"Distortion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other men Framing for delicate and perfumed ease, Not yet, along the happy ways of Youth, Had weaned from gentle usages so far To teach that fortitude that warriors feel And glory in the proof. He answered not, But writhing with intolerable pain, Convulsed in every limb, and all his face Wrought to distortion with the agony, Turned on his lord a look of wild appeal, The secret half atremble on his lips, Livid and quivering, that waited yet For leave—for leave to utter it—one sign — One word—one little word—to ease ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... difference between folk-lore of the so-called Old World and that of America. Transmitted orally through countless generations, the folk-stories of our ancestors show many evidences of distortion and of change in material particulars; but the Indian seems to have been too fond of nature and too proud of tradition to have forgotten or changed the teachings of his forefathers. Childlike in simplicity, beginning with ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... he lay, a strange distortion came Upon Cuchullin; as a bladder swells Inflated by the breath, to such a size And fulness did he grow, that he became A fearful, many-coloured, wondrous Tuaig— Gigantic shape, as big as a man of the sea, Or ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... but beauty weareth, near and far, Under the pale, blue sky and lonely star. This is that quick hour when the city turns Her troubled harsh distortion and blind care Into brief loveliness seen everywhere, While in the fuming west the ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... to Henry Fielding, Esq., novelist. He hunted from East Stour Farm, 1718, and in three years dissipated his fortune keeping hounds." In 1718, it may be observed, Fielding was a boy of eleven. Probably the whole of the latter sentence is nothing more than a distortion of Murphy.] But even L1500, and (in spite of Murphy) it is by no means clear that he had anything more, could scarcely last for ever. Whether his footmen wore yellow or not, a few brief months ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... extraordinary creations, due entirely to society for, according to Nature's plan, feeble or aborted beings ought to perish. The curvature or distortion of the spinal column creates in these outwardly deformed subjects as it were a storage-battery, where the nerve currents accumulate more abundantly than under normal conditions,—where they develop, and whence they are emitted, so to say, in lightning ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... of wood. Others were ferocious idols with protruding eyes and long flowing beards; fetiches of gloomy, barbaric cults capable of checking primitive humanity in its progress, forcing it to its knees with emotion as if at a meeting with divinity. In the calm of this frenzied, but motionless distortion, in the solitude of these fields peopled by startling and eternal specters, birds were singing, wild flowers crept to the foot of the worm-eaten trunks, and ants came and went, an infinite rosary, burrowing in the ancient roots like ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that it is the breath of tragedy that fills the lungs of the world. And every one whose innermost soul has a presentiment of this, every one unto whom the yoke of tragic deception concerning the aim of life, the distortion and shattering of intentions, renunciation and purification through love, are not unknown things, must be conscious of a vague reminiscence of Wagner's own heroic life, in the masterpieces with which the great man now presents ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... pressures, such as fire tubes or the internally fired furnaces of certain types of boilers, will collapse under a pressure much lower than that which they could withstand if it were applied internally. This is due to the fact that if there exists any initial distortion from its true shape, the external pressure will tend to increase such distortion and collapse the cylinder, while an internal pressure tends to restore the cylinder ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... signal for attack, by blowing their muscle horns. The adverse forces approached; but instead of the battle began a comic dance, in which the two armies emulated each other in grimaces, furious gesticulations, and a distortion of the eyes, which left only the whites visible, while the women shrieked a war-song, which, if their opponents had been lovers of harmony, would assuredly have put them to flight. The leaders on each side took no share in these violent ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... sometimes on the other? In soft iron, for instance, are the internal arrangements of the chemical atom forcibly distorted, and do they elastically return to their original relations when released? and in steel is the distortion permanent? In all the diagrams the heart-shaped body, exaggerated to show the depression caused by the inflow and the point caused by the ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater
... eyed this golden-haired virago now, and looked in vain for some trace of her wonted beauty in the stormy distortion ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... of her beauty, became an inexhaustible surprise and delight. The utter lack of congeniality, the barrier of caste that divided them, was indescribably sad. Rapturous admiration, gentle amazement, blind idolatry, meek bewilderment, the one twisted by brutality to a living distortion, the other lifted by refinement to the embodiment of womanly grace; and yet they were father and daughter. To do her justice, she strove in every way to testify her love and gratitude for her strange parent; the ties of blood asserted themselves in her words ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... view, scene or scenery; an optical device which gave a distortion to the picture unless seen from a particular point; a relief, modelled ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... impression. Such perfect patience and resignation! It made me really forget his crooked frame. Surely, dear Sarah, God makes us all equal, and it is ourselves alone that create a disparity. The calmness and Christian beauty that shone out of that poor boy's face, more than compensates for the distortion of his frame. We will find him out, if you please, some time, and I am sure we shall not repent it;" and Mrs. Fay cast an intelligent glance toward her impatient nephew, which was understood and appreciated by his mother, ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... for our native land would be good and praiseworthy if it did not degenerate, as we see it does everywhere, into vanity, the spirit of predominance, acquisitiveness, hate, envy, nationalism, and militarism. The monstrous distortion of the patriotic sentiment, which is increasing, is killing off humanity. Mankind is committing suicide, and ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... But the distortion which the character of Emma Burton undergoes, and the caricature of Gerty Neville, are, after all, easily pardonable faults in a story rich in noble thought and sympathy, bright with pretty, audacious nonsense, and containing such real ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... be forgotten in the morals of which they are but the revelation. Look at the high-shouldered, ungainly child in the corner: his mother tells him to go to his book, and he wants to go to his play. Regard the swollen lips, the skin tightened over the nose, the distortion of his shape, the angularity of his whole appearance. Yet he is not an awkward child by nature. Look at him again the moment after he has given in and kissed his mother. His shoulders have dropped to their place; his limbs are free from the fetters that ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... conviction that she had managed to scratch his face abundantly. Ridicule would be added to the scandal of the story. He imagined the adorned tale making its way through the garrison of the town, through the whole army on the frontier, with every possible distortion of motive and sentiment and circumstance, spreading a doubt upon the sanity of his conduct and the distinction of his taste even to the very ears of his honourable family. It was all very well for that fellow Feraud, who had no connections, no family to speak of, ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... over a bronze mat of needles. Their steps were noiseless. The odor of the cedars and the temple-like stillness brought to Peter's mind the night of his mother's death. It seemed to him a long time since he had come running through the glade after a doctor, and yet, by a queer distortion of his sense of time, his mother's death and burial bulked in his past as if ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... board which is large enough to cover the surface of the pile, and on the board place a weight of about fifteen pounds of bricks, or other convenient material. A box containing sand, stones, or coal may be used in place of the board and weights. The weight prevents the shrivelling and distortion ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... glass for his watch, for the watch-maker no more than anybody else dare serve him. Every feature of his extraordinary situation depicted in my first letter on "Disturbed Ireland" is exaggerated almost to distortion. ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... outline and coloring. Some of them disappoint us; like the ghost of Hamlet's father, they come in a "questionable shape." Thus, for instance, in his sketch of William Penn, the historian takes issue with the world on his character, and labors through many pages of disingenuous innuendoes and distortion of facts to transform the saint of history into ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Ah! wherefore should we turn To what our fathers were, unless to mourn? Degenerate Britons! are ye dead to shame, 610 Or, kind to dulness, do you fear to blame? Well may the nobles of our present race Watch each distortion of a NALDI'S face; Well may they smile on Italy's buffoons, And worship CATALANI's pantaloons, [95] Since their own Drama yields no fairer trace Of wit than puns, of humour than ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... the problems, it manifestly was necessary to state them. In doing this the writer has sought to present them in a readable and attractive form, but without any distortion or omission ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... travelled through Florence once when Galileo was at the height of his renown without calling upon or seeing him.) In so far as the motion of a planet was not circular, it had to be accounted for by the jostling and crowding and distortion of the vortices. ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... libels; he had no invention except in defamation; he was a mere pretender to genius. His morals were not left unimpeached; he was charged with selling other men's work printed in his name,—a gross distortion of his employing assistants in the translation of the 'Odyssey',—he was ungrateful, unjust, a foe to human kind, an enemy like the devil to all that have being. The noble authors, probably well aware how they ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... sleep, why John applauds it too. Such are we now, ah! wherefore should we turn To what our fathers were, unless to mourn? Degenerate Britons! are ye dead to shame, Or, kind to dulness, do you fear to blame? Well may the Nobles of our present race Watch each distortion of a Naldi's face; Well may they smile on Italy's buffoons, And worship Catalani's pantaloons,[17] Since their own drama yields no fairer trace Of wit than puns, of humour than grimace. Then let Ausonia, skill'd in ev'ry ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... themselves in infancy, and therefore they all ought to be quietly and easily brought into exercise. This maybe done by any object,—even a toy. Were we to tie up several of our members so as to prevent their use, and at the same time exercise strongly those at liberty, bodily distortion must result. If we, in teaching, exercise the memory alone, and that merely with a knowledge of words and not of things, an absolute mental distortion must result, and the higher powers of reflection, judgment, and reason will remain weak, feeble, and deficient from want of exercise. When ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... chosen shall dominate his work, is determined by his sense of proportion. He may distort an object to any extent or leave it as vague as the shadow on a wall in diffused light, or he may make it precise and particular as ever Jan Van Eyck did; so only that its distortion or elaboration is so proportioned to the other objects and intentions of his work as to promote its success in the eyes ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... a broken nose and a facial appearance strangely inferior to the look of David Lockwin, the orator. Robert Chalmers need not disguise himself. He will never be identified. That broken nose is a distortion that no detective could fathom. Those scarlet fimbrications under the skin proclaim the toper. Those missing teeth complete a picture which ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... carefully read the manifesto addressed by Sir Narayan Chandavarkar and others dissuading the people from joining the non co-operation movement. I had expected to find some solid argument against non-co-operation, but to my great regret I have found in it nothing but distortion (no doubt unconscious) of the great religions and history. The manifesto says that 'non-co-operation is deprecated by the religious tenets and traditions of our motherland, nay, of all the religions that have saved and elevated ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... was scarce a drop of blood on it; then there came from the throat a jet of blood which Mrs. Drabdump, conscious only of the horrid gash, saw but vaguely. I covered up the face quickly with a handkerchief to hide any convulsive distortion. But as the medical evidence (in this detail accurate) testified, death was instantaneous. I pocketed the razor and the empty sulfonal phial. With a woman like Mrs. Drabdump to watch me, I could do anything I pleased. I got her to draw my attention to the fact that both the windows were ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... is a symphonic prologue to Heine's tragedy, "William Ratcliff." The different psychological phases of the tragedy are presented by characteristic motives which war among themselves. The Scottish locale is indicated vividly, and the despair of the lovers presented in one place by the distortion and rending of all the principal motives. A dirge with bells and a final musing upon, and resignation before, implacable Fate give a dignified close to a work in which passion is exploited with ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... base of the country is generally limestone, sometimes slate which presents every variety of distortion, the strata being often vertical and wavy, no dykes were observed. The older rocks are generally completely covered by sand and shingle, or stones; but as we approach the boundaries of the valleys, they ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... infirmities of memory, and to the unconscious invention and distortion which grow out of imagination and feeling. Ordinarily, bare tradition, not verified by corroborative proofs, can not be trusted later than the second generation from the circumstances narrated. It ceases to be reliable when it has been transmitted through more than two hands. In the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... intelligently ventilated and given, at all times, as much fresh air as possible, the red spider is less likely to appear. For mildew, which is easily recognized by its white, powdery appearance on the foliage, accompanied with more or less distortion of the leaves, the remedy is sulfur in some form or other. The flowers of sulfur may be dusted thinly over the foliage; enough merely slightly to whiten the foliage is sufficient. It may be dusted on from the hand in a broadcast way, or applied with a powder-bellows, which is ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... in a dozen different exercises. He had no great faith in examinations, for he noticed that boys never did so well in them as in form: it was disappointing, but not significant. In due course they were moved up, having learned little but a cheerful effrontery in the distortion of truth, which was possibly of greater service to them in after life than an ability to read ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... experience of it. I formed an opinion, a morbid dislike of it then, and have not changed it. The benefit, however, of "squad drill" can not be overestimated. It makes the most crooked, distorted creature an erect, noble, and manly being, provided, of course, this distortion be a result of habit and not a natural deformity, the result of laziness in one's walking, such as hanging the head, dropping the shoulders, not straightening the legs, and crossing ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... almost a concrete form—something resembling a horrid bat. I was tired, excited, and generally overwrought. My head felt empty. What were the appearances of unhappiness? I was still naive enough to associate them with tears, lamentations, extraordinary attitudes of the body and some sort of facial distortion, all very dreadful to behold. I didn't know what I should see; but in what I did see there was nothing startling, at any rate from that nursery point of view which apparently ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... rational natures, except that they are not so essentially, but according to participation, and this most obscure, just as the rational soul may be said to be intellectual according to participation, as always projecting common conceptions without distortion. It must however be observed, that the extreme are that which is capable of being perfectly separated, such as the rational form, and that which is perfectly inseparable, such as corporeal quality, and that in ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... In optics the distinction is easily seen when the work is put to trial; but here too, as in drawing, it requires an educated eye to tell the difference when the work is only moderately bad; but with "bold" work, nothing can be seen but distortion and fog: and I heartily wish the same result would follow the same kind of handling in drawing; but here, the boldness cheats the unlearned by looking like the precision of the true man. It is very strange how much better our ears are than our eyes in this country: if an ignorant man ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... various sizes. The origin of such cracks in clay, and casts of the same, has before been explained, and referred to the drying and shrinking of mud, and the subsequent pouring of sand into open crevices. It will be seen that some of the cracks, as at b, c, traverse the footprints, and produce distortion in them, as might have been expected, for the mud must have been soft when the animal walked over it and left the impressions; whereas, when it afterwards dried up and shrank, it would be too ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... That distortion of facts was too much to be endured, with Corrie listening and Flavia a witness. Gerard's chivalry momentarily lapsed and he struck back with all ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... burla, a joke, fun, playful trick), a form of the comic in art, consisting broadly in an imitation of a work of art with the object of exciting laughter, by distortion or exaggeration, by turning, for example, the highly rhetorical into bombast, the pathetic into the mock-sentimental, and especially by a ludicrous contrast between the subject and the style, making gods speak like common men and common ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... last class; but sometimes he is especially attracted to some one division and rarely travels beyond its influences. His recollection of what he has seen may vary according to the degree of his development through all the stages from perfect clearness to utter distortion or blank oblivion. He will appear always in the astral body, since by the hypothesis he does not know how to form ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... even the passing distortion of physical suffering in his features, as he now looked on her. Blank, rigid horror—tearless, voiceless, helpless despair, seemed to have petrified the expression of his face into an everlasting form, unyouthful and unhopeful—as if he had been imprisoned from his ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... themselves distinctly in his last works. They little by little attained a kind of sickly irascibility, reaching the point of feverish tremulousness. This latter reveals itself in some of his last writings by a distortion of his thought which one is sometimes rather pained than surprised to meet. Suffocating almost under the oppression of his repressed transports of passion, making no longer use of the art except to rehearse to himself his own tragedy, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... to the conquest of it! To this is to be added, that when virtue is become habitual, when the temper of it is acquired, what was before confinement ceases to be so by becoming choice and delight. Whatever restraint and guard upon ourselves may be needful to unlearn any unnatural distortion or odd gesture, yet in all propriety of speech, natural behaviour must be the most easy and unrestrained. It is manifest that, in the common course of life, there is seldom any inconsistency between our duty and what is called interest: it is much seldomer that ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... the posterior margin of the M2 of KU no. 11210 is convex posterior to the metacone. The anterior edge of the base of the zygomatic arch of KU no. 11210 was dorsal to M2. The shallow oval depression in the maxillary dorsal to M1 might be the result of post-mortem distortion. ...
— Records of the Fossil Mammal Sinclairella, Family Apatemyidae, From the Chadronian and Orellan • William A. Clemens
... source of beneficent energy. We lose more than half of what we might gain when we cover it up, and try to push it back, to produce, it may be, not harmonious activity in the world, but merely internal confusion and distortion, and perhaps the paralysis of half the soul's energy. The sexual activities of the organism, we cannot too often repeat, constitute a mighty source of energy which we can never altogether repress though by wise guidance we may render ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... eager to see what is sane and strong and constructively valuable even in the strange notions of our patients, and less eager to call them queer and foolish. A delusion may contain another person's attempt at stating truth. The goal of psychiatry and of sound common sense is truth free of distortion. Many a strange religious custom and fancy has been brought nearer our understanding and appreciation since we have learned to respect the essential truth and individual and group value of fancy and feeling ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... the actual progress of the Grass. We were all, I think, impressed by the sense of repetition, of a scene enacted over and over again. It was this quality which gives my story, now that I look back upon it, a certain distortion, for no one, hearing it for the first time, and not as any reader of these words must be, thoroughly familiar with the events, could believe in the efforts made to combat the Grass. These efforts existed; we did ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... The wonderful thing becomes a fetish. So we end in an irrational reverence of that which is worthy of a real and rational reverence. Then we have a superstition. Superstition always results in destroying the rightful belief of which it is the exaggeration and distortion. ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... to say the least of it, extremely odd; he was low in stature; and this defect was enhanced by a distortion of the spine, so considerable as almost to amount to a hunch; his features, too, had all that sharpness and sickliness of hue which generally accompany deformity; he wore his hair, which was black as soot, in heavy neglected ringlets about his shoulders, and always without powder—a peculiarity ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... him. But to call this heroic mood by the name of self-love, is to single out what is absolutely the most unimportant element in the transaction, and to insist on thrusting it under the onlooker's eye as the vital part of the matter. And it involves the most perverse kind of distortion. For the whole issue and difference between the virtuous man and the vicious man turns, not at all upon the fact that each behaves in the way that habit has made least painful to him, but upon the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... this because of my personal knowledge of six cases at White Earth, in which paralysis of one side of the face occurred soon after the Mid[-e] administered this compound. In nearly all of them the distortion disappeared after a lapse of from six weeks to three months, though one is known to have continued for several years with no signs of recovery. The Catholic missionary at White Earth, with whom conversation was held upon this subject, feels impressed that some of ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... the face with the plaster, beginning at the upper part of the forehead, and spread it downwards over the eyes, which should be kept firmly closed, but not in such a manner as to produce any distortion by too violent compression—and continue the plaster as far as the lower border of the chin; cover that part of the chest and arms that is to be represented, and carry the plaster upwards, so as to join the cast ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... opposite surface. If two great globes attract each other, each tends to draw the other out into an ellipsoidal figure; they must be more rigid than steel to resist this — and even then they cannot altogether resist. If they are liquid or gaseous they will yield readily to the force of distortion, the amount of which will depend upon their distance apart, for the nearer they are the greater becomes the tidal strain. If they are encrusted without and liquid or gaseous in the interior, the internal mass will strive to assume the figure demanded by the tidal force, and ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... defended and excused himself by return of post. He implored her to pay no attention to the calumnious distortion of a friendship which had already served Aileen's interests no less than his own. It was largely to Miss Le Breton's influence that he owed the appointment which was to advance him so materially in his career. ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that immovable pose more successfully. I mean as to body and limbs; with the face there was a difference. By fleeting revealments of the face I saw that something was happening—something out of the common. There would be a sudden twitch of the muscles of the face, an instant distortion, which in the next instant had passed and left no trace. These twitches gradually grew in frequency, but no muscle outside of the face lost any of its rigidity, or betrayed any interest in what was happening to Jim. I mean if something was ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Envy of Spenser is only inferior to that of Giotto, because the idea of folly and quickness of hearing is not suggested by the size of the ear: in other respects it is even finer, joining the idea of fury, in the wolf on which he rides, with that of corruption on his lips, and of discoloration or distortion ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... instance of the distortion of a very upright nature; for she is undoubtedly a person of great natural truth and integrity, and yet, under the influence of an unfortunate passion, her pre-eminent virtue suffered total eclipse; and ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... to the mind), outside of both thought and nature, and making it consist of a group of eternal schemes, or forms, of which natural things are merely transient phantoms, and which can be reached by only a few aristocratic souls, born to rule the rest. On the basis of this distortion he constructed his Republic, in which complete despotism is exercised by the philosophers through the military; man is reduced to a machine, his affections and will being disregarded; community of women and of property is the law; and science ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... natural necessity for him: he was very nervous and ironical in temper, and found it hard to bear with the foibles of things and people which he saw with the most disconcerting clarity. And, as there is no good cause, nor any good man, who, seen at a certain angle or with a certain distortion, does not present a ridiculous aspect, there was nothing that, with his ironic disposition, he could go on respecting for long. All this was not calculated to make him friends. And yet he was always well-disposed ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... have the right to prevent the use of his or her name as the author of the work of visual art in the event of a distortion, mutilation, or other modification of the work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code, Circular 92 • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... the activity of children, encourage laziness and thoughtlessness, and do them more harm than can be told. The active tendency in them turns to the distortion of what is complete, and so ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the flesh from his hands and arms with his teeth, pulls his hair, and beats himself against the ground, meanwhile uttering the most piercing cries, until he is quite exhausted. The cold then deprives him of all motion and feeling, his body becomes much swollen, and fearful distortion of the features is produced by the dreadful convulsions he is suffering, while the surface of his skin becomes nearly black. The only remedy the natives know of is to scourge each other, and to drink the cold water from the springs, which ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... the principal cause at first of the misunderstanding of the doctrine, and afterward of the complete distortion of it. ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... of the Entente Powers would like to exalt this distortion of history into a dogma, in order that their various peoples may not bring any unpleasant charges against them. And yet the historical truth is already pretty clear to all who look for it honestly and without prejudice. The German Government believed that the Serbian propaganda would annihilate ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... distance, and give a sense of wild desolation in some ways more striking than the peaks of Scotland or Wales. The thick formations of millstone grit and limestone that rest upon the shale have generally avoided crumpling or distortion, and thus give the mountain views the appearance of having had all the upper surfaces rolled flat when they were in a plastic condition. Denudation and the action of ice in the glacial epochs have worn through the hard upper stratum, and formed the long and narrow dales; and in Littondale, ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... than to ethnology. The territories which they inhabited were known as Siem, Syam or Syama, which is commonly identified with the Sanskrit Syama, dark or brown.[189] But the names Shan and A-hom seem to be variants of the same word and Syama is possibly not its origin but a learned and artificial distortion.[190] The Lao were another division of the same race who occupied the country now called Laos before the Tai had moved into Siam. This movement was gradual and until the beginning of the twelfth ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... the imagination of her audience she relied mainly on her own imagination and her voice; striking no attitudes, and allowing herself nothing of that facial distortion which is the resort of the unimaginative, and destroys not creates illusion. Of course, her face changed, but the change was one of which she was probably unconscious, and which she couldn't have reproduced to her mirror; it was ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... least, superior to that which squeezes a foot into deformity. It is in both instances a barbarous conception alike of beauty and of the function of woman. The squeezed waist and the squeezed foot equally assume that distortion of the human frame may be beautiful, and that helpless idleness is the highest sphere ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... no admirer of blank-verse, and said it always failed, unless sustained by the dignity of the subject. In blank-verse, he said, the language suffered more distortion, to keep it out of prose, than any inconvenience or limitation to be apprehended from the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... out her hands. The scars of her toilsome years were upon them; the distortion of the labor she had wrought for him in his helpless infancy was set upon their joints. He was placing his liberty and his life in jeopardy for Ollie, and his going would leave mother without a stay, after her sacrifice of youth and hope and ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... yet with tenderness). This is the least fine of the three, and yet in itself it is a song of rare quality and far above the commonplace. The music is beautiful, although not free from distortion of the words. ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... all the papers and glanced through them with considerable wonder and amusement. They were decidedly metropolitan in size, and carried a tremendous amount of advertising. Early in his perusal he caught the personal bias of the news. Without distortion to the point of literal inaccuracy, nevertheless by skilful use of headlines and by manipulation of the point of view, all items were made to subserve a purpose. In local affairs the most vulgar nicknaming, the most savage ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... trace of the slight distortion left by her stroke. She merely looked paler, with darker shadows in the folds and recesses of her obesity; and, in the fluted mob-cap tied by a starched bow between her first two chins, and the muslin kerchief crossed over her billowing purple dressing-gown, ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... 1919, the Prince declared that the civil war then in progress in Russia was "accompanied by a spiritual conflict no less determined and portentous," and pointed out that the doctrine of Bolshevism was a deliberate distortion of Marxism, immediate revolution having been substituted by the Bolshevists for the evolution preached by Marx. He went on to say that one of the most striking characteristics of Bolshevism was its pronounced hatred of religion, and especially of Christianity, the ideal of a life beyond ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... either in that smile or the recollections it awakened that was particularly displeasing to her, for she suddenly assumed again that proud, chilly look that had so unspeakably roused my aversion at church—a look of repellent scorn, so easily assumed, and so entirely without the least distortion of a single feature, that, while there, it seemed like the natural expression of the face, and was the more provoking to me, because I ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... ill-lighted hall, barn-like in its proportions, and the smoke-laden air gave a peculiar distortion to everything. She felt as though she would stifle. There were shrill cries of boys selling programmes and soda water, and there was a great bass rumble of masculine voices. She heard a voice offering ...
— The Game • Jack London
... I group under this one head certain operations used for the relief of distortion, in which muscles or tendons are divided subcutaneously. Since the discovery of the principle by Delpech, and the application of it by Stromeyer, Dieffenbach, Little, and countless successors, it has been used for very many cases for which it is totally ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... tone so impressive, that, even amid the clatter of twenty machines around me, not a word was lost,—"you may be sure that this prejudice against women working for their own support will never die out. It is one of those excrescences of the human mind that cannot be extirpated. It is a distortion of the reasoning faculty itself, unworthy of a sensible person, and is generally exhibited only by those who, while boasting of exemption for themselves, have really little or nothing else to boast of. It is the infirmity of small minds, not a peculiarity of great ones. Prejudices ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... posterity will confirm the verdict of the present in regard to a poet whose reputation is due to no fleeting fancy, but to an instinctive recognition by the public of that which charms now and charms always,—true power and originality, without grimace and distortion; for Apollo, and not Milo, is ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... producing startling effects by artifices almost theatrical; and though his devices are obvious, they are more than forgiven for the genuine power and real naturalness behind the rhetorical masquerade. Other men's freaks and eccentricities lead to the distortion of truth and the confusion of relations, but Mr. Reade has freaks of wisdom and eccentricities of practical sagacity. Occasionally he has a stroke of observation that comes like a flash of lightning, blasting and shattering in an instant a prejudice ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... the theory of alterations held quite well, for low-order variables. Wherever we appeared, whatever we did, we set up a definite friction in the normal time-stream, a distortion, like pulling a taut rubber band out. And we could produce changes—on low-order variables. But the elasticity of the distortion was so great as to warp the change back into the time-stream without causing any lasting alteration. When it came to high-order changes, we ...
— Infinite Intruder • Alan Edward Nourse
... coercion cohesion crucifixion declension dimension dissension distortion divulsion expulsion impulsion insertion intention occasion propulsion recursion repulsion revulsion ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton
... therefore nothing in this universe was ever sick, is now sick, or can be sick. We know, Father and Mother of us all, that there is no such thing as a really diseased stomach; that the disease is the Carnal Mortal Mind given over to the World, the Flesh and the Devil; that the mortal mind is a twist, a distortion, a false attitude, the ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... worst it had been a flare of passion—incandescent. It was seldom more. His brain clearing, the temperature of his judgment quickly regained its mean, and he saw his chances without distortion, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... suffered this distortion of shape, and these acute pains for four years, he quitted his usual residence, the quarter du Marais, for the baths of the Fauxbourg Saint Germain. He took leave of his friends, by addressing some verses to them, entitled, Adieu aux Marais; in which he describes several celebrated ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... me to come when ye send for me", said she, turning round in the doorway with a grotesque distortion of her face intended ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... occasionally gets involuntary and very imperfect glimpses or reflections of these scenes of other days. A person of the latter type might have, let us say, a vision of some event in the past; but it would be liable to the most serious distortion, and even if it happened to be fairly accurate it would almost certainly be a mere isolated picture, and he would probably be quite unable to relate it to what had occurred before or after it, or to account for anything unusual which might appear in it. The trained man, on the other ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... finished under the skin apply linseed oil on outside and repeat this application several times during the period of drying. Watch and remodel details if any distortion ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... not for its picturesque externals, its feudalisms, chivalries, and the like; but because he found it a rich quarry of spiritual monstrosities, strange outcroppings of fanaticism, superstition, and moral and mental distortion of all shapes. It furnished him especially with a great variety of ecclesiastical types, such as are painted in Fra Lippo Lippi, Bishop Blougram's Apology, and The Bishop Orders his Tomb in ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... China counted for very much. There were illusions on both sides of the North Sea, which had to be paid for in blood. In both countries imperialism was a sentiment curiously compounded of idealism and bombast, and supported by very doubtful science. In the case of Germany the distortion of facts was deliberate and monstrous. Not only was every schoolboy brought up on cooked population statistics and falsified geography, but the thick-set, brachycephalous Central European persuaded himself that he belonged to the pure Nordic race, the great blond beasts of Nietzsche, which, ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... body to soul. No soul can be perfect in an imperfect body: no body perfect without perfect soul. Every right action and true thought sets the seal of its beauty on person and face; every wrong action and foul thought its seal of distortion; and the various aspects of humanity might be read as plainly as a printed history, were it not that the impressions are so complex that it must always in some cases (and, in the present state of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... my friends do not regard my views with the favor you express; they see evidence, rather, of mental weakness and distortion," said Benjamin in reply. ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... art must inevitably make shipwreck is the theory that it is good to perpetuate ugliness, in either painting or in sculpture. The permanent reality of life is beauty. So far as any person or object departs from this enduring reality, so far it is the result of distortion and deformity, and these, being the temporary, the accidental, the deficient, should not be perpetuated in ideal creation. It is an Apollo who embodies the permanent ideal of manhood—not a cripple or a hunchback. Still further: ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... the artisan, nor wallow in the mire of debauch, all equally abuse their strength, immeasurably strain their bodies and their minds alike, are burned away with desires, devastated with the swiftness of the pace. In their case the physical distortion is accomplished beneath the whip of interests, beneath the scourge of ambitions which torture the educated portion of this monstrous city, just as in the case of the proletariat it is brought about by the ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... emotional power, the power to cry "Fire!" in the theatre, the power to give enormous value for a limited time to some personality, some event, some aspect, true or false, without any power of giving a specific direction to the forces this distortion may set going. Directly the press of to-day passes from that sort of thing to some specific proposal, some implication of principles and beliefs, directly it chooses and selects, then it passes from the miscellaneous to the ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... already referred to the God of repressions and denials, and now must speak a little more freely of this travesty on "the Father," as expressed to us in Jesus Christ. Of all the obstacles to the rooting out of fear the lingering belief in such a distortion of Divine Love is to my mind ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... such credit as was his due. It is certain that he was considered a youth of extraordinary promise by his colleagues, Wilkie, Jackson, and Sir George Beaumont, yet there were not wanting critics who declared that his early picture, 'Dentatus,' was an absurd mass of vulgarity and distortion. Foreign artists who visited his studio urged him to go to Rome, where he was assured that patrons and pupils would flock round him; while, on the other hand, he was described by a native critic (in the Quarterly Review) as one of the most defective painters of the day, who had received ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... been the worse for drink. He declares that he heard cries but is unable to state from what direction they came. No signs of violence were to be discovered upon Sir Charles's person, and though the doctor's evidence pointed to an almost incredible facial distortion—so great that Dr. Mortimer refused at first to believe that it was indeed his friend and patient who lay before him—it was explained that that is a symptom which is not unusual in cases of dyspnoea and death ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... the perversion of spiritual being. Ambition is the inversion of spiritual power. Passion is the distortion of love. The mortal is the limitation of the immortal. When these false images give place to true, then the spiritual man stands forth luminous, as the sun, ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... distortion of Annabel's face broke off Persis' eulogy. "Are you feeling sick, Mis' Sinclair?" she asked in real alarm, thinking that she would never have given Annabel credit for this excess of ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... a mystery, the word mystery cannot be applied to moral truth, any more than obscurity can be applied to light. The God in whom we believe is a God of moral truth, and not of mystery. Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... this was ever granted, I would rest My head beneath thine, while thy healing hands Close-covered both my eyes beside thy breast, Pressing the brain, which too much thought expands, Back to its proper size again, and smoothing Distortion down till every nerve had soothing, And all lay ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... imprinted at the corners that may be as beautiful in later age as lip-dimples are in girlhood; a fair, broad forehead, that had never learned to frown; lines about mouth and chin, in sweet, honest harmony with the record of the eyes; no strain, no distortion of consciousness grown into haggard wornness; a fine, open, contented play of feature had wrought over all like a charm of sunshine, to soften and brighten continually. Her hair had been golden-brown; there was plenty of it ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... longer loved him. It is doubtful if she realized this before the birth of her first and only child. She lacked maternal feeling and rebelled with a bitter rebellion against the distortion of her figure that came with the pregnancy. The nursing ordered by the doctor and expected by all around her nearly drove her "wild", she said, for she felt like a "cow", a "female." Indeed she reacted bitterly against the femaleness that marriage forced on her and ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... ascertain the other sizes. The rationale of the architect's geometrical drawings is that on them each plane of the building (the front, the side, the plan, etc.) is shown separately and without any distortion by perspective, and in such a manner that every portion is supposed to be opposite to the eye at once. Only the width of any object on one side can be shown in this way at one view; for the width of the return side you have to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... may suit his convenience; and both Johnstone and Emery displayed abilities of the very first rate in the two characters they represented in "John Bull."—But to the author of "John Bull," whose genius may be animated to still higher exertions in the pursuit of fame, it may be said—Leave the distortion of language to men who cannot embellish ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... whether Clayton or Ellsworth should be mayor, Kittrell had to draw a political cartoon each day; and as he struggled with his work, less and less the old joy came to cheer and spur him on. To read the ridicule, the abuse, which the Telegraph heaped on Clayton, the distortion of facts concerning his candidature, the unfair reports of his meetings, sickened him, and more than all, he was filled with disgust as he tried to match in caricature these libels of the man he so loved and ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... saw huge-bodied, wide-spreading forest trees, with strange names and stranger appearance —trees that cast a shadow like a thunder-cloud, and were able to stand alone without being tied to green poles; in place of gold fish, wiggling around in glass globes, assuming countless shades and degrees of distortion through the magnifying and diminishing qualities of their transparent prison houses, I saw cats—Tom-cats, Mary Ann cats, long-tailed cats, bob-tailed cats, blind cats, one-eyed cats, wall-eyed cats, cross-eyed cats, gray cats, black cats, white cats, yellow cats, striped cats, spotted cats, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 1500 feet from X high quality steel frame buildings were not completely collapsed, but the entire buildings suffered mass distortion and all panels and ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... planetary orbit, was designed by me and built under my direction. It is protected from meteorites by certain forces of my devising. It is undetectable and invisible—your detectors do not touch it and light-waves are bent around it without loss or distortion. I am discussing these points at such length so that you may realize exactly your position. As I have intimated, you can be of assistance to me ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... limited visual works of art, but in theory may apply under contract and other principles. Moral rights may include the right of an author to have his or her name on a work, the right of attribution, and the right to object to distortion or ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... him lie and returned, weary and out of breath. He had been a very fine man in life, of beauty too, as was to be seen in the shape of his features and the particular elegance of his chin, despite the distortion of his last unspeakable dismay; and with his clothes I guessed his weight came hard upon two hundred pounds, no mean burden to ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... the best light. He was indignant that heathen historians wrote with scorn of the vanquished Jews, and resolved to describe the noble stand made by the Jewish armies against Rome. He was moved to wrath by the Egyptian Manetho's distortion of the ancient history of Israel, and he could not rest silent under the insults of Apion. The works of Josephus are therefore works written with a tendency to glorify his people and his religion. But they are in the main trustworthy, and are, indeed, one of the chief sources ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... get of New England character are free from any distortion, and their humorous phases are always entertaining. Mr. TROWBRIDGE'S brilliant descriptive faculty is shown to great advantage in the opening chapter of the book by a vivid picture of a village fire, and is manifested elsewhere with ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... she was said to have bewitched fell down on a sudden before all the court when he saw her, and would then as suddenly return to himself again, and very distinctly relate the several injuries she had done him: but in all this it was observed the boy was free from any distortion; that he did not foam at the mouth, and that his fits did not leave him gradually, but all at once; so that, upon the whole, the judge thought it proper to reprieve her." Memoirs and Travels of Sir John Reresby ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... from the atomicity of the Aether, it is exceedingly difficult to understand how such a property can belong to it. Atoms are exceedingly small particles, possessing the property of elasticity, or the power to recover their original shape after distortion or change of shape. If the Aether therefore be atomic, as is pointed out in Art. 44, it can at once be readily understood how the Aether as a whole can possess the property of elasticity. The atoms of the Aether must be inconceivably small, as the light-waves ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... modes of vice weakens the impression of disgust which is originally felt; as we lose by degrees the horror with which an unsightly countenance was beheld at the first interview, till at length we can more than tolerate distortion, and even court deformity. Never was a more important maxim delivered by the Saviour for the guidance of his disciples, than that which respected their avoidance of the first step in transgression. "Watch ye and pray," said he, "lest ye enter into temptation." The fence which is placed around ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... the unconsidered things I said last night, Conscience," Stuart began again, "there were some that I must still say. It was like the illogical thread of a dream which is only the distortion of a waking thought-flow. The essence of my contention ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... mathematical friends derived their identical formulas for gravity and electromagnetism, my job was pretty easy. As you know, a falling body follows the line of least resistance in a field of distortion of space caused by mass. I bend space into another such field by electromagnetic means, and the Comet flies down the track. Working the mercury disintegrators at full power, I can get an acceleration ...
— Out Around Rigel • Robert H. Wilson
... Byzantine church, and if this were all 'the widening' for which Professor Goodyear contended there would be no room for difference of opinion. The ledge formed by that set back may have served to support scaffolding. In the next place, due weight must be given to the distortion which would inevitably occur in Byzantine buildings. They were fabrics of mortar with brick rather than of brick with mortar, and consequently too elastic not to settle to a large extent in the course of erection. Hence is it that no measurements of a Byzantine structure, ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... kind of reluctance beneath his haste: again it was his father's step. She smiled, but looked away from him as he approached her; she seemed to be re-living her own past as one re-lives things in the distortion of fever. ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... College chimney-pieces with the photographic portraits of all the owner's College friends, had just then come into fashion, Mr. Verdant Green's beaming countenance and spectacles were daguerreotyped in every variety of Ethiopian distortion; and, being enclosed in miniature frames, were distributed as ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... rank. His humour, which, as Steele observes, is peculiar to himself, is so happily diffused as to give the grace of novelty to domestick scenes and daily occurrences. He never "outsteps the modesty of nature," nor raises merriment or wonder by the violation of truth. His figures neither divert by distortion, nor amaze by aggravation. He copies life with so much fidelity, that he can be hardly said to invent; yet his exhibitions have an air so much original, that it is difficult to suppose them not merely the ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... prescribe duties; ideals become laws; and the measure is, 'Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.' The Stoic maxim, 'Nothing in excess,' is inadequate in reference to moral excellence, and Aristotle's doctrine of the 'Mean' can hardly be applied without considerable distortion of facts. The only virtue which with truth can be described as a form of moderation is Temperance. It has been objected that by his doctrine of the 'Mean' Aristotle 'obliterates the awful and absolute difference between right and wrong.' If we substitute, as ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... Annie, my only servant, gave me a month's "warning." That was four years ago; and she gave up cooking for me to marry a young watchmaker down at the town—a youth of no mark save for a curious distortion of the left eyebrow (due to much gazing through a circular glass into the bowels of watches), a frantic assortment of religious convictions, a habit of playing the fiddle in hours of ease, and an absurd name—Tubal Cain Bonaday. I noticed that Annie ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the Apollonians albinoes are not uncommon; nor are the children put to death, as by the Ashantis. Both races cut the boss from hunchbacks after decease, and 'make fetish' over it to free the future family from similar distortion. Our villagers told us strange tales of a magician near Assini who can decapitate a man and restore him to life, and who lately had placed a dog's head on a boy's body. Who can 'doubt the fact'? ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... understand it as a derivation from Brune; and I bring it here before the reader's attention as giving him a perfectly instructive general type of the kind of degradation which takes place in the forms of flowers under more or less malefic influence, causing distortion and disguise of their floral structure. Thus it is not the normal character of a flower petal to have a cluster of bristles growing out of the middle of it, nor to be jagged at the edge into the likeness ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... high priest differs from other words of our Lord's antagonists, which we have been considering in recent pages, in that it is no distortion of our Lord's characteristics or meaning. It correctly understands, but it fatally rejects, His claims; and does not hesitate to take the further step, on the ground of these, of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... departs from the normal dactylic succession in inverting the values of the second and third members of the group. This inversion is not inherent in the rhythmic type. The series of three beats decreasing in intensity represents the natural dactylic; the distortion actually presented is the result of the proximity of each of these groups to a syncopated measure which follows it. This influence I believe to be reducible to more elementary terms. The syncopated measure is used to mark the close of a logical sequence, ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... future conversion, and the neglect of that moral training which is essential to the best development of religious character, and, indeed, without which religious character is often a melancholy distortion, or sadly defective, may be followed by their natural consequences; and we cannot complain,—for God works no miracle, nor turns aside any great law, in favor of our misconduct; yet it remains true that all who love and serve him, and command their children and households to fear ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... within the outlines are left flat. As regards the treatment of the human figure, we have here the stereotyped Egyptian conventions. The head, except the eye, is in profile, the shoulders in front view, the abdomen in three-quarters view, the legs again in profile. As a result of the distortion of the body, the arms are badly attached at the shoulders. Furthermore the hands, besides being very badly drawn, have in this instance the appearance of being mismated with the arms, while both feet look like right feet. The dress consists of the usual loin-cloth and of a thin, transparent ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... bottom of the barrel, to act as guide. Drill a 5/32-inch hole in the barrel on this line just below plate B, and a similar hole in the bottom of the cylinder. (The cylinder end should be put in position temporarily while this is done to prevent distortion.) Flatten down the cylinder slightly on the line of the hole, so that it may lie snugly against the barrel, and clean the outside of the barrel. Lay the cylinder against the barrel with the holes opposite one another, and push a short piece of wood through ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... all the while can be completely self-possessed and grave without ever once becoming slow or heavy. There was an air of candour, of ingenuous simplicity, of demure propriety, about the embodiment, that made it inexpressibly funny. There was no effort and no distortion. The structure of the impersonation tingled with life, and the expression of it—in demeanour, movement, facial play, intonation and business—was clear and crisp, with that absolute precision and beautiful finish for which the acting of Jefferson has always been ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... progress, he humbly bows and meekly does obeisance. But before that nameless prejudice that leaps beyond all this he stands helpless, dismayed, and well-nigh speechless; before that personal disrespect and mockery, the ridicule and systematic humiliation, the distortion of fact and wanton license of fancy, the cynical ignoring of the better and the boisterous welcoming of the worse, the all-pervading desire to inculcate disdain for everything black, from Toussaint to the devil,—before this there rises a sickening despair that would disarm and ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... difficulties and perversions of the Christian revelation, "the recognition, for example, of the object of highest worship in a being who could make a hell." "Is it possible," he asks, "to adore such a one without a frightful distortion of the standard of right and wrong?" "Any other of the outrages to the most ordinary justice and humanity involved in the common Christian conception of the moral character of God sinks into insignificance beside this dreadful idealization of wickedness. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... distortion. The old man, full of days, lay calmly asleep, and Paul Capel bent down and ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... animal is so complete, so self-sufficing, of a nature so leonine, that a man, however little of a Turk he may be, regrets the presence of so great a mind in such a body, and could wish that she were wholly woman. He fears to find the strange distortion of an abnormal soul. Do not cold analysis and matter-of-fact theory point to passions in such a woman? Does she judge, and not feel? Or, phenomenon more terrible, does she not feel and judge at one and the same time? Able ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... feature (the next to it was a grinning monkey), but it was not the features that were the most striking part. There was a half-open mouth, not in any way distorted out of its exquisite beauty by the intense expression of suffering it conveyed. Any distortion of the face by mental agony implies that a struggle with circumstance is going on. But in this face, if such struggle had been, it was over now. Circumstance had conquered; and there was no hope from mortal endeavour, or help from mortal creature to be had. But the eyes ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Its ragged owner leaned his arm on the window-frame, and with his head in the room, said in his patois, "Ho! waiting are you? You'll have enough of the lake one day. Don't you mind watching; they'll send when you're wanted;" and twisting his yellow face into a malicious distortion, he went on. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... in stating a false syllogism. Your opponent makes a proposition, and by false inference and distortion of his ideas you force from it other propositions which it does not contain and he does not in the least mean; nay, which are absurd or dangerous. It then looks as if his proposition gave rise to others which are inconsistent either with themselves or with some acknowledged ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Nothing actually moved. Nevertheless there was a motionlessly writhing and crawling distortion of the ship and everything in it, accompanied by a sensation that simply can ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... from that by taking up the study of local government as his principal occupation, but the typical "Webbite" of the Fabian Society, who is very much to Webb what the Marxist is to Marx, entranced by his leader's skill, still clings to a caricature distortion of this earlier Fabian ideal. He dreams of the most foxy and wonderful digging by means of box-lids, table-spoons, dish-covers—anything but spades designed and made for the job in hand—just as he dreams of an extensive expropriation of landlords by a ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells |
