"Portrayal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kept on hugging and kissing her like this—" Billy went into an ecstasy of portrayal. Suddenly, however, he reeled into sanity, for Jude had struck him across the cheek with the back of a hand ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... immobility, due to the influence of religion, attached itself, at an early period, to Egyptian art. The artist, in the portrayal of the figures of the gods, was not allowed to change a single line in the conventional form. Hence the impossibility of improvement in sacred sculpture. Wilkinson says that Menes would have recognized the statue of Osiris in the Temple of Amasis. Plato complained ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... and especially of the Anglo-Saxon school, show a superbly decorative use both of gold and silver. The "Coronation Oath Book of the Anglo-Saxon Kings" is especially rich in this exquisite metallic harmony. By degrees, also, the Anglo-Saxons became more perfected in the portrayal of the human figure, so that by the twelfth century the work of the Southern schools and those of England were more alike than at ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... the portrayal of scenes, incidents, and celebrated people in the highest perfection of the photographers', ...
— Wholesale Price List of Newspapers and Periodicals • D. D. Cottrell's Subscription Agency
... representation, exact as possible, of the manners and characters of the dramatis persona of the play; and perhaps the conditions under which the play was written do not allow such representation. The exact and studied portrayal of a character demands from the author long preparation, and cannot be accomplished in a few hours. From, the first scene to the last, each tale must be posed in the author's mind exactly as it will be proved to be at the end. It ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... which must have represented the descent as forced and not voluntary, has been modified by the introduction of a new factor,—the search for her dead consort, Tammuz. The character of Ishtar as the goddess of war[1167] may also have influenced this portrayal of her rage. In her violence, she threatens a conflict between the dead and the living. The former will destroy[1168] the latter, as a victorious army butchers the hostile host. The watchman endeavors to pacify the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... being determined. The trials now in progress in Nurnberg-and those soon to begin in Tokyo—bring before the bar of international justice those individuals who are charged with the responsibility for the sufferings of the past six years. We have high hope that this public portrayal of the guilt of these evildoers will bring wholesale and permanent revulsion on the part of the masses of our former enemies against war, militarism, aggression, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... sketch among them all that will not afford pleasure to the reader for its genial humor, artistic local coloring, and admirable portrayal of ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... he builds up their environment. Here his realism is intense. Indeed, occasionally one is tempted to credit Balzac with a greater love of things than of men, yet not the things of nature as much as things made by men. His portrayal of landscape may be fine prose, but contains no pure feeling of poetry in it, while, in the town, in the house, in the street, wherever the human mind and hand have left their imprints, his language grows warm, his fancy swoops and grasps the significance of detail; these dumb survivals of the ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... we have grown indifferent to all of earth. What an array of them there are, too! The bare catalogue of their names would fill a volume, and it would not be bad reading to the genuine Dickens lover,—recalling, as each name would, so much of vivid portrayal, and starting so many associations in the mind. But there is no need to repeat the names; the big, dull old world long ago learned them by heart. Nor will they soon be relegated to the shades. While the tide of English ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... dramatists, many of whom had rare gifts, and all of whom glowed with a spark of the genuine literary fire. But Shakespeare was the sun in the firmament: when his light shone, the fires of all contemporaries paled in the contemporary playgoer's eye. There is forcible and humorous portrayal of human frailty and eccentricity in plays of Shakespeare's contemporary, Ben Jonson. Ben Jonson was a classical scholar, which Shakespeare was not. Jonson was as well versed in Roman history as a college tutor. But when Shakespeare and Ben Jonson ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... one day while in this state at an angle of the garden trying to devote his entire mind to the portrayal of a tree-fern, and vainly endeavouring to prevent Hester Sommers from coming between him and the paper, when he was summoned to attend upon Ben-Ahmed. As this was an event of by no means uncommon occurrence, he listlessly gathered ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... its portrayal of characters that are never commonplace though genuinely human, and in its development of a singular social situation, the book is one to give ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... no one has ever been able to identify, absolutely, any single character in these books. Indeed, it would be impossible for me to restrict myself to actual portraiture. It is trite to say that photography is not art, and photography has no charm for the artist, or the humanitarian indeed, in the portrayal of life. At its best it is only an exhibition of outer formal characteristics, idiosyncrasies, and contours. Freedom is the first essential of the artistic mind. As will be noticed in the introductions and original notes to several of these volumes, it is stated that they possess anachronisms; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ignorant and illiterate could read. His instinct would tell him, wherever he saw the pictured horror, that a friend, not an enemy, had drawn it, but for what purpose? What was the secret meaning, which he was to extract from a portrayal of his woes at once so real and terrible. Was it to be a man, to seize the knife, the torch, to slay and burn his way to the rights and estate of a man? Garrison had put no such bloody import into the cut. It was designed not to ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... dance above the portrayal of sensuous emotion into the realms of poetry. The wild spirit of the Gypsy, captivating, fresh and invigorating and compelling as the winds of the mighty Sierras and plains of the land she inhabited, enveloped and animated her. The rushing, whirling ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... Unwahrscheinlichkeiten" (Introd. Ps., p. 26, N. 25.) "Jeder Leser," says he, " darin beistimmen, dass ... der erste Act eine so gelungene Exposition darbietet, wie sie die dramatische Poesie nur aufweisen kann." Such a statement must fall, by weight of exaggeration. In appreciation of the portrayal of the name-part he continues: "Mit welch' ueberwaeltigender Herrschaft tritt hier gleich die meisterhaft geschilderte Hauptperson hervor! Welche packende Kraft, welche hinreissende verve liegt in dem reichen Dialoge, der wie beseelt von der feurigen Energie des begabten Menschen, ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... success in the second century before Christ. It was, however, ousted by the mime, which was the kind of comic literature thoroughly national at Rome. The mime was a farce of popular morals, particularly of the lower classes; it was a portrayal of the dregs of society in their comic aspects. It maintained its sway until the close of the Roman Empire without becoming more dignified; rather the reverse. The names of some authors of mimes have survived: Publius Syrus and Laberius, in the time of Caesar. What is curious is ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... volume if he had lived to complete it. But no one will read the fascinating description of the Northern Lights without feeling a poetical appropriateness in the fact that his last work ends with a portrayal of the auroras—one of those phenomena which elsewhere he described as "the most glorious of all the terrestrial manifestations ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... to all the little aristocracies surviving, in fiction, from some more substantial day. Yet in spite of these conventions his better novels have a texture of genuine vividness and beauty. In their portrayal of the manners of New Orleans they have many points of quiet satire and censure that betray a critical intelligence working seriously behind them. That critical disposition in Mr. Cable led him to disagree with the majority of Southerners regarding the justice due the ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... MS. "The epic character of the ancient lyric appears especially in this: that the song is less the utterance of a momentary feeling than the portrayal of a lasting state, perhaps the reflection of an entire life, generally that of one isolated, or bereft by death or exile of protectors and friends." (Ten Brink, Early Eng. Lit.,I.) Iadopt Brooke's ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... heroism are not pure fables invented by the fancy of a poet or the credulity of a monk. If the accuracy of historical narrative must not be looked for in them, their moral truth must be recognized in their portrayal of a people ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... you, I went home and closed my eyes and sat alone—thinking of you," he told her. "To me all that is fine beyond words I try to translate into music. Where words—even poetry—fail, notes begin. So at the piano I tried to express something like a portrayal of you—to myself." ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... and the idea, which are always mutually illustrative to a degree not often attained in any species of modern art. . . . His language, though extraordinarily accurate, is always light and free. . . . We know of nothing equal to it, in its way [the portrayal of Dimmesdale], in the whole circle of English literature;' and much more in the ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... more faithful portrayal of New England life than that which Mrs. Stowe gives in "The ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... many visits to the apartment on Riverside Drive; for Miss Lewis professed to be very anxious that he should consult with her and tell her his ideas of her part. But Thyrsis soon discovered that what she really wanted was to have him listen to her ideas. Miss Lewis was at war with Thyrsis' portrayal of Helena—it was incomprehensible to her that Lloyd should not be pursuing her, and she playing the coquette, according to all romantic models. Particularly she could not see how Lloyd was to resist the particularly charming Helena which she was going ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... elaborate this idyllic portrayal, I may merely note, briefly and sympathetically, how this rural joy was troubled by the passing away of a dear woman friend who resided with them, and then by the death of his esteemed and careful consort. He laid these dear remains in his own property, and although he resolved to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... that some day he would dominate them all. The restlessness and discomfort, and at the same time the sense of unknown and fascinating possibilities which are the birthright of talented youth, and in the portrayal of which Balzac is supreme, must have been well known to him by experience; and his almost Oriental love of beauty and luxury made his life ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... work of Mr. London has that compelling style, that skill in character portrayal and in the construction of unusual plot which since he first began to write fiction have always marked him apart from the rank and file of novelists. No writer to-day is more praised than Mr. London for the ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... KING ALFRED'S COURT. By LUCY FOSTER MADISON. Illustrated by IDA WAUGH. This is a strong and well told tale of the 9th century. It is a faithful portrayal of the times, and is replete with historical information. The trying experiences through which the little heroine passes, until she finally becomes one of the great Alfred's family, are most entertainingly set forth. Nothing short ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... so-called select few, I believe that his finest task is that of giving back to a multitude their own thoughts and conceptions, illuminated, enlarged, and if needful, purged, perfected, transfigured. The making of a play that shall be closely observant in its portrayal of character, moral in purpose, dignified in expression, stirring in its development, yet not beyond our possible experience of life; a drama, the unfolding of whose story shall be watched intently, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... Jonathan. There was a certain dignity or sadness in his answer which reminded Helen of Colonel Zane's portrayal of a borderman's life. It struck her keenly. Here was this young giant standing erect and handsome before her, as rugged as one of the ash trees of his beloved forest. Who could tell when his strong life might be ended ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... This he thought would give weight and distinction to the book. So the Prince's philosophic demoralization is described at tedious length and the story drops out of sight for a long time. Then it is taken up again and the Prince falls in love with a beautiful Greek religieuse. The portrayal of this woman aroused another flicker of interest on Schiller's part, though she too was finally to be unmasked as one of the conspirators. Then he seems to have tired of 'The Ghostseer' altogether; ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... has been the refuge of lo castizo. It has been a theatre of manners and local types and customs, of observation and natural history, where a rather specialized well-trained audience accustomed to satire as the tone of daily conversation was tickled by any portrayal of its quips and cranks. A tradition of character-acting grew up nearer that of the Yiddish theatre than of any other stage we know in America. Benavente and the brothers Quintero have been the playwrights who most typified the ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... in the drama or the novel, you will still find, I think, that the character of the physician awaits in its interesting varieties competent portrayal. ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... along toward the cool, clear dawn of that very morning when, having tearfully assured Mrs. Lathrop for the twentieth time that he had taken but "one li'l' drink," he sobbed himself to sleep. His ears still range disconcertingly with the stinging echoes of his wife's all-too-frank and truthful portrayal of his character, disposition, parentage, and future prospects. His heart was still swollen and painful with the many things he would like to have said in reply had he not been deterred by valor's better part. It was a relief to him, therefore, to take advantage ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... mockery of the poet is the sycophantic adulation of the editor to his statesman employer, Pisistratus. If any question may be left to literary discrimination it is the authentic originality of the portrayal of Nestor. ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... mere mechanical photographic reproduction of the people it describes, but a glowing, vivid portrayal of them, with all the pulsating sympathy of one who understands them, their thoughts and feelings, with all the picturesque fidelity of the artist who appreciates the spiritual significance of that which he seeks to ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... beside her, and her hands open. And with raised face, motionless as in an ecstasy of suffering, she did not take her eyes from that adorable and tragic pair. Never had human face displayed such beauty, such a dazzling splendour of suffering and love; never had there been such a portrayal of ancient Grief, not however cold like marble but quivering with life. What was she thinking of, what were her sufferings, as she thus fixedly gazed at her Prince now and for ever locked in her rival's arms? Was it some jealousy which could have no ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... to the English reader under the title of "Liza," is a writer of whom Russia may well be proud.[A] And that, not only because he is a consummate artist,—entitled as he is to take high rank among those of European fame, so accurate is he in his portrayal of character, and so quick to seize and to fix even its most fleeting expression; so vividly does he depict by a few rapid touches the appearance of the figures whom he introduces upon his canvas, the nature of ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... well. Battle-accounts were frequently published that would be no mean comparison to the studied pen-pictures of the famous writers of this or any other age. They were extensively copied by the press of England and the Continent, and received high praise for their vivid portrayal of the battle-field and its scenes. Apart from the graphic accounts of great battles, they furnished materials from which the historians will write the enduring records of the war. With files of the New York dailies at his side, ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... out there. I have heard almost no unfavorable criticism of the story—nothing which you could make serviceable in its revision. I have heard Dr. P. criticise Ernest—of course the character and not your portrayal. For myself I consider the character a natural and consistent one. Perhaps few men are found who are quite so blind to a wife's wants and yet so devoted, but—I don't know what the wives might say. We have had hundreds of letters of which the expression ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... gentility extending from his varnished boot-tips to his glossy hat, looked like the "flattered" portrait of a common man—just such an idealized presentment as his own brush might have produced. As a rule, however, he devoted himself to the portrayal of the other sex, painting ladies in syrup, as Arran said, with marsh-mallow children leaning against their knees. He was as quick as a dressmaker at catching new ideas, and the style of his pictures changed as rapidly as that of the fashion-plates. ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... point the old epic becomes a remarkable portrayal of daily life. In its picturesque lines we see the galley set sail, foam flying from her prow; we catch the first sight of the southern headlands, approach land, hear the challenge of the "warder of the cliffs" and Beowulf's ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... monologues of Men and Women. In 1835 the solution was not yet found, but the five years which followed were to carry Browning, not without crises of perplexity and hesitation, far on his way towards it. Paracelsus was no sooner completed than he entered upon his kindred but more esoteric portrayal of the soul-history of Sordello,—a study in which, with the dramatic form, almost all the dramatic excellences of its predecessors are put aside. But the poet was outgrowing the method; the work hung fire; and we find him, before he had gone far with the perplexed record of that "ineffectual angel," ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... this adventure I should write its history, I resolved immediately to note down some details of the state of affairs in Paris at the end of this day, the second of the coup d'etat. I wrote this page, which I reproduce here, because it is a life-like portrayal—a sort of direct photograph:— ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... the language of music—I now have a story to tell you of a certain freakish character; and then we are regaled with the musical portrayal of a series of Till's pranks. As an Epilogue, Strauss improvises on this opening theme as much as to say—you have listened to my musical story, now let us indulge in some reflections as to the fate of poor Till, for after ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... condemned it to destruction. This was, on the one hand, licentious to the last degree, and on the other, aimed at certain classes in society, which, after the middle of the sixteenth century, ceased to afford a ground for public attacks. If in the 'Sofonisba' the portrayal of character gave place to brilliant declamation, the latter, with its half-sister, caricature, was used far ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... stories, rich in pungent humor and extremely clever in their portrayal of quaint and amusing character, deserve a place among the choice specimens of American humorous literature—which means the best humorous literature in the ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... an ample command of the resources of the subject, easy discursiveness and lively criticism, he puts the reader in possession of such preliminary information as he will like or need to have. The body of the work begins with a portrayal of America as it appeared to its earliest discoverers and explorers. The second chapter is devoted to the Jesuit missionaries, who, reviving the spirit of the Crusades, plunged into the wilderness to convert the aborigines ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... study of any work of art. Each is the portrayal of some generality in concrete form. The concrete is understood by anybody who knows enough to recognize it. The generality can be discovered only by him who has a similar imagination, and hence each one draws a different generalization from the same work ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... pair, "I am of Opinion, that neither of the two Gentlemen conducted themselves so, as to overcome an ordinary Share of Virtue" (p. 24). Nevertheless the discussion in the Critical Remarks is thrown out of balance by exaggerated talk about the portrayal of licentious scenes. ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... followed, and in 1873 "A Princess of Thule" attained great popularity. Retiring from journalism the next year he devoted himself entirely to fiction. A score of novels followed, the last in 1898, just before his death on December 10 of that year. No novelist has lavished more tender care on the portrayal of his heroines, or worked up more delicately a scenic ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... until the will of the National Assembly, at once to be convened, should be promulgated on the subject of the penalty of death. The effects of this decree, as it sped on the lightning's wings, like a saving angel, all over France, may be imagined perhaps, but portrayal is impossible! Who can imagine even the joy, the rapture it brought to many a dungeon-prisoner, who was counting the hours that yet remained to him of life and preceded his awful doom, or to those who sorrowed over his untimely—perchance ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... picture of Beatrice, so that the very streets of Rome seemed to echo her name—though it was only old women calling out "rags" ('cenci')—he was tempted from his airy flights to throw himself for once into the portrayal of reality. There was no need now to dip "his pen in earthquake and eclipse"; clothed in plain and natural language, the action unfolded itself in a crescendo of horror; but from the ease with which he wrote—it cost him relatively the least time and pains of all his ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... confined to the portrayal of the inanimate face before me, I often pause to take mental as well as pictorial notes of the surroundings. I observe that the defunct is attired in a suit of black, which has doubtless been provided by the ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... the utter impracticability of crossing either in the summer and with a bicycle; but the wish gives birth to the thought that perhaps he may not unlikely be indulging in the Persian weakness for exaggeration in his graphic portrayal of the difficulties presented ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... or the like—was popular because in its own way it matched the newly awakened taste for realism and fact. The drama which in the hands of Ben Jonson had attacked folly and wickedness proper to no place or time, descended to the drawing-rooms of the day, and Congreve occupied himself with the portrayal of the social frauds and foolishnesses perpetrated by actual living men and women of fashion in contemporary London. Satire ceased to be a mere expression of a vague discontent, and became a weapon against opposing men and policies. The new ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... fallen short of the immense volume of old and new truths which it has striven to mould and formulate. The characteristic genius of the time is shown more powerfully on the one hand in the accumulation of specific knowledge, as science; and on the other hand in the imaginative portrayal of human life. The favorite vehicle of imagination has been the novel. If our successors hereafter desire to know how man in the nineteenth century appeared to himself, their best guides will be such as Scott, Hawthorne, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Hugo, ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... terrible days in Ireland is a fascinating if often gruesome study, and may be recommended as a vivid, if not perhaps calmly impartial, portrayal by an eye-witness of a memorable struggle."—Glasgow ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... the portrayal so strangely weird in form and color you ask yourself where have I felt that, seen this, before? Immediately you are transported in memory to the midst of a crowded street. In the mad bustle and noise you are conscious ...
— The Fourth Dimensional Reaches of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition • Cora Lenore Williams
... A vivid portrayal of the experience of an Eastern author, among the cowboys of the West, in search of "local color" for a new novel. "Bud" Thurston learns many a lesson while following "the lure of the dim trails" but the hardest, and probably the most ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... of his work is independent of it; for the picture possesses its beauty even when we know nothing of its model. In the language of current philosophy, truth in the sense of the correspondence of a portrayal to an object external to the portrayal, is ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... the Bernard Shaw preface to the play, and asked that there be no applause during the performance, a suggestion which was rigidly followed, thus adding greatly to the effectiveness and the seriousness of the dramatic portrayal. ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... Kenny in a painter's smock intent upon a palette, vividly, whimsically, delightfully Kenny. There was tenderness and sympathy in Sid's portrayal. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... made up of what I have called the author's touches. She excels in the portrayal of homely stationary figures for which her well-stored memory furnishes her with types. Here is another touch, in which satire predominates. Harold Transome makes a speech to the electors ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... was the tenth installment of The Hazards of Hortense. He passed before the lively portrayal in colours of Hortense driving a motor car off an open drawbridge. The car was already halfway between the bridge and the water beneath. He sneered openly at the announcement: "Beulah Baxter in the Sensational Surprise Picture of the Century." A surprise picture indeed, if those now entering ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... inspiration from the scheme which prevailed in the time of the Memphite dynasties, but besides the usual scenes of agricultural labour, hunting, and sacrifice, there were introduced episodes from the public life of the deceased, and particularly the minute portrayal of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... subject-matter of poetry, is perhaps only saying that the poet must be sincere. The mathematician is most sincere when he uses his intellect exclusively, but a reasoned portrayal of passion is bound to falsify, for it leads one insensibly either to understate, or to burlesque, or to indulge in a psychopathic analysis of emotion. [Footnote: Of the latter type of poetry a good example is Edgar Lee Masters' ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... their martial enthusiasm and fatalistic courage were all aglow, when the recital of their fathers' deeds had stirred their blood and the portrayal of their own victories filled them again with the fierce joy of conflict, when the mountain of stone that arched the Columbia had risen before them in assurance of dominion as eternal as itself,—now, when in every eye gleamed desire of battle and every ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... which fiction, whether in poetry or prose, possesses for most minds arises mainly from the biographic element which it contains. Homer's "Iliad "owes its marvelous popularity to the genius which its author displayed in the portrayal of heroic character. Yet he does not so much describe his personages in detail as make them develop themselves by their actions. "There are in Homer," said Dr. Johnson, "such characters of heroes and combination of qualities of heroes, that the united powers of mankind ever since have not ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... Vivid in its portrayal of fascinating college life, the fine young men and women do more than win victories in athletics and in the class-room—they win out in the battle for character. Vigorous in its practical idealism, this is a story to ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... time, but it was necessary as a measure of war." The plea of 1864 was the same as the plea of 1914. In a vivid sketch of Sherman's March, Prof. HENRY E. SHEPHERD, whose North Carolina home, Fayetteville, lay in the track of the invaders (Battles and Leaders, 4, 678) winds up by saying that the portrayal of it "baffles all the resources of literary art and the affluence even of our English speech," and those who know Professor SHEPHERD'S resources and affluence will recognize the desperate nature of the task. ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... Aside from his portrayal of jewels in his numerous portraits, Holbein ranked as the master designer of jewels in his day. Many of the finest of these designs have been preserved for us and can be seen in the British Museum, to which they were bequeathed by Sir Hans Sloane ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... this famous beverage, and knew not the inn by reputation, its business was made known by a swinging sign, upon which, very indifferently executed, was the figure of a leopard, and, further, as if the artist had not sufficient confidence in his powers of portrayal, he had printed in large and uncertain letters, "At the sign of the Leopard may be found all manner of goodly cheer and comfort." Below this evidence of what might be found within, a small and narrow doorway gave entrance to the hostelry. Inside, a larger room than the outer aspect of ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... narratives he is portrayed as the dominant figure, moulding the history as God's representative. Abraham and Moses are here conceived of as prophets, and the Ephraimite history of their age is largely devoted to a portrayal ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... stories. The true artist will seek to shape this living substance into the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skilful selection and arrangement of his material, and by the most direct and appealing presentation of it in portrayal ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... soil, sheep-raisers, raiders upon neighboring tribes—such were the primitive Bantu. Let the reader substitute "Bantu" for "Germani" in Tacitus's classic description, or for "Britons" in any accurate portrayal of the manners and customs of the early inhabitants of the British Isles, and he will catch the true spirit of life as it was among the primitive Bantu before the advent of the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... this book Mr. Harris has done for the wheat fields what Mr. Westcott has done for rural New York and Mr. Bacheller for the North country. It is in no way imitative of David Harum or Eben Holden; and, unlike each of these books, it is not in the portrayal of a single quaint character that its power consists. Mr. Harris has taken for his story a typical Iowa farmer's family and their neighbours; and, although every one of the characters is realistically portrayed, the sense ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... meaning of the text, the scene; also what the composer had in mind when he wrote. Then he learns to express these emotions in his own voice and action, through the imaginative power, which will color his tones, influence his action, render his portrayal instinct with life. Imagination in some form is generally inherent in all of us. If it lies dormant, it can be cultivated and brought to bear upon the singer's work. This ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... Europe are drawn from the fiercest of South American deserts, and the gold which measures American commerce is mined in the arctic wilds of Alaska or in the almost inaccessible scarps of the western highlands. The description of these regions and the portrayal of their relation to the rest of the world is the purpose of Part I of ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... before the public, first of all in the presence of those who were probably the best qualified to pronounce a perfectly dispassionate opinion. It certainly appeared somewhat dubious at the first, that question as to the suitability for portrayal before mixed assemblages, of one of the most powerfully tragic incidents ever depicted by him in the whole range of his voluminous contributions to imaginative literature. The passages selected to this end from his famous story of Oliver Twist were those relating more particularly ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... delicate portrayal of characters in an old New England town. Dr. Lavendar's fine, kindly wisdom is brought to bear upon the lives of all, permeating the whole volume like the pungent odor of pine, healthful and life giving. "Old Chester Tales" will surely be among ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... Strafford's devotion to his King had in it not only the element of loyalty to the liege, but an element of personal love which would make an especial appeal to Browning. He, in consequence, seizes upon this trait as the key-note of his portrayal of Strafford. ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... operated the food-readier. She ate. Calhoun gave a very good portrayal of a man who will respond politely when spoken to, but who was busy with ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... years abroad, while reading the biographies of distinguished men who had been benefactors, the thought occurred that I had had a varied career, though not as fruitful or as deserving of renown as these characters, and differing as to status and aim. Yet the portrayal might be of benefit to those who, eager for advancement, are willing to be laborious ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Chesnutt, in The Marrow of Tradition, has given a faithful portrayal of these disgraceful events, the Wellington of the story being Wilmington. Perhaps the best commentary on those who thus sought power was afforded by their apologist, a Presbyterian minister and editor, A.J. McKelway, who on ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... reason on which to found denial of De Quincey's statements as to the magnitude of the doses he was able to take; and his frankness and truthfulness is equal to that of any of his detractors. William Rosse Cobbe, in a volume entitled "Dr. Judas, or Portrayal of the Opium Habit," gives with great frankness of confession and considerable purity of diction a record of his own experiences with the drug. One entire chapter of Mr. Cobb's book and several portions of other chapters are devoted to showing that De Quincey was ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... appears to me easiest to comprehend and most satisfying to examine. I decided that it would be sufficient to explain the whole situation to the satisfaction of any one, if I began the book with a detailed history of moth, egg, caterpillar, and cocoon and then gave complete portrayal of each stage in the evolution of one cocoon and one pupa case moth. I began with Cecropia, the commonest of all and one of the most beautiful for the spinners, and ended with Regalis, ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... to the stronger, doing the things you can do while you practise towards the things you hope to do, and illustrating impersonal themes until the time comes for you to try your own individual battle in the great world of thought and feeling; till, mature in strength equal to the portrayal of great natures, the Angels of God as shown forth by you may be recognised as indeed Spirit, and His Ministers as ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... detail stands out so much more prominently than all the rest, that the really important aspects are quite overshadowed in my memory, and notwithstanding the surprising nature of Alfred Fluette's deportment, I am obliged to pause and group them in my own mind in order to produce a reasonably correct portrayal of what actually transpired. But one's memory is apt to play strange and unaccountable tricks, and mine is no exception. The best mental image I can recall is distorted, all out of drawing, as the artists say; I can ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... life—not of life universal, but of life particular, the social life of to-day. It is not nice; neither is the social life of to-day nice. One lays the book down sick at heart—sick for life with all its "lyings and its lusts." But it is a healthy book. So fearful is its portrayal of social disease, so ruthless its stripping of the painted charms from vice, that its tendency cannot but be strongly for good. It is a goad, to prick sleeping human consciences awake and drive them into the ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... its diction, and vigorous though be the portrayal of the miserable creature to whom the poem relates, most certainly lacks 'a gracious somewhat,' whilst no less certainly is it marred by a most unfeeling coarseness. A poem about love it may be—a love-poem it is not. Of the 'wild ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... Judaism); her daughter Marusya, who although fully Christian is ostracized as being a Jewess, and struggles unsuccessfully to find her place in life; and Peter Khlopov, a full Christian who finds Jewish culture agreeable. Steinberg's portrayal of Samuel makes it clear, even in the first few pages, that Samuel, although Jewish, thinks very much like a Russian peasant; in a very real way he straddles that fringe zone between the two ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... attained by the utmost clearness, and thus only by a gradually increasing speed. It is therefore most desirable to practise it piano also by way of variety, for otherwise the strength of tone might easily degenerate into hardness, and in the poetic striving after a realistic portrayal of a storm on the piano the instrument, as well as the piece, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... Rebisso, who made the statue of General McPherson which stands in one of the circular parks in Washington, and the equestrian statue of General Grant for the city of Chicago. Its cost, which, exclusive of the pedestal, is twenty-seven thousand dollars, is paid by the city. Mr. Rebisso has given a portrayal of Harrison unlike any of the more familiar pictures. These usually present a decrepit old man, from whose eye have vanished that fire of youth and flash of soul which made Harrison a leader of men. The Rebisso statue, as will be seen by the reproduction ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... any honest and prudent wight must needs be sore offended and scandalized by all this appalling array of armour and bucklers and the horde of warriors Homer calls Corythaioloi (glancing-helmed) by reason of the terrifying hideousness of their head-gear, and that the portrayal of these same fighting fellows was in very truth unseemly, as contrarie to good and peaceable manners, immodest, no thing in the world being more shameful then homicide, and eke lascivious, as alluring folk to cruelty, the which is the ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... Lampton's own house, and I was present. In fact I was myself the guest who ate the turnips. In the hands of a great actor that piteous scene would have dimmed any manly spectator's eyes with tears, and racked his ribs apart with laughter at the same time. But Raymond was great in humorous portrayal only. In that he was superb, he was wonderful—in a word, great; in all things else he was a pigmy of ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... eschatological system of Hinduism corresponds, as we have seen, to the teaching of that faith in reference to God, man, and earthly life and conditions. And the Christian preacher's or teacher's vivid portrayal of the Christian's heaven too often denotes to the Hindu only one of the many purgatorial heavens of his religion, and rarely suggests to him the supreme test of the value of our faith as contrasted with his own. The glories ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... are activities which, like art, are internal or immanent and individual, and others which are external or practical. The true work of art is the internal picture. Measure is what differentiates the artist's portrayal of anger on the stage and the anger of a really angry man. Truth is not sought in poetry, or if it be sought there, it is truth of an altogether different kind. The truth of poetry lies in coherent presentation. Likeness to a model ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... difficult. The blank expansion of the leaf is not quite unrelieved by ornament, but is set off with small points, spots, and blossoms. This will be thought less strange if we reflect on the Eastern representations of animals, in the portrayal of which the flat expanses produced by the muscle-layers are often treated from a purely decorative point of view, which strikes us as an exaggeration ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... tour was the production of "Carmen." The fiery, impetuous, emotional, and sensuous character of the Spanish heroine appealed to Miss Nethersole's vivid imagination, and she gave a realistic portrayal of the role that became popular and spectacular. In all parts of the country the "Carmen Kiss" became a byword. The play, in addition to its own merits as a striking drama, and its vogue at the opera through ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... enactment of Malvolio, of Falstaff, or of Richard Crookback has the high merit of faithfully setting forth humanity, though in certain whimsical or distorted phases; but we are more profoundly enriched by the portrayal of higher types. And thus, in making an actor's chosen and successful studies a means of measuring his genius, we find in the self-poise which wins without effort, and must throughout sustain the princely Hamlet, or Othello tender ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... mine. If you have never had the good fortune to live with them, it is impossible to make you see them as they are. When you once have thoroughly known them, language will fail you to do them justice, and you will prefer to be silent rather than slander them by inadequate portrayal. They are at first sight not attractive-looking. If you stand outside and look at them from a distance their lives will appear to you very humdrum and prosaic. But remember that for almost thirty years our Lord lived ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... using Madeline as the mouthpiece of his own sociological and religious views, I must acknowledge his good intentions, while deploring what seems to me an artistic error. But, all said, the book is very far from being ordinary; its quality in the portrayal both of place and character is of the richest promise for future stories, in which I hope the author will give us more pictures of the land ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... plot which, though not dramatically flawless, has movement and energy and stir. The sweetness and modesty of his disposition lends itself to his portrayal of the more gracious aspects of human life, especially as seen in the humours and oddities of very simple and ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... of Lothario, however much tending tardily to do justice to a particular lady, cannot terminate wholesomely. But he became a gallant partisan. His portrayal of Mr. Warwick to his wife and his friends was fine caricature. 'The fellow had his hand up at my first word—stood like a sentinel under inspection. "Understand, Sir Lukin, that I receive you simply as an acquaintance. As an intermediary, permit ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... been from the beginning. It was the instructor and consoler of the faithful, a means whereby the Church made converts, and an adornment of wall and altar. It had not entirely escaped from symbolism. It was still the portrayal of things for what they meant, rather than for what they looked. There was no such thing then as art for art's sake. It was ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... Browning's portrayal of love shows that it can be a wireless telegraphy, that, in the instance of Cristina and her lover, exerted its force across a crowded room; in The Statue and the Bust, it is equally powerful across ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... of their superior self-consciousness when passing through radical social changes, and by virtue also of their power of literary portrayal of experience, have set down for us, for all time, the way by which man attained his unlimited power over woman and over ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... a kaleidoscopic miscellany of anecdote, grave and gay; brief bits of biography and impressionistic portrayal of types, charming glimpses into Parisian life and character, and, above all, descriptions of the city's chief, and, to outward view, sole occupation—the art of enjoying oneself. Tourists have learned that Mr. Smith is able to initiate them into many mysteries uncatalogued or ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... by the French genius, and well, if rather impudently, copied by Colonna; Boccaccio's vivid Italian Cressida; Chaucer's inimitable Pandarus, the first pleasing example of the English talent for humorous portrayal in fiction; the wonderful passage, culminating in a more wonderful single line,[69] of that Dunfermline schoolmaster whom some inconceivable person has declared to be only a poet to "Scotch patriotism"; the great gnomic verses of Shakespeare's Ulysses, and the various, unequal, sometimes ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... be concrete, historic, a story, and this story, which is the content of the idea of country, is in general a narrative assuming a certain artistic form in which facts are treated at least selectively, and usually imaginatively. This work of portrayal of the life of a nation by its story is consciously or unconsciously an appeal to the will; it is given artistic rather than scientific form for this reason. Its purpose is to present a national spirit, or ideal, or principle, and also to persuade the mind to ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... his head was full of that curious performance, Der Weisse Konig, which occupied many of the leisure moments of his life, being dictated to his former writing-master, Marcus Sauerwein. He had already designed the portrayal of his father as the old white king, and himself as the young white king, in a series of woodcuts illustrating the narrative which culminated in the one romance of his life, his brief happy marriage with Mary of Burgundy; ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... poems named. But when all allowances are made, one is forced to conclude that 'La Peau de chagrin' is a novel of extraordinary power and absorbing interest; and that its description of its hero's dissipations in the libertine circles of Paris, and its portrayal of the sublime devotion of the heroine Pauline for her slowly perishing lover, are scarcely to be paralleled in literature. Far less powerful are the short stories on similar themes, entitled 'L'Elixir de longue vie,' and 'Melmoth reconcilie' (Melmoth Reconciled), which give us Balzac's rehandling ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... hindrance. The little band of missionaries we have sent are hopelessly inadequate to the task and plead for reinforcements with a pathos that almost breaks our hearts. Oh, do not some of us, as we have followed the portrayal of the needs of South America, like Isaiah of old, hear the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send and who will go for us?" God grant that some of us may respond as he did, "Lord, ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... the piece, a vicious old man, that from the beginning Vane had wanted me to play. I had disliked the part and had refused, choosing instead to act a high-souled countryman, in the portrayal of whose irreproachable emotions I had taken pleasure. Vane now renewed his arguments, and my power of resistance seeming to have departed from me, I accepted the exchange. Certainly the old gentleman's scenes went ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... stone. On it a fire burned with a faint blue flame,—the fumes which rose from it were no doubt chiefly responsible for the prevailing perfumes. Behind it was a huge bronze figure, more than life size. It was in a sitting posture, and represented a woman. Although it resembled no portrayal of her I have seen either before or since, I came afterwards to understand that it was meant for Isis. On the idol's brow was poised a beetle. That the creature was alive seemed clear, for, as I looked at it, it opened and shut ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... Damned in Hell suffering a new torment from their inability to get at the Filboid Studge which elegant young fiends held in transparent bowls just beyond their reach. The scene was rendered even more gruesome by a subtle suggestion of the features of leading men and women of the day in the portrayal of the Lost Souls; prominent individuals of both political parties, Society hostesses, well-known dramatic authors and novelists, and distinguished aeroplanists were dimly recognizable in that doomed throng; noted lights of the musical-comedy stage flickered ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... with its restrictions. Facts and ideas are all within the province of fiction. The intellect of an incisive moralist, like La Bruyere, the power of treating character as Moliere could treat it, the grand machinery of a Shakespeare, together with the portrayal of the most subtle shades of passion (the one treasury left untouched by our predecessors)—for all this the modern novel affords free scope. How far superior is all this to the cut-and-dried logic-chopping, the cold analysis ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... of us live longer than about one hundred and sixty years—at about that age most of us decide to pass. When this tapestry wall is finished, it will not be simply form and color, as it is now. It will be a portrayal of the history of Norlamin from the first cooling of the planet. It will, in all probability, require thousands of years for its completion. You see, time is of little importance to us, and workmanship is everything. My companion will continue ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... larger part of his master-epic, "The Lusiad," while exiled in India. For seventeen years he led an adventurous life in the East; and it is easy to recognize many harbors and stretches of coast line from his inimitable portrayal. ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... his anguish, both of body and spirit, was poignant and heart-breaking, I know. His interest in and love for his characters were intense as his nature, and is shown nowhere more strongly than in his sufferings during his portrayal of the short life of "Little Nell," like a father he mourned for his little girl—the child of his brain—and he writes: "I am, for the time, nearly dead with work and grief for the loss of my child." Again he writes of her: "You can't imagine (gravely I write and speak) how exhausted I am to-day ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... had early carried it into favor with the New York audience that nightly crowded the theatre in which it was being presented. The star, a young woman of exceptional talent, almost a great artist, had by her remarkable portrayal of the leading role sprung from obscurity to fame ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower |
