"Figuratively" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shell opened actual war; its discharge was, figuratively speaking, heard around the world; it awakened a lethargic people in the Northern States of the Union; it caused many who had never dreamed of war to prepare for it; it set on fire the blood of a people, North and South, of ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... simile to death, Hester," said Mr. Gresley, impatiently. "If you had listened to what I tried to say this morning you would have seen I only used the word worm figuratively. I never meant it literally, as any one could see who was not determined to misunderstand me. Worms pay school-rates! Such folly is positively sickening, if it were ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... sunshine journeying through the prisoner's cell,—it may be considered as something sent from Heaven to keep the soul alive and glad within him. And there is something equivalent to this sunbeam in the darkest circumstances; as flowers, which figuratively grew in Paradise, in the dusky room of a poor maiden in a great city; the child, with its sunny smile, is a cherub. God does not let us live anywhere or anyhow on earth without placing something of Heaven close at hand, by rightly using and considering which, the earthly darkness or trouble will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... FETTER.—As the plough is the typical instrument of industry, so the fetter is the typical instrument of the restraint or subjection necessary in a nation—either literally, for its evil-doers, or figuratively, in accepted laws, for its wise and good men. You have to choose between this figurative and literal use; for depend upon it, the more laws you accept, the fewer penalties you will have to endure, and the fewer punishments to enforce. For wise laws and just restraints are ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... often been said figuratively, that marriage is a lottery; but we do not recollect to have met with a practical illustration of the truth of the simile before the following, which is a free translation of an ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... you, not my last, but my first adventure,—I mean the first adventure of my life, my first fall,—for it is a moral fall after all, in the arms of Venus. Oh! I am not going to tell you my first—what shall I call it?—my first appearance; certainly not. The leap over the first hedge (I am speaking figuratively) has nothing interesting about it. It is generally rather a disagreeable one, and one picks oneself up rather abashed, with one charming illusion the less, with a vague feeling of disappointment and sadness. That realization of love the first ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... through the Academy building, which, as it was vacation, was now being cleaned and made ready for the fall term. Globes, maps, blackboards, collections of minerals, electric machines, patent desks, dining-room, and dormitory passed before them in rapid succession, figuratively speaking; afterward they went up to the cupola to see the view, and finally settled themselves on the large ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... or supper in a tavern" (says Rubbi, the Petrarchal rather than Dantesque editor of the Parnaso Italiano, and a very summary gentleman); "here used figuratively, though it is not a word fit to be employed on serious and grand occasions" (in cose gravi ed illustri). See his "Dante" in that ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... literally and figuratively, for the work was heavy. The high winds which had kept the British squadrons to the ground, petered out to gentle breezes, and the air was alive with craft. Bombing raid, photographic reconnaissance and long-distance scouting ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... of musical sounds or a tune. For the mechanism of such an arrangement in a clock and in a set of bells, see the articles CLOCK and BELL. The word is also applied to the tune thus played by the bells and also to the harmonious "fall" of verse, and so, figuratively, to any harmonious agreement of thought or action. (2) (From Mid. Eng. chimb, a word meaning "edge," common in varied forms to Teutonic languages, cf. Ger. Kimme), the bevelled rim formed by the projecting staves at the ends of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... coldly and calmly all this had been calculated beforehand by the conspirators, to make sure that no absence of malice aforethought should degrade the grand malignity of settled purpose into the trivial effervescence of transient passion, the torch which was literally to launch the first missile, figuratively, to "fire the Southern heart" and light the flame of civil war, was given into the trembling hand of an old white-headed man, the wretched incendiary whom history will handcuff in eternal infamy with the temple-burner of ancient Ephesus. The first gun that spat its iron insult at Fort Sumter, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... outwards, worn on the edge of the hoods of bachelors of arts, etc. Therefore, if both budge and fur be taken literally the line is tautological. But 'budge' has the secondary sense of 'solemn,' like a doctor in his robes; and 'fur' may be used figuratively in the sense of sect, just as "the cloth" is used to denote the clergy. The whole phrase would thus be equivalent to 'solemn doctors of the Stoic sect.' It is possible that Milton makes equivocal reference to the two senses ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... to say, that in Arabic there is the like metaphor, of the sun's rays to a deer's horns. R. adds, that the Jews also attributed horns to Moses in another sense, figuratively for power, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... of the most thoughtful of liturgical students are agreed, from a source no less remote than the Temple of Solomon, and they are severed, to speak figuratively, by a valley not unlike that which in our thoughts divides the Mount of Beatitudes from the ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... over to England in those days, partly on business and partly to shock the king. He liked to go to the castle with his breeches tucked in his boots, figuratively speaking, and attract a great deal ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... married a person who had formerly been chaste, and fell only after her marriage. This view is no doubt the correct one, as is obvious from the relation of the figure to the reality. According to ver. 2, it is to be expressed figuratively that the people went a-whoring from Jehovah. The spiritual adultery presupposes that the spiritual marriage had already been concluded. Hence, the wife can be called a whoring wife, only on account of the whoredom which she practised after her marriage. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... temperare poculum, not figuratively, however, like Anacreon, but importng the love-philtres of the witches. By "cups of kisses" our poet may allude to a favorite gallantry among the ancients, of drinking when the lips of their mistresses had ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... impossible! Are your brains scattered? I speak figuratively, awaiting the time when they will be scattered in earnest. It must be some miserable jester who has worded, printed, and placarded this unconscionable decree. But no, it is in the usual form, the usual type. This is rather too much, Gentlemen of the Commune; it outsteps ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... Otherwise, I might be, figuratively speaking, stripped of my material here piece by piece, and I would finally stand before you with hardly a loin cloth of an idea which I could ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... did not take his hat off when the gentry rode by, and it was well known that he had jeered at several of the most important individuals in county office. Consequently, discreet persons who did not believe in the morals of "the masses" shook their heads at him, figuratively speaking, and predicted that the end of his career would be unfortunate. So it was not very likely that he would receive much patronage in ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... it were a matter of one," spoke up the big man, striking his breast in a way to make it perfectly apparent whom he meant by that word one. And having (if I may judge by the mingled laugh and growl of his companions) thus shown his hand both figuratively and literally, he relapsed into the calculation which seemed to absorb all of his ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... of extravagance, and, by implication, of dishonesty, and in return, the indignant widow had opened upon her such a volley of justifiable retaliation that Miss Shott, in great wrath, had retired from the house, followed, figuratively, by a small coin which she had brought as a present and which had ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... uncoveries, 'They literally bathed my shoes with their tears!' Idem, sed quantum mutatus ab illo! I am almost tempted to the ambiguous wish that he might have slipped in literally to one of the many graves he robbed figuratively. ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the name of America gives to the expansive progress of humanity. The patriots of both Houses, as the exponents of the noble and loftiest aspirations of the American people, whipped in—and this literally, not figuratively—whipped Mr. Lincoln into the glory of having issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The laws promulgated by this dying Congress initiated the Emancipation—generated the Proclamation of the 22d September, and of January 1st. History will not allow ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... the poorest Brazilian thinks much of is his affectionate wife who literally and figuratively is often in the same boat with her husband, pulling against the stream. Family ties are strong in Brazil and the sweet flower of friendship thrives in its sunny clime. The system of land and sea breezes prevail on the coast from Cape Frio to Saint Catherine ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... with Manila had been more or less suspended, and at intervals absolutely so, since the great naval engagement, just a few profited by the circumstances of war. One British firm there, figuratively speaking, "coined" money. They were able frequently to run a steamer, well known in Chinese waters (in which I have travelled myself), between Manila and Hong-Kong carrying refugees, who were willing to pay abnormally high rates of passage. In ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... would cease entirely could the Assembly have its own way in the matter. The system of communications, so well begun and already so productive of happy results, would come to an end. To turn the destiny of the highlander over to the lowlander is, figuratively speaking, simply to write his sentence of death; to condemn as fair a land as the sun shines on to renewed barbarism. We are shut up to this conclusion, not by theoretical considerations, but by experience. ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... day and the morning of the next, everybody in the camp worked hard and did what could be done to help the captain prepare for his voyage, and even Ralph, figuratively speaking, put his hand ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... Figuratively, Blizzard's tongue went into his cheek at the mention of Dr. Ferris, but the expression of his face underwent no change. "Of course," he said simply, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, "I have forgiven your father. ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... for a special purpose—that special purpose was to acquaint himself as thoroughly as possible with the doings of Frank Burchill. Burchill was there—he was almost on the point of saying, in the next cell!—there, in the flat across the corridor; figuratively, within touch, if it were not for sundry divisions of brick, mortar, and the like. Burchill's door was precisely opposite his own; there was an advantage in that fact. And in Triffitt's outer door (all these flats, ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... having proved abortive, they contrived ways and means of their own to reach the Land o' Heart's Desire. Helen's old bachelor uncle, a queer, dull old gentleman, whose mind was certainly not active, and whom Helen could, figuratively speaking, turn and twist about her little finger, was persuaded to pass the holidays at Wilmot Hall. He knew a number of people in Annapolis, so the path to a certain extent was cleared for Lily Pearl and Helen, though ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Figuratively, the camp's nose had tilted at this, and it stated pompously that it were better to preserve its classic purity of features and pro rata of toes, than to jeopardize these adjuncts through fear ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... (figuratively) walk round your coffee-cup, surveying its fair proportions from different points of view. If the coffee is strong and you are nervous—that's one thing. Again, if the coffee be weak and you be ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... Capt. Kennedy and Mr. Staunton, no doubt, used the words "starved" figuratively, for neglected by his country, for myself, I really do not know whether Homer really was neglected by ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... set her foot upon the threshold) was by the ingenious device of a young monk, who lifted her over in his arms. These peaceful women of Methodism are finding no obstacle now as did Hadwig of old; they do not need even figuratively to be lifted over the entering threshold; they are gladly welcomed, and are introducing a new element into the life of ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... arrives, and with it the other guests. At half-past eight your wife is beckoned mysteriously out of the room, where the parlour- maid informs her that the cook has expressed a determination, in case of further delay, to wash her hands, figuratively speaking, ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... consequence of a movement made in Mexico by General Valencia—others that it has been caused by a message received from General Paredes. We paid a visit in the evening to the old curate, who was pretty much in the dark, morally and figuratively, in a very large hall, where were assembled a number of females, and one tallow candle. Of course all were talking politics, and especially discoursing of the visit of the president the preceding night, and of his departure in the morning, and of his return in the afternoon, and of the difficulty ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... and they were wide enough to make New York or Chicago appear cramped by comparison. One could walk for hours in a straight line south from the public square in Mockawock and still not be "out in the country," figuratively speaking, although he might not see a house or a human being—unless he turned his head—after the first ten minutes. He could also walk west or north in the same futile effort to get out of the "city" ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... "exile" advisedly with regard to Madame Grambeau, and not figuratively at all. She was, I had been told, a bourgeoise, of good class, who had taken part in the early revolution, but who, when the canaille triumphed and drenched the land in blood, in the second phase of that fearful ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... Like stand at bay, etc., a term used when the stag, driven to extremity, turns round and faces his pursuers. Cf. Shakespeare, 1. Hen. VI. iv. 2. 52, where it is used figuratively (as ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... all, everybody—I speak figuratively—is happy. It may be that some poor little waif is hungry, having had only rice water for breakfast, it may be some sad hearts are beating under the gay kimonos, and it may be, Mate dear, that somebody, ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... gravity, its spatial extendedness is, as we have seen, due to levity. If we reduce the volume of a piece of physical matter by means of pressure, we therefore release levity-forces previously bound up in it, and these, as always happens in such cases, appear in the form of free heat. Figuratively speaking, we may say that by applying pressure to matter, latent levity is pressed out of it, somewhat like water out ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... said, we saw and read the heavens without Old-World dust in our eyes, and our book that was to be should teach the European moles the very alphabet of planets. Alas! I also was too indolent—truly, not figuratively; the ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... addressing William on a field of battle when he came toward him at the head of his troop. "William," said he, "you are my true and legitimate son. The rest are nobodies." He may, it is true, have only intended to speak figuratively in saying this, meaning that William was the only one worthy to be considered as his son, or it may be that it was an inadvertent and hasty acknowledgment that Rosamond, and not Eleanora, was his true wife. As time rolled on, however, and the political arrangements arising out of the ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... destructive energy. The origin is heavenly, in sharp contrast to the human origin of the kingdoms symbolised in the colossal man. That idea is twice expressed: once in plain words, 'the God of heaven shall set up a kingdom'; and once figuratively as being cut out of the mountain without hands. By the mountain we are probably to understand Zion, from which, according to many a prophecy, the Messiah King was to rule the earth (Ps. ii.; Isa. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... something which told against her. And why should it not be so? What good could be said? Janway's Mills had borne in upon her the complete sense of her outcast state. While professing a republican independence of New England spirit, the place figuratively touched its forehead to the earth before Miss Starkweather. She lived on an income inherited from people who had owned mills instead of working them; who employed—and discharged—hands. She would have been regarded as an ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... ordinary polonaise is opened by the most distinguished person of the gathering, whose privilege it is to conduct the whole file of the dancers or to break it up. This is called in Polish rey wodzic, figuratively, to be the leader, in some sort the king (from the Latin rex). To dance at the head was also called to be the marshal, on account of the privileges of a marshal at the Diets. The whole of this form is connected with the memories and customs of raising the militia (pospolite), or rather of the ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... actresses of his time. In those early days Booth used to come to rather formal luncheons, and at all such functions Richard and I ate our luncheon in the pantry, and when the great meal was nearly over in the dining-room we were allowed to come in in time for the ice-cream and to sit, figuratively, at the feet of the honored guest and generally, literally, on his or her knees. Young as I was in those days I can readily recall one of those lunch-parties when the contrast between Booth and Dion Boucicault struck my youthful mind most forcibly. Booth, with his deep-set, big black eyes, shaggy ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... me," she continued. "Oh, I didn't mean really—I mean figuratively; but never mind. Now, I'm nothing but a bubble and a toy, and I ache to be considered a philosopher. Don't you remember my telling you what a philosopher I was, the very first conversation that we ever had together? I do try so hard to ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... we proceed to study the technical methods of delineating characters, we must ask ourselves what constitutes a character worth delineating. A novelist is, to speak figuratively, the social sponsor for his own fictitious characters; and he is guilty of a social indiscretion, as it were, if he asks his readers to meet fictitious people whom it is neither of value nor of interest to know. Since he aims ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... Peirithoos, the former destined to cause the suicide of his father Aigeus; and with many more such myths. They can be traced, without room for doubt, back to simple expressions of the fact that the morning and the evening of the one day can only come when the previous day is past and gone; expressed figuratively by the statement that any one day must destroy its predecessor. This led to the stories of "the fatal children," which we find ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... identifications native Chinese scholars have often shown themselves hopelessly at sea. For instance, [tian] "the sky," figuratively God, was explained by the first Chinese lexicographer, whose work has come down to us from about one hundred years after the Christian era, as composed of [yi] "one" and [da] "great," the "one great" thing; whereas it was simply, ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... calculated beforehand by the conspirators, to make sure that no absence of malice aforethought should degrade the grand malignity of settled purpose into the trivial effervescence of transient passion, the torch which was literally to launch the first missile, figuratively, to "fire the southern heart" and light the flame of civil war, was given into the trembling hand of an old white-headed man, the wretched incendiary whom history will handcuff in eternal infamy with the temple-burner ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... each other, until the Spirit of Wrath was crushed. And when Diana is said to hunt with her nymphs in the woods, it does not mean merely, as Wordsworth puts it,[78] that the poet or shepherd saw the moon and stars glancing between the branches of the trees, and wished to say so figuratively. It means that there is a living spirit, to which the light of the moon is a body; which takes delight in glancing between the clouds and following the wild beasts as they wander through the night; and that this spirit sometimes assumes a perfect human ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... reached this rather astonishing conclusion. I have no doubt that all of his kind—and it is not a stupid kind, by any means—think the same. I tried to tell him about America, where we were all equals in theory (I omitted "theory"), and yet where some of us still "drive other people," figuratively speaking. But he only laughed and shook his head, and said he did not believe that all men were equal in such a land any more than they were in Russia. That was the sort of wall against which I was always being brought up, with a more or less painful bump, when I attempted to elucidate the institutions ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... to hear it,' said Mr. Micawber. 'It was at Canterbury where we last met. Within the shadow, I may figuratively say, of that religious edifice immortalized by Chaucer, which was anciently the resort of Pilgrims from the remotest corners of—in short,' said Mr. Micawber, 'in the ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the punch there began to be a little more freedom. Some prohibitionists among the working people went away when they found that the lemonade was punch; but Mrs. Munger did not know it, and she saw the ideal of a Social Union figuratively accomplished in her own house. She stirred about among her guests till she produced a fleeting, empty good-fellowship among them. One of the shoe-shop hands, with an inextinguishable scent of leather and the character of a droll, ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... who are disposed to smile at the idea of a live man crushed (figuratively) under the heel of a ghost, I beg you to look back upon your own experience, and count up the happenings which have struck you as mysterious. You will be astonished at their number. But nothing is so mysterious ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... is characterized by the durability of that metal or not, is a question which we leave to the decision of posterity; we cannot, however, help thinking that, considering the boldness of our attempt, it possesses figuratively at least, something in common with the substance in question— and we would fain hope that that something does not consist ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... in mines, but to the circumstance of their digging up iron, the substance by means of which they might acquire freedom and independence. This is quite in the manner of Tacitus. The word iron was figuratively used by the ancients to signify military force in general. Thus Solon, in his well-known answer to Croesus, observed to him, that the nation which possessed more iron would be master of all ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... hurled a dynamite bomb at him the result could have been no more surprising. The lank, sallow man went up into the air, figuratively. He went up a mile or more, and on the way down he reached his hand inside the kitchen door and brought it forth enveloping the barrel of a ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... used in two senses in the Bible: figuratively, as denoting existence which may have a beginning, but will have no end, e. g., angels, the human soul; literally, denoting an existence which has neither beginning nor ending, like that of God. Time has past, present, future; eternity has not. Eternity is infinite duration without any beginning, ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... five minutes of our meeting. And that understanding would never permit me to think twice about him. He is a cheerful companion; but—no, auntie, count him out. As for the others—no, thanks. The man I marry will have to be a man, some one who, when I do wrong, can figuratively take me across his knee. The man I marry must be my master, auntie. Don't be shocked. I mean it. And I haven't met such a man under your roof. You see all my ideas are ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... as the Zapotec women from here to Tehuantepec, but a few were dressed in striking huipilis of native weaving, with embroidered patterns, and had their black hair done up in great rings around their heads, bright strips of cloth or ribbon being intermingled in the braiding. Literally and figuratively shaking the dust of the Mixe towns from our feet, we now descended into the Zapotec country. We were oppressed by a cramped, smothered feeling as we descended from the land of forested mountains and beautiful streams. At evening we reached San Miguel, the ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... passed through both my ears, and I have remembered them. I am accused, and I am not guilty." (The interpreter translated each sentence as it was delivered, and gave it as nearly verbatim as possible—observe, the pronoun I is here used figuratively, for his party, and for the tribe). "I thought I would come down to see my red-headed father, to hold a talk with him.—I come across the line (boundary)—I see the cattle of my white brother dead—I see the Sauk kill them in great numbers—I said that there would be trouble—I turn to go to ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... towards the end of 1790, on his first trip to England; in 1791 Mozart perished miserably, and was laid in a pauper's grave—the man whom Haydn called the greatest composer of the time was buried by the parish, and in 1792 Haydn returned triumphantly from England, his brow wreathed with laurel, figuratively, and his pockets crammed with English notes and gold, literally. There are a few other odds and ends worth mentioning. His opera, Orlando Paladino, written in 1782, made a great hit, and under its German name of Ritter Roland ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... in its very nature stupid. It is stupid because the aim of life (I use the expression only figuratively, and I could just as well speak of the essence of life, or of the world) is to gain a knowledge of our own bad will, so that our will may become an object for us, and that we may undergo an inward conversion. Our body is itself ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Ruler of the Valley—the name given figuratively to a dense gray mist which the south wind sweeps into the valleys from the mountain tops. It is well known as ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... hemmed up in a corner of the cart-shed, and his brother and sister make pretence, to tear him limb from limb. Zadkiel defends himself gallantly, but has to succumb at last, for he is fairly rolled on his back, and in a few minutes is, figuratively speaking, turned inside out. Then they espy the good-natured admiring face of their mother, peering at them over the corner of the straw, and at her they all rush. They make believe that she is a fox, and her life is accordingly not ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... to despair," breaking up the images of the gods, allowing the holy fires of the temples to go out, lighting none in their homes, destroying their furniture and domestic utensils, and tearing their clothes to rags. This disorder and gloom signified that figuratively the end of the world was ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... The Americans then informed Penny, who was pushing for Wellington Channel; and he, after some trouble, succeeded in catching the "Assistance," and, on going on board of her, learnt all they had to tell him, and saw what traces they had discovered. Captain Penny then returned—as he figuratively expressed it—"to take up the search from Cape Riley like a blood-hound," and richly was ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... it clear that for the purpose of Human Engineering the old concepts of matter, space and time are sufficient to start with; they are sufficient in much the same way as they have been sufficient in the old science of mechanics. Figuratively speaking Human Engineering is a higher order of bridge engineering—it aims at the spanning of a gap in practical life as well as in knowledge. The old meanings of matter, space and time were good enough to ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... afternoon. Lalage is going to him with that text drawn in her hand. She's also taking Miss Battersby, a wedding ring, a cake, and a white satin dress. I'm speaking figuratively of course." ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... acknowledge that she did not, and under a hot volley of questions from Donna admitted further that not a soul in San Pasqual had even hinted to her of such a contingency. Too late the spinster realized that she had, figuratively speaking, placed all of her eggs in ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... the particular fact that he robbed the till and got away with it. We seldom hear of a penitent of this kind being indicted by a Grand Jury, tried, convicted and jailed on the basis of his salvation outcries. He talks figuratively. ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... Richard said, without any confirmatory oath, that he should hang Adhemar of Limoges and the Count of Saint-Pol, all who heard him believed it. The Abbot Milo believed it for one. Figuratively, you can see his hands up as you read him. 'To hang two knights of such eminent degree and parts,' he writes, 'were surely a great scandal in any Christian king. Not that the punishment were undeserved or the executioner insufficient, God knoweth! ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... we know the custom that prevailed in ancient times of putting the sins of the people, figuratively speaking, into a white cloth, dipping the cloth into blood, tying it to the horns of the scapegoat, and turning the animal loose in the wilderness till the sun, air and rain had bleached it white, we can not appreciate the expression, 'though ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... the knitting-needles of women clicked, as they did throughout the length and breadth of the land. And the young men left shop and trade and counting-house. And young parsons fretted, and some obtained the Bishop's permission to become Army chaplains, and others, snapping their fingers (figuratively) under the Bishop's nose, threw their cassocks to the nettles and put on the full (though in modern times not very splendiferous) panoply of war. And in course of time the brigade of artillery rolled away and ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... Still, I must prove with them, since there is nothing in our language to replace them. Deaf-blind metaphors to correspond do not exist and are not necessary. Because I can understand the word "reflect" figuratively, a mirror has never perplexed me. The manner in which my imagination perceives absent things enables me to see how glasses can magnify things, bring them nearer, or ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... care whether any subtle change was becoming manifest in the attitude of her fellow boarders. The worst, she felt sure, had already overtaken her. In reaction to the sensitive, shrinking mood of the previous day, a spirit of defiance had taken possession of her. Figuratively she declared that the world could go to the devil, and squared ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... as if the musicians were tired too. Mrs. Bellairs had resumed her chair on deck, but some of the elder ladies were gathered round her; Bella and Lucia sat together in one corner. Dr. Morton, the most desirable parti in Cacouna, was literally, as well as figuratively, at Bella's feet, and Maurice leaned on the railing beside them. Mr. Percy was happier than he had been all day; he had been taken possession of by a pretty young matron—an Englishwoman, who still talked of "home," and they had found out ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... they are so precocious that one is constantly deceived in guessing their age. She would have been pretty if she had been clean; and was abundantly and expensively ornamented. Sometimes we hear it figuratively said of a domestic coquette, that she carries all her property on her back. These Greeks must be well off, if it may not sometimes be so said with propriety of them. They have a plan of advertising a young lady's assets, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... weary of the amusement and dropped it, didn't you? Well, you dropped Linton with it into a Slough of Despond. He was in earnest: in love, really. As true as I live, he's dying for you; breaking his heart at your fickleness: not figuratively, but actually. Though Hareton has made him a standing jest for six weeks, and I have used more serious measures, and attempted to frighten him out of his idiotcy, he gets worse daily; and he'll be under the sod before summer, ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... contending for the issue. The Bastille was to be either the prize or the prison of the assailants. The downfall of it included the idea of the downfall of despotism, and this compounded image was become as figuratively united as Bunyan's Doubting Castle and ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... ladies,' said that gentleman, airily, after he had prostrated himself, figuratively as well as disfiguratively, before Miss Henrietta, bowed over Bertha's hand, and drew his chair to Fanny's sewing stand, for the triple purpose of confusing her zephyrs, flirting at a side table, and ascertaining whether Henrietta had fulfilled the luxuriant promise of her earlier youth. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... matter with yer?" snarled the man, suddenly dropping the mask that he had been figuratively wearing while using ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... happened. The man of the family died, or was killed, and the woman forced to build a shelter as best she might until the boys grew big enough to help? That, too, had happened. Whatever the reason, some of the best Anglo-Saxon stock had been stranded in the Cumberlands, staying there literally and figuratively while the world advanced. ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... to him henceforth. This is the third Hohenzollern whom we mark as a conspicuous acquirer in the Hohenzollern family, this Friedrich IV., builder of the second story of the House. If Conrad, original Burggraf, founded the House, then (figuratively speaking) the able Friedrich III., who was Rudolf of Hapsburg's friend, built it one story high; and here is a new Friedrich, his Son, who has added a second story. It is astonishing, says Dryasdust, how many feudal superiorities the Anspach and Baireuth people still have in Austria;—they ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... lady appeared, displaying such a small proportion of woman to such a large proportion of purple and fine linen, that she looked as if she was literally as well as figuratively "dressed ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... a beehive; used, like apiarium in the same sense, figuratively for a collection of hard-working people, or a scholarly work (e.g. dictionary) involving bee-like industry. By analogy the term is used for the hollow of the ear, where ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... minute or two after, they were talking as lively as two young magpies. They had figuratively kissed and ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... ordinary young business man, doctor, or lawyer, or man about town, into three short years; that he has learned to think and to act quickly, to be patient and unmoved when every one else has lost his head, actually or figuratively speaking; to write as fast as another man can talk, and to be able to talk with authority on matters of which other men do not venture even to think until they have read what he has written with a copy-boy at his ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... place by the General as the Emperor's representative, a high position and great responsibility for so young a soldier. They made a hasty breakfast and broke camp. Indeed, there was little to break. The words are only used figuratively, since they had no tents. In half an hour after Marteau had left the Emperor's headquarters, the squadrons were formed. Nansouty, attended by his staff and the young officer, galloped to the head of the column, gave the word of command ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... silent. It was well known that no one dared mention her sons' names to Mrs. Hope. Figuratively she removed her shoes from off her feet, for she felt that ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... it into very plain language, I resolved to bully Charlie off his hobby. He had thrown his mother at my head (figuratively speaking, of course) until, if she had been present in propria persona, I should have been tempted to try Hiawatha's remarkable feat with his grandmother, and throw her up against the moon. But as I could not revenge myself upon her personally, I began to lay deep and subtle plans for inducing ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... stable-yard. By-and-by he was left severely alone, and for the impudence of him, and his courage, and his endurance, and his general cockiness, and his extraordinary ingenuity in mischief, he was called "Speug," which is Scotch for a sparrow, and figuratively expressed the ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... droll expression, remarked, "You seem to live rather in the nethermost depths. You must feel as if you were going to heaven literally and figuratively every time you ascend to ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... implies an arithmetical computation; if four persons lose respectively $10, $20, $30, and $40, the average loss is $25. The word is used figuratively by Dr. O.W. Holmes in "The average intellect of five hundred persons, taken as they come, is not very high." In the sense of "usual," "common in occurrence," "of the usual standard," ordinary ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... lost their fragrance. What she needs is a good dose of common sense, but we don't seem to be able to administer it. If only we could put a cannon cracker under her chair, maybe it would rouse her. Oh, I was just speaking figuratively; I didn't mean the real article," he hastened to assure his small audience, as a gasp ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... churches and altars, to consecrate the ornaments of churches, to ordain abbots and abbesses and the secular clergy. Gilbert's diagram represented the bishop as ruling two churches; but he explains that this is to be interpreted figuratively. A bishop may have as many as a thousand churches within his jurisdiction: he must have at ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... figuratively, the highest point or culminating-point of anything; the zenith; as the meridian of ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... his elegant plum-colored coat—with stockings, long embroidered waistcoat, and scarlet ribbon tied around his powdered hair, Verty came forward to meet his innamorata, as joyous and careless as ever, and, figuratively ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke |
