"Literal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so far as is known, spent all his life in writing and lecturing. Though he was not strictly either an orator or a philosopher, his works include both speeches and philosophical treatises; but his chief distinction and his permanent interest are as a novelist both in the literal and in the accepted sense of the word—a writer of prose romances in which he carried the novella elocutio to the highest point it reached. He was born about the year 125; the Metamorphoses, his most famous ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... many literal citations of and references to foreign words, sounds, and alphabetic symbols drawn from many languages, including Gothic and Phoenician, but chiefly Latin and Greek. This English Gutenberg edition, constrained to the characters of 7-bit ASCII code, adopts ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of the self sacrificing qualities that a brother should have for a sister, he was nevertheless her blood kin, and without doubt he had loaded his pistol with a bullet for the man whom he believed would have it in his power to crush that beautiful sister to the earth, even to the point of literal seduction. For judged from the nihilists' standpoint again, they understood Zara to be one who would not hesitate at any sacrifice, in defense of the cause ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... avoid the vice of rhetorical amplification. It also prevented him from missing the point of a joke of which he was unconscious. As a rule, his 'Johnsoniana' are better than those of Sir John Hawkins or Mrs. Piozzi, because they are more literal. In one or two instances an embellishment which improved a story was rejected by him because it was not true. These powers—observation, scrupulous accuracy and industry, and enthusiastic admiration of his hero—were all that he needed for ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... emphatically that he has authority for every single bit of Folk-lore recorded. Very often his work was merely that of a translator, for most of his information, derived from the people, was spoken in Welsh, but he has given in every instance a literal rendering of the narrative, just as he heard it, without embellishments or ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... historically true. The familiar story of a damosel imprisoned in a gloomy dungeon, guarded by a cruel dragon—and then, when all her hope had vanished, rescued by the sudden appearance of the brilliant knight, who carried her away from her dull prison to a land of sunshine and happiness—this became the literal experience of Elizabeth Barrett. Her love for her husband was the passionate love of a woman for a man, glorified by adoration for the champion who had miraculously transformed her life from the depths of despair to the topmost heights of joy. He came, "pouring ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... shown than in this peculiarity of its structure. As in the common law, so in the constitution, change has been effected in substance without any corresponding change in terminology. There is hardly one of the phrases used to describe the position of the crown which can be understood in its literal sense, and many of them are currently accepted in more senses than one. The American constitution of 1789 reproduced, however, in essentials, and with necessary modifications, the contemporary British model, and, where it did so, has preserved the old conception of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... view Judaisers of a narrow creed. Prudential motives, no less than a predisposition in favor of the old national canon, may have hindered them from expressly citing any apocryphal production. The apostle Paul and probably the other writers of the New Testament, believed in the literal inspiration of the Biblical books, for he uses an argument in the Galatian epistle which turns upon the singular or plural of a noun.(93) And as the inspiration of the Septuagint translation was commonly held by the Christians of the early centuries, it may be that ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... material is all his own. He asserted the poet's claim to borrow from all science, and from every phase of nature, the associations and images which he wants; and he showed that those images and associations did not lose their poetry by being expressed with the most literal reality. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... nearer approach to proper pronunciation of the word than was vouchsafed to the genuine Normans when they say "Abe Linkin." That the Normans cherished the thought of their Northern origin is a modern error. Sir F. Palgrave, with literal accuracy, assures us that they "dismissed all practical recollection in their families of their original Scandinavian ancestry. Not one of their nobles ever thought of deducing his lineage from the Hersers or Jarls or Vikings ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... Almost all the extant copies of this drama—and no fewer than ten have been examined—appear to vary in certain literal particulars. Of two copies in the Malone collection, one presents additions which might bespeak it a later impression than the other; and yet, on the other hand, has errors (some of a serious kind) peculiar to itself. The ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... dreamed of Death:—what will it be to die Not in a dream, but in the literal truth With all Death's adjuncts ghastly and uncouth, The pang that is the last and the last sigh? Too dulled, it may be, for a last good-bye, Too comfortless for any one to soothe, A helpless charmless spectacle of ruth Through long last hours, so long while yet they fly. ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... slave? After directing, that the labour of all the household, 'man-servant and maid-servant,' should cease, it then proceeds to the ox and the ass, and the stranger that is within thy gates. Now, gentlemen, this cannot be applied to the stranger in the literal sense of the word, the hospitality of the age forbidding that labour should be required of him. At that time slaves were brought from foreign lands, and were a source of traffic, as may be inferred by the readiness with which the Ishmaelites purchased ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... word with its literal translation, "tail-horn-hoofed Satan," and be shy of compound epithets, the components of which are indebted for their union exclusively to the printer's hyphen. Henry More, indeed, would have naturalized the word without hesitation, and 'cercoceronychous' would have shared the astonishment ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... avowedly fiction. They are, at the same time, true, in that the material of which they are moulded consists of facts,—facts as precise as painstaking observation and anxious regard for truth can make them. Certain of the stories, of course, are true literally. Literal truth may be attained by stories which treat of a single incident, or of action so restricted as to lie within the scope of a single observation. When, on the other hand, a story follows the career of a wild creature of the wood or air or water through wide intervals of time and space, ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of the Doctrine of Descent is that the plants and animals of the present-day are the lineal descendants of ancestors on the whole somewhat simpler, that these again are descended from yet simpler forms, and so on backwards towards the literal "Protozoa" and "Protophyta" about which we unfortunately know nothing. Now no one supposes that Darwin originated this idea, which in rudiment at least is as old as Aristotle. What Darwin did was to make it current intellectual coin. He gave it a form that commended itself ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... against Hurry. It was a Divine object lesson of perfect law, perfect plan, perfect order, perfect method. Six days of work carefully planned, scheduled and completed were followed by,—rest. Whether we accept the story as literal or as figurative, as the account of successive days or of ages comprising millions of years, matters little if we but ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... correct list of all the royal letters which had been sent by different English monarchs to the Grand Masters of Malta, with their dates, the languages in which they were written, and stating to whom they were addressed. I now purpose to forward with your permission from time to time, literal translations of these letters, which Mr. Strickland of this garrison has kindly promised to give me. The subjoined are the first in order, and have been carefully compared, by Dr. Vella and myself, with the originals now in the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... to judge the quality of literature, distinguishing with ease between what is literal and what is imaginative, or figurative, or humorous. When they read that the rope with which the powerful Fenris-Wolf was bound was "made out of such things as the sound of a cat's footsteps, the roots of the mountains, the breath of a fish and the sinews of ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... example, though a stereotyped conception of the shepherd poet ruled,—as witness the verses of Hughes, [Footnote: See Corydon.] Collins, [Footnote: See Selim, or the Shepherd's Moral.] and Thomson,[Footnote: See Pastoral on the Death of Daemon.]—it is obvious that these gentlemen were in no literal sense expressing their views on the poet's habitat. It was hardly necessary for Thomas Hood to parody their efforts in his eclogues giving a broadly realistic turn to shepherds assuming the singing robes. [Footnote: ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... the effect of the transverse series of filaments, and the geometric color patterns of the basketry were reproduced in incised lines. When these peoples came to paint their wares it was natural that the colored patterns native to the basketry should also be reproduced, and many more or less literal transfers by copying are to be found. A fine example of these painted textile designs is shown in Fig. 354. It is executed in a masterly style upon a handsome vase of the white ware of ancient Tusayan. Not only are the details reproduced with all their geometric exactness, but the arrangement of ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... Scripture here, sir, especially in that gross literal way! The new lights here have taught us that Scripture's saying one thing, is a certain proof that it means another. Except, by ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... Bray to conjure popularity, she had set up her establishment immediately after her husband's death. Then the old lady herself had fallen asleep—in her case a literal description of her disease. One night they had put her quietly to bed as usual, and in the morning she was still asleep—a slumber which really ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... kettle boiled, I made porridge and coffee; and that, beyond the literal drawing of water, and the preparation of kindling, which it would be hyperbolical to call the hewing of wood, ended my domestic duties for the day. Thenceforth my wife laboured single-handed in the palace, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... same people returned with Mansong's answer, a literal translation of which I give as follows. "Mansong says he will protect you; that a road is open for you every where, as far as his hand (power) extends. If you wish to go to the East, no man shall harm you from Sego till you pass Tombuctoo. If you wish to go to the West, you ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... dress uniform of a general, received us in a haughty manner, and cross-questioned us in the most minute and tedious manner. Dennis somewhat puzzled him by the style of his answers, which were anything but literal translations of what Captain Hassall said. The result, however, was favourable, and we were allowed to go wherever we chose about the city, and to get the necessary repairs of our ships executed, and to obtain all the ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... While we witness the presumptuous priest pronouncing infallible the decrees of his own erring judgment, we see the high-minded philosopher abjuring the eternal and immutable truths which he had himself the glory of establishing. In the ignorance and prejudices of the age—in a too literal interpretation of the language of Scripture—in a mistaken respect for the errors that had become venerable from their antiquity—and in the peculiar position which Galileo had taken among the avowed enemies of the church, we may find the elements ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... it—"Thou shalt live!" Nothing affects and astonishes one more in these inscriptions than this calm, assured confidence that death was but a profound sleep,—a rest unspeakably grateful after such a weary life of awful suffering,—and that they should see their beloved ones again. It was a literal realisation of the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews: "And others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection." They surrendered all that life holds dear, and life itself, from loyalty to the God of truth, knowing whom they had believed, and ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... rebuilt, the ground that had lain fallow and tangled with briers and thorns is to be tilled, and to bloom like Eden, a restored paradise. How far the fulfilment has halted behind the promise, the melancholy condition of Palestine to-day may remind us. Whether the literal fulfilment is to be anticipated or no seems less important than to note that the experience of forgiveness (and of the consequent blessings described above) is the precursor of this fair picture. Therefore, the Church's condition of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... book, and, instead of understanding each sentence according to the main purpose and intention, interpret every phrase in its literal sense as conveying, and designed to convey, a metaphysical verity, or historical fact:—what a strange medley of doctrines should we not educe? And yet this is the way in which we are constantly in the habit of treating the books of ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... the perception of the mental pictures is a perfectly conscious process and involves the exercise of an introspective faculty. The passive seer, on the contrary, is effortless, and receives impressions by reflection, the visions coming imperceptibly and having a literal interpretation. The vision is not in this case of an allegorical or symbolic nature, as is the case with the positive seer, but is an actual vision of a fact or event which has already happened or as it will transpire in the future. Thus the positive vision consists in the projection ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... is said, by Daniel Ben Judah. The fact that the Methodist leaders took Olivers from his bench to be one of their preachers answers any suggestion that the converted shoemaker copied the Jewish hymn and put Christian phrases in it. He knew nothing of Hebrew, and had he known it, a literal translation of the Yigdal will show hardly a similarity to his evangelical lines. Only the music as Leoni sang it prompted his own song, and he gratefully put the singer's name to it. Montgomery, who admired the majestic style of the hymn, and its glorious ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... original two columns of the Temple. The symbolic meaning of these columns we shall leave for the present unexplained, only adding that Entered Apprentices keep their working-tools in the column JACHIN; and giving you the etymology and literal ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... so literal, dearest. Women are so desperately matter-of-fact; it comes out even in ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... that when the sun is in the meridian of our hemisphere [Footnote 10: Antipodi orientali cogli occidentali. The word Antipodes does not here bear its literal sense, but—as we may infer from the simultaneous reference to inhabitants of the North and South— is used as meaning men living at a distance of 90 degrees from the zenith of the rational horizon of each observer.], the antipodes to the East and to ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... as under rebuke; but he had long known the literal nature of obedience. "The shape," he said, "was short and thick, but had two sharp, black projections curved upwards on each side of the head or top, rather like ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... before you arrived on the scene to put everything in focus. And if I had done all that, while you were still here in Rome, running up and down your scales, honestly . . . I know I sound awfully literal . . . but I don't see how we ever could have ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... person is lost if he have not dignity, or, failing that, at least pride, which is its shadow and in many ways its substitute. Master Francis, I fancy, would follow his own eager instincts without much spiritual struggle. And we soon find him fallen among thieves in sober, literal earnest, and counting as acquaintances the most disreputable people he could lay his hands on; fellows who stole ducks in Paris Moat; sergeants of the criminal court, and archers of the watch; blackguards who slept at night under the butchers' stalls, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Those literal translations were always at hand, and from them he could easily obtain his author's sense with sufficient certainty; and among the readers of Homer the number is very small of those who find much in the Greek more than in the Latin, except ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... Library at Milan, may be considered as expressing his most undisguised feelings, as excited by an event which dissolves trifling attachments, while it gives permanence to those of a genuine nature. It was probably intended for no eye but his own. I annex as literal a translation as possible, and from the beauty and ease of their latinity, have been tempted to precede it ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... Why, then, we must still believe that, in order to help on the slaughter of his enemies on the part of a barbarian general, God stopped the whole machinery of the universe for hours until he got through with his killing. We must believe the literal story of Jonah's being swallowed by the whale. We must believe no end of incredibilities; and then, if we dare to read with our eyes open, we must believe immoral things, cruel things, about men and about God, things which our civilization would ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... literal. "Say, Annie," he blurted out, "I begin to think you have had to do most of the work over there. Now, haven't you? ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the steps to take their seats, each face was enveloped in a handkerchief, and there were passionate embraces, literal pressings to the breast, and violent sobs, as each victim, one after the other, ascended the carriage steps and fell back on the seat; while in the background, Honor Callaghan was uttering Irish wails over the Abbe and Laurence, ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... literal sense of this direction it would be an invasion of the constitutional prerogatives and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... an incomparable kind of story-telling in most of the best essays of Elia, but it is a kind which he had to find out, by accident and experiment, for himself; and chiefly through letter-writing. 'Us dramatic geniuses,' he speaks of, in a letter to Manning against the taking of all words in a literal sense; and it was this wry dramatic genius in him that was, after all, the quintessential part of himself. 'Truth,' he says in this letter, 'is one and poor, like the cruse of Elijah's widow. Imagination is the bold face that multiplies its ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... against the Republic of Colombia, differences arose between the parties to the arbitration in regard to the scope and extension of the award, of which certain articles were contested by Colombia, while Italy claimed their literal fulfillment. The award having been made by the President of the United States, as an act of friendly consideration and with the sole view to an impartial composition of the matter in dispute, I could not but feel deep concern at such ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... pencil-marks before me; I dare say they were full of meaning when I scrawled them down, but now I have lost the key. "Jolly captain—left his wife—forty years—electric light deceives on a low beach—fourteen children—El Cano—break in the head of wine-casks": there is a literal copy of the contents of a page, which may mean nothing or anything, frivolity or a thesaurus of serious information. Memory, what a treacherous jade thou art! It may be said, why did I not take copious notes ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... "Our kingdom." There are various objections to the word Yugoslavia; in the first place, it was introduced by the Austrians, who did not wish to call their subjects Serbs and Croats; in the second place, the term is a literal translation from the German and is against the laws of the Serbo-Croatian language. Another, and more important objection, is that the Bulgars, though Yugoslavs, are not included in Yugoslavia; and perhaps the name will be officially ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... A. Schultze, de parabolarum J. C. indole poetica com. Men have good cause to suspect the accuracy of their artificial rules, when the application of them works such havoc. Better that we should have no critical rules, than adopt such as separate on superficial literal grounds, things that the judgment of the Church and the common sense of men have in all ages joined together as substantially of ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... seem that the ceremonial precepts have not a literal, but merely a figurative cause. For among the ceremonial precepts, the chief was circumcision and the sacrifice of the paschal lamb. But neither of these had any but a figurative cause: because each was given as a sign. For it is written ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... in the course of which The League of Youth had been hissed down at Christiania. Then and there he sent his defiance back to Norway in At Port Said, one of the most pointed and effective of all his polemical lyrics. A version in literal prose must suffice, though it does cruel injustice to the ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... suggesting corrupt influence. That is not my point. Corruption is a very difficult thing to manage in its literal sense. The payment of money is very easily detected, and men of this kind who control these interests by secret arrangement would not consent to receive a dollar in money. They are following their own principles,—that is to say, ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... the word "windows" signifies the literal opening of heaven. With rain as we know it, the water appears to fall by drops from the pores of the rain-clouds, but at the time of the flood it came down with great force, not through pores, but through windows, like water poured from a vessel ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... club, thick enough to brain a wild beast, and his staff to lean upon or to touch his sheep, while the ancient shepherd without firearms would surely still more require both. They will comfort me—a very beautiful verb, the literal meaning of which is to help another, choked with grief or fear, to breathe freely, ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith
... compliment. It is enough to say that a fund was raised for Flanagan's defence, and a threatening notice written to be pasted on the Bodagh Buie's door—of which elegant production the following is a literal copy:— ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... perspicuity, of Latin elocution. But his mind was stored with a treasure of Greek learning: history and fable, philosophy and grammar, were alike at his command; and he read the poems of Homer in the schools of Florence. It was from his explanation that Boccace composed [* and transcribed a literal prose version of the Iliad and Odyssey, which satisfied the thirst of his friend Petrarch, and which, perhaps, in the succeeding century, was clandestinely used by Laurentius Valla, the Latin interpreter. It was from his narratives that the same Boccace collected the materials ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... have been very scanty. The day, week, month, year, and generation (this last usually implying the time from the birth of a man to that of his son, but possibly in Gen. xv. 16, a century) are all that we find. These in their literal sense were evidently inadequate. Nor could the deficiency be supplied by numerals, even if the general style of the narrative would have admitted their use, for we find in Genesis no numeral beyond the thousand. There was no word at all in early Hebrew equivalent ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... above description may seem fantastical or exaggerated to those who have never seen an Oriental or an Italian sky; yet it is but a literal and hardly sufficient delineation of an August evening (the eighteenth), as contemplated in one of many rides along the banks of the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... obtruded—a literal mountain of ice was before him. The snow of the recent fall had been whipped away, and the surface of the mountain, here perilously steep, was now sleek and solid with ice. Bull looked gloomily toward the summit so close above him, and the ice glimmered in the ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... usually went by the name of George Blaurock (Bluecoat) and whom his disciples hailed as a second Paul, was spread far and wide and made a great noise, the government ordered a conference to be held with them at the council-house. The following are the literal contents of Blaurock's Confession: "I am a door. He who enters by me will find pasture, but he who enters elsewhere, is a thief and a murderer, as it is written: I am a good shepherd; a good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep; so I also give my body and life ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... coming whence it may, Belgium were absorbed, the day that witnessed that absorption would hear the knell of public right and public law in Europe.... We have an interest in the independence of Belgium which is wider than that which we may have in the literal operation of the guarantee. It is found in answer to the question whether under the circumstance of the case this country, endowed as it is with influence and power, would quietly stand by and witness the perpetration of the direst crime ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... confess at once what is wrong in the kitchen, and then go and fetch Melissa." The woman was, perhaps, wise to defer the evil moment as long as possible. Matters might soon change for the better, and good or evil could come only from without. So Dido clung to the literal sense of her master's question, and something note-worthy had actually happened in the kitchen. She drew a deep breath, and told him that a subordinate of the night-watch had come in and asked whether Alexander were in the house, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... occasion joyously, and "put him out" in the most literal fashion; so that no more was seen of ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... was going to look foolish at hearing his own words thus reproduced in such literal fashion, she never made a ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... the idealist historian of the poet, and that the adventures which he related of him were not to be taken in the literal and Judaic sense. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of his manner, as he gave us this literal and somewhat poetical translation of the popular slang of the day, so amused Walter that I had to send him off to make some inquiries about the route in order to prevent an outburst of laughter which our French friend, who is endowed ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... bull by the horns in a literal as well as figurative sense, the lad began gradually to develop into that terrible embodiment of unrest—a boy. He exhibited no very marked peculiarities up to this time to distinguish him from other youths; but just grew into the conglomerate mass of good, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... superlatives, and the comparison of adjectives whose meaning will not admit of different degrees.[Footnote: Many words which grammarians have considered incapable of comparison are used in a sense short of their literal meaning, and are compared by good writers; as, My chiefest entertainment.—Sheridan. The chiefest prize.—Byron. Divinest Melan- choly.—Milton. Extremest hell.—Whittier. Most perfect harmony—Longfellow. Less perfect imitations.—Macaulay. ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... it. We require every possible help and attraction of sound in our language to smooth the way for the admission of things so remote from our present concerns. My own notion of translation is, that it cannot be too literal, provided these faults be avoided: baldness, in which I include all that takes from dignity; and strangeness, or uncouthness, including harshness; and lastly, attempts to convey meanings which, as they cannot be given but by languid circumlocutions, cannot in ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... elder of the two on the raft, rolling his glowing eyes over the different objects that were visible in and about the Castle, with a keenness that showed how little escaped him. "My brother is very proud, but Rivenoak (we use the literal translation of the term, writing as we do in English) is a name to ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... 278: A literal translation of the first line would be as follows: (Here) stands the doomed sacrifice for the journey in ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... cookery book declares that some crabs like to be boiled alive. In the same way he thought and spoke as if the people liked being kept in superstition; only he meant this in a literal sense, whereas the cookery book did not mean ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... of the clergy) there is a better dinner than usual. I never knew man or woman in all my life who on a Fast-day refrained from eating. And quite right, too. The growth of common sense has gradually abolished literal fasting. In a Oriental climate, abstinence from food may give the mind the preeminence over the body, and so leave the mind better fitted for religious duties. In our country, literal fasting would have just the contrary effect: it would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... your excellency, referring to the twenty-second article of the treaty of friendship, navigation, and limits agreed upon between the King, my master, and the United States of America, has been pleased to inquire, after transcribing the literal text of said article (which you find so explicit as not to require any comment nor to admit of dubious construction), if His Majesty has been pleased to designate any other position on the banks of the Mississippi, and where that is, if his royal pleasure does not continue ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... easily be gathered, that, notwithstanding the wise laws of Solon, which they still professed to follow, the government was falling into decay, for we are not to understand the jest of Aristophanes in the literal sense. It is plain that the corruption, though we should suppose it but half as much as we are told, was very great, for it ended in the destruction of Athens, which could scarce raise its head again, after it had been taken by Lysander. Though we consider Aristophanes, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... pagan mysteries into lower and more literal forms, the Ivy preserved two meanings. It was already the vine of life, and the early Christians laid it in the coffins of their departed, as the emblem of a new life in Christ.[4] It had hung upon the limbs ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the Grandchildren of the Ghetto, which is mainly a history of the middle-classes, is mainly a history of isolation. "The Upper Ten" is a literal phrase in Judah, whose aristocracy just about suffices for a synagogue quorum. Great majestic luminaries, each with its satellites, they swim serenely in the golden heavens. And the middle-classes look up in worship and the lower-classes in supplication. "The Upper Ten" have no spirit of exclusiveness; ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of resolving mathematical problems, by means of equations, or rather computing abstract quantities by symbols or signs; a literal arithmetic. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... reconciliations, but the cup of unhappiness for Julie Herzl overflowed when Herzl became the official leader of a public movement. From that time on her home was constantly overrun with unwelcome visitors. Not only did Herzl give his life to the movement in the literal sense, but he gave his reserve of funds and sacrificed the welfare of his family for the sake of the movement he had brought to life. His domestic affairs as well as his failing heart, made all the years of Herzl's brief Zionist life ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... principles distinguishes the jejunum (e nestis), or the empty portion of the small intestines in animals (to enteron lepton), the caecum (tuflon ti kai ogkodes), the colon (to kolon), and the sigmoid flexure (stenoteron kai eligmenon.) The modern epithet of rectum is the literal translation of his description of the straight progress (euthu) of the bowel to the anus (proktos.) He knew the nasal cavities and the passage from the tympanal cavity of the ear to the palate, afterwards described by ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... warmly—even in its literal significance of imparting a good deal of his own earnest caloric to the editor's fingers—and left the room. His footfall echoed along the passage and died out, and with it, I fear, all impression of his visit from the editor's mind, as he plunged again into ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... hulu-nui. Steep declivities, pali, on the side of Waipio valley, Hawaii. Instead of inserting these names, which would be meaningless without an explanation, the author has given a literal translation of the names themselves, thus getting a closer insight into ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... been more, just and literal in the case of Mrs. Clifford. I could scarce believe my eyes; and when forced to do so, I could scarcely suppose that this bravery was intended for my eyes only. Nor was it;—but let me not anticipate. This spectacle, I need not say, sobered me entirely, if anything was necessary ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... the entire system of determining the age of strata by their fossil contents; and if we take the word "contemporaneous" in a general and strictly geological sense, this belief can be accepted as proved beyond denial. We must, however, guard ourselves against too literal an interpretation of the word "contemporaneous," and we must bear in mind the enormously-prolonged periods of time with which the geologist has to deal. When we say that two groups of strata in different regions are "contemporaneous," we simply ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... in a quite literal sense; and how awfully exposed! It was spared, however. There was even legible on the faces of the stolid little boys who viewed it a sort of reluctant approval. Some of the little girls seemed to be forming with their lips the word 'pretty,' but then ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... army can not be rendered active, etc.—Neque ex ignavo strenuum, neque fortem ex timido exercitum oratione imperatoris fieri. I have departed a little from the literal reading, ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... we compare the fables which generally pass for Aesop's, with those written by Mary, we shall perceive that the translation of the latter could never have been regarded as a literal version of the former. She is a great deal more particular than Aesop; her moralizations are not the same. In a word, I think she comes nearer to Phaedrus than to the ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... inmost recesses. Unbelief hung its murky vapors about her heart, curtaining it from the sunshine of God's smile. It was not difficult to trace her gradual progress if so she might term her unsatisfactory journey. Rejecting literal revelation, she was perplexed to draw the exact line of demarcation between myths and realities; then followed doubts as to the necessity, and finally as to the probability and possibility, of an external, verbal revelation. A revealed ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... words are the revelation of a firm resolve, of a great molding purpose; Jesus perceived that it was his duty to be in the house of his Father—not merely in the literal Temple, but in the sphere of life and activity of which the Temple was the great expression and symbol and sign. He had determined, that is, to devote all his thoughts and energies and powers to the definite service of God. At the age of twelve are not most children sufficiently mature to form ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing." One may question, indeed, if figurative language of the kind in question can ever be successfully transferred to canvas; whether this literal lamb, on its red-damasked table, in the midst of these carefully marshalled squadrons of Apostles, Popes, and Princes, can ever quite escape a hint of something ludicrous. One may question all this, yet still admire to the full both the spirit of devotion that inspired ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... he said, 'that you will kindly forget and forgive my extraordinary want of tact and perception when—in short, when I caught the fly. I positively blush at my own stupidity in putting a literal interpretation on a lady's little joke! Violence in My Sanitarium!' exclaimed the doctor, with his eyes once more fixed attentively on my face—'violence in this enlightened nineteenth century! Was there ever anything so ridiculous? Do fasten your cloak before you go out, it ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... brings me to a third reason why, under the stress of war, English Christianity is hardly in revival, namely, Bible difficulties. The Prayer Book comes down to us from men who were held by a belief in the literal truth of the whole Bible. In so far as it has been an effective manual for ordinary people, it has been on the strength of an absolute dogma in their minds as to the "Word of God." That dogma has in a vague ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... pleaded at the bar of the moral judgment of mankind. (Cheers.) I know that to some this will sound as the language of exaggerated feeling; but I can only say that I have expressed myself in language which I believe conveys the literal ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... but Zeuxis of Heraclea is said to have been the first to paint movable pictures. He is famed for his marvelous power of imitation: the birds pecked at a bunch of grapes which he painted. But even he was outdone by Parrhasius. Zeuxis, however, had far higher qualities than those of a literal copyist. The most successful of the Greek painters was Apelles. Among his masterpieces was a painting of Venus rising from the waves, and a portrait of Alexander the Great. We have not in painting, as in sculpture, a store of monuments of Greek art; but the skill ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... daily papers. Nowhere do I find selection, everything is reported, dialogues and descriptions. Take for instance the long evening talk between the farm people when Oak is seeking employment. It is not the absolute and literal transcript from nature after the manner of Henri Monier; for that it is a little too diluted with Mr Hardy's brains, the edges are a little sharpened and pointed, I can see where the author has been at work ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... English audience is nothing if not literal; and they are as polite as they are literal. They understood that I was a reformed criminal and as such they gave me a hearty burst ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... shared myself, and, as may be seen, even this impression was left to be collected from the general tone of the conclusion and not from any specific words, which are in no instance at variance with the literal truth. In no long time after that paper was written I became sensible that the effort which remained would cost me far more energy than I had anticipated, and the necessity for making it was more apparent ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... her consciousness as if washed clean by its temporary absence from life. She tried to sit up and smile at Neale and Agnes. She had never fainted away in all her life before. She felt very apologetic and weak. And she felt herself in a queer, literal ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... never so fluent as when sitting beside him "up in front!" There was a tallow dip or two, and no other light save that of the fire. Who that ever told a story could wish a more inspiring auditor than Jacob Bean, a literal, honest old fellow who took the most vital interest in every detail of the stories told, looking upon their heroes and their villains as personal friends or foes. He always sat in one corner of the fireplace, poker in hand, and the crowd tacitly allowed him the role of Greek chorus. ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... "accent'' has its origin in the Lat. accentus, which in its turn is a literal translation of the Gr. prosodia. The early Greek grammarians used this term for the musical accent which characterized their own language, but later the term became specialized for quantity in metre, whence comes the Eng. prosody. Besides various later developments of usage it ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... useful or practicable for after life, and so, with that Dutch stolidity that, once fixed, knows no altering, he refused to copy his writing lessons. Of course trouble immediately ensued between Edward and his teacher. Finding herself against a literal blank wall—for Edward simply refused, but had not the gift of English with which to explain his refusal—the teacher decided to take the matter to the male principal of the school. She explained that she had kept Edward after school for as long as two hours ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... befall. The organic and environic rearrangements incident to obscure rotations in higher space are like the changes a mirror-image undergoes as an object draws near and then recedes from its plane. This is only a figure of speech, but it is susceptible of almost literal application. Ideas, emerging from the subconscious, appproach, intersect, recede from, and re-approach the stream of conscious experience; taking the forms of aversions and desires, they register themselves in action, and by reason of time curvature, everything ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... the British farmer may obtain the benefit of this gentleman's experience, and that he may receive all manner of justice, I beg leave to send you a literal copy of the recipe which he was kind enough ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... was military. What had enabled the National Convention in the days of the Revolution's darkest peril to roll back the tide of foreign invasion was the heroism and devotion of an enthusiastic citizen soldiery, actuated by a solemn consciousness that in a very literal sense they were fighting for their fields and firesides, for the rights of men and of Frenchmen. They constituted compact and homogeneous armies, inspired by the principles and words of Rouget de Lisle's ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... debtor for three friendly letters. I ought to have written to you long ere now, but it is a literal fact, I have scarcely a spare moment. It is not that I will not write to you: Miss Burnet is not more dear to her guardian angel, nor his grace the Duke of Queensberry to the powers of darkness, than my friend Cunningham to me. ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... due to lords, and other "Persons of Quality," or had concerned himself with things so trivial as the proper use of the fork, napkin, and toothpick. Something is said too about "inferiours," before whom one must not "Act ag'tt y'e Rules Moral." But in 1888 the Rules were subjected to careful and literal treatment by Dr. J.M. Toner, of Washington City, in the course of his magnanimous task of preserving, in the Library of Congress, by exact copies, the early and perishing note-books and journals of Washington. This able literary ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... word incensed is to be taken in its literal and material sense, set on fire.) What taste or judgment was it that directed this combination? or is there nothing more than taste or ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... that all the typical movements of our time are upon this road towards simplification. Each system seeks to be more fundamental than the other; each seeks, in the literal sense, to undermine the other. In art, for example, the old conception of man, classic as the Apollo Belvedere, has first been attacked by the realist, who asserts that man, as a fact of natural history, is a creature with colourless hair and a freckled face. Then ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... is because they deal with subject matter which is more significant in life. In concluding this portion of the discussion, we note that the distinction between special and general education has nothing to do with the transferability of function or power. In the literal sense, any transfer is miraculous and impossible. But some activities are broad; they involve a coordination of many factors. Their development demands continuous alternation and readjustment. As conditions change, certain factors ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... later verse become more prosaic, but he becomes considerably less intelligible. There is a passage in "The Old Bachelor," too long to quote but worth referring to, which, though it may be easy enough to understand it with a little goodwill, I defy anybody to understand in its literal and grammatical meaning. Such welters of words are very common in Crabbe, and Johnson saved him from one of them in the very first lines of "The Village." Yet Johnson could never have written the passages which earned Crabbe his ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... The translation is by no means literal, and lacks the crispness and freshness of Oriental antithesis. Rueckert, I fear, will never be as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... is a good dry farmer on a small scale, and farming is a laborious business in the shifting sands of Hopiland. Their corn is their literal bread of life and they usually keep one year's crop stored. These people have known utter famine and even starvation in the long ago, and their traditions have made them wise. The man tends the fields and flocks, makes mocassins, does the weaving of the community (mostly ceremonial ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... one of those autobiographical novels that were popular throughout the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century. It was published in 1970, and one must understand Wander Jahre rather in a spiritual and intellectual than in a literal sense. It is indeed an allusive title, carrying the world back to the Wilhelm Meister of Goethe, a century and ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... Florence, at that time the intellectual and artistic center of Christendom. For a few years, beginning in 1402, he also taught Greek at the University of Pavia. He had earlier written a Catechism of Greek Grammar, and at Pavia he began a literal rendering of Plato's Republic into Latin. From his visit dates the enthusiasm for the study of ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... though several parts of them have found translators, the whole have never yet appeared in English; and, of some pieces, the most accomplished scholar would scarcely undertake to furnish at once a literal and an intelligible version. [370:5] His style is harsh, his transitions are abrupt, and his inuendos and allusions most perplexing. He must have been a man of very bilious temperament, who could scarcely distinguish a ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen |
