"Semblance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... surface—a three dimensional form; so that if you want to represent a solid object, a vase, you must draw it flat, and you can only represent the solidity of that vase by resorting to certain devices of light and shade, to the artificial device which is called perspective, in order to make an illusory semblance of the third dimension. There on the plane surface you get a solid appearance, and the eye is deceived into thinking it sees a solid when really it is looking at a flat surface. Now as a matter of fact if you show a picture to a savage, an undeveloped savage, or to ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... is sawn into a rough semblance of the musket-stock before it is sent to the armory. It then passes through seventeen different machines, emerging from the last perfectly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... higher the heat increased, till it became almost insupportable. The officers spoke earnestly together for some time, and were evidently growing anxious as to the road we were taking. At length their voices grew louder and louder, as if disputing on the point, for there was very little semblance of discipline among them. Then they called up several of their men one after the other, but could not gain the information they required. Some of the prisoners were next brought up, but they either could not or would not say whether we were pursuing the proper course, their ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... in his ideas of temporal reconstruction, Mr. Carlyle goes back to something like the forms of feudalism for the model of the industrial organisation of the future; but in the spiritual order he is as far removed as possible from any semblance of that revival of the old ecclesiastical forms without the old theological ideas, which is the corner-stone of Comte's edifice. To the question whether mankind gained or lost by the French Revolution, Mr. Carlyle nowhere ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... that any semblance, any appearance of concession to the view that such things might exist is equivalent to a renunciation of all that I hold most sacred. But I'm afraid I have not succeeded in securing ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... Kentuckians who had been Kentuckians only a year or two, the wild hunters of Boone and Kenton, the rivermen, a few New Englanders, French and Spanish creoles, and men from different parts of Europe. It was a picturesque group without much semblance of military discipline, but with great skill, courage, and willingness ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... an instinctive tendency to religious superstition, (of which I shall here say nothing,) to the fairy mythology of the nursery, and the phantom machinery invented by poets to clothe with the semblance of reality their dreams and fancies, can be traced in a great measure the existence in the mind of the credulity which renders the fear in question possible, opening an introduction for it into the heart excited by inexplicable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... that grieves and wounds her much, but she dare not openly show her grief; she has hidden her mourning in her heart. And yet, if any one had marked it, he would have seen by her countenance and by her outer semblance, that she suffered great pain and sorrow of body; but each one had enough to do to utter his own grief and recked nought of another's. Each was lamenting his own sorrow; for they find their kinsmen and their friends in evil case; for the river-bank ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... the last fortnight had worked a transformation on the foliage. The thousand islands were changed from green bowers to the semblance of shrubberies of rhododendron, so brilliant were the crimson and red of their leaves. They were associated in her mind with Cecil, whose artistic eye revelled in the autumn tints, and was perpetually painting and grouping them during ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... with sufficient deliberation to note the smallest hostile demonstration of the garrison, now raised a white handkerchief on the end of his fusee, and came within speaking distance of the fortress. Then, assuming what he intended should be an imposing and dignified semblance of authority, he blustered forth, in a voice that might have been heard at a much ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... were eventually subdued and some semblance of order was restored, but greater woes and sharper shames awaited this unhappy nation, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... it be the duty of the husband to adhere strictly to his marriage vow: if his breach of that vow be naturally attended with the fatal consequences above described: how much more imperative is the duty on the wife to avoid, even the semblance of a deviation from that vow! If the man's misconduct, in this respect, bring shame on so many innocent parties, what shame, what dishonour, what misery follow such misconduct in the wife! Her parents, those of her husband, all her ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... superior law of the "conservation of substance." As a matter of fact, dualistic philosophy still attempts to raise such objections, often under the guise of cautious criticism. The sceptical (in part also purely dogmatic) objections have a semblance of justification only in so far as they relate to the fundamental problem of substance, the primary question as to the connection between matter and energy. While freely recognising the presence of this real "boundary of natural knowledge," we can yet, within this boundary, apply quite ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... named, the incidents of which are as vivid in my memory as at the moment when they occurred, more than half a century ago. Though the commerce of our town had very materially declined from its former condition of wonderful activity and enterprise, it was still kept up with considerable semblance of its former spirit, and, besides our native vessels, a foreign ship occasionally sailed up our beautiful river. A few miles beyond the stream, in the neighboring State, dwelt a population chiefly agricultural, a portion ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... withstand an indefinite siege on this fragment of Serbian territory, holding Belgrade as a bridgehead for another advance toward the main Morava Valley, when the next effort to invade Serbia should be made. He would, at the same time, preserve at least a semblance of his prestige from all the calamities that had befallen his armies, enabling him to represent the campaign as a reconnaissance in force, similar to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... And sheds a comfort, even in despair." Or— "The widow'd husband sees his sainted wife In pictures warm, and smiling as in life,— And— While he gazes with convulsive thrill, And weeps, and wonders at the semblance still, He breathes a blessing on the pencil's aid, That half restores ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... exactly copied in the bird's plumage. And then she did sit so close, and simulate so well a shapeless, decaying piece of wood or bark! Twice I brought a companion, and, guiding his eye to the spot, noted how difficult it was for him to make out there, in full view upon the dry leaves, any semblance to a bird. When the bird returned after being disturbed, she would alight within a few inches of her eggs, and then, after a moment's ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... cynical and truthful as Alfieri, may make us pause and refuse to affirm that this strange love, platonic for seven long years, ceased to be a mere passionate friendship even when it resorted to the secrecy and deceptions of a mere common intrigue; even when it openly braved, in the semblance of marriage, the opinion of the world at large. During those many months of solitude in the villa at Colmar, with no other company than that of his Sienese servant or secretary and of the horses, whose news ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... some support at every turn. But since he had resisted being forced to tell it, and apparently only ceded to Monsieur de Lamotte's violent persistency, the situation was changed; and this refusal to speak, coming from a man who thereby compromised his personal safety, took the semblance of generosity, and was likely to arouse the magistrate's curiosity and prepare his mind for unusual and mysterious revelations. This was exactly what Derues wanted, and he awaited the interrogation with ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... immobilized the greater number of American vessels necessary to blockade him. The importance of this fact was evident to every one when, in the middle of June, the remainder of the Spanish home fleet, whipped hastily into a semblance of fighting condition, set out eastward under Admiral Camara to contest the Philippines with Dewey. It was impossible for the United States to detach a force sufficient to cross the Atlantic and, without ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... face would have laid her senseless at his feet, then he could have helped himself to that priceless telegram. But Richford had been in the world long enough to knew how to control his temper when it suited him to do so. He forced something in the semblance of ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... marked the Celtic race, Of different language, form, and face - Avarious race of man; Just then the chiefs their tribes arrayed, And wild and garish semblance made The chequered trews and belted plaid, And varying notes the war-pipes brayed To every varying clan; Wild through their red or sable hair Looked out their eyes with savage stare On Marmion as he passed; Their legs above the knee ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... injurious, especially to the potatoe crop. The frosts set in early, and so did the snows; as to the far-famed Indian summer it seems to have taken its farewell of the land, for little of it have we seen during three years' residence. Last year there was not a semblance of it, and this year one horrible dark gloomy day, that reminded me most forcibly of a London fog, and which was to the full as dismal and depressing, was declared by the old inhabitants to be the commencement of the Indian summer; the sun looked dim and red, ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... any sincerity in the transaction either on the part of Huntly and his friends, or of the King and Council, or of the majority of the Assembly: the whole business was concocted and pushed through by the Crown for its own ends, with as much of the semblance of concession to the Church as possible, and as little of the reality. The action of the Court throughout the whole case was such as to breed the greatest suspicion of the King's honesty in professing zeal for the defence ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... ill-favoured handkerchief; his dirty wristbands were pulled on as far as possible and ostentatiously folded back over his cuffs; he displayed no gloves, and carried a yellow cane having at the top a bone hand with the semblance of a ring on its little finger and a black ball in its grasp. With all these personal advantages (to which may be added a strong savour of tobacco-smoke, and a prevailing greasiness of appearance) Mr Swiveller leant back in his chair with his eyes fixed ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... dawn—and in the center of this as in an aureole stood a nobly proportioned figure, clad in gold-coloured garments fashioned after the early Greek models. Presumably this personage was human,—but never was a semblance of humanity so transfigured. The face and form were those of a beautiful youth,—the eyes were deep and brilliant,—and the expression of the features was one of fine serenity and kindliness. Morgana gazed and gazed, bending herself towards her wonderful visitor with ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... chaste, youthful Canova, and beyond, painted on boards and set against satin, a Botticelli face, spiritual, sphinx-like. Her brows were slightly drawn; she breathed deeply now, as if there were something in the place, its quiescence, the immobility of the lovely but ghost-like semblance of faces with which it was peopled that oppressed her. She seemed to be thinking, or questioning herself, when suddenly her attention was attracted again by a sound of a different kind, or was it only fancy? She looked toward a large Flemish tapestry covering one entire ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... and foolish: still, it occurred to me that being happy was not in itself possible at all times; and that, similarly, if I were unhappy, I was unhappy, not by choice, but because it was not in my power to feel otherwise. I thought this, not indeed in words, or in any semblance of coherent argument, but in a sort of confused perplexity, which was only partly represented by my reply ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... of Henry's contemptuous look as he left her, without even a parting salutation, awakened the bitter thought that she had fallen in his estimation, perhaps beyond the power of retrieval, and she resolved to keep up the semblance of a pride and indifference which she was far from feeling. For her cousin's opinion she little cared, nor was she influenced by the thought of an invisible yet heart-searching eye. No wonder, then, that she clung to her perverseness, and moved about on her restless pillow with no ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... four, some to seven, some to ten, and, a few who were considered the ringleaders, to twenty-five years of cellular confinement. But against Don Silverio it was found impossible even to make out the semblance of an accusation, the testimony event of those hostile to him being irresistibly in his favour in all ways. He had done his utmost to defend the poor peasantry who had been misled by Adone to their own undoing, and he had ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... in spite of an uneasy position his sleep was very sweet, unconscious as he was of anything having the semblance of danger. ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... of maidenly innocence, with a semblance of conventional unction about their heads, were there like apparitions that a breath might dissipate. Aristocratic beauties with haughty glances, languid, flexible, slender, and complaisant, bent their heads as though there were royal ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... that he would be beaten, and that the man who had been knocked over would get a dollar. We managed by this crude acting to save an open rupture, but it was plain that the rank and file must not be allowed to mix. We managed eventually to restore a semblance of good-fellowship by purchasing at very heavy prices a great number of eggs. The women, the children, and the wounded have been long in want of eggs and fresh food, and we knew that these would do a great ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... ever been subject are slowly and surely converging their forces upon his mind; and, rapt as he is in the preacher's utterance, there come to him shadowy recollections of some tender admonition addressed to him by dear womanly lips in boyhood, which now, on a sudden, flames into the semblance of a Divine summons. Then comes the sermon, from the text, "My son, give me thine heart." There is no repulsive formality, no array of logical presentment to arouse antagonism of thought, but only inglowing enthusiasm, that transfuses the Scriptural appeal, and illuminates it with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... was not taken by the trader. Withers suddenly showed a semblance of the aloofness Shefford had observed ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... pledged his in turn to her. Pledged? Rather gave outright. Gave? Nay, upon my faith, I lie; for no one can give away his heart. I must express it some other way. I will not say it, as some have done who make two hearts dwell in one body, for it bears not even the semblance of truth that there should be in one body two hearts; and even if they could be so united, it would never seem true. But if it please you to heed my words, I shall be able explain how two hearts form but one without coming to be identified. Only so ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... a human being. The most of their assaults are pure bluster, mere pretence of fury, as is shown by the fact that if, carried away by their pretence, they are led to use their teeth, it is usually a mere sham assault, having no semblance of the effectiveness ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... journaux. Cet animal a le peau noir pour le plupart, et porte un cercle blanchatre autour de son cou. On le trouve tous les jours aux dits salons, ou il demeure, digere, s'il y a de quoi dans son interieur, respire, tousse, eternue, dort, et ronfle quelquefois, ayant toujours le semblance de lire. On ne sait pas s'il a une autre gite que cela. Il a l'air d'une bete tres stupide, mais il est d'une sagacite et d'une vitesse extraordinaire quand il s'agit de saisir un journal nouveau. On ne sait pas pourquoi ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... snuff at the fragrance of a handful of the loamy earth! Is there nothing fresh around us? Is there no green thing to be seen? Yes, the inside of our bulwarks is painted green; but what a vile and sickly hue it is, as if nothing bearing even the semblance of verdure could flourish this weary way from land. Even the bark that once clung to the wood we use for fuel has been gnawed off and devoured by the captain's pig; and so long ago, too, that the pig himself has in ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... he showed that deference to rank and station which was expected of a junior officer; and among the seniors were several whom he speedily designated "unconscionable old duffers" and treated with as little semblance of respect as a second lieutenant could exhibit and be permitted to live. Rayner prophesied of him that, as he had no balance and was burning his candle at both ends, he would come to grief in short order. Hayne retorted ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... united himself politically with his enemies. There was a close political intimacy between him and Jefferson, but never anything like confidence. In their party they were rivals; and after the election which made Jefferson President, there was no semblance of ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... ineffective, and set up the invalidity of the judgment if and when an attempt is made to take his property thereunder. However, if he desires to contest the validity of the proceedings in the court in which it is instituted, so as to avoid even semblance of a judgment against him, it is within the power of a State to declare that he shall do this subject to the risk of being obliged to submit to the jurisdiction of the Court to hear and determine the ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... hear, as all scorn is out of tune with a dead presence. You might as well be contemptuous of a baby. But Prosper was no fool, to think at the wrong time. He laid the body down in the grave, and busied himself to compose it into some semblance of the rest there should be in that bed at least. This was hard to be done, since it was as stiff as a board, and took time. The lady grew impatient, fidgeted about, walked up and down, could not stand for a moment: but she said nothing. At last Prosper stood up by the side of ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... changed its orbit, doubt even of his own established formulae and tables. Weren't they all just talking through their hats? Wasn't it merely a game in which an elaborate system of equivalents gave a semblance of actuality to what in fact was nothing but mind-play? Even Wells, whose literary style he admired as one of the beauties as well as one of the wonders of the world, had been a disappointment. He had seemed singularly ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... the semblance of a man distraught. Horror stared from his deep-set eyes and lurked in the corners of his mouth. His father had been struck dead within a few seconds after they had separated in the entrance hall, both having quitted the breakfast room together, and the awful discovery ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... not such a comforting reflection, King rode in silence for a while, with the Pathan trudging solemnly beside his stirrup keeping semblance of guard over him. When they reached the steep escarpment he had to dismount, although the mullah in the lead tried to make his own beast carry him up the lower spur and was mad—angry with his men for laughing when the ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... of destruction continued, the heavy iron guns sank through the decks and disappeared; the crew of the vessel (who were looking on) crumbled down into skeletons, and dust, and fragments of ragged garments; and there were none left on board the vessel in the semblance of life but the father ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... return! Thus to effect, cause yields. Art hath her turn, And triumphs over Nature. I, who strive with sculpture, Know this well: her wonders live In spite of time and death, those tyrants stern. So I can give long life to both of us In either way, by color or by stone, Making the semblance of thy face and mine. Centuries hence when both are buried, Thus thy beauty and my sadness shall be shown, And men shall say, "For her ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... betrayed no curiosity as to the peculiar circumstances of her stay, but affected to regard it as something quite normal, and he watched over her in every way with a fatherly as well as an official vigilance which never degenerated into the semblance of any other feeling. Clementina rested in his care in entire security. The world had quite fallen from her, or so much of it as she had seen at Florence, and in her indifference she lapsed into life as it was in the time ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... treacherous hysteria, an ugly, raw, emotional menace. A service was in progress; a sustained, convulsive murmur came from within, a wordless, fluctuating lament. Suddenly it was pierced by a shrill, high scream, a voice tormented out of all semblance to reason. The sound grew deeper and louder; it swung into a rhythm which formed into words, lines, a primitive chant that filled the plateau, swelled out over the swamp. It continued for an incredible length of time, rising to an unbearable pitch, then it died ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... ended abruptly in the graveyard. Two cross-streets, which had started out with laudable ideas of independence, lost courage at Main Street and sought strength in union; but the experiment was not successful, and a cow-path was the result. The only semblance of frivolity about the town was a few straggling cottages on stilts of varying height as they approached the river; for they seemed ever in the act of holding up their skirts preparatory to wading ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... chief of Atreus' race, Returning proud from Troy subdued! How shall I greet thy conquering face, How nor a fulsome praise obtrude, Nor stint the meed of gratitude? For mortal men who fall to ill Take little heed of open truth, But seek unto its semblance still: The show of weeping and of ruth To the forlorn will all men pay, But, of the grief their eyes display, Nought to the heart doth pierce its way. And, with the joyous, they beguile Their lips unto a feigned smile, And force a joy, unfelt the while; But he who as a shepherd ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... shoulder of his favorite horse, followed him through the day with tormenting displeasure, though the offer of a cut-glass bottle full of a delightfully scented lotion for the amelioration of the suffering animal brought the semblance of a grin. And Hob, the brute, had gone away with it in his pocket, accompanied by explicit directions as to its application by means of a soft bit of flannel the size of a pocket handkerchief, also provided. ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... there are two theories of the common-law liability for unintentional harm. Both of them seem to receive the implied assent of popular textbooks, and neither of them is wanting in plausibility and the semblance of authority. ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... through its palmy leaves the chastened wind remorsefully sighs requiems, chanting, whispering, moaning and sighing from balmy springtime on through the heat of the long summer days, until in the frost the farmers cutting the stalks and stacking them evenly about in the semblance of long departed tepees, leave no dangling blades to sigh through, nor tassels ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... springing straight up into the air as though from a released spring, or diving forward and upward in long graceful bounds like dolphins at sea. These leaps were incredible. Several even jumped quite over the backs of others; and all without a semblance of effort. ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... features of their interior architecture, costume, religion, domestic life, and everything that can be expressed by paint and plaster; and, likewise, to bring all climates and regions of the earth within these enchanted precincts, with their inhabitants and animals in living semblance, and their vegetable productions, as far as possible, alive and real. Some part of the design is already accomplished to a wonderful degree. The Indian, the Egyptian, and especially the Arabian, courts are ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... him the loping mob yelled and howled and came pouring over half the square. Just half. Then by that sudden intuition which permeates even the most crazed mob with some semblance of reason, they came to a ragged halt, heads turning from ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... great fool to give myself against my inclination! If you fancied you would find my virtue unarmed you made a great error. Behold the poniard of the king, with which I will kill you if you make the semblance of a ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... world. Man, with his motives and works, his languages, his propagation, his diffusion, is from Him. Agriculture, medicine, and the arts of life, are His gifts. Society, laws, government, He is their sanction. The pageant of earthly royalty has the semblance and the benediction of the Eternal King. Peace and civilization, commerce and adventure, wars when just, conquest when humane and necessary, have His co-operation, and His blessing upon them. The course of events, the revolution of empires, the rise and fall of states, the periods and eras, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... cabbage, and all other such like windy victuals, which may endanger the troubling of your brains and the dimming or casting a kind of mist over your animal spirits. For, as a looking-glass cannot exhibit the semblance or representation of the object set before it, and exposed to have its image to the life expressed, if that the polished sleekedness thereof be darkened by gross breathings, dampish vapours, and foggy, thick, infectious exhalations, even so the fancy cannot ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... with brave eyes, that Egypt insults herself when she creates horrors in stone and says, 'This is my idea of art.' And these things are not human; neither are they beasts—they are grotesques that verge so near upon a semblance of living things as to be piteous. They thwart the purpose of sculpture. Why do we carve at all, if not to show how we appear to the world or the world appears to us? Now for my rebellion. I would carve as we are made; as we ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... douar to which they were conducted were lads as old as they, and lasses too, without the semblance of clothing upon their nude bodies; not even a shirt,—not even the ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... hour of midnight, the 10th of May, 1774. The monarch of France is alone as he struggles with the king of terrors. No attendants linger around him. Two old women, in an adjoining apartment, occasionally look in upon the mass of corruption upon the royal couch, which had already lost every semblance of humanity. The eye is blinded. The swollen tongue can not articulate. What thought of remorse or terror may be rioting through the soul of the dying king, no one knows, and—no one cares. A lamp flickers at the window, which ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... the Thames in that of London? If the almost impenetrable smoke and filth from coal-fires were charmed away—shew me, I beseech you, any view of Paris, from this, or from any point of approach, which shall presume to bear the semblance of comparison with that of London, from the descent from Shooter's Hill! The most bewitched Frenchified-Englishman, in the perfect possession of his eye sight, will not have the temerity to institute such a comparison. But as you near the barriers, your admiration ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of mood and whim; Now that its spare and desolate figure gleams Upon my nearing vision, less it seems A looming Alp-height than a guise of him Who scaled its horn with ventured life and limb, Drawn on by vague imaginings, maybe, Of semblance to his personality In its quaint glooms, keen lights, and ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... saying that they ought to revolt from the emperor and join him in an attack [upon him],—"because," said he, "he has despoiled the whole Roman world, because he has destroyed all the flower of their senate, because he debauched and likewise killed his mother, and does not preserve even the semblance of sovereignty. Murders, seizures and outrages have often been committed and by many other persons: but how may one find words to describe the remainder of his conduct as it deserves? I have seen, my friends and allies,—believe me,—I have seen ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... three dry lakes. In the garish light of day they show for what they are, the light yellow hard-baked soil of the desert, without even the ordinary sage brush; but in early morning and, less frequently, toward evening, these lakes take on a semblance of their former state, sometimes (so strong is the mirage) almost deceiving those best acquainted with the region. Years ago—how many it would be difficult to say—these dry lakes were veritable bodies of water; indeed, at an earlier period than that, they were, without doubt, and including ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... of an animated excitement in action, which often incites to valour. Also, practised on ships parting at sea, on joining an admiral, &c. In piratical vessels, to frighten their prey with a semblance ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... gamblers the miners paid little attention. But if, as was often the case, some miner, crazed with an overdose of "double-distilled damnation," fell a victim to the revolver or knife of a gambler, there was sure to be "something doing." Among these restless, adventurous men there was a semblance of law, but its administration was too often a mockery and a farce. This, however, only applies to the ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... fallen, Carthage has fallen; has not Rome almost fallen, fallen not by the might of her enemies, but by the decay of her morals, the degeneracy of her statesmen? What is the name of liberty, without the semblance! Is it liberty for a few mighty families to enrich themselves, while the Republic groans? Is it liberty for the law courts to have their price, for the provinces to be the farms of a ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... everybody. She was eight years younger than I, and my especial pet. Then came the terrible fever, and for days we thought she could not live. Finally she rallied, only for us to discover that we had lost her—her brain was a wreck. The semblance of Ruth stayed with us twelve years longer, until she was eighteen years old; then she went Home. That is undoubtedly the foundation for Ilga's malicious little story; but, you see, Thistledown, there is no present cause for sorrow, only thankfulness that Ruth's journey ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... for information, instruction, edification, and intervals of sleep. It is the style of an age, a class, a sect, not of an individual. Deeds and not words are what count in it. Only by big, wild, or extraordinary things can it be compelled to a semblance of life. Borrow gives it such things a hundred times, and they help one another to be effective. The reader does not ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... plain, which is surrounded by ranges, stands a broad backed butte that was once a volcano. The Rio del Norte sweeps in a curve about its base. Time and volcanic crumblings and desert wind have carved the great beast into the semblance of an elephant at rest. The giant head is slightly bowed. The curved trunk droops, but the eyes are wide open and the ears are slightly lifted. By day it is a rich, red bronze. By night, a purple that deepens to black. Watching, brooding, listening, day or night, ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Aztecs. The rain still fell. The drum of the war-god mingled with frightful peals of thunder, and the shrill cries of the Mexicans rose higher and higher. The Spaniards were sick, wounded, beaten and terrified. Only Cortes and his captains and a few of his veterans preserved the slightest semblance of organization. ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... fantastic darknesses descend into the roads,—black distortions, mockeries, bad dreams,—an endless procession of goblins. Least startling are the shadows flung down by the various forms of palm, because instantly recognizable;—yet these take the semblance of giant fingers opening and closing over the way, or a black crawling ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... core,—the earth rocked and heaved through all Venezuela; and then, almost before the awful exclamation, El temblor! had time to burst from the lips of that stricken nation, it bounded from the bonds that held it, and in a moment was quaking, heaving, sliding, surging, rolling, in awful semblance to the sea. Great gulfs opened and closed their jaws, swallowing up and again belching forth dwellings, churches, human beings, overtaken by ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... gathered from Joan. They winnowed it of all chaff, all useless matter—that is, all matter favorable to Joan; they saved up all matter which could be twisted to her hurt, and out of this they constructed a basis for a new trial which should have the semblance of a continuation of the old one. Another change. It was plain that the public trial had wrought damage: its proceedings had been discussed all over the town and had moved many to pity the abused prisoner. There should be no more of that. The sittings should be secret hereafter, and no spectators ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... poor creatures of London and Paris living. Clothes were the emblems of that hypocrisy for which civilization stood—a pretense that the wearers were ashamed of what the clothes covered, of the human form made in the semblance of God. Tarzan knew how silly and pathetic the lower orders of animals appeared in the clothing of civilization, for he had seen several poor creatures thus appareled in various traveling shows in Europe, and he knew, too, how silly and pathetic man appears in them since the only men he had ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... field both teams played faultless ball, not the semblance of an error being made. Besides backing up their pitchers in this fashion, both local and visiting athletes ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... best to shun the semblance and the food of love, to abstain from it, and totally avert the mind ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... the subordinate stations, his hopes, surely, ought to be dash'd;—and he deserves well of Society and of Virtue who performs the office.—Tho', I believe, in the Character before me, the gentle semblance of Virtue will not pass current with those who possess the least suspicion, or the most ordinary penetration.—But more ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... manifestation of deity, and careless of the sorrows and sins of the world. The great bronze image is fifty feet high, but it is hollow. We entered it, climbed up by ladders to its shoulders, and looked out of windows in its back. Its hollowness seemed symbolic, for it has only the outward semblance of divinity and is deaf to all human entreaties. On that same day we visited the temple of Hachiman, the god of war, most spacious and impressive in its park-like surroundings of ancient trees and noble gateways, but fearful in its accompanying images of revenge and slaughter. Humanity ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... not all dark outside: one spot caught my eye, bright with a livid unearthly brightness—the Dead Stone shining out into the night like an ember from hell's furnace! There was a horrid semblance of life in the light,—a palpitating, breathing glow,— and my pulses beat in time to it, till I seemed to be drawing it into my veins. It had no warmth, and as it entered my blood my heart grew colder, and my muscles more rigid. My fingers clutched ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... their emotional susceptibility. Some go through life always clouded, always dull, like a piece of glass cut in semblance of a gem, that refracts no colors and is empty of light. Others are vivid, impressionable, reacting to every experience. Some of us are most aroused by contact with one another. Interest awakens at the sound of a voice; we are most alive when most with our kind. Others, like Thoreau, respond best ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... semblance of respect to a brave enemy was followed by a scene of barbarity worthy of the Spain of that day. The ceremony of a public execution was gone through with, the head of the corpse being struck off, ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... avoided giving a handle to opposition or to ambition by unpopular changes, or manifest violations, of the constitution; it permitted, though it did nor promote, the enlargement in a democratic direction of the power of the burgesses. But while the burgesses acquired the semblance, the senate acquired the substance of power —a decisive influence over legislation and the official elections, and the whole control ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... mission, which, if we fail to accomplish it now, may be postponed for half a century. Every delay, every error, may be fatal. And the people through whom we have to work are uneducated, liable to accept any error which wears a semblance of war against the past, and in danger, from their long habit of slavery, of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... what Satanism is," said Durtal to himself. "The external semblance of the Demon is a minor matter. He has no need of exhibiting himself in human or bestial form to attest his presence. For him to prove himself, it is enough that he choose a domicile in souls which he ulcerates and incites to inexplicable crimes. Then, he can hold his victims ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... the President or the Secretary of State quite fully realized that there is a good deal of belated encouragement due us and quite a limitless supply of discouragement due those who try "to overthrow or ignore" all semblance of a belief in the right of women to give their consent to their own government. I am glad to have so high an authority that the good time is not only coming but that it has at last arrived—and through ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... had. Mr. Dick, as usual, was not forgotten. My aunt informed me how he incessantly occupied himself in copying everything he could lay his hands on, and kept King Charles the First at a respectful distance by that semblance of employment; how it was one of the main joys and rewards of her life that he was free and happy, instead of pining in monotonous restraint; and how (as a novel general conclusion) nobody but she could ever ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... everything before them, and were eager to achieve still greater victories. Behind the Brooklyn works stood a poorly armed, badly officered, and for the most part untrained mass of men, hurriedly gathered into the semblance of an army. The events of the previous day, moreover, had greatly depressed their spirits. Not a few of those who had been engaged in or witnessed the battle were badly demoralized. To make matters worse, the very ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... a very large one, and appeared to extend along the whole coast. Seaward, it was formed entirely of cocoa trees, but inland a large number of other trees were mingled with the palms. All day the boys attempted to find some semblance of gum oozing from these trees. With sharp pieces of shell they made incisions in the bark of each variety that they met with, to see if any fluid exuded which might be useful for this purpose, but ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... expounded the Girton Girl, "woman is so immeasurably man's superior that only by weighting him more or less heavily with worldly advantages can any semblance of balance be obtained." ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... nimble flight Exulting gained the empyreal height, In heaven to dwell, while here below Thy semblance reigns in mimic show; From thence to earth, at thy behest, Descends fair peace, celestial guest! Beneath whose veil of shining hue Deceit oft ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... another pause, then Alfred drew in his breath and bore down upon Jimmy with fresh vehemence. "The only time I get even a semblance of truth out of Zoie," he cried, "is when I catch her red-handed." Again he pounded the table and again Jimmy winced. "And even then," he continued, "she colours it so with her affected innocence and her plea about just wishing to be a 'good fellow,' that ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... those days. Jeanne had never handled one of those precious books in which King Charles may have been painted in miniature as one of the Magi offering gifts to the Child Jesus.[673] It was not likely that she had ever seen one of those figures painted on wood in the semblance of her King, with hands clasped, beneath the curtains of his oratory.[674] And if by chance some one had shown her one of these portraits her untrained eyes could have discerned but little therein. ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... to. The fascination of staring upon the truth of oneself is deadly, but it surpasses all other fascination. He sins more often now. I watch him sin. Sometimes under my contemplation I see him writhing like a thing in a trap—the semblance of myself. How the woman despises him now! Sometimes I feel deeply sad at my own ruthlessness. It is frightful to contemplate the physical wreck of a being whom, in some strange and hideous way, one always feels to ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... more haltingly than he had, and with no semblance of a French accent—the French rather of an English school. ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... its readers. All dispatches favorable to the secessionists and their cause were published, as a matter of course; but those that were not favorable were either suppressed entirely, or distorted out of all semblance to the truth. They began this course in the early days of the Confederacy and kept it up to the end, one of their generals forging a telegraph dispatch, in which he announced that he had won a great battle, during which he killed and captured twenty ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... know, old wiseacre?" demanded Bob Tice, of the second patrol; for at the time they were marching without the least semblance of order. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... among the boys up for examination, most of whom hailed from other schools, he became interested and began to draw him out. And Keith was able to respond with some of his old-time quickwittedness. His ambition had been stirred into a semblance of life through the shock of his failure, while the summer's rest and peace had brought back some of his natural vivacity. The inner conflict was still a source of trouble, but it did not seem quite so much a matter of life and death. He had not yet passed the crisis, but he had reached a point ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... "Constitution" of the United States to set forth therein the will of God, and his commands was wise and farseeing. It has raised up a barrier against the encroachments of every form of popular religion and has given a semblance to freedom of ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... while we were in the cabin. With a knife." The moon shone full in his face; she had never seen such a transformation, such a semblance of quiet, cold rage. If the man ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... of the evening, the giant Mexican strode on by the side of the two horsemen, sometimes trotting like a dog, more often walking with a shambling, wide-reaching step, tireless as any wild animal. His feet, seamed and parched into the semblance rather of horn than of flesh and bone, were quite bare, though now it was a time of year when the nights at least were very cool and when freezing weather might come at any time. He was clad lightly as ever, in torn ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... son-in-law, and vilified and anathematized by all three of them. I am still willing to go on paying, but only on conditions that they give me in return for my money, if not the reality, at least a show of love, affection, and respect. I'm determined to have the semblance of these things; I'm quite resolved on that. Yes, I will have myself treated with deference. I'll be petted and coddled and made much of, or else I'll suspend payment. It was one of my old friends, ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Grace, rushing into their chums' room and frantically shaking Betty, while Amy vainly tried to waken Mollie. The girls still slept on in the semblance of ordinary, ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... the distant Northern or Sicilian town [284] whence the prizeman had come.—A countless series of popular illustrations to Pindar's Odes! And if art was still to minister to the religious sense, it could only be by clothing celestial spirits also as nearly as possible in the bodily semblance of the various athletic combatants, whose patrons respectively they were supposed ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... safety, but to their opponents' hatred and cruelty. If deeds only could be made the grounds of criminal charges, and words were always allowed to pass free, such seditions would be divested of every semblance of justification, and would be separated from mere controversies by a hard and ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... a virtue which of itself consecrates the lives of the mostly vulgar and entirely selfish young creatures who enter into it. The blind and witless passion in which it oftenest originates, at least with us, is flattered out of all semblance to its sister emotions, and revered as if it were a celestial inspiration, a spiritual impulse. But is it? I defy any one here ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... why, to my mind, the Canadians did a fine thing for civilization's sake. It hurt sometimes to think that we also could not be in the fight for the good cause, particularly after the Lusitania was sunk, when my own feelings had lost all semblance of neutrality. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... Deeply pondered and reflected: "While he seems a man in semblance, And a hero in appearance, Yet his height is but a thumb-length, Scarce as lofty as ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... said, "These brief interviews, stripped of even the semblance of ceremony, give me a better insight into the real character of the person and his true ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... dropped a tear over the uncoffined burial of his persecutor; but his heart was filled with gratitude, as he looked into the peerless night,—gratitude to Him who has given us a soul, that we may admire the works of his hands. As Harry sat musing, turning from the heavenly orbs to their semblance on the bosom of the placid waters, he observed, as it were, a fallen star, mirrored therein, but rousing his dreamy senses, he found it was a small, shining object, floating near them. He drew it from the water; it was a block of wood, in the form ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... dollars and sixty cents. Being recruited at various times and places, their terms of enlistment were expiring daily, and they wanted to go home. As they were reckless and intemperate, St. Clair, in order to preserve some semblance of order, removed them to Ludlow's Station, about six miles from Fort Washington. Major Ebenezer Denny, aide to St. Clair, says that they were "far inferior to the militia." On the morning of October twenty-ninth, when St. Clair's army ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... Europe presented after the removal of the seat of empire to Byzantium and the incursions of the Northern tribes was melancholy in the extreme. Nothing but the church retained any semblance of organised existence; and when at last some kind of order began to emerge from a chaos of universal ruin, and churches and monastic buildings began to be built in Western Europe, all of them looked to Rome, and not to Constantinople, as their common ecclesiastical ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... of the march and rapid progress of Julian was speedily transmitted to his rival, who, by the retreat of Sapor, had obtained some respite from the Persian war. Disguising the anguish of his soul under the semblance of contempt, Constantius professed his intention of returning into Europe, and of giving chase to Julian; for he never spoke of his military expedition in any other light than that of a hunting party. In the camp of Hierapolis, in Syria, he communicated this design to his army; slightly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... was in his mind, she dared not trust herself to words but told her gratitude with her eyes, as she returned his clasp. Then he sent her back by the one semblance of a path which ran through the forest, and himself rode on ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... The outline of that little head, so admirably poised above the long, white throat, the delicate, fine features, the subtle curves of the lips, the mobile face itself, wore an expression of delicate discretion, a faint semblance of irony suggestive of craft and insolence. Yet it would have been difficult to refuse forgiveness to those two feminine failings in her; for the lines that came out in her forehead whenever her face was not in repose, like her upward glances (that pathetic ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... sanction of law, but the next section repeals all laws and parts of laws inconsistent with the provisions of this act. The regulations of 1863 are but a compilation of orders made prior to the war, when such men as Davis and Floyd took pleasure in stripping General Scott of even the semblance of power, and purposely reduced him to a cipher in the command ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman |
