"Mimicry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cloud-capped Alps, opened a highway through the watery wilderness of the Atlantic, leveled the forests of the new world, and reared in its stead a community of States and nations. Perseverance has wrought from the marble block the exquisite creations of genius, painted on canvas the gorgeous mimicry of nature, and engraved on a metallic surface the viewless substance of the shadow. Perseverance has put in motion millions of spindles, winged as many flying shuttles, harnessed thousands of iron steeds to as many ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... Empathy is based on its analogy with sympathy, and turns it into a kind of sympathetic, or as it has been called, inner, i.e. merely felt, mimicry of, for instance, the mountain's rising. Such mimicry, not only inner and felt, but outwardly manifold, does undoubtedly often result from very lively empathic imagination. But as it is the mimicking, inner or outer, of movements and actions which, like the rising of the mountain, take place only ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... "comic relief" was occasionally interposed amid more serious happenings. The blacks were friendly, though occasionally shy and suspicious. In one scene the mimicry that is a characteristic of the aboriginal was quaintly displayed. The incident, full of colour and humour, is ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... however great, need not surprise us: for we quarrel, ourselves, for many and slight causes,—much more, one should think, may crystals, who can only feel the antagonism, not argue about it. But there is a yet more singular mimicry of our human ways in the varieties of form which appear owing to no antagonistic force; but merely to the variable humor and caprice of the crystals themselves: and I have asked you all to come into the schoolroom to-day, because, of course, ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... others it is told that while he was at the French court the courtier to whom he applied for promotion always put him off with the answer, "Lascia fare mi." Weary of waiting, Josquin composed a mass upon the subject la, sol, fa, re, mi, repeated over and over in mimicry of the oft repeated answer. The king was so much amused that he at once promised Josquin a position, but his memory not having proved faithful, Josquin appealed to him with a motette: "Portio mea non est in terra viventium" ("My portion is not in ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... served. All nature and all humanity will serve a good master and rebel against an ignoble one. And there is no surer test of the quality of a nation than the quality of its servants, for they are their masters' shadows and distort their faults in a flattened mimicry. A wise nation will have philosophers in its servants'-hall, a knavish nation will have knaves there, and a kindly nation will have friends there. Only let it be remembered that 'kindness' means, as with your child, not indulgence, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... to have a discussion on "Mimicry, as producing Abnormal Sexual Characters," at the Entomological to-night. I have a butterfly (Diadema) of which the female is metallic blue, the male dusky brown, contrary to the rule in all other species of the ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Faust Lemaitre's genius took a new development in creating the part of Mephistopheles. The feature of the part which balked and baffled him was the infernal laugh indicated by Goethe. By every expedient that mimicry could suggest day after day he studied to give forth that terrible laugh, but all his efforts were useless: he could not satisfy his conception with his execution. Then the idea came into his head to abandon the laugh altogether, and substitute for it that diabolical grimace ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... dress, and in one lightning flash will take you in from head to foot, note every detail of your costume, and, the next day, imitate whatever parts of it please their fancy and fall in with their national customs. They are adepts at mimicry and among themselves will lash us mercilessly. They straighten up their shoulders, pull in the abdomen, and strut about with a stiff-backed walk and with their hands hanging stiffly at their sides. They themselves are full of ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... on, accompanying each remark with a pantomime mimicry of the air and gesture of the individual. He showed in a second the contortions of Harry Weston in drawing the bow, and in another the grimaces of Henry Hope, the choir man, in producing bass notes, or the swelling majesty of Randall Porcher, the cross-bearer, till it really seemed ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tried to recover his dignity. The waiter behind him, recognizing only the delightful mimicry of this adorable officer, was in fits of laughter. Nevertheless, the consul managed to ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... could reply, the voice from the silver and red patrol ship dropped into an exaggerated mimicry of ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... examples; and in English drama this kind of thing is alluded to again and again. What Jonson really did, was to raise the dramatic lampoon to an art, and make out of a casual burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary pretensions and permanency. With the arrogant attitude mentioned above and his uncommon eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no wonder that Jonson soon involved himself in literary and even personal quarrels with his ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... there will sing and dance Marianito, Chananay, Balbino, Ratia, Carvajal, Yeyeng, Liceria, etc. The Filipino enjoys the theater and is a deeply interested spectator of dramatic representations, but he listens in silence to the song, he gazes delighted at the dancing and mimicry, he ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... introduced, who are raised on a little stage and during several hours arrest the attention of their audience by the relation of wonderful and interesting adventures. There are also characters of humour amongst them who, by buffoonery, mimicry, punning, repartee, and satire (rather of the sardonic kind) are able to keep the company in laughter at intervals during the course of a night's entertainment. The assembly seldom breaks up before daylight, and these bimbangs are often continued for several days and nights ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... huge caverns opening in front to the vast ocean, which had probably hollowed them out of the earth-fast rock in the course of succeeding ages, yawned in the mimicry of Gothic arches, the entering tide would rush, as it were, into the bowels of the land, roaring and groaning in those strange subterranean dungeons like some strong prisoner, Typhon, Enceladus, or Ephialtes, in his immortal agony. One of these singular vaults opened right in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... flannel shirt and corduroy trousers, clasped tight to knee by high brown boots below them, Stephen O'Mara held out a sinewy brown hand. His voice was a little unsteady, but the mimicry of his own drawling speech of former years held an echo of boyhood—a twanging, boyish echo—which dragged ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... conceives himself aggrieved. The issue will be as in Mr O'Connell's courts, where the parties played at going to law; from the moment when they ceased to play, and no longer "made believe" to be disputing, the award of the judge became as entire a mockery, as any stage mimicry of such a transaction. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... the standpoint of absolute music, even these rather beg the question as they are so extremely programmistic, dramatic or even theatric. This one-sided development of French music was chiefly caused by the people's innate fondness for the drama, and by the national genius for acting, mimicry and dancing. ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... underfoot there was no lack of life either. Strange insects, shaped like sticks or leaves or even bits of moss, attracted the attention of the alert boys although they passed over hundreds of such nature mimics unnoticed, owing to the perfection of their mimicry. ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... had been the candidate opposed to Grant during his first presidential campaign; Senator Anthony, Senator Edmunds, the former Vice-President Mr. Hamlin, Senator Carpenter, and others. Many good stories were told, and one amused me especially, as it was given with admirable mimicry by Senator Carpenter. He described an old friend of his, a lawyer, who, coming before one of the higher courts with a very doubtful case, began his plea as follows: "May it please the court, there is only one point in this case favorable to my client, but that, may it please the court, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... mimicry was irresistible. "Don't you think I'm a bit lovable, cousin?—not a bit? You discourage me! I'm doomed to be a spinster, I suppose! Ah, me! And I'd far rather be the spinster's cat! Cats aren't worried about the conventions ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... up the jack with which he had pulled off his wet boots, and waited for a good chance to launch it at Joe's head. But Joe kept behind his grandmother, and proceeded with his mimicry. ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that which was not at Waterloo. Whereas any direct factual imitation, resting upon painted figures drest up in regimentals, and worked by watchwork through the whole movements of the battle, would have been no art whatsoever in the sense of a Fine Art, but a base mechanic mimicry. ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... parties believed in the utter overthrow of Richelieu; and while he was yet on his way to Versailles, the ballad-singers of the Pont Neuf were publicly distributing the songs and pamphlets which they had hitherto only vended by stealth; and the dwarf of the Samaritaine was delighting the crowd by his mimicry of Maitre Gonin. At the corners of the different streets groups of citizens were exchanging congratulations; and within the palace all the courtiers were commenting upon the approaching triumph of M. de ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... frowning attitude exactly caught from her mother. He had on that mussy suit of yellow Chinese silk, and there was a spot on the waistcoat straining at its pearl buttons. She wondered, maintaining the silent mimicry of elder remonstrance, why he would wear those untidy old things when his chests were heaped with snowy white linen and English broadcloths. It was very improper in an Ammidon, particularly in one who had been captain of so many big ships, and in court dress with a cocked ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... feeling unfettered by it. A strange beautiful butterfly floats past him in the air; her radiant wings can be only those of a soul; and it strikes him that while the waves are his property, and the air is hers, hers is true freedom, his only the mimicry of it. He sees little to regret in this, since imagination is as good as reality; and Heaven itself can only be made up of such things as poets dream. Yet he knows that his swimming seems but a foolish compromise ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... we Europeans all know how difficult it is to distinguish apart the sounds in a foreign language. Which of us, for instance, could follow an American Indian through a sentence of more than three words? All savages appear to possess, to an uncommon degree, this power of mimicry. I was told, almost in the same words, of the same ludicrous habit among the Caffres; the Australians, likewise, have long been notorious for being able to imitate and describe the gait of any man, so that he may be ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... whooping might be heard individual comments, each shrieked out shrilly and each punctuated by a sneeze from Mr. Leary's convulsed frame; or lacking that by a simulated sneeze from one of the revellers—one with a fine humorous flare for mimicry. And these comments were, for example, ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... proof. Wallace had reached the same conclusion, but he had not so clear a perception as Darwin of the effectiveness of natural selection in forming species, and did not develop the theory so fully. Nevertheless, Wallace's writings, especially those on mimicry, etc., and an admirable work on The Geographical Distribution of Animals, contain many fine original contributions to the theory of selection. Unfortunately, this gifted scientist has since devoted himself to spiritism.* (* Darwin and Wallace ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... massive and cumbersome and yet so pliable and elastic majesty. It had turned around and around, running with breathless speed, with its tongue lolling out, as it were, and probably yapping and snapping in mocking mimicry of a pup trying to catch its tail; and it had scooped out a spiral trough with overhanging rim. I felt sorry that I had not been there to watch it, because after all, what I saw, was only the dead record of something that had been very much alive and vociferatingly noisy. And in another ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... lying, I reckon," he hazarded. With an ebullition of laughter, he hastily scrambled to his feet and unhitched his horse; then, as he put his foot in the stirrup, he paused and added, "Or else, 'Better leave it be, sonny,'" with the effrontery of mimicry. "'Mought ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... bears that belonged to my father and his friends, and, perhaps, it is to the numerous tricks in which they were instructed, and to the facility with which they learnt them, that I am indebted for the talent of mimicry that has been of so much use to me through life. At fifteen I was an accomplished luti. I could eat fire, spout water, and perform all sorts of sleight of hand, and I should very probably have continued to prosper in this ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... a single word or perhaps by three or four together so that it requires a great deal of practice, attention and also a special study of the mimicry which accompanies and explains these terse vocal sounds, to enable one to follow ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... interlace We sauntered slowly, for we loved the place, And talked of passing things; I, pleased to trace Through leafy mimicry the true leaves made, The stateliness ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... that wonderful power of accurate mimicry which is so strong in all natural human beings, began to trill out at once, with a very good Parisian accent, a few lines from a well-known song in "La Fille ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... certain actor, for instance, made as many guineas as Moran did shillings by mimicking his sayings and his songs and his getup upon the stage. One night this actor was at supper with some friends, when dispute arose as to whether his mimicry was overdone or not. It was agreed to settle it by an appeal to the mob. A forty-shilling supper at a famous coffeehouse was to be the wager. The actor took up his station at Essex Bridge, a great haunt of Moran's, and soon gathered a small crowd. He had scarce got through "In Egypt's ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... Cunning's promise good, When she winks the other eye? Noodledom seeks her neighbourhood, And winks its other eye. For no one winks so freely as a fool who thinks he's sly; The dupe of deeper knavery smirks in shallow mimicry Of the smirking JERRY DIDDLER who is sucking him so dry, And who winks the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various |
