"Allegorical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... volume, he left another behind him. Of this kind of Fables the author does not appear to have formed any distinct or settled notion. Phaedrus evidently confounds them with Tales, and Gay both with Tales and Allegorical Prosopopoeias. A Fable or Apologue, such as is now under consideration, seems to be, in its genuine state, a narrative in which beings irrational, and sometimes inanimate, arbores loquuntur, non ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... conceive a wary combatant may lie invulnerable. Since I was of understanding to know that we knew nothing, my reason hath been more pliable to the will of faith: I am now content to understand a mystery, without a rigid definition, in an easy and Platonic description. That allegorical description of Hermes* pleaseth me beyond all the metaphysical definitions of divines. Where I cannot satisfy my reason, I love to humour my fancy: I had as lieve you tell me that anima est angelus hominis, est corpus Dei, as [Greek omitted];—lux ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... corridors hewn through the living rock. Their walls, covered with hieroglyphics and paintings of allegorical processions, might well have occupied thousands of arms for thousands of years in their formation. These corridors of interminable length opened into square chambers, in the midst of which pits had been contrived, through which we descended by cramp-irons ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... the one hand, had to be omitted from the programme offered to artistic treatment, for the reason that the fine arts could not deal with it at all. Much, on the other hand, had to be expressed by means which painting in a state of perfect freedom would repudiate. Allegorical symbols, like Prudence with two faces, and painful episodes of agony and anguish, marred her work of beauty. There was consequently a double compromise, involving a double sacrifice of something precious. The faith suffered by having its mysteries brought into the light of day, ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... episodes of the chase. This curious example of the work of seventeenth-century artists in leather measures 16 1/2 in. in length by 12 1/2 in. in width. Another typical piece, of a highly decorative allegorical character, is a rectangular coffret with arched lid, the ornament being in colours and gilt. On the front is a knight and a lady, on the lid two paladins mounted on griffins, two savages with clubs and shields, and ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... of @Rg-Veda was identified in the Aitareya Ara@nyaka under several allegorical forms with the Pra@na [Footnote ref 1], the Udgitha of the Samaveda was identified with Om, Pra@na, sun and eye; in Chandogya II. the Saman was identified with Om, rain, water, seasons, Pra@na, etc., in ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... went into Wolsey's great Hall, up a most spacious staircase, the walls and ceiling of which were covered with an allegorical fresco by Verrio, wonderfully bright and well preserved; and without caring about the design or execution, I greatly liked the brilliancy of the colors. The great Hall is a most noble and beautiful room, above ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the work not only of the monks, but also of the begging friars, and in {25} smaller part of the secular or parish clergy. They are full of the ascetic piety and superstition of the Middle Age, the childish belief in the marvelous, the allegorical interpretation of Scripture texts, the grotesque material horrors of hell with its grisly fiends, the vileness of the human body and the loathsome details of its corruption after death. Now and then a single poem rises above the tedious and hideous barbarism of the general level of this ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... mystery which involves their construction awakens the curiosity of the most unobservant spectator. Pillars which belong to no known order of architecture, inscriptions in an alphabet which continues an enigma, fabulous animals which stand as guards at the entrance, the multiplicity of allegorical figures which decorate the walls,—all conspire to carry us back to ages of the most remote antiquity, over which the traditions of the East shed a doubtful and ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... at them, and did not answer. He would have shut the book, but Sheffield wished to see some more. Meanwhile he said, "Oh yes, true, there are some things; but I have an expedient for all this; I mean to make it all allegorical. The Blessed Virgin shall be the Church, and the saints shall be cardinal and other virtues; and as to that saint's life, St. Ranieri's, it shall be ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... been in place a year, but whenever he was at home Morris's visits to Mr. Fregelius did not grow fewer. Indeed, his wife noticed that, if anything, they increased in number, which, as the organ was now finished down to the last allegorical carvings of its case, seemed remarkable and unnecessary. Of course, the fact was that on these occasions the conversation invariably centred on one subject, and that subject, Stella. Considered in certain aspects, it must have been a piteous thing to see and hear these two ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... given by Louis XVIth to the Chamber of commerce of Rouen, on the 28th june 1786, in the great hall of the archbishop's palace, called the Salle des Etats. All the figures are of natural size, and are striking likenesses. The subject of the other painting is allegorical. ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet
... this!' In pontifical pride he walked at the head of the procession, with flowers and wheat-ears in his hand, to the sound of chants and symphonies and choruses of maidens. On the first of the great basins in the gardens, David, the artist, had devised an allegorical structure for which an inauspicious doom was prepared. Atheism, a statue of life size, was throned in the midst of an amiable group of human Vices, with Madness by her side, and Wisdom menacing them with lofty wrath. Great are the perils of symbolism. Robespierre applied a torch to Atheism, but ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... touches him upon the Head, that Part of the Man being looked upon as the Seat of Reason. And thus of the rest of the Poem. As for the Odyssey, I think it is plain that Horace considered it as one of these Allegorical Fables, by the Moral which he has given us of several Parts of it. The greatest Italian Wits have applied themselves to the Writing of this latter kind of Fables: As Spencer's Fairy-Queen is one continued ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... country must have long lingered; and, after all has been said, it is wonderful that the traces of them should be so exceedingly scanty in Chaucer's pages. Twice only in his poems does he refer to the Plague:—once in an allegorical fiction which is of Italian if not of French origin, and where, therefore, no special reference to the ravages of the disease IN ENGLAND may be intended when Death is said to have "a thousand slain ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... lampoon to that of polished satire—swaying parties and peoples, too, and challenging comparison with the higher (at times it might almost be said the highest) efforts of literature in that direction. The beauty and statuesque qualities of his allegorical figures, the dignity of his beasts, and the earnestness and directness of his designs, apart from the exquisite simplicity of his work at its best, are things previously unknown in the art of which he is the most accomplished master, standing alone and far ahead of any of his ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... of ancient times, just as the Code of Hammurabi or the Egyptian Book of Life is to us. The Alexandrian Jews were the first to popularize its teachings, to bring Jewish religion into line with the thought of the Greek world. It was to this end that they founded a particular form of Midrash—the allegorical interpretation, which is largely a distinctive product of the Alexandrian age. The Palestinian rabbis of the time were on the one hand developing by dialectic discussion the oral tradition into a vast system of religious ritual and legal jurisprudence; ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... table is hard at work on a decorative panel for a ceiling. It is already laid out and squared up, from careful pencil drawings. Two young architects are working for him, laying out the architectural balustrade, through which one, a month later, looks up at the allegorical figures painted against the dome of the blue heavens, as a background. And so the painter swallows his eggs, mayonnaise, and demi of beer, at a gulp, for he has a model coming at two, and he must finish this ceiling on ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... passive seer, on the contrary, works not at all and makes no effort, the visions coming slowly, almost imperceptibly, and in most cases having a literal interpretation. The visions in this case are not allegorical, emblematic, or symbolic, as in the case of the positive seer, but are actual visions of facts just as they have happened, or will transpire in the future. Of the two orders, the passive is the more serviceable because the more perspicuous, but it has the disadvantage of being largely under ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... six categories of everlasting atoms, nine substances, twenty-four qualities, and five motions. And, however difficult, and even impossible may seem the exact representation of all these abstract ideas, idealistic, pantheistic, and, sometimes, purely material, in the condensed shape of allegorical symbols, India, nevertheless, has known how to express all these teachings more or less successfully. She has immortalized them in her ugly, four-headed idols, in the geometrical, complicated forms of her temples, and ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... angry at being cheated. Though the day was a most lovely one, I rode home in fit humor to contrast the system of paganism which Cortez introduced with the more poetical system which preceded it, and to compare these cast-off child's dolls with the allegorical images of the Aztecs. My landlord had two boxes of such images, collected when they were cleaning out one of the old city canals. By way of parlor ornaments, we had an Aztec god of baked earth. He was sitting in a chair; around his navel was coiled a serpent; his right hand rested upon the head ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... order of the golden fleece taken at the battle of Grandson—now in the museum at Berne. Till then Arras had supplied most of the splendid decorations of which we find such marvellous lists. Every possible subject—religious, romantic, historical, and allegorical—was pressed into the service, and pictured hangings were supposed to instruct, amuse, and edify the beholders. The dark ages were illuminated, and their barbarity softened, by these constant appeals to men's highest instincts, and to the memories ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... themselves are not strictly consecutive, but, by the interpellation of certain other words, a series of intelligible sentences is obtained, the meaning of which is not very clear, but is no doubt allegorical. The method of decipherment is shown in the accompanying tables, and the full rendering suggested on the enclosed sheet. It is to be noted that the writer of this document was apparently quite unacquainted ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... gentle except one, a scene of which a gentleman's house was the centre, standing low in the vale, the hills above it covered with gloomy fir plantations, and the appearance of the house itself, though it could scarcely be seen, was gloomy. There was an allegorical air—a person fond of Spenser will understand me—in this uncheerful spot, single ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... An allegorical episode may be cited as a sample of the general style of this effusion. The poet relates how the Genius of Poetry (like, but how unlike, her who was seen by Burns in vision) appeared to him with counsel how best to hit the taste of ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... have more of the intellectual part of the character, and seem vicious on reflection, and of set purpose. Rubens' are noble specimens of a class; Poussin's are allegorical abstractions of the same class, with bodies less pampered, but with minds more secretly depraved. The Bacchanalian groups of the Flemish painter were, however, his masterpieces in composition. Witness those prodigies of colour, character, and expression at Blenheim. In ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... allegorical personality, speaking in allegories and parables, and at times not even refraining from relating his own dreams—is a figure we can understand but very imperfectly if we have no knowledge of his creator and counterpart, Friedrich Nietzsche; and it were ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... forward a subject of singular interest and importance—"The lameness of Shakespeare—was it moral or physical?" He would not insult their intelligence by dwelling on the absurd and exploded hypothesis that this expression was allegorical, but would at once assume that the infirmity in question was physical. Then arose the question—In which leg? He was prepared, on the evidence of an early play, to prove to demonstration that the injured and interesting ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Tenents' (as Sir Thomas Browne has it) which are perpetuated, not originated, in the Historia Animalium. Some of them come, through Persia, from the farther East: and others (we meet with them once more in Horapollo the Egyptian priest) are but the exoteric or allegorical expression of the arcana of ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Henri IV. and Louis XV., 1773-1777. Salle des Gardes, principally by Charles IX., but restored by Louis Philippe. In the medallions above the five real and mock doors are portraits of Francis I., with the allegorical figures of Might and the Fine Arts; Henri II., with figures of Diana and Liberality; Antoine Bourbon (father of Henri IV.), with figures of Hope and Abundance; Henri IV., with figures of Peace and Glory; and Louis XIII., with figures of Religion and Justice. Beautiful chimney-piece ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... October, 1842; the lady referred to was the Princess Belgiojoso (1808-1871), who after the unsuccessful movement for Italian liberty in 1831 left Italy and resided in Paris, where Musset came often to her salon, i. LA NUIT, one of the famous allegorical statues made by Michaelangelo for the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... panorama,—Rebecca, with her tall slenderness, her thoughtful brow, the fire of young joy in her face, her fillet of dark braided hair, might have been a young Muse or Sibyl; and the flowery hayrack, with its freight of blooming girlhood, might have been painted as an allegorical picture of The Morning of Life. It all passed him, as he stood under the elms in the old village street where his mother had walked half a century ago, and he was turning with the crowd towards ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... who had before been most violent, now sat as if struck dumb. A silence of some minutes prevailed, when all at once, the spirit of revelation seemed to come on me, and I said, "Why, gentlemen, you must be sensible that it is but an allegorical expression;" and I added, "how often in the ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... Rome. He believes that gold is the only sound material for pillars of society. The aristocratic idea is in his bones." Edmonds, by a feat of virtuosity, sent a thin, straight column of smoke, as it might have been an allegorical and sardonic pillar itself, almost to the ceiling. "But he believes in fair play. Free speech. Open field. The rigor of the game. He's a sportsman in life and affairs. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... surveying the motives of his life, but Browning filling in the bizarre outlines of his construction with appropriate psychological detail. Another symptom of decline in Browning's most characteristic kind of power is probably to be found in the play of symbolism which invests with an air of allegorical abstraction the "Tower" and the "Turf," and makes the whole poem, with all its prosaic realism, intelligibly regarded as a sort of fantasia ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... on Isaiah, St. Jerome joins this interpretation to several passages in the prophet—"Since the advent of the Saviour, all that must be understood in an allegorical sense; for all the error of the waters of Egypt, and all the pernicious arts which deluded the nations who suffered themselves to be infatuated by them, have been destroyed by the coming of Jesus Christ." A little after, he adds—"That Memphis was also strongly addicted to magic, the vestiges ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... small pictures with gilt skies, and angels in red and blue. Well, yesterday he called on papa, and requested his permission to ask me to sit—or, rather, stand—for the heroine of his next great work, which is to be an allegorical one, taken from the 'Faery Queen' or the 'Morte d'Arthur,' or some such book. I protested; it was no use. 'Good gracious, papa,' I said, 'do you know what he will make of me? He will give me a dirty brown face, and I shall wear a dirty green ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... to Lovelace.— His executorial proceedings. Eleven posthumous letters of the lady. Copy of one of them written to himself. Tells Lovelace of one written to him, in pursuance of her promise in her allegorical letter. (See Letter XVIII. of Vol. VIII.) Other executorial proceedings. The Colonel's letter to James Harlowe, signifying Clarissa's request to be buried at the feet ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... allegorical subject, I will take his likeness as Satan. Ha, ha! a true painter's revenge,—eh? And the way of the world, too! When we can do nothing else against a man whom we hate, we can at least paint his effigies as the Devil's. Seriously, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... begins to paint in his strength, with conviction—rather happy and innocent than not—that it is right to paint any beautiful thing, and best to paint the most beautiful,—say in 1470, at twenty-three years of age. The allegorical Spring and the Graces, and the Aphrodite now in the Ufficii, were painted for Cosmo, and seem to be taken by Vasari and others as early, or early-central, works in his life: also the portrait of Simonetta Vespucei[1]. He is known to have painted much in early life for the Vespucei ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... really assisting to him?" but appears strongly disposed to answer it in the affirmative,—giving, as an instance, in favour of this conclusion, the classic Addison, who, "as appears," he says, "from some original efforts in the sublime, allegorical way, had no want of natural talents for the greater poetry,—which yet were so restrained and disabled by his constant and superstitious study of the old classics, that he was, in fact, but a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... hear the law? [4:22]For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, one by a servant woman, and the other by a free woman. [4:23]But he by the servant woman was born of the flesh, and he by the free woman, by the promise. [4:24]These things are allegorical, for those [women] are two covenants, one from Mount Sinai, bearing children for servitude, which is Hagar; [4:25]for Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; and the present Jerusalem answers to her, for she is in servitude with her children. [4:26]But the Jerusalem ...
— The New Testament • Various
... Poets, which has mostly been to the left through the upper Circles, is now generally to proceed straight across the lower Circles where Fraud is punished. They had been going to the left at the foot of the precipice, and consequently turn to the right to ascend the bridge. The allegorical intention in the direction of ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... should not be understood of the vulgar, and which bore a hidden meaning to his disciples. Pythagoras did the same. The prophets and religious writers must have done so to an even greater extent.[167:1] And we know enough of the history of ritual to be sure that a great deal of it is definitely allegorical. The Hellenistic Age did not wantonly invent the ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... stanza, according to the then reigning mode. His Bouge of Court is a poem of some merit: it abounds with wit and imagination, and shews him well versed in human nature, and the insinuating manners of a court. The allegorical characters are finely described, and well sustained; the fabric of the whole I believe entirely his own, and not improbably may have the honour of furnishing a hint even to the inimitable Spencer. How or by whose interest he was made Laureat, or whether it ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... adduces, however, an historical document, to prove its existence during the reign of the Norman Dukes; and, while he candidly states the difference of opinion among learned men on the subject, some of them treating the story as allegorical, others setting it wholly aside, and regarding the privilege merely as a special act of grace conceded to the church, in honor of the Ascension, on the anniversary of which festival it was exercised, he takes ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... readers will then comprehend practically how the vulture could feast on the perpetually growing heart of Prometheus—why Tantalus tempted the gods by murdering Pelops—and they will see that the calamities of the Theban race are an allegorical representation of the inevitable fate which awaits a people groaning under the system of taxation now in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... the Poet is based on fact; and that Scylla held a secret correspondence with Minos during the siege of Megara, and, at length, introduced him into the town, by opening the gates to him with the keys which she had stolen from her father, while he was asleep. This is probably alluded to under the allegorical description of the fatal lock of hair, though why it should be depicted in that form especially, it is difficult to guess. The change of Scylla into a lark, or partridge, and of her father into a sea eagle, are poetical fictions based on the equivocal meanings of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... far the history; the allegorical significance we shall discuss at its proper place. The carelessness of a translator has caused a dispute upon this part of the story. The Hebrew text does not say that the raven did not return, as Jerome translated; hence there was no need to invent a reason why he did not return—because he found ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... who began to understand this allegorical talk of the North-West trader, and feel uncomfortable, and therefore didn't like to say no. "Well, then, the spruce must stay with the pirch, or the pirch live with the spruce," continued Peter. "The peech wood ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... a hearty meal of roast turkey and mince pies! We almost fell to wishing each other a Happy Christmas, and instinctively wondered if roast chestnuts would form part of the afternoon's programme. Unfortunately, chestnuts of an allegorical kind did enter into the proceedings. Meanwhile, the rain continued its unceasing downpour. It was some time before the baggage waggons arrived on the scene, and, needless to say, they and their contents were very damp. But the peons soon had the goods unpacked, ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... Sovrani!—Well said! But I am the mocking demon always, as you know—and I should almost be tempted to say that you WILL die in the attempt! I do not mean that you will die physically,—no, you will probably live to a good old age; people who suffer always do!—but you will die in the allegorical sense. You will grow the stigmata of the Saviour in your hands and feet—you will bear terrible marks of the nails hammered into your flesh by your dearest friends! You will have to wear a crown of thorns, set on your brows ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... occupation; and possibly also a premeditated demonstration of the fact that they placed their personal affairs above the call of their king. The monarch executed a terrible retribution upon his rebellious subjects. If the parable was intended to be an allegorical presentation of actual events, it passes at this point from the story of the past to that of the future, for the destruction of Jerusalem postdates by several decades the death of Christ. Finding the guests ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... same as for studying the language of an author: we compare the passages in which the expressions occur in which we suspect an oblique sense, and look to see whether there is not one where the meaning may be guessed from the context. A celebrated instance of this procedure is the discovery of the allegorical meaning of the Beast in the Apocalypse. But as there is no certain method of solving these problems, we never have a right to say we have discovered all the hidden meanings or seized all the allusions contained ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... Sparsit was not a poetical woman; but she took an idea in the nature of an allegorical fancy, into her head. Much watching of Louisa, and much consequent observation of her impenetrable demeanour, which keenly whetted and sharpened Mrs. Sparsit's edge, must have given her as it were a lift, in the way of inspiration. ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... controversies Dacier's preface states some of the typical themes of neo-Aristotelian criticism: the idea that proper tragedy is based on a fable that imitates an "Allegorical and Universal Action" intended "to Form the Manners," a view that closely relates tragic fable to epic fable as interpreted by Le Bossu;[16] that modern tragedy, being concerned with individuals and their intrigues, cannot be universal and is therefore necessarily ...
— The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry • Andre Dacier
... the hero of one of his short stories to "Moliere's Don Juan, Goethe's Faust, Byron's Manfred, Maturin's Melmoth—great allegorical figures drawn by the greatest ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... Treasurer to Queen Elizabeth. The bishop received in exchange for the famous old house a piece of land near Cricklade, in Wiltshire. The poet earl was that wise old statesman who began "The Mirror for Magistrates," an allegorical poem of gloomy power, in which the poet intended to make all the great statesmen of England since the Conquest pass one by one to tell their troublous stories. He, however, only lived to write one legend—that of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. One of his finest and most ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... romance, is "merely the Dawn," or Light, or some other bright being carried away by Paris, who represents Night, or Winter, or the Cloud, or some other power of darkness. Without discussing these ideas, it may be said that the Greek poets (at all events before allegorical explanations of mythology came in, about five hundred years before Christ) regarded Helen simply as a woman of wonderful beauty. Homer was not thinking of the Dawn, or the Cloud when he described Helen among the Elders on the Ilian walls, or repeated ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... apostolic writings, namely, that the subject of which they treated did not lead them to any direct recital of the Christian history, belongs to the writings of the apostolic fathers. The epistle of Barnabas is, in its subject and general composition, much like the epistle to the Hebrews; an allegorical application of divers passages of the Jewish history, of their law and ritual, to those parts of the Christian dispensation in which the author perceived a resemblance. The epistle of Clement was written for the sole purpose of quieting certain dissensions ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... But the narrative of Hephaestos binding Here his mother, or how, on another occasion, Zeus sent him flying for taking her part when she was being beaten—such tales must not be admitted in our state, whether they are supposed to have an allegorical meaning or not. For the young man cannot judge what is allegorical and what is literal, and anything that he receives into his mind at that age is apt to become indelible and unalterable; and therefore ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... retain the allegorical and poetical style, of which you were so fond in many of your writings. Mine also run sometimes into poetry, particularly in my "Telemachus," which I meant to make a kind of epic composition. But I dare not rank myself among the great poets, nor pretend ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... charge of either disciple of the sea; but there was, to say the truth, a certain twist in the formation of the letters—an indescribable lee-lurch about the whole—-which foreboded, in the opinion of both seamen, a long run of dirty weather; and determined them at once, in the allegorical words of Legs himself, to "pump ship, clew up all sail, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Olindo on the Funeral Pyre delivered by Clorinda.[11] The action has more than usual force and movement, and the undraped figures are drawn with severe exactitude. Presiding over the whole series, in the middle of the ceiling, is an allegorical figure of Jerusalem Delivered.[12] An angel on either side unlooses the fetters of an innocent placid maiden crowned with thorns. These frescoes, notwithstanding their situation in a cold, damp garden-house, remained, when I saw them last, in January, 1878, in sound condition: thus once ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... very doubt is allegorical. It typifies the workings of the human mind when first confronted by the truth. When the seeker first beholds the light, as shown through the devotion of such a woman as Catherine Outasoren, there ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... holy books is the allegorical idea that the Brahmin, or priest, was the mouth of the original man; the warrior his arms; the agriculturist his thighs; while the Sudra, or common people, sprang out of his feet. The duties and relations of the four castes are defined and stated ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... Theagenes to ask whether any evidence existed to show that the pre-Homeric Greeks were Empedoclean or Heraclitean philosophers. He readily proved to himself that Apollo, Helios, and Hephaestus were allegorical representations, like what such philosophers would feign,—of fire, that Hera was air, Poseidon water, Artemis the moon, and the rest he disposed of in ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... little fountains, two symmetrical bare flower-beds, divided, as by a parting, by a gravel path, carefully raked and bordered by orange trees in tubs. In the middle was the bronze statue of some unknown Grand Duke in the costume of Louis Philippe, on a pediment adorned at the four corners by allegorical figures representing the Virtues. On a seat one solitary man was dozing over his paper. Behind the silly moat of the earthworks of the Palace two sleepy cannon yawned upon the sleepy town. Christophe laughed at ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... of this Etruscan tomb stands a fine bronze allegorical group—the Goddess of Victory in her car, drawn by prancing horses—fitting memorial to this greatest of ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... depot is the statue of Columbus in a broad open space. It was erected so late as 1862, and stands upon a pedestal ornamented with ships' prows. At the feet of the statue kneels the figure of America, the whole monument being of white marble, and surrounded by allegorical figures in a sitting posture, representing Religion, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... is one likewise which, although universally admitted to be allegorical, has never been satisfactorily explained. Prometheus stole fire from heaven, and was chained for this crime to Mount Caucasus, where a vulture continually devoured his liver, that grew to meet its hunger. Hesiod says that, before the time of Prometheus, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... trail afoot. The way was guarded by strange, distorted trees, and rocks carved into fantastic shapes. Some of them were piled high like temples. Others, round and squat, resembled the fat and obscene deities of Eastern religions. There were seals and elephants and crocodiles and allegorical monsters, some of them as tiny as the grotesque Japanese carvings, others as stupendous as Egypt. The trail led by them, among them, between them. At their feet clutched snowbush, ground juniper, the gnarled fingers of manzanita, like devotees. A foaming ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... a mixed dream and is due to more than one cause. The first part is literal in its fulfilment, and belongs to the spiritual class; the other part of the dream is subjective, and therefore allegorical in meaning. Together with the letter, it was a ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... be considered as allegorical of one of the most interesting situations of the human mind. It represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Was there ever a theatre on Kennington Common? In the Biographia Dramatica of David Erskine Baker (edit. 1782, vol. ii. p. 239.), we are told, that the "satyrical comical allegorical farce," The Mock Preacher, published in 8vo. in 1739, was "Acted to a crowded audience at Kennington Common, and many other theatres, with the humours of the mob." Was it acted in a booth, or in a permanent theatre? The words, "many ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... in the apostle as in his Lord, it is not possible that there can really be such contradiction; and because, consequently, the seeming contradiction must be attributable to our defect of knowledge, or inability, to interpret rightly the allegorical teaching of Christ, we might do well, although no solution of the difficulty should be at hand, to accept this gospel of salvation, in the confidence that, as being declared by St. Paul in plain terms, it must be true ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... sect of the Ranters. Mr. Sinclair has joined the Shakers. Mr. Grimaldi, Senior, after being long a Jumper, has lately fallen into some whimsical theories respecting the Fall of Man; which he understands, not of an allegorical, but a real tumble, by which the whole body of humanity became, as it were, lame to the performance of good works. Pride he will have to be nothing but a stiff neck; irresolution, the nerves ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... square shape, once the property of the Rev. Mr. Bowle, is given in detail by Carter in the Ancient Specimens, and is as interesting an example of allegorical romance as can be imagined. Observe the attitude of the knight who has laid his sword across a chasm in order to use it as a bridge. He is proceeding on all fours, with unbent knees, right up the sharp edge of ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... to assign to Dante's beloved an appropriate and consistent allegorical character, in keeping with the views of the poet's time, and with the quality of the varied material which goes to build up his poetic structures, his creations will appear not only intelligible and natural, but unfold ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... passage in his writings, admitted to be authentic, involve a palpable contradiction, it hath been the custom of the ingenuous commentator to smooth the difficulty by the supposition, that in the one case an allegorical or tropical sense was chiefly intended. So by the word 'native,' I may be supposed to mean a town where I might have been born; or where it might be desirable that I should have been born, as being situate in wholesome air, upon a dry chalky soil, in which I ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... a magnificent allegorical expansion of this idea; and the laureate has also finely commemorated the old belief in the country of Lyonnesse, extending beyond the bounds ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... the gate of the church opened; the crowd gave way on either side, and, preceded by three of the young nobles of the inferior order, bearing standards of allegorical design, depicting the triumph of Liberty, Justice, and Concord, forth issued Rienzi, clad in complete armour, the helmet alone excepted. His face was pale with watching and intense excitement—but stern, grave, and solemnly composed; ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... experiment of lying in bed I might never have discovered it. For years I have been looking for some blank spaces in a modern house to draw on. Paper is much too small for any really allegorical design; as Cyrano de Bergerac says, "Il me faut des geants." But when I tried to find these fine clear spaces in the modern rooms such as we all live in I was continually disappointed. I found an endless pattern and complication of small objects hung like a curtain of fine links between me and my ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... paint such subjects, not only from his being eminently skilled in the knowledge of the ceremonies, customs, and habits of the ancients, but from his being so well acquainted with the different characters which those who invented them gave to their allegorical figures. Though Rubens has shown great fancy in his Satyrs, Silenuses, and Fauns, yet they are not that distinct, separate class of beings which is carefully exhibited by the ancients, and by Poussin. Certainly, when ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... Boccaccio has made use of the first part of it in his "Decameron," Day I. nov. 5; and it is curious to observe that the garbled Venetian popular version has preserved the chief characteristic of the Eastern story—the allegorical reference to the king as a lion and his assuring the husband that the lion had done ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... demi-human and supernatural, with all time or no time for the enactment of its events. The modern story puts its note of emphasis upon character that is contemporary and average; and thus makes a democratic appeal against that older appeal which, dealing with exceptional personages—kings, leaders, allegorical abstractions—is naturally aristocratic. ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... adumbration; application. exaggeration, hyperbole &c 549. association, association of ideas (analogy) 514.1 V. employ a metaphor &c n.; personify, allegorize, adumbrate, shadow forth, apply, allude to. Adj. metaphorical, figurative, catachrestical^, typical, tralatitious^, parabolic, allegorical, allusive, anagogical^; ironical; colloquial; tropical. Adv. so to speak, so to say, so to express oneself; as it were. Phr. mutato nomine de te fabula narratur ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... at each other,—the naturally most veracious young woman in the colonies, and the subsequent allegorical impersonation of truth in America,—and knew each other lied, and, I imagine, respected each other ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... it means taking it away. Just as there is popular poetry, popular wisdom in proverbs, so too there must be popular metaphysics; for mankind requires most certainly an interpretation of life, and it must be in keeping with its power of comprehension. So that this interpretation is at all times an allegorical investiture of the truth, and it fulfils, as far as practical life and our feelings are concerned—that is to say, as a guidance in our affairs, and as a comfort and consolation in suffering and death—perhaps ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... phantoms and apparitions, they are not northern specters, but respectable shades, classic, well-mannered, orderly, and have no kinship with anything but the personifications, Vice, Virtue, Fear, Pleasure, and the rest of their genteel allegorical company. Unconsciously, however, Monti had helped to prepare the way for romantic realism by his choice of living themes. Louis XVI, though decked in epic dignity, was something that touched and interested the age; and ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... different forms of scepticism or reason used in attack. The very attempt of the Alexandrian school of theology to adjust the mysteries of Christianity and of the Bible to speculative thought, by a well meant but extravagant use of allegorical interpretation, is itself a witness of the presence or pressure of free thought. The less violent of the two forms of unbelief is seen in the Gnostics, the rationalists of the early Church, who summoned Christianity to the bar of philosophy, ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... negroes, is artistically dramatic in this: it progresses in an orderly way from a beginning to a well-defined conclusion, and is full of striking episodes that suggest the culmination. It seems to me to be to a certain extent allegorical, albeit such an interpretation may be unreasonable. At least it is a fable thoroughly characteristic of the negro; and it needs no scientific investigation to show why he selects as his hero the weakest and most harmless of all animals, and ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... canvases that are placed over doorways in the galleries of the Academy, and, in the sense of elevation, may consequently be spoken of as high. All this is wrong. Alas! that we should write it. Would that we could right it! And to think of the musty subjects that our historical and allegorical men select. Ho! young men—away with your CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS; relegate your METAMORA to his proper limbo; let WASHINGTON alone; and LINCOLN; and OSCEOLA the Savage; and POCAHONTAS, and all the rest. Leave them ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... she sent an allegorical picture, called "The Gold Mine." A young woman in gold drapery drops gold coins from her hands. In the background is the entrance to a mine, lighted dimly by a miner's lamp, while a pickaxe lies at the feet of the woman; this picture was accorded ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... elders; the other, which represents a Saracen with a European female between him and a Christian soldier, is, perhaps, an ecclesiastical allegory, descriptive of the Saracen and the Christian warrior contending for the liberation of the Church. These sort of allegorical stories were common among monastic ornaments, and the famous legend of St George and the Dragon ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... descendants dwelt. Myths of that world were still preserved in their archives, and in those myths were legends of a vaulted dome in which the lamps were lighted by no human hand. But such legends were considered by most commentators as allegorical fables. According to these traditions the earth itself, at the date to which the traditions ascend, was not indeed in its infancy, but in the throes and travail of transition from one form of development to another, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of the time in the rooms downstairs, and part out of doors in the great square which is formed by the three sides of the house, and by the lofty iron railings and gates which protect it in front. A large circular fish-pond with stone sides, and an allegorical leaden monster in the middle, occupies the centre of the square. The pond itself is full of gold and silver fish, and is encircled by a broad belt of the softest turf I ever walked on. I loitered here on the shady side pleasantly enough ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... many Boers have, he has never lost. He is quite ignorant of conversation in the ordinary acceptation of the word; he is an autocrat in all his ways, and has a habit of almost throwing short, jerky sentences at you generally allegorical in form, or partaking largely of scriptural quotations—or misquotations quite as often. Like most of the Boers, the Bible is his only literature—that book he certainly studies a good deal, and his religion is a ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... of Louis XVIII., and his queen died here. The drawing-room is still kept as in those days; the blue damask on the walls has been changed by time to a brown. The rooms are spacious and lofty, the chimney-pieces of richly carved marble. The ceiling of one room has fine bas-relief allegorical figures. ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... illustrated in the leading event. When Donatello kills the wretch who malignantly dogs the steps of Miriam, all readers think that Donatello committed no sin at all; and the reason is, that Hawthorne has deprived the persecutor of Miriam of all human attributes, made him an allegorical representation of one of the most fiendish forms of unmixed evil, so that we welcome his destruction with something of the same feeling with which, in following the allegory of Spenser or Bunyan, we rejoice in the hero's victory over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... between the earth and the tree that has its roots in the earth; but it is a very bad principle if it means that the tree could grow just as well with its roots in the air. Every great literature has always been allegorical—allegorical of some view of the whole universe. The 'Iliad' is only great because all life is a battle, the 'Odyssey' because all life is a journey, the Book of Job because all life is a riddle. There is one attitude in which we think ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... three in 1596; of the remaining six which he had planned some fragments were issued after his death. The poem is a combination of allegory and romance; and in this prefatory letter to Raleigh the poet himself explains the plan of the work and its main allegorical signification.] ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... volume upon vellum, which is The Doctrynal of Sapience, 1489, of which a copy, formerly in the King's Library at Windsor, is now in the British Museum. This is a very interesting work as connected with Caxton, being entirely translated by himself into English verse. It is an allegorical fiction, in which the whole system of literature ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... saint's day by a masked ball, and the whole convent was engrossed in the invention of whimsical disguises. The nuns indeed were not to take part in the ball; but a number of them were to appear in an allegorical entertainment with which the evening was to open. The new Papal Nuncio, who was lately arrived in Venice, had promised to be present; and as he was known to be a man of pleasure there was scarce a sister in the convent but had an eye to his conquest. These circumstances gave to ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... detected in Plato's writings, but none of them are at all explicitly developed, and one cannot but feel that some writers on the subject have claimed altogether too much for Plato's theology.[11] The poetical and allegorical form into which he so constantly throws his discussion makes it extremely difficult to determine his exact position, especially on such a subject as his theology, in which he is constantly adapting his metaphysical ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... possible a priori, it is a posteriori so very improbable that it ought to be rejected; that those who believe in this creation rely upon the literal interpretation of Genesis, whilst the contemporary students of the Bible affirm that the book is allegorical, that God, in the beginning created the elements and gave them power to evolve in all the forms that characterise the organic and inorganic worlds. One voice alone was raised in protest, but it was drowned beneath the refutations ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... the Naya. Carried onward by the press of people, I was amazed at the magnificence and luxury everywhere apparent. The walls were mostly of polished marble inlaid with gold and adorned with frescoes, the ceilings ornamented with strange allegorical paintings, and the floors of jasper and alabaster. But as the irate crowd dashed onward through the great tenantless chambers they tore down the rich silk hangings and trod them underfoot, broke up the tiny gold-inlaid ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... Surya is the spirit of the sun. We hear a good deal about him in the Rig-veda, but the whole of it is merely description of the power of the sun in the order of nature, partly allegorical, and partly literal. He is only a nature-power, not a personal god. The case is not quite so clear with Savita, whose name seems to mean literally "stimulator," "one who stirs up." On the whole it seems ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... incredible to the reader that I marveled much at the hidden meaning of this allegorical speech, and never for one moment supposed it to mean: "I, Dr. Foshay, with my botanic system of medicine, am the biggest humbug in these parts, and if you are going to succeed with me you must be another." But I had already recognized the truth of his last ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... follow their example and preach sermons, accordingly, to justify this stand. Next the question of heaven is brought into question by a conscientious divine, who expounds the conviction that it should be accepted in an allegorical meaning, not literally—that instead of being a paradise inhabited by the souls of the elect, it should be considered rather a state of mind of living mortals who ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... amongst the Jews for fifteen and amongst the Gitanos for three days, during which, on both sides, much that is singular and barbarous occurs, which, however, has perhaps its origin in antiquity the most remote. But the wedding ceremonies of the Jews are far more complex and allegorical than those of the Gypsies, a more simple people. The Nazarene gazes on these ceremonies with mute astonishment; the washing of the bride - the painting of the face of herself and her companions with chalk and carmine - her ensconcing herself within the curtains ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... Christianity away with the greatest onslaught ever directed against it. Ah! those tombs of the popes at St. Peter's, with their impudent, insolent glorification of the departed, their sumptuous, carnal hugeness, defying death and setting immortality upon this earth. There are giant popes of bronze, allegorical figures and angels of equivocal character wearing the beauty of lovely girls, of passion-compelling women with the thighs and the breasts of pagan goddesses! Paul III is seated on a high pedestal, Justice and Prudence are almost prostrate at his feet. Urban VIII is between Prudence ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... most important work, the bronze door of the Baptistery, still exists, and with every prospect of preservation. It is adorned with bas-reliefs from the history of S. John, with allegorical figures of virtues and heads of prophets, all most beautiful,—the historical compositions distinguished by simplicity and purity of feeling and design, the allegorical virtues perhaps still more expressive, and full of poetry in their symbols and attitudes; the whole ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... telling a true story and not some allegorical fantasy—these people who had built this place had been a race who knew the secrets of life so intimately they could manipulate the unborn child into shapes intended to give it powers and physical attributes fitting it for amphibious life, for the underground ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... of infidelity together." Collins contributed more than any other author to the rise of Deism in France. He applied himself to the overthrow of all faith. Ignoring prophecy, he held that nothing in the Old Testament has any other than a typical or allegorical ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... existed among them from the earliest times, the origin and policy of which it is not easy to explain—the marriage of brother and sister—which Diodorus supposes to have been owing to, and sanctioned by, that of Isis and Osiris; but as this was purely an allegorical fable, and these ideal personages never lived on earth, his conjecture is of little weight; nor does any ancient writer offer a satisfactory explanation of so strange ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Tree, &c. (Vol. iii., p. 203.).—The allusions in Hall's poem, stanzas iii. & v., refer to the fine allegorical description of human decrepitude in Ecclesiastes, xii. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... is to be INFERRED that there are countless dark bodies near the sun—such as we shall never see. Among ourselves, this is an allegory; and the psychologist of morals reads the whole star-writing merely as an allegorical and symbolic language in which much ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... heroical verse," by John Harington, London, 1591, fol. The plates were used in the Italian edition: "Orlando Furioso ... novamente adornato di Figure di Rame da Girolamo Porro Padouano," Venice, 1588, 4to. There is, however, a difference in the frontispiece, where the allegorical figure of Peace is replaced in the English edition by a portrait of Harington, engraved by Thomas Coxon, who signed as if the whole frontispiece was by his hand. We give a reduced fac-simile of ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... this book that in The Idylls of the King "the effort is made to reconcile the human story with the allegory, and in consequence the issues are confusedly presented to our mind." It is characteristic of the Morte d'Arthur fragment that it is apparently free from all allegorical intention. It is merely a moving human story with a fascinating element of mystery inspired by the original Celtic legend. An element of allegory lies in the epilogue, and The Passing of Arthur still further enforces ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... given on such occasions as when a king or other person of high rank made formal entry into a town. They consisted of an elaborate scenic background set up near the city gate or on the street, with figures from allegorical or traditional history who engaged in some pantomime or declamation, but with very ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher |
