Of The Works Of Talbot Mundy • Bradford M. Day, Editor
... characteristics found full vent. 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huckleberry Finn' are the romances of eternal youth, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. They are freighted, however, with a wealth of pungent and humorous characterization that have made of them contemporary classics. From ethical sophistication and moral truantry Mark Twain evolves an inexhaustible supply of humour. The revolt of mischievous and Bohemian boyhood against the stern limitations of formal Puritanism ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... picture of the Virgin: "The neck of a heifer, and flesh like cream or hasty-pudding, that quivers when it is touched;" or of the picture of St. Ursula's companions, by the same hand: "Their squab noses poking out of bladders of lard that did duty for their faces;" not to speak of the characterization of a "Sacred Heart" too revolting to reproduce? Surely when, after having reviled M. Tissot almost personally, he describes his works as painted with "muck, wine-sauce, and mud," it is difficult not to answer with a tu quoque as ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... published under the title of "A Piratical Ballad"[4]. Note that these initial verses are described as "ragged" and in this I am also quoting Allison himself who in our various chats on his reminiscence of "Treasure Island" has often given them this characterization. Be that as it may these three verses were the foundation for the perfect six that were to emerge after several years more of intermittent ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... written in 1861, long after Trollope had left Ireland. The characterization is weak, and the plot, although the author himself thought ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... Spain in America, p. 50, for Columbus's bitter characterization of the Spaniards in Espanola in 1498, and p. 46 for the royal authorization in June, 1497, to transport criminals to the island. The terrible consequences of this policy led the Spanish government later to adopt the strictest regulations controlling emigration ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... is the title of a German story by Hermann Hesse, in which he severely criticizes the incompetency of the present school system to fully develop the youth. The characterization of the teachers' profession as Hesse puts it, does not only serve for Germany, but for all modern states in which governments strive to train the young for the purpose of making patient subjects and hurrah-screaming patriots of them. The author says with fine ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... throngs. Other regions, more secluded, appear as quiet nooks, made for a temporary halt or a permanent rest. Here some part of the passing human flow is caught as in a vessel and held till it crystallizes into a nation. These are the conspicuous areas of race characterization. The development of the various ethnic and political offspring of the Roman Empire in the naturally defined areas of Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and France illustrates the process of national differentiation which goes on ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... account be taken of the attitude consistently maintained by General Convention towards any proposition for the change of so much as a comma in the Prayer Book, during a period of fifty years prior to the introduction of The Book Annexed, it will perhaps be concluded that for the characterization of the Committee's policy timidity is scarcely so ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... made to explain the blunder of the Greeks, who saw in the hand placed connected with the mouth in the hieroglyph of Horus (the) son, "Hor-(p)-chrot," the gesture familiar to themselves of a finger on the lips to express "silence," and so, mistaking both the name and the characterization, invented the God of Silence, Harpokrates. A careful examination of all the linear hieroglyphs given by Champollion (Dictionnaire Egyptien) shows that the finger or the hand to the mouth of an adult (whose posture is always distinct from that of a child) is always in connection with the ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... none of them into perfection, it is true. He accepted, and even advertised their limitations. But in each of them he found an example of the hero as artist. His characterization of Flaubert as the "operative conscience or vicarious sacrifice" of a styleless literary age is the pure gold of criticism. "The piety most real to her," Fleda says in The Spoils of Poynton, "was to be on one's knees before one's high standard." ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... race of beings whose life and whose sensual experience was limited to space of two dimensions. He gave his little book the title "Flatland," and it gained wide attention. In his Commencement address at Columbia last year, President Butler had the happy thought of applying the term in the characterization of certain aspects of the intellectual and political life of our time. He was speaking particularly of that absorption in the immediate problems of the day which makes almost impossible a true study and contemplation of the lasting concerns of mankind ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... WORDSWORTH'S characterization of the woman in one of his poems as "a creature not too bright or good for human nature's daily food" has always appeared to me too cannibalesque to be poetical. It directly sets one to thinking of the South ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... includes a brief characterization of the system with details on the domestic and international components. The following terms and abbreviations are ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... to membership in the Clergy Club of Cincinnati, an organization which is composed of many of the leading Protestant ministers. On the occasion of the club's twenty-fifth anniversary in 1919, Dr. Dwight M. Pratt, then of the Walnut Hills Congregational Church, wrote a witty and apt characterization of each member. The following is his ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... tragedy" (I, 330). Hill employed the device, the good news coming as a complete surprise, but he made it part of a carefully ordered plot designed to reveal the direct intervention and mysterious workings of a particular Providence, making characterization and action consistent, and giving his play a precise theological significance. In Moore's day, however, under the impact of deism and the developing rationalism, the concept of a particular Providence in orthodox theology had become so subtilized that the older idea of direct and striking ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... sentiment and humorous characterization. Nothing more individual, and in its own way more powerful, has been done in American fiction.... The story is ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... air of innocence, in a pastoral romance, in a simple prayer, in an artless letter[4120]. None of the gifts which serve to arrest and fix the attention are wanting in this style, neither grandeur of imagination nor profound sentiment, vivid characterization, delicate gradations, vigorous precision, a sportive grace, unlooked-for burlesque, nor variety of representation. But, amidst so many ingenious tricks, apologues, tales, portraits and dialogues, in earnest as well as when masquerading, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... engagingly idiotic. The worthy people who hold such language may justly boast themselves superior to reason and impregnable to light. The only effective reply to these creatures would be a cuffing, the well meant objections of another class merit the refutation of distinct characterization. It is the old talk of devotees about sin, of topers concerning water, temperance men of gin, and albeit it is neither wise nor witty, it is becoming in us at whom they rail to deal mercifully with them. In some otherwise estimable ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... completed. "An indispensable work of reference to every one interested in the land and its products, whether commercially or professionally, as a student or an amateur," is the Boston Transcript's characterization of it, while Horticulture adds that "it is very live literature for any one engaged in any department of ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick |
