"Acrostical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... however, where it is permitted by the context.] The Rectification of the subject (man) taken up by the Art, is achieved through the purification of the earthly elements according to the indication of the alchemists who call the beginning of the work "Vitriol," and form an acrostic from the initial letters of this word: "Visita Interiora Terrae, Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem" [ Visit the interior of the earth; by purifying you will find the hidden stone]. Half way up there ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... letter from each line of this verse, you will find an acrostic which spells a holiday greeting. The letters, too, are in a straight line with one another—but what letters ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... nonsense she hears talked about her; that hesitating smile which held my youth in tether has come to seem but a grimace; and the pale mountains no more mysterious than a globe or map seen from a little distance. The Mona Liza is a sort of riddle, an acrostic, a poetical decoction, a ballade, a rondel, a villanelle or ballade with double burden, a sestina, that is what it is like, a sestina or chant royal. The Mona Liza, being literature in intention rather than painting, has drawn round ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... violets. If we lived a hundred years ago, and wrote in the Gentleman's or the London Magazine, we should tell Mr. Sylvanus Urban that her neck was the lily, and her shape the nymph's: we should write an acrostic about her, and celebrate our Lambertella in an elegant poem, still to be read between a neat new engraved plan of the city of Prague and the King of Prussia's camp, and a map of Maryland ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to write, Thy inoffensive satires never bite. In thy felonious heart though venom lies, It does but touch thy Irish pen, and dies. Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame In keen Iambics, but mild Anagram. Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command Some peaceful province in acrostic land, There thou may'st wings display and altars raise, And torture one poor word ten thousand ways. Or if thou would'st thy different talents suit, Set thy own songs, and sing them to thy lute." He said: But his last words were scarcely heard: For Bruce and ...
— English Satires • Various
... was his first hit, and in the next year "I Lombardi" was even more successful—partly owing to the revolutionary feeling which in no small degree was to help him to his future high position. Indeed, his name was a useful acrostic to the revolutionary party, who shouted "Viva Verdi," when they meant "Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D' Italia." "Ernani," produced at Venice in 1844, also scored a success, owing to the republican sentiment ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... cat, and afflict or cure all the cattle in the neighborhood." The latter is credited with more celestial attributes in the obituary that survives her than were allotted her unfortunate companion; and the acrostic inscription on ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... dry joke, quodlibet, cream of the jest. word-play, jeu de mots[Fr]; play of words, play upon words; pun, punning; double entente, double entendre &c. (ambiguity) 520[Fr]; quibble, verbal quibble; conundrum &c. (riddle) 533; anagram, acrostic, double acrostic, trifling, idle conceit, turlupinade|. old joke, tired joke, flat joke, Joe Miller|!. V. joke, jest, crack a joke, make a joke, jape, cut jokes; perpetrate a joke; pun, perpetrate ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... neither concern for originality, nor knowledge of composition, and the poets were strangers to the conception of art and beauty. Moreover, they imposed upon themselves rather complicated rules, the most simple forms adopted being rhyme and acrostic. Sometimes they accomplished veritable feats of mental gymnastics, whose merit resided in the mere fact that a difficulty was overcome. Too often a play upon words or alliteration takes the place of inspiration, and ideas give ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... are obviously intended as a pair. They are identical in number of verses and in structure, both being acrostic, that is to say, the first clause of each commences with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the second clause with the second, and so on. The general idea that runs through them is the likeness of the godly ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... York, who may have consulted his Cordelier confessor, Mansuete, about procuring a priest, and the priest was smuggled into the king's room by the Duchess and Chiffinch.[98] Now the letters are a verbal acrostic of Pere Mansuete a Cordelier Friar, and a syllabic acrostic of PortsMouth and ChifFinch. This is a singular coincidence. Macaulay adopted the first interpretation, preferring it to the second, which ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... was to teach; its character was symbolic and decorative. Art had no separate and independent existence. It had no direct reference to nature; the pictorial representation of individual traits was quite outside its scope; a few signs fixed by convention sufficed. A fish—derived from the acrostic ichtbus—symbolized the Saviour; a cross was the visible token of redeeming grace. And so through several hundred years. The twelfth century saw the beginnings of a change in the direction of spiritual and intellectual emancipation. ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... hand* describes The Dream of the Rood, in the Vercelli Book, as an introduction to the Elene or Finding of the Cross which is unmistakably claimed as Cynewulf's own by an acrostic introduced into the runic letters which form his name, and goes on to assert that the Ruthwell Cross gives a fragment of the poem in the Old Northern dialect of the seventh or eighth century, "of which the MS. text is evidently a late West Saxon transcription differing in many respects from the ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... single remark at all theological in its character, and it was of a kind suited rather to do harm than good. In reading in the class one Saturday morning a portion of the Hundred and Nineteenth Psalm, I was told by the master that that ethical poem was a sort of alphabetical acrostic—a circumstance, he added, that accounted for its broken and inconsecutive character as a composition. Chiefly, however, from the Sabbath-day catechizings to which I had been subjected during boyhood by my uncles, and latterly from ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... ACROSTIC (Gr. akros, at the end, and stichos, line or verse), a short verse composition, so constructed that the initial letters of the lines, taken consecutively, form words. The fancy for writing acrostics is of great antiquity, having been common ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... I asked. He had a curious habit, had Henry, of commenting aloud upon his own unspoken thoughts, thereby bestowing upon his conversation much of the quality of the double acrostic. We had been discussing the question whether sardines served their purpose better as a hors d'oeuvre or as a savoury; and I found myself wondering for the moment why sardines, above all other fish, should be of an unbelieving nature; while endeavouring to picture to myself the costume best adapted ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome
... and it was probably in that year that he wrote L'Amorosa Fiammetta and the allegorical prose pastoral (with songs interspersed) which he entitled Ameto, and in which Fiammetta masquerades in green as one of the nymphs. The Amorosa Visione, written about the same time, is not only an allegory but an acrostic, the initial letters of its fifteen hundred triplets composing two sonnets and a ballade in honour of Fiammetta, whom he here for once ventures to call by her true name. Later came the Teseide, or romance of Palamon and Arcite, the ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... acrostic is "mantrap"; the missing rhyme is "mishap." The entire solution was given in something under half an hour by Popsie Bantam. She was a very bright girl, and afterwards married a ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain |
