"Delineation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from the truth of the description and the sentiment is denied to me." It was still later that Macaulay made his famous estimate of her genius:—"Shakespeare has neither equal nor second; but among those who, in the point we have noticed (the delineation of character), approached nearest the great master, we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen as a woman of whom England may justly be proud. She has given us a multitude of characters, all, in a certain sense, commonplace, all such as we meet every day. Yet they are all ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... each chapter for itself; or regard it as one handsome marble square in the tesselated pavement of a haughty palace, not as a useful brick in the domestic sidewalk, which is to carry you straight to a homely destination. Observe the description of scenes, how powerful! the delineation of character, how fascinating! and be pleased with the luxuriance of the style and the gorgeous drapery of language wherewith so royally the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... mentioned there is a delineation of the Fall, in which the serpent has given to it a human head with a most sweet, crafty expression. Now in these two instances the style is somewhat rude; but there are passion and feeling in it. This is not a question of mere execution, but of mind, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... the perspective—Japanese style—exaggerating to the very utmost the already abnormal outlines of what I see before me. And then the pictured dwelling lacks the fragile look and its sonority, that reminds one of a dry violin. In the pencilled delineation of the woodwork, the minute delicacy with which it is wrought is wanting; neither have I been able to give an idea of the extreme antiquity, the perfect cleanliness, nor the vibrating song of the cicalas that seems to have been stored away within it, in its parched-up fibres, during hundreds ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... of the names of the noblemen to whom the several villas they passed belonged, adding light sketches of their characters, such as served to amuse rather than to inform, exhibiting his own wit instead of the delineation of truth. Emily was sometimes diverted by his conversation; but his gaiety did not entertain Madame Montoni, as it had formerly done; she was frequently grave, and ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... is beyond the province of Geography. It should be left to poets and painters, he might say, and geographers should confine themselves to the more prosaic business of exact measurement, of accurate delineation, of reasoning regarding the relation of the facts to one another, and of explaining ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... March by Lord Roden, who moved for a select committee of inquiry into the state of Ireland since 1835, with respect to the commission of crime. His lordship, indeed, adopted the most inculpatory view of the question, and every circumstance in his delineation of the matter—the deeply-rooted ribbon conspiracy; the unredressed grievances of the persecuted Protestants at Achill, and the general insecurity of life and property, were, in his opinion, either created by the conduct of Lord Normanby, or had acquired an aggravated ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of Mr. Barker is valuable, also, as a graphic delineation of the 'public opinion' of the south. The great difficulty with which the release of these free men was procured, notwithstanding the personal efforts of Mr. Jacob Barker, who is a gentleman of influence, and has, we believe, been an alderman of New Orleans, reveals a 'public opinion,' ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... which he uses;" and the same objection makes it a presumption in you to suppose that you can admire him.—Thomson they seem to have forgotten. Smollett they have neither forgotten nor forgiven for his delineation of Rory and his companion, upon their first introduction to our metropolis.—peak of Smollett as a great genius, and they will retort upon you Hume's History compared with his Continuation of it. What if the historian ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... crescent, and that it undergoes varying phases in correspondence with the changes in its relative position to the earth and the sun, we cannot see much of the planet. It is too small and too bright to admit of easy delineation of details on its surface. No doubt attempts have been made, and observations have been recorded, as to certain very faint and indistinct markings on the planet, but such statements must ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... of the cemetery I began to take a less sanguine view of my attempt. The commemorative anniversary had filled the silent avenues with visitors, and I felt the futility of my quest as I tried to fix the gatekeeper's attention on my delineation of a stout Italian priest with a bad cough and a bunch of flowers tied up in a red cotton handkerchief. The gate-keeper showed that delusive desire to oblige that is certain to send its victims in the wrong direction; but I had the presence of ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... herself. She called the three councils together to consult them on the means by which these disorders were to be remedied. The majority was in favor of sending an extraordinary ambassador to Spain, who by a circumstantial and vivid delineation should make the king acquainted with the true position of affairs, and if possible prevail on him to adopt efficient measures of reform. This proposition was opposed by Viglius, who, however, had not the slighest suspicion of the secret designs of the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... became familiar with 'viae dolorosae' painted at reduced prices, with male and female saints at so much per gross, even with 'pounced' shop blinds—in short, all the ignoble jobs that degrade painting and make it so much idiotic delineation, lacking even the charm of naivete. He even suffered the humiliation of having portraits at five-and-twenty francs a-piece refused, because he failed to produce a likeness; and he reached the lowest degree of distress—he worked according to size for the petty dealers ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... heart in them.... These things, however, did not seem to affect her audience. They cheered her as if their hearts were really touched.... These, however, are but early impressions, and we shall be anxious to see her in still another delineation." ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... and for a seventh, a Sunday Room, for the history of Christianity in its art, including the farthest range and feeblest efforts of it; reserving for this room, also, what power could be reached in delineation of the great monasteries and cathedrals which were once the glory ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... in his delineation of the Duchess. He had to paint a woman in a hazardous situation: a sovereign stooping in her widowhood to wed a servant; a lady living with the mystery of this unequal marriage round her like a veil. He dowered her with no salient qualities of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... needing no extenuation; but carefully searching into it, with the view of excusing and explaining it; dwelling on it, presenting all the documents of it, and as it were spreading it over the whole field of his delineation; as if religious heterodoxy had been the grand fact of Sterling's life, which even to the Archdeacon's mind it could by no means seem to be. Hinc illae lachrymae. For the Religious Newspapers, and Periodical Heresy-hunters, getting very lively in those years, were prompt to seize the cue; ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... his guilt to Camilla, Leonardo has excused it by an emphatic delineation of Michiella's magic sway over him. (Leonardo, in fact, is your small modern Italian Machiavelli, overmatched in cunning, for the reason that he is always at a last moment the victim of his poor bit of heart or honesty: he is devoid of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... earth. He knew not she was there, for she rarely now asked a question respecting his engagements, or expressed any interest in his movements, yet how her ears drank in the music of his voice, and her eyes flashed back the proud light that shone in his! As she listened to his delineation of woman's claims to the sympathy and the defence of every generous heart, as she heard his biting sarcasm on the cowardly nature that, having wronged, would now crush into deeper ruin his fair client, as she saw kindling ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... and abundant supply of labor" required for the maintenance of the British manufacturing system, and "cheap labor" furnishes Mr. Dickens with his "Oliver Twist," his "Tom-all-alone's," and the various other characters and situation by aid of whose delineation he is enabled, as a German writer ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... Astronomy. Gunnery. History. Fortification. Navigation. Encamping. Decimal arithmetic. Intrenching. Trigonometry. Approaching. Dialing. Attacking. Gauging. Delineation. ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... friends with him himself and found the acquaintance of interest at times. The faithfully reproduced atmosphere of Barnesville had almost a literary colour. Occasionally, though not frequently, he encouraged delineation of Jenny and Tom Scott and Thacker and "the boys." He had even inhaled at a distance vague whiffs ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... work is written with considerable strength of delineation; although his accounts are not quite safe authority for the character of his enemies. His words he spelled after a provincial pronunciation: thus, describing the crew of the Sydney, he writes, instead of Sepoys ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... God; God is not in all his thoughts;"—"He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten; He hideth his face; He will never see it."—"Wherefore doth the wicked contemn God? he hath said in his heart, Thou wilt not require it;" And these words exhibit a graphic delineation, of that state of mind in which occasional thoughts of God are neutralized by habitual unbelief, and the warnings of conscience silenced by the denial of a supreme moral government. In like manner, when the apostle ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... and coarseness, with which, nevertheless, he produced the cleanest and prettiest drawings. His chief diligence and most careful elegance he brought to work in the painting of his beloved cats. In right delineation of their forms he had the art to seize the general nature of this animal, and, in the portrait-like indication of their various physiognomies, to reflect the specific character of each. The sycophantic look full of falseness, the dainty movements ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... wife or daughter like a satchel on his arm, away he would start on such a race through the streets as left neither brain nor breath till the church was gained." Such, very much abbreviated, is Mrs. Stowe's portrait of her father at this period. It is a good example of her power of delineation; but what a life was this for a half distracted girl like Harriet! Much better for her would have been the old serene, ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... not only as an answer to charges and insinuations, but also as an able and clear exposition of the meeting point of the Jewish and Christian dispensations; a distinct and lucid delineation, amidst apparent divergencies, of the coincidences of the animating principles of the law and ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various
... of the truth and magnifying or embellishing the rest, produced portraits which those of Lincoln's contemporaries who knew him best are scarcely able to recognize. There is, on the other hand, no doubt about the faithfulness of Mr. Herndon's delineation. The marks of unflinching veracity are patent in ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... partner in his own cure. The auctioneer heard, without much surprise, that his was a constitution which (always with due watching) might be left to itself, so as to offer a beautiful example of a disease with all its phases seen in clear delineation, and that he probably had the rare strength of mind voluntarily to become the test of a rational procedure, and thus make the disorder of his pulmonary functions a general benefit ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... tight pantaloons, and Hessian boots—extracting from his bosom his father's portrait and expressing filial sentiments to it. One was less likely to accuse Corinne of peevishness when one beheld the delineation of family worship in the Edgermond household from which she fled. And the faithful eyes remonstrated with the petulant brain for scoffing at excessive sentiment, when they saw how everybody was always at somebody else's feet, or supporting somebody else in a fainting condition, or resting his or ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... ballad, the Gothic romance, the Ossianic poetry, the new German literature, the Scandinavian discoveries, these and other scattered rays of influence reach a focus in Scott. It is true that his delineation of feudal society is not final. There were sides of mediaeval life which he did not know, or understand, or sympathize with, and some of these have been painted in by later artists. That his pictures have a coloring of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... call herself Signora Ballatino, and she does not play upon the zithern. Her name has a homelier sound, and her speciality is the delineation of coster character. ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... prevent the buying in on a settling day the balance of the account, and to defeat the consequent rise, thereby making the real bear a fictitious bull account. To give the reader a conception of this, and of the practices as well as the interior of the Stock Exchange, the following attempted delineation is submitted:—The doors open before ten, and at the minute of ten the spirit-stirring rattle grates to action. Consols are, suppose, 69 to 69-1/8—that is, buyers at the lower and sellers at the higher price. Trifling manoeuvres ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... art of DRAWING had not been also carried to some excellence—although to PAINTING itself the poet makes none but dubious and obscure allusions. Still, if, on the one hand [178], in embroidery, and upon arms (as the shield of Achilles), delineation in its more complex and minute form was attempted,—and if, on the other hand, the use of colours was known (which it was, as applied not only to garments but to ivory), it could not have been long before two such kindred elements of the same art were united. Although ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... masks, and others enveloped in the cowls, through which only the eyes could be distinguished, the figure of the cross upon the breast, and under that emblem, of divine peace, inflicting such horrible tortures on their fellow-men that the pen shrinks from their delineation. Nor was it the mere instruments of torture Marie beheld: she saw them in actual use; she heard the shrieks and groans of the hapless victims, at times mingled with the brutal leers and jests of their fiendish tormentors; she seemed ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... the one that showed that an aptitude for delineation is the same as adjustment. It was admitted that having explained that there would be undertaken a readjustment. The end was outlined. The completion was distinguished. The relative actuality was not detailed. There was precedence. There was not lingering. There was the article that was not ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... by men, George Eliot's Romola being the only notable exception. The true representatives of female novelists are now the leaders of that school which confines itself to minute observation, whether of outward facts or inward feeling, and which is above all things devoted to the close delineation of contemporary society. The analysis of character within the range of ordinary experience, the play of civilised emotion, the vicissitudes of grief or joy in the parsonage, the ball-room, and the village, the ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... by really efficient officers have been omitted, if not suppressed, in order to cover certain discrepancies. And if so whether it was an expedient to avoid showing the weakness of the maps (on which certain names figure prominently) which were taken as a basis for the delineation? ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... is technically termed the central form. Art under Polygnotus was, however, in a state of formal "parallelism;" certainly it could boast no variety of composition. Apollodorus "applied the essential principles of Polygnotus to the delineation of the species, by investigating the leading forms that discriminate the various classes of human qualities and passions." He saw that all men were connected together by one general form, yet were separated by some predominant power ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... beautiful are these angels and other angelic figures throughout the book, their wings shining with glowing colors amid woven patterns of graceful design. The portraits and miniatures and the numerous faces centred in initial letters are not to be adjudged by the standard of anatomical drawing and delineation of the human figure, but rather by their effect as part of a scheme of ornamentation; for the Celtic illuminator was imaginative rather than realistic, and aimed altogether at achieving beauty by means of color and design. The Book ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... her a shrewd and discriminating old lady, with a great gift for character delineation. So you went to ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... chronology of Rienzi's life, the plot of this work extends over a space of some years, and embraces the variety of characters necessary to a true delineation of events. The story, therefore, cannot have precisely that order of interest found in fictions strictly and genuinely dramatic, in which (to my judgment at least) the time ought to be as limited as possible, and the characters as few;—no ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... states without reservation or deliberate purpose. They do not, however, reveal any different image from that which is presented in the autobiography: on the contrary, they confirm the truthfulness and frank fidelity of the more conscious self-delineation which is there attempted. There breathes, indeed, through the whole book a tone of unaffected sincerity, the charm of which cannot be overrated. Not only does every statement bear the stamp of veracity, but there is an utter absence of artifice, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... poem multiplicity of character and variety of incident. In Paradise Regained there are only two personages, both of whom are supernatural. Indeed, they can scarcely be called personages; the poet, in his fidelity to the letter, not having thought fit to open up the fertile vein of delineation which was afforded by the human character of Christ. The speakers are no more than the abstract principles of good and evil, two voices who hold a rhetorical disputation through four books and two ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... of the novelists in the delineation of feeling and the analysis of motives. In "uncovering certain human lots, and seeing how they are woven and interwoven," some marvellous work has been done by this master in the two arts ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... of "star-gauging," and its issue in the delineation of the sidereal system as an irregular stratum of evenly-scattered suns, is the best-known part of his work. But it was, in truth, only a first rude approximation, the principle of which maintained its credit ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... study of handwriting would be complete unless it recognised that phase of it which touches on the delineation of character by ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... taking an arm, they marched me to my room. This took not more than half a minute, but the time was not so short as to prevent my delivering myself of one more thumb-nail characterization of the doctor. My inability to recall that delineation, verbatim, entails no loss on literature. But one remark made as the doctor seized hold of me was apt, though not impromptu. "Well, doctor," I said, "knowing you to be a truthful man, I just ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... with human nature, seems to be wholly influenced by his own wishes and his own conception of what the exigencies of the moment require. It would not be difficult, I think, and perhaps I may hereafter attempt to apply this delineation of his disposition to the events of his life, and to show how the leading idea in his mind has been the constant guide which he has followed, sometimes to the detriment of the best interests of the country and sometimes to ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... entrance to Boka Kotorska in Montenegro; Prevlaka is currently under observation by the UN military observer mission in Prevlaka (UNMOP); the border commission formed by The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Serbia and Montenegro in April 1996 to resolve differences in delineation of their mutual border has made ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... character are not many, but they are sufficient for its delineation, and it is a moral character. We must, of course, get rid of the notion that the relative magnitude of the virtues and vices according to the priest or society is authentic. A reversion to the natural or divine scale has been ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... pay a visit. They could all talk. They told of the village, of the vineyard, of the forest, of the old castle with its parks and canals and ponds. Down in the water dwelt also living beings, which, in their way, could fly under the water from one place to another—beings with knowledge and delineation. They said nothing at all; they ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... salmon, and a gallon of Glenlivet; as to their manners and ancient costume, and was pointed out a short fat man, the head of his clan, who promenaded the streets without trousers. Neither did he find the delineation of their customs more satisfactory. He was made nearly tipsy at a funeral—was shown how to carve haggis—and a fit of bile was the consequence, of his too plentifully partaking of a superabundantly rich currant bun. He mused over these defeats of ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... had opportunity to observe that in person this "wise, good, and religious" man must, at the time Miss Bronte knew him, have more closely resembled M. Pelet of "The Professor" than any other of her pen-portraits: indeed, after the lapse of more than forty years that delineation still, for the most part, aptly applies to him. He is of middle age, of rather spare habit of body; his face is fair and the features pleasing and regular, the cheeks are thin and the mouth flexible, the eyes—somewhat sunken—are of mild blue and of singularly pleasant expression. We found ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... still going to and fro on the earth, under all sorts of disguises. And this element in the middle age, for the most part ignored by those writers who have treated it pre-eminently as the "Age of Faith"—this rebellious and antinomian element, the recognition of which has made the delineation of the middle age by the writers of the Romantic school in France, by Victor Hugo for instance in Notre-Dame de Paris, so suggestive and exciting, is found alike in the history of Abelard and the legend of Tannhaeuser. More and more, as we come to mark ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... Toolemak. He and his companions came on board the Fury, when I employed him for a couple of hours in drawing a chart of the strait. Toolemak, though a sensible and intelligent man, we soon found to be no draughtsman, so that his performance in this way, if taken alone, was not a very intelligible delineation of the coast. By dint, however, of a great deal of talking on his part, and some exercise of patience on ours, we at length obtained a copious verbal illustration of his sketch, which confirmed all our former accounts respecting the existence of a passage ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... the urgent request of the gentleman who acted as editor, Rev. W.R. Clark—thus rescuing an inimitable little work from comparative oblivion—that the parents of the youthful author reluctantly consented to the publication of this curious delineation of child-life. From the date of his birth (1833), Charlie must have written his work some forty years ago. How long he was engaged in its composition is not stated, but from the internal evidence yielded by the spelling and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... elevation to the character of the tales which they illustrate; and the original etchings, as I have before said in the Appendix to my 'Elements of Drawing,' were unrivalled in masterfulness of touch since Rembrandt, in some qualities of delineation unrivalled even by him." "The Two Elves," says Hamerton, "especially the nearer one, who is putting on his breeches, are drawn with a point at once so precise and vivacious, so full of keen fun and inimitably happy invention, that ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... 1781, 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, cymbals, ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... too far away to be a part of the picture, the country, the beautiful country, makes one continually wonder, not that the painters of a past generation grew to love the region and to revel in its seductive delights, but rather that they could ever stop its delineation. The effect of the changing light and shade and varying atmospheric conditions lend the same enchantment that lies in ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... critic. Alexander is a compound of Hero and Lover, and in both extravagant and enthusiastic almost to madness. It is in the former of these Mr. C. chiefly displayed his powers. His voice, his person, and his manner qualified him for an impressive delineation of that portion of the character—but as a lover Mr. Cooper only serves to remind us with disadvantage to him, of actors we have seen before. In the proud and boastful exultation, the starts of anger, the quick resentment, and ardent friendship, the sudden alternation of storm and calm, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... my delineation I have high authority. A year and some months ago, I had the pleasure of seeing at Venice my friend the honourable Douglas Kinnaird. In his way through Germany, he told me that he had been honoured ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... beautiful statues of Nineveh.[89-[]] Even the slightest touching makes a figure "in relief." This statue from Chichen-Itza has all the appearance of being intended as the likeness of a man, and much skill is shown in the delineation of the proportions. It is entirely detached, and reposes upon a base carved from the same block of stone as the figure, which gives it a higher rank in sculpture than any other in America, of which ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... contrasts of juxtaposed colours or textures are affected by quantity, and a sense of proportion decides what quantities best produce this effect and what that. The correctness or amount of information to be conveyed in the delineation of some object, in relation to the mood which the artist has chosen shall dominate his work, is determined by his sense of proportion. He may distort an object to any extent or leave it as vague as the ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... impossible to explain to the twentieth century the bad mystery of our present, without the aid of Powers's head of Calhoun, the less adequate bust of Stephen A. Douglas, and the one which should be modelled of Mr. Buchanan! A faithful delineation of the features of some men is needful. We should be thankful for that black frown of Nero, for the bald pate of Scipio, for those queer eyes of Marius, and for the long neck of Cicero, as seen in the newly discovered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... O most fatal and potent of mankind, in what terms shall I describe thee? What words are adequate to the just delineation of thy character? How shall I detail the means which rendered the secrecy of thy purposes unfathomable? But I will not anticipate. Let me recover if possible, a sober strain. Let me keep down the flood of passion that would render ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... of his finest passages, says that 'A true delineation of the smallest man and his scene of pilgrimage through life is capable of interesting the greatest men; that all men are to an unspeakable degree brothers, each man's life a strange emblem of every ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... of great celebrity, particularly in his early pieces, for his truth of delineation, his fertile imagination, and his rich colouring; his works are numerous, and have nearly all of them sacred subjects; an Italian critic says of him, "He had truth in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... supernatural. Overbeck was not the man to rush in where angels fear to tread. Likewise among Biblical subjects, I find in the National Gallery, Berlin, The Creation of Adam and Eve, and The Expulsion from Paradise. Here the delineation of the undraped figure proves absolute knowledge, and shows, as before said, that the usual course of drawing from the nude had been gone through. The point indeed need not be discussed further, as Schadow expressly states that Overbeck's drawings from the nude as well ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... it is remarkable—almost, indeed, a gallery in itself, comprising as it does portraiture, design, topography, and the delineation of one of the most spirited episodes in religious history. After the magic words "One Pound," it is, of course, to St. George and the Dragon that the eye first turns. What Mr. Ruskin would say of the latest version of the encounter between England's tutelary genius and his fearsome foe, ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... this writer a rare inventive skill, an astonishing subtilty in the delineation of character, and a style perhaps unequalled among contemporaries in a certain Keats-like affluence. Yet her plots have usually been melodramatic, her characters morbid, and her descriptions overdone. These are undoubtedly great offences, and have grievously checked her growing fame. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... this poem, with the slight exceptions just mentioned, show a gain over the earlier poems in narrative power, but it also marks an advance in character delineation. The characters of the Lay are, with one or two exceptions, mere lay-figures; Lord Cranstoun and Margaret are the most conventional of lovers; William of Deloraine is little more than an animated suit of armor, and the Lady of Branksome, except at one point, when from her walls she defies the ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... existing constitution of society. It seemed as if something would be gained for the decision of this question if that constitution were faithfully developed in its practical effects. What is now presented to the public is no refined and abstract speculation; it is a study and delineation of things passing in the moral world. It is but of late that the inestimable importance of political principles has been adequately apprehended. It is now known to philosophers that the spirit and character of the Government intrudes itself into every rank of society. ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... religious tenets of travellers who visited the temple, and thus familiarized herself with all existing creeds and hierarchies. The lore so carefully garnered is finally analyzed, classified, and inscribed on papyrus. The delineation of scenes and sanctuaries in different latitudes, from Lhasa to Copan, gave full exercise to Edna's descriptive power, but imposed much labor in the departments of physical ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... which the elixir of life was distilled, and frightened at her grandfather's chiding, runs with it into the cemetery where it is lost among the graves and never seen again. This account stands by itself, having no direct connection with what precedes or follows; but the delineation is so vivid, the poetic element in it so strong, that it may be said to stand without assistance, and does not require the name of Hawthorne ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... and, however candid the intentions of a tourist may be, it is difficult in a short residence in the country so completely to throw off certain prejudices and misapprehensions as to proceed to the delineation of its social characteristics with any degree of fairness and accuracy. The similarity of language, and to a great extent of customs and manners, renders one prone rather to enter into continual comparisons ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Assurbanipal in the palace at Dur-Sargina, must bear the date of 600 B.C. The hero is supposed to be a solar personification, and the epic is interesting to modern writers not only on account of its description of the Deluge, but also for the pomp and dignity of its style, and for its noble delineation of ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... sixteenth year, still studying, and at the same time giving more and more assistance to my father in connection with his journalistic work. He has included in his "Glances Back" some account of the facilities which enabled him to secure adequate pictorial delineation of the Court life of the Empire. He has told the story of Moulin, the police-agent, who frequently watched over the Emperor's personal safety, and who also supplied sketches of Court functions for the use of the Illustrated London News. Napoleon III resembled his great-uncle in at least one ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... these remarks on the Odyssey is that I wished to make you understand that great poets and prose-writers, after they have lost their power of depicting the passions, turn naturally to the delineation of character. Such, for instance, is the lifelike and characteristic picture of the palace of Odysseus, which may be called a sort of comedy ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... immediately goes on to relate the remainder of this day's occurrences, so painfully pregnant in discoveries relative to this savage people. The reader, it is believed, will think the account in the text abundantly minute, without any addition. What a fine specimen to prove the accuracy of Rousseau's delineation of our species, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... artists, he was strongly individualistic in temperament, and his satire and ridicule were aimed not at causes, but at effects. Let but the individuals act morally, and the system, which Gogol never questioned, would work beautifully. This conception caused Gogol to concentrate his best efforts upon delineation of character. It was the characters that were to be revealed, their actions to be held up to scorn and ridicule, not the conditions which created the characters and made them act as they did. If any lesson at all was to be drawn from the play it ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... The delineation of all these characters has two constant qualities: objectivity and justice. The author has not merged the sharp outlines of humanity into the background of his own idiosyncrasy. Ibsen's characters speak and act as though ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... could be brought forward as evidence that Mr. Saltus loves the fire-side sphynx. The Mr. Incoul of the title gives one a very excellent idea of how inhuman a just man can be. There is not a single slip in the skilful delineation of this monster. The beautiful heroine vaguely shambles into a tapestried background. She is moyen age in her appealing weakness. The jeune premier, Lenox Leigh, is well drawn and lighted. Time after time the author strikes subtle harmonies which must have delighted Henry James. Why is this ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... of this prince, upon the delineation of which so much pains have been employed, by the various writers who treat of the history of his time, it must be confessed that the facts which have been noticed in the foregoing pages furnish but too many illustrations of the more unfavourable ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... perfect poet; and yet it is interesting, when we see how the portraiture of a dog, detailed through thirty odd lines, is frittered down and finally almost lost in the mere laxity of the style, to compare it with the clear, simple, vigorous delineation that Burns, in four couplets, has given us of the ploughman's collie. It is interesting, at first, and then it becomes a little irritating; for when we think of other passages so much more finished and adroit, we cannot help feeling, that with a little more ardour after ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... probably true, as he once said, that he had read more novels than his friends gave him credit for, and it is certainly true that what his reading lacked in extent it made up in intensity. As might be supposed, his taste in fiction was for forcible delineation and robust humor. The flavor of strong, healthy individuality was what attracted him; for rarities, niceties, and abnormalities of mental organisation he cared nothing. He liked things which he could take hold of with his mind, not things ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... in the later school of sculpture known as Gandhara or Graeco-Buddhist he is frequently shown in a full length portrait. This difference is remarkable. It is easy to say that in the older school the Buddha was not depicted out of reverence, but less easy to see why such delineation should have shocked an Indian. But at any rate there is no difficulty in understanding that Greeks or artists influenced by Greeks would think it obvious and proper to make an effigy of ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... tone, and tampers with one of the most sacred of our instincts. It never in his case, I think, made any difference to his presentment of the truth, but it is a principle that I should not dare to advocate; however, it was so integral a part of his faith that in this delineation, which shall be as accurate as I can make it, I ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... respectfully to observe, that they hope their examples may not be altogether devoid of indirect instruction; and lest it should be supposed that they lived without object, aim, or principle, they would observe that the maxim which has influenced the delineation of the different Scenes and Characters is, that feeling, unguided and unrestrained, soon becomes mere selfishness; while the simple endeavour to fulfil each immediate claim of duty may lead to the ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for us, from the forest, the savages, and wild beasts, our fair domain of fertile fields and beautiful rivers, to fade into oblivion? They who have hearts to admire nobility imparted by nature's great seal—fearlessness, strength, energy, sagacity, generous forgetfulness of self, the delineation of scenes of terror, and the relation of deeds of daring, will not fail to be interested in a sketch of the life of the pioneer and hunter of Kentucky, Daniel Boone. Contemplated in any light, we shall find him in his way and walk, a man as truly great ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... true, is so imperfect in its delineation of habitual conduct liable to another construction, that the agitated Flowerpot returns, with quick indignation, "your arm was always reaching out whenever you sat in a chair anywhere near me, and whenever ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... is, when joined to a feeling heart, the surest guide to him who would describe natural truth, whether of the souls of men or of material forms. The realists of art may not be so well satisfied with a composition, as with the delineation, line by line, and point by point, of a scene in nature; yet the more comprehensive critic will own that universality will gain by the composition far more than local identity can lose. By his imaginative skill, Church has portrayed in two or three pictures those characteristics ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... to produce his scepticism not less than his life to increase it. He has left us a clear delineation of himself in his writings. If considered on the emotional side, he was a creature of impulses. His predominant passion was an enthusiastic desire to reform the world. Filled with the wildest ideas of the French revolution, his impulsiveness hurried him on ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... CHARACTER.—A new illustrated Hand-book of Phrenology and Physiognomy, for Students and Examiners, with a chart for recording the sizes of the different Organs of the brain in the Delineation of Character; with upward of 170 Engravings. By ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... propensity to self-delineation, which so strongly pervades his maturer works is, to the full, as predominant in his early productions, there needs no better record of his mode of life, as a school-boy, than what these fondly circumstantial effusions ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... The delineation of that Promethean fortitude which defied conscience, as he has shown it in Manfred, is his greatest achievement. The terrific fables of Marlowe and of Goethe, in their respective versions of the legend of Faustus, had disclosed the utmost writhings which remorse ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... unfortunately little-known tales of the lamented Fitz-James O'Brien, the weird tales of writers of all tongues have been thoroughly sifted by me in the course of my reading, and I say to you now that in the whole of my life I never read one story, one paragraph, one line, that could approach in vivid delineation, in weirdness of conception, in anything, in any quality which goes to make up the truly great story, that story which came into my hands as I have told you. I read it once and was amazed. I read it a second time and was—tempted. It was mine. The writer himself had authorized me to treat ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... to whom certain young gentlemen, who never saw them, constantly refer. The methods of the stage have completely changed, and with them the tastes of the people. The probability is that some of the old actors of only a few years ago would excite much merriment in their delineation of tragedy. A very great tragedian of a past generation was wont, in the tent scene in "Richard III.," to hold a piece of soap in his mouth, so that, after the appearance of the ghosts, the lather and froth might ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... or in bronze. And when the fashion came in of making statues of victors in the games, and other distinguished persons, a new element was introduced, which had large social as well as artistic results. The sculptor carried his usual reverence into his careful delineation of the victor's form, while he obtained in him a model, usually of the very highest type, for perfecting his idea of some divinity. The possibility of gaining the right to a statue gave a fresh impulse to all competitors ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... not only in propositions but also in the delineation of feeling, as, for instance, when feelings are ascribed to a character other than those which nature and the subject-matter demand. You will find this fault in an epigram by Vulteius, which was for ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... of a more mysterious nature rule the higher spheres of the organic world in which is comprized the human species in all its varied conformation, its creative intellectual power, and the languages to which it has given existence. A physical delineation of nature terminates at the point where the sphere of intellect begins, and a new world of mind is open to our view. It marks the limit, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... volumes of essays contain much of Mr. Lucas' charming character delineation; in their amusing discursiveness, their recurrent humor, and their quiet undertones of pathos, the reader will catch many delightful glimpses of Mr. Lucas' ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... A Romance of the Republic, a story of the days of slavery; powerful in its delineation of some of the saddest as well as the most dramatic conditions of master and slave in the Southern States. Her husband, who had been long an invalid, died in 1874. After his death her home, in winter ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of all that is generous, warm, and noble, in order to respect the passive acquiescence in methodical conventions and hollow forms. And how common such men are with us in this century, and how inviting and how necessary their delineation, may be seen in this,—that the popular and pre-eminent Observer of the age in which we live has since placed their prototype in vigorous colours upon imperishable canvas.—[Need I say that I allude to the Pecksniff of ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... disappeared among the clouds, or melted away in a distance greater than the eye can comprehend, we should not, perhaps, ask for a word to assure us respecting the state of the soul. But there is no more perfect delineation of the appearances which death presents to us, than in the following inspired description: "As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down and riseth not; till the ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... to escape the taint of degrading Plautus to the status of a petty moralizer[29]. In particular, he lauds the Aul unreservedly as a chef d'oeuvre of character delineation and pronounces it immeasurably superior to Moliere's imitation, "L'Avare."[30] This whole critique, while interesting, falls into the prevailing trend of imputing to Plautus far too high a plane of ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... travel and refined by education. On the road to London from the port where he landed, he accidentally found in the inn where he lodged Johnson's life of Savage, and was so taken with the charms of composition, and the masterly delineation of character displayed in that work, that, having begun to read it while leaning his arm on the chimney-piece, he continued in that attitude, insensible of pain till he was hardly able to raise his hand to his head. The ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... work I shall give a brief delineation of the political movements of the last twelve or fourteen years, or at least of those events that came within my knowledge, which I believe will include almost every thing relating to reform and the public characters who have taken ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... selections from the letters. guildry and treasurer's accounts, forming 3 vols. of the Spalding Club; Cosmo Innes, Registrum Episcopatus Aberdonensis, Spalding Club; Walter Thore, The History of Aberdeen (1811); Robert Wilson, Historical Account and Delineation of Aberdeen (1822); William Kennedy, The Annals of Aberdeen (1818); Orem, Descripjion of the Chanonry, Cathedral and King's College of Old Aberdeen, 1724-1725 (1830); Sir Andrew Leith Hay of Rannes, The Castellated Architecture of Aberdeen; Giles, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... book is to exhibit a fair delineation of the credulity of the human mind. Such an exhibition cannot fail to be productive of ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... from that belonging to his preceptor at La Pointe about the year 1800, and although the traditions given by Sikassig[)e] is similar to the one surviving at Red Lake, the diagram is an interesting variant for the reason that there is a greater amount of detail in the delineation of objects mentioned in ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... perplexing question, has baffled all human wisdom. Either some radical defect must have existed, in the measures devised for its removal, or the time has not yet come for successfully assailing the institution. Our work is completed, in the delineation we have given of its varied relations to our agricultural, commercial, and social interests. As the monopoly of the culture of cotton, imparts to slavery its economical value, the system will continue as long as this monopoly is maintained. Slave labor products have now become necessities ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... difficult and foreign names is given in brackets; and appropriate illustrations have been liberally provided. Maps are as useful in history as in geography, and plans are often essential to the lucid delineation of military movements. Both are here presented wherever it was thought they would be ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... could have done no more in the delineation of her superhuman beauty. The same ethereal figure which stood before me the preceding night upon the steps of the Ducal Palace, stood before me once again. But in the expression of the countenance, which was beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... could not help regretting that it should devolve upon a young actor, who could scarcely expect to escape unhurt in it. Our surprise was great, nor was our pleasure less, to find in Mr. Wood's performance, a pleasing marked delineation of the best features of Alonzo, with the worst considerably softened and relieved. Seldom is a character so indebted to the aid of an actor as this to the judgment of Mr. Wood. Dr. Young's muse ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... to rest upon the common realities of life and to dispense with its anomalies." The student should therefore be careful to observe (1) the truth of description, and the appropriateness of the description to the characters; (2) the strong and accurate delineation of the characters themselves. Not only is this to be noted in the passages where the poet has taken pains openly to portray their various characteristics, but there are many passages, or single lines perhaps, which serve more subtly to delineate them. What proud reserve, what sorrow ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the ceremony. The women brought imitations of men, women, animals, and birds, carved with labour and ingenuity out of sea-horse teeth. The dresses and the figures of the animals were not badly executed, but there was no attempt at the delineation of the countenances; and most of the figures were without eyes, ears and fingers, the execution of which would perhaps have required more delicate instruments than they possess. The men set most value on saws; kutteeswabak, ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... to our wishes and fancies, without poetry; but poetry is the most emphatical language that can be found for those creations of the mind "which ecstacy is very cunning in." Neither a mere description of natural objects, nor a mere delineation of natural feelings, however distinct or forcible, constitutes the ultimate end and aim of poetry, without the heightenings of the imagination. The light of poetry is not only a direct but also a reflected light, that while it shews us the object, throws a sparkling ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... character backwards, and let us see the closing scenes of his life first,—like a Hebrew Bible, of which the beginning is at the end; but the author's genius has triumphed over the perils of the task, and given us a delineation as consistent and symmetrical as it is striking and vigorous. Ignorant of books, simple, and credulous, guileless himself, and suspecting no evil in others, with moderate intellectual powers, he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... President Garfield, worthy of the occasion, of the distinguished audience before him, and of his reputation as an orator. From the beginning to the end it was elevated in tone, eloquent in the highest sense of that word, and warm in expression of his affection for the friend he eulogized. His delineation of Garfield as a soldier, an orator, and a man, in all the relations of life, was without exaggeration, but was tinged with his personal friendship and love. He described him on the 2nd of July, the morning of his wounding, as a contented and happy man, not in an ordinary degree, but ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... In the delineation of war scenes Captain King's style is crisp and vigorous, inspiring in the breast of the reader a thrill ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... charges and notable enterprise of that worthie Gentleman maister Thomas Sackford, in procuring the Charts of the seuerall prouinces of this realme to be set foorth, we are in hope that in time he will delineate this whole land so perfectlie, as shall be comparable or beyond anie delineation heretofore made of anie other region; and therefore leaue that to his well deserued praise. If any well willer will imitate him in so praiseworthie a worke for the two other regions, we will be glad to further his endeuour with all the helpes ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (1 of 12) - William the Conqueror • Raphael Holinshed
... knowledge advances. Only in this case the details have already been filled in by the light of very imperfect knowledge, aided by a fertile imagination. These we must obliterate if we would restore the possibility of a faithful delineation, and we must be careful, in future, to avoid a similar error. We must put down nothing as certain which has not been conclusively shown to ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... conceptions of human fancy, and will for ever command the admiration of romantic and elevated minds. But it wants that yet higher excellence, which arises from a thorough knowledge of human nature—a graphic delineation of actual character, a faithful picture of the real passions and sufferings of mortality. It is the most perfect example of poetic fancy; but the highest species of the epic poem is to be found not in poetic fancy, but poetic history. The heroes and heroines ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... upon the term Phrenologist as signifying one who goes about over the country feeling the bumps on the heads of those who consult him, looking for hills and hollows, depressions and ridges of the cranium, and predicating thereon a delineation of character. ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... sincerely and heartily commend. The same quality of sympathy with his subject, which led him in his former work to palliate the moral obliquity and overlook the baseness of his hero, in consideration of brilliant gifts of intellect and person, gives vigor and spirit to his delineation of a character in most respects so different as that of Jackson. This man, who filled so large a place in our history, and left perhaps a stronger impress of himself on our politics than any other ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... first volume by two short novels, The Midge and The Story of a New York House. Then he undertook the writing of the short story, his first book being Zadoc Pine and other Stories. The title story of this book contains a very humorous and faithful delineation of a New Englander who is transplanted to a New Jersey suburb. Soon after writing this he began to read the short stories of Guy de Maupassant. He admired them so much that he half translated, half adapted a number ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... numerous than would consist with a reasonable attention to economy. The necessity of a numerous court for the trial of impeachments, is equally dictated by the nature of the proceeding. This can never be tied down by such strict rules, either in the delineation of the offense by the prosecutors, or in the construction of it by the judges, as in common cases serve to limit the discretion of courts in favor of personal security. There will be no jury to stand between the judges who are to pronounce the sentence of the ...
— The Federalist Papers
... Carlyle be tolerated; in neither of them is found in any marked degree what has been aptly called 'double-headed' power—in neither are combined the antagonistic resources of profound thought and brilliant imagination. Macaulay, unapproachable in the delineation of character and in the mastery of stately narrative, seems to be shorn of his wonted power in the presence of the higher philosophical and moral questions—the flight that is elsewhere so bold and triumphant, droops and falters here. As for Carlyle, to say nothing ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and readjustment of Christianity, which that calm conviction would imply, is still far from being the one taken by all of those who bear the Christian name. If it is permissible in the writing of a book like this to have an aim besides that of the most objective delineation, the author may perhaps be permitted to say that he writes with the earnest hope that in some measure he may contribute also to the establishment of an understanding upon which so much both for the Church and the ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... these searching words make an indelible impression upon the heart of every reader. How striking, and alas! how true, is this delineation of character. Religious when in company with professors—profane when with the world; pretending to be a Christian on a Sunday; striving to climb with Christian the Hill Difficulty—every other day running down the hill with Timorous and Mistrust. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... written on the right limits of music as a depicting art. The distinction is well drawn between actual delineation, of figure or event, and the mere suggestion of a mood. It is no doubt a fine line, and fortunately; for the critic must beware of mere negative philosophy, lest what he says cannot be done, be refuted in the very doing. ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... reflections, and finally lands me at the commencement of this young girl's story, which, as I said, I have found the time and felt the interest to learn something of, and which I think I can tell without wronging the unconscious subject of my brief delineation. IRIS. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the unwilling victim with widely opened, cavernous jaws thickly set with most formidable-looking teeth. The figures were executed in rather high relief, and there was a certain quaintness and stiffness of outline in their delineation that marked them as the work of an untutored artist, yet the action of them was depicted with a spirit and vigour which proved that the sculptor, although untutored, was undoubtedly a keen student of nature. Altogether, it was by far the most surprising thing of its kind that Stukely had ever seen, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... mention made of this contrivance both in Homer's "Hymn to Mercury," and in the "Argonautics" of Apollonius Rhodius. The scholiast of the latter gives a description of the process, which exactly answers to the Mexican delineation. ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... human heart; it is not even much of a love-story, but a most vivid narrative, without startling situations or adventures. Its great charm is its quiet humor,—not strained into witty expressions which provoke laughter, but a sort of amiable delineation of the character of a born gentleman, with his weaknesses and prejudices, all leaning to virtue's side. It is a description of manners peculiar to the Scottish gentry in the middle of the eighteenth century, especially among the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... vestiges of the ancien regime, Haldimand Castle, disappears, a few details culled from reliable sources may not be unacceptable, especially as by fire, repairs and the vicissitudes of time, the changes are so great, as to render difficult the delineation of what it originally formed part of in ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... and successful attempt to combine ideal delineation of character with the records of history. Very beautiful and very true are the portraits of the female mind and heart which Grace Aguilar knew how to draw. This is the chief charm of all her writings, and in ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... the Rev. Patrick Bronte of Haworth in Yorkshire. In June, 1854, she married her father's curate, the Rev. Archer Bell Nicholls. Under the pseudonym of Currer Bell she published several novels, in which she displayed great power in the delineation of character. The most important of these were "Shirley," "Villette" and the celebrated "Jane Eyre." At the same time her sister, Emily Jane, who published under the name of Ellis Bell, won fame by her novel "Wuthering Heights." She ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... will inevitably come, though far distant now perhaps, the artist who will attempt to restore to life, and hold up to the view of the world, the greatest man of this age, will be compelled, in order to give a faithful delineation, to take for his model the portrait which I, better than any one else, have been able to draw from fife. I think that no one has done this as yet; certainly ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... Lest the artist's delineation of her charms on this very page humbug your fancy, take from me her authorized description. She was a nice-looking, awkward, loud, rather bashful, brown-haired girl, with a sallow complexion, bright eyes, and a perpetual smile. She had a wholesome, Spraggins-inherited love ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... as down-trodden, he wanted to think out a means for her deliverance. To obtain a clear vision he chose as a method the delineation of as large a number as possible of marriage cases that he had seen—and he had seen many, as most of his contemporary friends were married. Of these he chose twelve, the most characteristic, and then he went to work. When he had written about half that ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... opinions which many of my brother writers—and notably, the great writer to whom "Hide And Seek" is dedicated—expressed of these pages when I originally wrote them. I leave it to the reader to compare this novel—especially in reference to the conception and delineation of character—with the two novels ("Antonina" and "Basil") which preceded it; and then to decide whether my third attempt in fiction, with all its faults, was, or was not, an advance in Art on my earlier efforts. This is all the favor I ask for a work which I once wrote with anxious care—which ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... it in a word is impossible. To describe it in a few words is not easy. Froude himself called it in after life a "cry of pain," meaning that it was intended to relieve the intolerable pressure of his thoughts. It is not a novel, it is not a treatise, it is not poetry, it is not romance. It is the delineation of a mood; and though it was called, with some reason, sceptical, its moral, if it has a moral, is that scepticism leads to misconduct. That unpleasant and unverified hypothesis, soon rejected by Froude himself, has been revived by M. Bourget in Le Disciple, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... gives little indication of literary merit. The style is stilted, and there is no attempt at delineation of character. It is wholly without dramatic action; for this, Mary explains, would have interfered with her main object. But then its straightforward statement of facts, by concentrating the attention upon them, adds very strongly to the impression they produce. ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... An Exact Delineation of the Cities of London and Westminster, and the Suburbs Thereof. London, 1658. (Reproduced by ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... encounter. However, his first sentences, and the way in which they were received, amply sufficed to prove that his success was certain. The dialect of Artemus bears a less evident mark of the Western World than that of many American actors, who would fain merge their own peculiarities in the delineation of English character; but his jokes are of that true Transatlantic type, to which no nation beyond the limits of the States can offer any parallel. These jokes he lets fall with an air of profound unconsciousness—we may almost say melancholy— which is irresistibly droll, aided as it is ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... of a double thread—delightful, wise, sunshiny talks on the lines laid down by the Autocrat, and an autobiographical love story. It is full of wisdom and of beauty, of delicate delineation, and of inspiring sentiment" New ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... writing for the press. Her first novel, "Sense and Sensibility," was published in 1811, and was followed by "Pride and Prejudice," her masterpiece, "Persuasion," and others, her interest being throughout in ordinary quiet cultured life, and the delineation of it, which she achieved in an inimitably charming manner. "She showed once for all," says Professor Saintsbury, "the capabilities of the very commonest and most ordinary life, if sufficiently observed and selected, and combined with due art, to furnish forth prose fiction not ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... William de Ryee, is an earnestly introspective poem, well cast in iambic pentameter quatrains. "Ye Ballade of Patrick von Flynn" is a comic delineation of the cheap pseudo-Irish, England-hating agitators who have been so offensively noisy on this side of the Atlantic ever since the European war began, and particularly since the late riots in Dublin. This class, which so sadly misrepresents the loyal ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft |
