"Descriptive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his clerk has to take the descriptive lists, you know, sir," replied the sailor. "Then he gets an order from the captain to give the men their clothes and small stores—tobacco, soap, sewing silk, and the like, you know, sir. I was told to come back and report ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... of "Handbook of Descriptive and Practical Astronomy," etc. With 24 Illustrations. (Library of Useful Stories.) ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... offshoot and prolongation, on the other, there are strong analogies, as will be clearly seen in the course of our study, but there are also differences that are not less appreciable. Professor Rawlinson shows this very clearly in a page of descriptive geography which he will allow us to quote as it stands. It will not be the last of our borrowings from his excellent work, The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World, a book that has done so much to popularize the discoveries ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... minute of the date and cause of his death. These with other facts, such as name, age, physical description, birthplace, time of service, amount of pay due, balance of clothing-account and stoppages, must be more or less repeated on various records, such as the descriptive book of the company, the daily return, the monthly return, the quarterly return, the muster-roll from which the name would be dropped, and the final statements which were to go to the Adjutant-General and the Paymaster-General. ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... Reverend Jurges sent us—names and addresses of his congregation. I've mailed them all descriptive matter; and I wrote Mr. Jurges that the price of his stock would be five dollars, but that we couldn't sell to his congregation for less than seven. That's right, isn't it? I told him Molino stock would go up to par next month. That's ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... DESCRIPTIVE POWER. Usually secondary in appearance but of vital artistic importance, is the author's power of description, of picturing both the appearance of his characters and the scenes which make his background and help to give the tone of his work. Perhaps four subjects of ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... "bridegroom" is the newly married man, and "bride-bell," "bride-banquet" are old equivalents of wedding-bells, wedding-breakfast. "Bridal" (from Bride-ale), originally the wedding-feast itself, has grown into a general descriptive adjective, e.g. the bridal party, the bridal ceremony. The bride-cake had its origin in the Roman confarreatio, a form of marriage, the essential features of which were the eating by the couple of a cake made of salt, water and flour, and the holding by the bride of three wheat-ears, symbolical ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... instructions of the merchant princes of Leadenhall Street to their pro-consuls in Asia. Of the quality of these documents, it is sufficient to say, that they were John Mill's; but, in respect to their quantity, it may be worth mentioning that a descriptive catalogue of them completely fills a small quarto volume of between three hundred and four hundred pages, in their author's handwriting, which now lies before me; also that the share of the Court of Directors in the correspondence between themselves and the Indian governments ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... adventure of immeasurable possibilities, you are straitened between cold despairs and immense hopes, you will readily forgive this irreverent, self-confident critic-journalist any crude things he may have said in his haste for sake of his flashes of perception, his happily descriptive phrases, his inspiring anticipations, his uncalculating candour, and above all his generous preoccupation with things that matter enormously. "What we prosperous people who have nearly all the good things of life and most of the opportunities have to do now is to justify ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... saw was a narrow sloping back and a broad hat resting the brim on it. My report to her spoke of an old gentleman of dark complexion, as the only traveller on the platform. She has faith in the efficiency of her descriptive powers, and so she was willing to drive off immediately. The intention was a start to London. Colonel De Craye came up and effected in five minutes what I ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of what was there planted; where a river encompassed the city itself, and a grove of the best trees for magnitude was round about. This he named Antipatris, from his father Antipater." [Greek text]. No words can be more distinctly descriptive; yet Robinson, who had not visited that district, in his positive manner lays down that the village of Cuf'r Saba is the site of Antipatris; and "doubtless" all that is said about "well watered," and "a river encompassing the city," means that some wadi or watercourse came ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... and others, on the Poems and related Subjects[1] (g) Letter to Charles Fox with the 'Lyrical Ballads,' and his Answer, &c. (h) Letter on the Principles of Poetry and his own Poems to (afterwards) Professor John Wilson IV. Descriptive: (a) A Guide through the District of the Lakes, 1835 (b) Kendal and Windermere Railway: two Letters reprinted from the Morning Post. Revised, with Additions, 1844 ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... identifiable by their names but said to have been in Kibi, which was the term then applied to the provinces of Bingo, Bitchu, and Bizen, lying along the south coast of the Inland Sea and thus facing the sun, so that the descriptive epithet "sun-direction" applied to the region ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... happily as he listened to the other's vociferations, which threatened Dishpan with every known form of torture and punishment, from instant disembowelment to the more merciful end of losing her brain through the medium of a club. He grinned because Otto's vocabulary descriptive of terrible things always impending over the heads of his sleek and utterly heedless pack-horses was one of his chief joys. He knew that if Dishpan should elect to turn somersaults while diamond-hitched under her pack, big, ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... arranged in one general alphabet, this being the most useful and the readiest form for reference. To render it, as nearly as possible, a correct representation of the contents of the library, each work has but one principal descriptive entry. The shelfmark is confined to this entry—duplicate shelfmark references, when the position of books is likely to be often altered, from the accession of additions to the library, &c., leading to frequent ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... of relationship used in different parts of the world may be divided, according to the author just quoted, into two great classes, the classificatory and descriptive, the latter being employed by us. It is the classificatory system which so strongly leads to the belief that communal and other extremely loose forms of marriage were originally universal. But as far as I can see, there is ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... the front segment, dead-black and also bristling with hairs. Length: 16 to 18 millimetres (.63 to .7 inch.—Translator's Note.); width: about 3 millimetres." (.12 inch.—Translator's Note.) A quarter of a century and more has elapsed since I jotted down this descriptive sketch; and to-day, at Serignan, I find in the Eumenes' larder the same game which I noticed long ago at Carpentras. Time and distance have not altered ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... sheep or a cow, or an inanimate thing, like that stone wall, for instance,—see how its character as a wall comes out as it sweeps over the top." At this moment, a little drop of surprise in his voice made me look around. He was walking backwards, one arm extended toward the hill in a descriptive gesture. "Why, it is the dream!" he murmured in hushed excitement. "Ah, of course! I might have known it. Now, I'll ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... anguish to talk of going to the police in the morning, of printing descriptive bills, of setting people to drag the ponds for miles around. It was extremely gruesome. I murmured something about communicating with the young lady's relatives. It seemed to me a very natural suggestion; but Fyne and his wife ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... of bituminous coal, was English too, as was also the chill temperature that sometimes called for a fire at midsummer, and the foggy or smoky atmosphere which often, between November and March, compelled me to set the gas aflame at noonday. I am not aware of omitting anything important in the above descriptive inventory, unless it be some book-shelves filled with octavo volumes of the American Statutes, and a good many pigeon-holes stuffed with dusty communications from former Secretaries of State, and other official documents of similar value, constituting part of the archives of the ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the costume which prevailed, among persons of wealth and standing in New England, within a century, I quote a descriptive passage from a history of Newburyport, by Mrs. E. V. Smith, published in 1854, ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... the songs and recitatives is wondrous. Purcell was one of the very greatest masters of declamation. In his recitative we are leagues removed from the "just accent" of Harry Lawes. It is passionate, or pathetic, or powerfully dramatic, or simply descriptive (in a way), or dignified, as the situation requires. "Let the dreadful engines" and "Ye twice ten hundred deities" have, strange to say, long been famous, in spite of their real splendour; and another great specimen is the command of Aeolus to the winds (in King ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... surveyors and nautical cartographers to achieve standardization in nautical charts and electronic chart displays; to provide advice on nautical cartography and hydrography; to develop the sciences in the field of hydrography and techniques used for descriptive oceanography ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... processes we are enabled for the first time to accomplish the rapid production of positive copies in black of plans and other line drawings. Each of these new methods has its own sphere of action; both, therefore, should deserve equally descriptive notices. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... supplied the materials. Of course, they cannot be universally applicable. Such details varied in various circles, and were changed very gradually; nor can I pretend to tell how much of what I have said is descriptive of the family life at Steventon in Jane Austen's youth. I am sure that the ladies there had nothing to do with the mysteries of the stew-pot or the preserving-pan; but it is probable that their way of life differed a little from ours, ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... employed in the home service to take their places in America. Hence, they set their wits to work in order to delay the return of the troops to England. The first thing they did was to pass a resolution directing General Heath to transmit to the board of war, a descriptive list of every person comprehended in the convention. Burgoyne and his officers bitterly resented the insinuations of congress, and raised objections to such a humiliating measure; but his army was, nevertheless, described man by man, with all the minuteness ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in fifteen Books, contains 160 pieces, nearly all of them short, and descriptive of manners and events in several of the feudal states of Ku. The title has been translated by The Manners of the Different States, 'Les Murs des Royaumes,' and, which I prefer, ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... of more of less ephemeral literature, as well as the records of the explorations of early days, I have been astonished at the rich treasures of scientific and descriptive literature that have Lake Tahoe as their object. Not the least service this unpretentious volume will accomplish is the gathering ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it." This is a principle of defensive design, cited here because it is usually given in mutant forms less descriptive of the challenges of design for lusers. For example, you don't make a two-pin plug symmetrical and then label it 'THIS WAY UP'; if it matters which way it is plugged in, then you make the design asymmetrical (see also ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... tears he wants to draw from our eyes, I can bate him there," observed Mike, when Kakaik had ceased; and he began one of those sad ditties descriptive of the death of some Irish heroine. Though the Indian could not understand the meaning, he appeared to be much affected, and it was some time before he began another song. From the few words we could make out, we supposed him to be recounting ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... suspected. O. Henry is responsible for the vogue of the latter of these two alternatives,—and the strain of living up to his inventiveness has been frightful. Finally comes a last suspiration, usually in the advertising pages. Sometimes it is a beautiful descriptive sentence charged with sentiment, sometimes a smart epigram, according to the style of story, or the "line" expected of the author. Try this, as the advertisements say, on your favorite magazine. This formula, with ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... wholly erroneous; more than that, it is even dangerously fallacious, in that its use blinds or tends to blind our own people to the real conditions existing in the Archipelago. It is correct to speak of the Filipino peoples, because this expression is, geographically, accurately descriptive; but it is absolutely misleading to speak of the Filipino people, because of the false political idea involved and conveyed by the use of the singular number. Similarly, there is no objection to the term "Filipino" or "Filipinos," so long as we understand it ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... to his parents at this period are filled with patriotic sentiments, and he writes many pages descriptive of the state of affairs in England and of the effects of the war on that country. He strongly upholds the justice of that war and pleads with his parents and brothers to take his view of the matter. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... appointed to investigate the laws of abstruse sciences, and perform in literature and art the bolder flights of genius. She may surpass him in representing life and manners, and in the composition of letters, memoirs, and moral tales, in descriptive poetry, and in certain styles of music and painting, and even in sculpture. But she will never write an Iliad or a Paradise Lost, or tragedies like those of Aeschylus. She will never rival Demosthenes in producing a political oration, nor a massive philosophic ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... succeed thereby, every word striking and ringing down with full force, no cushion of an epithet intruding between the reader's brain-anvil and the poet's hammer to break the blow. In Uhland's "Three Burschen," if we recollect right, there are but two epithets, and those of the simplest descriptive kind: "Thy fair daughter" and a "black pall." Were there more, we question whether the poet would have succeeded, as he has done, in making our flesh creep as he leads us on from line to line and verse to verse. So Tennyson, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... sailing, the Inspector of Ordnance will furnish the commander with a descriptive list of his battery, together with a statement of the number of times each gun on board has been fired, in the following form; a copy of which the commander shall transmit to the Bureau before sailing: this list shall be returned to the Inspector of the Yard to which she may return, ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... exactly, I suppose you take an estate in fee simple in Marrowbone, and for life only in Horse-pasture and Poison-field; the want of words of inheritance in the two last cases, being supplied as to the first, by the word 'estate,' which has been repeatedly decided to be descriptive of the quantum of interest devised, as well as of its locality. I am in hopes, however, you have not copied the words exactly, that there are words of inheritance to all the devises, as the testator certainly ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... pathetic close to these pages, so full of touches of humour, keen observation and racy anecdote. It would seem as if the hand which wielded so descriptive and ready a pen had wearied of its task; as if, at last, the sunny nature was overcast and the merry heart saddened. But surely not another word is needed to make the narrative more perfect. Those who first become acquainted with ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... are heaps of English nurses in the streets. I expect to sleep in this place and proceed to my destination to-morrow. How I wish I could send you a really descriptive letter! If I did, I fear you would not get it—so I have to write in generalities. None of this seems real—it's a kind of wild pretence from which I shall awake-and when I tell you my dream you'll laugh and say, "How absurd ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... list of work in hand are four paleontological papers, besides the slowly progressing "Manual of Comparative Anatomy." ("On Indian Fossils," on "Cephalaspis and Pteraspis," on "Stagonolepis," and a "Memoir descriptive of Labyrinthodont remains from the Trias and Coal of Britain," which he first treated of in 1858, "clearly establishing for the first time the vertebrate nature of these remains."—Sir M. Foster, Obituary Notice "Proceedings of the Royal ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... the student's second year, with Greek, Roman, and Mediaeval architectural history, the Orders and their applications, drawing, sketching, and tracing, analytic geometry, differential calculus, physics, descriptive geometry, botany, and physical geography. In the third year the course is extended to the theory of decoration, color, form, and proportion; conventionalism, symbolism, the decorative arts, stained glass, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... keep record of his or of any man's conversation), and my recollection of what passed is too indefinite in some salient particulars to make it safe to attempt to complete the outlines of the story. I consider the fragment in all respects finer than Hand and Soul, and the passage descriptive of the artist's identification of his own personality in the portrait on the walls of the gallery among the very finest pieces of picturesque, impassioned, and dramatic writing that Rossetti ever achieved. On one occasion I remarked incidentally upon ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... Chiffield. That gentleman took them with a profound bow, glanced over them, and said, "How elegant!" "What rich scenery!" "How tasty they are got up, a'n't they?" "This is the showiest picture;" "Here's a neat one," &c., &c., &c. Mr. Chiffield had contracted the use of a certain class of highly descriptive adjectives in selling dry goods. Clementina watched him narrowly, and thought how nicely she could ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... brought me last night a long letter from S. descriptive of Mrs. Wolcott's party, McClellan, the fashions, and Hallowell's feeling at the position in which he places himself in going into a negro regiment. I wish he could see Colonel Higginson and his, but a Northern black regiment will be a very different thing from a Southern one—the ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... brother, though his consummate art kept him behind a veil, while the others were known and recognized as open and active foes. No publication speaks of this Peter, nor does any orator enumerate his qualities, while the other two chiefs have been the subjects of every species of descriptive talent, from that of the poet to that of ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... he was so gentle, generous and genial that his friends and associates felt for him a regard approaching affection. In youth he was an eminently handsome man and in maturer years his presence was imposing. Sailors and Indians are fond of giving personally descriptive names to those with whom they are thrown in contact; when Tucker was a lieutenant he was called "Handsome Jack" by the men-before-the-mast, and the warriors of the savage tribes that wander about the head waters of the Amazon knew him as the "Apo," the ...
— Life of Rear Admiral John Randolph Tucker • James Henry Rochelle
... is descriptive of the seed, which is almost spherical, black, and so hard that it has been used in the West Indies instead of shot. Hence it will occasion no surprise that the germs burst through the strong covering with difficulty, and that sometimes weeks elapse before the seedlings appear, one or two at ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... Sightseeing Tours: Descriptive folders and other literature may be obtained at the Chamber of Commerce and at the hotels and information bureaus in San Francisco about trips supervised by licensed sightseeing companies. Some of the outstanding attractions of the ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... A descriptive catalogue of the books and pamphlets educed by the reinstitution of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy in England, would be a very entertaining work. It is astonishing how active the English become in pamphleteering when any such engrossing subject comes before the people or the parliament. The Duke ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... these monuments, instructive to the present generation, of what our fathers did, are to be found. In the library of your association for the collection of your early history, I found a letter descriptive of the reading of the church service to his army by General Washington, during one of those winters when the army was ill-clad and without shoes, when he built a little log-cabin for a meeting-house, and there, reading the service to them his sight failed him, he put on his glasses and, with emotion ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... house and the river. It was restored as nearly as possible to its original character on its purchase by the State in 1849, and it is now the treasure-house of many memories, and of valuable historic relics. A descriptive catalogue, prepared for the trustees, under act of May 11, 1874, by a patient and careful historian, Dr. E. M. Ruttenber, will be of service to the visitor and can be obtained on the grounds. The following facts, condensed from his admirable historical sketch, are ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... artistic and exquisitely finished pieces of work that Crawford has produced. The picturesque setting, Calabria and its surroundings, the beautiful Sorrento and the Gulf of Salerno, with the bewitching accessories that climate, sea, and sky afford, give Mr. Crawford rich opportunities to show his rare descriptive powers. As a whole the book is strong and beautiful through its simplicity, and ranks among the choicest of the author's ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God." Micah 6:8. The life of Enoch is descriptive of the Christian's life, and it is said that he "walked with God." Hand in hand with God, heart in heart, and life in life, is the true Christian way. In order to walk thus with God, we must be in agreement ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... of Quaker Hill, which it is my purpose in this book to write, comprises three periods; and the descriptive sociology records two differing yet related forms of social life, connected by a period of transition. This study will then be made up of three parts: First, the Quaker Community; second, the Transition; and third, the Mixed Community. The periods of time corresponding to these three ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... information, forwarded by a confiding correspondent of an opposition syndicate, made a careful duplicate of the matter, and brought the result to Torpenhow, who said that all was fair in love or war correspondence, and built an excellent descriptive article from his rival's riotous waste of words. It was Torpenhow who—but the tale of their adventures, together and apart, from Philae to the waste wilderness of Herawi and Muella, would fill many books. They had been ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... Courtisanes, which is avowedly its second part, a small piece of Eve et David serving as the link between them. But it is almost sufficient by and to itself. Lucien de Rubempre ou le Journalisme would be the most straightforward and descriptive title for it, and one which Balzac in some of his moods would have ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Sophocles or the blank verse of Shakspere, but roughly corresponds to the Greek choruses or the occasional rhymed songs of the Elizabethan stage. In other words, the verse portion of a Sanskrit drama is not narrative; it is sometimes descriptive, but more commonly lyrical: each stanza sums up the emotional impression which the preceding action or dialogue has made upon one of the actors. Such matter is in English cast into the form of the rhymed ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... I am a man of business. And these are good copy. Now, about this Egypt. I will put the matter in the shape of a business proposition. Will you undertake, if I pay your passage, and your friend's, with all travelling expenses, to let me have three descriptive articles a week, on Cairo, the Nile, Syria, and India, running to about two thousand words apiece, at three ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... there was a reaction before the century closed. Among the greater poets are Sully-Prudhomme and Coppee; among the novelists, Daudet, Zola, Maupassant, and Bourget. In history some writers, as Villemain, are remarkable for their power of descriptive narrative; others, like Guizot, for their breadth of philosophical reflection, superadded to deep researches. Some, like Augustin Thierry, in his work on the Middle Ages, combined both elements. His brother, Amedee Thierry, depicted the state of ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... has published a magazine containing the addresses and reports given at its annual meetings. Among its other publications are statistics relative to the Health of College Women (1885); a Bibliography of the Higher Education of Women (1897); a full descriptive list of the fellowships for graduate study open to women in this country, together with a list of the undergraduate scholarships offered to women in the nineteen colleges belonging to the A. C. A. (1899). It will ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... many delightful passages. La Cenerentola and Lucrezia Borgia are mentioned in passing. Saltus has (or had) an exuberant fondness for Donizetti and Rossini. Here is a telling bit of art criticism (attributed to a character) descriptive of the Paris Salon: "There was a Manet or two, a Moreau and a dozen excellent landscapes, but the rest represented the apotheosis of mediocrity. The pictures which Gerome, Cabanel, Bouguereau, and the acolytes ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... left us the unfinished Faerie Queene, an allegorical epic which shows the influence of Ariosto and other Italian poets, and contains exquisitely beautiful passages descriptive of nature, etc. His allegorical plot affords every facility for the display of his graceful verse, and is outlined in ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... view on social conditions, a deeply religious spirit, and a charming facility both in descriptive and romantic passages, give this novelist her ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... is for the greater part a collection of Hawaiian songs and poetic pieces that have done service from time immemorial as the stock supply of the hula. The descriptive portions have been added, not because the poetical parts could not stand by themselves, but to furnish the proper setting and to answer the questions of those who ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... words, he seemed so to enter into their spirit—as some earnest descriptive speakers will—as unconsciously to wreathe his form and sidelong crest his head, till he all but seemed the creature described. Meantime, the stranger regarded him with little surprise, apparently, though with much contemplativeness of a mystical ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... name in this case to furnish one himself, more descriptive as he thought and distinctive. His success in this attempt must be esteemed but partial since all the related forms, immediately listed, nod as well. Bulliard's name as applied by Persoon is therefore to be preferred. But the transfer ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... Lucian, page 985, "were the first who invented the science of the stars, and gave names to the planets, not at random and without meaning, but descriptive of the qualities which they conceived them to possess; and it was from them that this art passed, still in an imperfect state, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... it, father?" Jasper paused in the midst of a descriptive fire concerning the new buildings going up on either hand, with many side stories of the men who were erecting them; and he paused for ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... titles of Lenau's lyrics descriptive of nature are "Herbst," "Herbstgefuehl" (twice), "Herbstlied," "Ein Herbstabend," "Herbstentschluss," "Herbstklage," and many others of a similar kind, such as "Das duerre Blatt," "In der Wueste," "Fruehlings Tod," etc. If we disregard a few quite ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... "Now, there's enough descriptive colour to give you a proper mental picture. If you had left me alone I'd have finished it ten minutes ago. The rest moves with accelerated rhythm. It begins with the cracking of a stick in the forest. Hark! A ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... representing the same Image. The Drama presents to the Eyes of a Spectator an Actor, who speaks and acts as the Person, whom he represents, is suppos'd to speak and act in real Life. The Characteristic Writer introduces, in a descriptive manner, before a Reader, the same Person, as speaking and acting ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... mill was shut down the third time on a week day. It looked as tho it never could open. But it did open, and when it opened it had a new kind of boss. If I were to give the new boss a descriptive name, I would call him "Bill Whackem." He was an orphan. He had little chance. He had a new black eye almost every day. But he seemed to fatten on bumps. Every time he was bumped he would swell up. How fast he grew! He became ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... were permitted to board her. The mayor of San Francisco and the chief of police reported that nothing suspicious was to be seen upon her, and the port authorities announced that her papers were correct and in order in every detail. Many photographs and columns of descriptive matter were ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... proceed again to France. "The capture of Bapaume is imminent, you must certainly obtain that," I was told, "and add another to your list of successes." So I left by the midday boat-train; the usual crowds were there to see their friends off. A descriptive writer could fill a volume with impressions gathered on the station platform an hour before the train starts. Scenes of pathos and assumed joy; of strong men and women stifling their emotions with a stubbornness that would do justice to the martyrdom of the Early Christians ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... thought, or from co-operative study, discussion and observation. These papers are carefully condensed, sifted, classified, and placed in proper record form, by the editing committee of the club. This committee, is also instructed to prepare short extracts, essays and descriptive articles relating to club work, for publication in the mothers' ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... it, and is resolved at all costs on knowing the secret. And again in the vaults beneath the house Sir Jocelin reports that Ul-Jabal "holds the lantern near the ground, with his head bent down": can anything be better descriptive of the attitude of search? Yet each is so sure that the other possesses the gem, that neither is able to suspect that ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... infinity of the native names of places, all of which are descriptive and appropriate, is of itself a prima facie evidence of their having strong ideas of property in the soil; for it is only where such ideas are entertained and acted on that we find, as is certainly the case in ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... his richly descriptive book "The Farm" writes, "On the way one passed the big orchard which was Jamie's pride, and beyond one came to the field where the big hickory stood. It was a memorable tree, famous in the countryside for bearing enormous nuts with shells so soft that the faintest tap of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... stated purposes are to promote and encourage social intercourse and good fellowship and to advance the interests of the community. The name selected is the Fat and Skinny Club. If this be the most appropriate name descriptive of its membership it is better that ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... verbal picture, florid in its descriptive phraseology, but cognate enough to convince Crane it was Mortimer who had made one of the bets. His preconceived plan of the suspected man's ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... a word, or words, that will correctly describe it, and then transpose the letters of the descriptive word so as to form another word, which will answer to the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the hospitals and military posts on the Mississippi River, and here her aid was invaluable. It required a remarkable woman to undertake such a work. At one point she found twenty-three men, sick and wounded, whose regiments had left them, and who could not be discharged because they had no descriptive lists. She went at once to General Grant, and said, "General, if you will give me authority to do so, I will agree to take ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... of other remarkable features of the island, the great rocks which are piled along its coasts, are all descriptive and not legendary names—the Devil's Chimney, the Cheeses, the Templar's Rock, the Gannett Rock, the Mousehole. These names will have been given in comparatively recent times, at least since the Saxon invasion, for they show a different mentality from the Celtic ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... only literature, but we have character drawing, humor, and descriptive powers that Blackmore only equalled once, and that was in 'Lorna Doone.'... He knows the heart as well as the trees; he knows men and women as well as he knows nature, and he holds them both in the ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... of the Statesman seems to contend in Plato's mind with the political; the dialogue might have been designated by two equally descriptive titles—either the 'Statesman,' or 'Concerning Method.' Dialectic, which in the earlier writings of Plato is a revival of the Socratic question and answer applied to definition, is now occupied with classification; there is nothing in which he takes greater delight than in processes ...
— Statesman • Plato
... here illustrated is too "descriptive" and not sufficiently "monumental" to be assigned to the Timourid age, and so I give it to the late fifteenth century, to those delicious years when the old tradition, though weakened, had not been smothered under the scenic delicacies ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... mercy of God in favour of the erring father in Purgatory. It was a beautiful expression of the unbreakable chain of tradition, a tradition whose links were human hearts. In such conceptions, rather than in descriptive pictures of Paradise and Gehenna, is the true mind of Judaism to ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... education at Cambridge University. Two years after his graduation, he made his first appearance as a poet with the publication of "An Evening Walk; an Epistle in Verse." In the same year he published "Descriptive Sketches in Verse," inspired by a pedestrian tour through the Alps. These poems brought the appreciation of Coleridge, and both men soon became friends. Together with Wordsworth's sister they made a tour of Germany. ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... a clipped expression, derived, I believe, from Po-to-wau-me-ac. Po-to-wau, as we have it, in Potawattomie, means to make a fire in a place where fires, such as council fires, are usually made. The ac in the word is apparently from ak or wak, a standing tree. The whole appears descriptive of a burning tree, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... charming Juvenile Annual, the New Year's Gift, furnishes the following admirable model of a descriptive letter from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... be compared to another, descriptive of the same divinity, preserved in Sahagun's MS. in Madrid. It is as follows, with my ...
— Rig Veda Americanus - Sacred Songs Of The Ancient Mexicans, With A Gloss In Nahuatl • Various
... gave a descriptive narrative of the killing of each bird and squirrel as he pulled them off his belt and ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... 1824 he became connected with the Natural History Department of the British Museum, and was appointed Keeper of the Zoological collections in 1840. He was the author of 'Illustrations of Indian Zoology,' 'The Knowsley Menagerie,' etc., and of innumerable descriptive Zoological papers.), at the British Museum, attacked me in fine style: "You have just reproduced Lamarck's doctrine and nothing else, and here Lyell and others have been attacking him for twenty years, and because YOU (with a sneer and laugh) say the ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... which it is discharged. It can easily be seen that no matter how good the books brought out by a firm, they would be likely to remain on stockroom shelves if readers were not properly made aware of their issue. The name "Publicity department" is the most descriptive title that can be given to the part of the staff devoting its energies to the many variations of news-spreading involved ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... always insisted, in the early stages of his delirium, on singing Hibernian ballads descriptive of the unflinching courage, pure patriotism and heroic sacrifices of the late Owen Roe O'Neill and O'Donnell Abu. Later in the evening he would howl like a timber-wolf and throw glasses, and toward morning he always fought it out on the floor with some enemy. Of course, in the sawmill ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... passed since their return to America without lamentations from Mrs. Pett on the subject of their failure to secure the young man's person. The occasion of Mrs. Pett's reading of the article in the Sunday Chronicle descriptive of the Lord Percy Whipple affair had been unique in the little man's domestic history. For the first time since he had known her the indomitable woman had completely broken down. Of all sad words of tongue or pen the saddest are these "It might have been!" and the thought ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... satirist, an office almost identical with Chaucer's. But he held it for little more than a year.), though doubtless it must have brought him into constant contact with merchants and with shipmen, and may have suggested to him many a broad descriptive touch. On the other hand, it is not necessary to be a poet to feel something of that ineffable ennui of official life, which even the self-compensatory practice of arriving late at one's desk, but departing from it early, can only abate, but not take ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... at a loss. For many years I had had in my possession two very important documents, the last memorial of 1878 and the report of the Military Committee thereon under General Bragg in 1881. With these two in my hand I proceeded to consult the Descriptive Catalogue of the Congressional Library. To my surprise, I found that these two very important documents had been omitted from the index. Calling attention to the fact, we looked them up in the body of the volume and ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... of the younger, may be searched in vain for the slightest evidence of moral or didactic sentiment. The instructive and ethical mannerisms of the later classicists had produced some beautiful and more accomplished verse, especially of a descriptive order, but its very essence had excluded self-revelation. Dennis, at whom Pope taught the world to laugh, but who was in several respects a better critic than either Addison or himself, had come close to the truth sometimes, but was for ever ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... with the plane of cleavage. A section across the cleavage then shows a maximum amount of absorption. A halo seen on this section simply produces this effect in a more intense degree. This is well shown in Plate XXIII (lower figure), on a portion of the halo-sphere. The descriptive name "Pleochroic Halo" has originated from this fact. We must conclude that the effect of the ionisation due to the alpha ray has not been to alter fundamentally the conditions which give rise to the optical properties of the ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... Chasseurs d'Afrique, and the trial of Anastasius Papadopoulos, I must refer you to the Algerian, Parisian, and London Press. There you will find an eagerly picturesque account of the whole miserable affair. Now, not only am I unable to compete with descriptive verbatim reporters on their own ground, but also a consecutive statement, either bald or graphic, of the tedious horrors Lola Brandt and I had to undergo, would be foreign to the purpose of these notes, however far from their original purpose ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... woven hoarfrost that was not to be found. There was none like it to be procured; this was the night of the little masquerade; it was indispensable; and immediately she proceeded to raise the house. In answer to her descriptive inquiry, Paula, who every noon nestled as near the sun as possible, responded in a high key from the attic a descriptive negative; neither had her mother, waking from a siesta in the garden, seen any white gauze folderols. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in England was as four to one compared with that of Ireland; though, according to the number of acres under cultivation, it ought not to exceed two to one. He then proceeded to read numerous extracts from the reports of the commissioners, descriptive of the extreme misery of the Irish peasantry. He described men as lying in bed for want of food; turning thieves in order to be sent to jail; lying on rotten straw in mud cabins, with scarcely any covering; feeding on unripe ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... this man a nature lover, a nature limner, worthy to take his place among our Giffords, Whittredges, McEntees, Bierstadts, and Beards? Truly original, natural, and American, who among our descriptive writers can ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Sedgwick. After dinner, the day of the ride, he sought him out, and they conversed together for two or three hours; or, rather, the Colonel talked and Sedgwick listened. The Colonel had been sent on many a service by his government; he was a keen observer, had good descriptive powers, and was an interesting talker. Moreover, he liked ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... descriptive names confined to boxers, such as Bombardier Wells and Gunboat Smith? Why not Rifleman Redmond, Airman Churchill, Solicitor George, Golfer Asquith, Bushman Wilding, Trundler Hitch, Dude Alexander, Bandsman Beecham, Hunger-Striker Pankhurst? Or, to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... the season, between May and November, of being highly gratified, except the mind is entirely depraved. To every visitant, the guide of Mr. Moncrief will not only be useful but entertaining. The poetical epistles of Miss Fidget are not only descriptive but very humorous, and the poetry of Mr. ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... no person shall be appointed by the respective States to receive them, they must be delivered 'to the overseers of the poor of the port or place where such ship or vessel may be brought or found,' and an account of your proceedings, together with the number and descriptive list of such negroes, mulattoes, or persons of color, must be immediately transmitted to the governor or chief magistrate of the State. You will communicate to me, minutely, all ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... interior of Newgate—in an amateur capacity, of course; and, having carried our intention into effect, we proceed to lay its results before our readers, in the hope—founded more upon the nature of the subject, than on any presumptuous confidence in our own descriptive powers—that this paper may not be found wholly devoid of interest. We have only to premise, that we do not intend to fatigue the reader with any statistical accounts of the prison; they will be found at length ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... "City" is not necessarily descriptive: perhaps less so than the application of Euclidean axioms to advanced geometry. Physically, ...
— General Max Shorter • Kris Ottman Neville
... of 425 miles, concur in the statement that it is an undertaking unmatched in its severity and rigors by any like journey over the treeless and shrub-less spaces of the earth. "The Flight of a Tartar Tribe," as told by De Quincey, in his matchless descriptive style, carrying his readers with him through scenes of almost unparalleled warfare, privation, and cruelty, until the remnant of the Asiatic band stands beneath the shadow of the Chinese Wall to receive the welcome of their deliverer, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... the old blacks tell their legends you notice a great difference between them as raconteurs—some tell the bare plot or feature of the legend, others give descriptive touches all through. If they are strangers to their audience, they get it over as quickly as possible in a half-contemptuous way, as if saying, 'What do you want to know such rubbish for?' But if they know you well, and know ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... emerged not a big history, but a short novel. Short as it is, it has been called an epical poem in the manner of Homer, and a dramatisation of history in the manner of Shakespeare. Both remarks are just, though the influence of Homer is the more evident; in the descriptive passages, the style is deliberately Homeric, as it is in the romances of Sienkiewicz, which owe so much to this little book by Gogol. It is astonishing that so small a work can show such colossal force. Force is its prime quality—physical, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... I turned around to watch his face. I recognized the air—the opening passage from Haydn's Creation. I was soon spellbound, as were all the rest. Mrs. Flaxman laid down her fan; there were no melting passages to bring tears in this symphony, descriptive of primeval darkness, and confusion of the elements, the evil spirits hurrying away from the glad, new light into their native regions of eternal night—the thunder and storm and elemental terrors. Presently I turned to Mr. Winthrop. He was sitting ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... sense or other appertain to him? But what need of many words? It flashes on every reader whose imagination supplies an unpreoccupied, unrefracting, 'medium' to the Apostolic assertion, that corruption in this passage is a descriptive synonyme of the material sensuous organism common to saint and sinner,—standing in precisely the same relation to the man that the testaceous offensive and defensive armour does to the crab and tortoise. These slightly combined ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... "you and I have many pleasant and grateful memories, little pictures and stories, which seem like chapters in the history of this doubtful idea of yours: suppose that I should write some of them down, purely in a descriptive and narrative way, without committing myself to any opinion as to their morality; and suppose that a few of your opinions and prejudices, briefly expressed, were interspersed in the form of chapters to be skipped: would a book like that symbolize and illustrate the true inwardness of the ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... more tractable, agreeing to sell the land as far as the Cumberland River. In order to secure the additional territory watered by the tributaries of the Cumberland, Henderson agreed to pay an additional sum of two thousand pounds. Upon this day there originated the ominous phrase descriptive of Kentucky when The Dragging Canoe, dramatically pointing toward the west, declared that a DARK Cloud hung over that land, which was known as ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... would appear that at this period Nin-agal is still an independent deity. The later identification with Ea appears to be due to the idea of 'strength' involved in the name of Nin-agal. In the same way, many of the names of Ea were originally descriptive of independent gods who, because of the similarity of their functions to those of the great Ea, were absorbed by the latter. Their names transferred to Ea, are frequently the only trace left of their original ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... and subvert his throne. The soul of the enterprise was the great domestic John Cantacuzene; the sally from Constantinople is the first date of his actions and memorials; and if his own pen be most descriptive of his patriotism, an unfriendly historian has not refused to celebrate the zeal and ability which he displayed in the service of the young emperor. [89] That prince escaped from the capital under the pretence of hunting; erected his standard at ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... the two chief ways of sympathetic vision. We call our way the objective, the Egyptian the subjective. But objective and subjective are words that depend absolutely on your starting point. Spiritual and sensual are much more descriptive terms. ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... "The name's somewhat descriptive, even if it is incomplete. As I said, visibility refraction doesn't work right in their case. Somehow, they pick up visual sensation right through a screen, regardless of its adjustment. But things seen through a screen are distorted, and look abnormal to them. Unless they're used to it, they get ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... has no power of expressing truths of birth and germination; it paints effects, results, the caput mortuum, but not the cause, the motive power, the native force the development of any phenomenon whatever. It is analytic and descriptive, but it explains nothing, for it avoids all beginnings and processes of formation. With it crystallization is not the mysterious act itself by which a substance passes from the fluid state to the solid state. It is the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... recently discovered manuscript of Wilhelm Meisters Theatralische Sendung occurs this passage, evidently self-descriptive: "Als Knabe hatte er zu grossen praechtigen Worten und Spruechen eine ausserordentliche Liebe, er schmueckte seine Seele damit aus wie mit einem koestlichen Kleide, und freute sich darueber, als wenn sie zu ihm selbst gehoerten ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... century, wrote poems upon the subject of Nature; but it would be foolish to suppose that Wordsworth and Coleridge merely carried on a fashion which Thomson had begun. Nature, with them, was something more than a peg for descriptive and didactic verse; it was the manifestation of the vast and mysterious forces of the world. The publication of The Ancient Mariner is a landmark in the history of letters, not because of its descriptions of natural objects, but ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... behaviour, no word could be better than goistering, and we prefer goister to gauster. Its likeness to boisterous will assist it, and we guess that it will be accepted. In the little glossary at the end of the book goistering is explained as guffawing. That word is not so descriptive of the jackdaw, since it suggests 'coarse bursts of laughter', and the coarseness is absent from the fussy vulgarity and mere needless jabber ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... stone to the descriptive cairn heaped up by generations of tourists in honor of the King-Cataract; simply because it is presumption in any man to pass judgment on that famous scene till he has studied it for more days than I could spare hours. I do not think, the eye is disappointed, even at first sight: ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Naples, Florence, Rome, Munich, Paris, Athens, and London, or from their American agents. Such photographs, in the usual size, 8 x 10 inches, sell, unmounted, at from 6 to 8 francs a dozen. All dealers in lantern slides issue descriptive catalogues of a great variety of archaeological subjects. In addition to photographs and lantern slides, a collection of stereoscopic views is very helpful in giving vividness and interest to instruction in ancient history. An admirable series ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... the constructions of bits, each more peculiar in form or more torturing in effect than that which has preceded it. I have seen collections of these instruments of torments, and among them some of which Marlowe's curious adjective would have been highly descriptive. It may be, however, that the word is 'ring-led,' in which shape it would mean guided by the ring on ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... poet, he was a leader of the Huguenots in the wars that ended with the accession of Henry IV. After the assassination of Henry IV., his safety became more and more threatened in France, and he withdrew finally to Geneva. His main work is a long descriptive and narrative poem, but in many parts essentially lyrical, les Tragiques, a fierce picture of France in the civil wars. In his lyrics, which comprise stances, odes, and lgies, he is a follower ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... memoir on fossil shells, in which he described many new species, was published in 1802, after the appearance of his Hydrogeologie, to which he refers. It was the first of a series of descriptive papers, which appeared at intervals from 1802 to 1806. He does not fail to open the series of memoirs with some general remarks, which prove his broad, philosophic spirit, that characterizing the founder of a new science. He begins ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... or two there came a letter-unusually long for Gaston— to Mrs. Gasgoyne herself. It was simple, descriptive, with a dash of epigram. It acknowledged that he had felt the curb, and wanted a touch of the unconventional. It spoke of Ian Belward in a dry phrase, and it asked for the date of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to the verbal variants descriptive of intuition, noted at the beginning: intuitive knowledge is expressive knowledge, independent and autonomous in respect to intellectual function; indifferent to discriminations, posterior and empirical, to reality and to unreality, to formations and perceptions of space ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... Turk lying amid houris. The gnawing, creeping sensualities of his phrase—his one phrase—how descriptive it is of the form and whiteness of a shoulder, the supple fulness of the arm's muscle, the brightness of eyes increased by kohl! Scent is burning on silver dishes, and through the fumes appear the subdued colours ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... he gave his place is a good proof of that," said Harry. "If he had called it the Colonnade, that would have been at least descriptive and appropriate; but he tacked on the Manor, which had neither rhyme nor ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... hold of the susceptibilities of a man who loves the country,—for his coinage of all sweet sounds of birds, all murmur of leaves, all riot and blossoming of flowers, into fragrant verse,—he was without a peer in his day. It is not that he is so true to natural phases in his descriptive epithets, not that he sees all, not that he has heard all; but his heart has drunk the incense of it, and his imagination refined it, and his fancy set it aflow in those jocund lines which bound and writhe and exult with a passionate love for the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... low in my life,' said the lady who always brought back an A.D.C. from the Castle, and the phrase was cited afterwards as being admirably descriptive ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... manuscript there is evidence of indecision on the author's part. His heroine had begun to bother him a trifle. He had written a half-dozen lines descriptive of Miss Andrews's emotions at receiving a special note of invitation, subsequently erasing them. The word "gleefully" had been scratched out, and then restored in place of "scornfully," which had ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... the art of literature—such a sentence, for the sake of example, as "the dawn was breaking"—the matter is quite different. If the sentence came at the beginning of a short story, it might be a mere descriptive prelude. If it were the last sentence in a short story, it might be poignant with some peculiar irony or triumph. Can any one read Browning's great monologues and not feel that they are built up like a good short ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... feet. No sooner, however, had she recognized him than she loosed her hold, flopped him back into the gutter, and, addressing the policeman, bade him "Fur the love of hivvin set him on again!" which the policeman declined to do, despite Mrs. McGrath's magnificent and descriptive denunciation, addressed to the entire neighborhood, in which Elmendorf's personal character and professional career came in for glowing and not altogether inaccurate portrayal. Slowly the dishevelled scholar found his legs, ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... alleged or ascertained, of the Heroic Age of nations. It is enough for the purpose of this book that the name "Heroic Age" is a good one for this stage of the business; it is obviously, and on the whole rightly, descriptive. For the stage displays the first vigorous expression, as the natural thing and without conspicuous restraint, of private individuality. In savagery, thought, sentiment, religion and social organization may be exceedingly complicated, full of the most subtle and strange relationships; ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... was fully assured. Fatty Freeman was a young man for whose opinion older men were accustomed to wait. His person more than justified his praenomen, for Mr. Harper Freeman, Jr., was undeniably fat. "Fat, but fine and frisky," was ever his own comment upon the descriptive adjective by which his friends distinguished him. And fine and frisky he was; fine in his appreciation of good eating, fine in his judgment of good cattle and fine in his estimate of men; frisky, too, and utterly irrepressible. "Harp's just like a young pup," his own father, ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... to speculate vaguely whether or not Desmond knew the nature of the tight place—tight was such a very descriptive adjective—out of which he had pulled Scaife. Then he ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... upon which it was situated the waters swept with a mighty impetus and a deafening roar that gave the place its descriptive name of Rushy Shore. As the air and water here were mildly salt, the situation was deemed very healthy and well suited to such delicate lungs as required a stimulating atmosphere, and yet could not bear the full strength ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... hereditary rank but that of royal birth, and that of the chiefs of the military tribes, who may be regarded as a military aristocracy; but there is a system of life titles which secure to the holders certain privileges and immunities, and are much prized. The titles are nominally descriptive of some personal quality, talent, or trust, such as Councillor of the State, Confidant of the King, Trusted of the Sultan; they are also bestowed upon ladies in high position. The name of an animal is never introduced ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... No descriptive language can express the confusion and shock which the words, "break off," introduced into the conversation. It is enough to say that these four apparently well-bred persons all ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... this same economist a comprehensive paragraph descriptive of its riches: "Through hills which line these [confluent] rivers run enormous veins of bituminous coal. Located near the surface, the coal is easily mined, and elevated above the rivers, much of it comes down to Pittsburgh by gravity. There are ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... signified to us that we must first purchase a ticket for each grown person, at the price of half a franc each. This expenditure admitted us into the sacristy, where we were taken in charge by a guide, who came down upon us with an avalanche or cataract of French, descriptive of a great many treasures reposited in this chapel. I understood hardly more than one word in ten, but gathered doubtfully that a bullet which was shown us was the one that killed the late Archbishop of Paris, on the floor of the cathedral. [But this was ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... strong-walled, deep-moated cities along his frontier, and made one, drawn by lot, out of every ten families of the countryside, go to live in these fortified towns. Their rulers were burgraves, or city counts. Titles now so largely ornamental were then descriptive of ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier |
