"Pantomimical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is at its broadest, and he revels in almost pantomimic fun, he never loses sight of truth and nature—never strikes a false or uncertain note. Robinson goes to an evening party with a spiked knuckle-duster in his pocket and sits down. Jones digs an elderly party called ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... in Mr. Corbeck was almost ludicrous. His start of surprise, coming close upon his iron-clad impassiveness, was like a pantomimic change. But all idea of comedy was swept away by the tragic earnestness with which he ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... getting the great leading figures on the political stage, who had been presented to me in my schooldays not so much as men as the pantomimic monsters of political caricature, while I was getting them reduced in my imagination to the stature of humanity, and their motives to the quality of impulses like my own, I was also acquiring in my Tripos work a constantly developing and enriching conception of ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... people collected were soon engaged according to their tastes—some dancing, some running races, others amusing themselves with the various games, and others witnessing the feats of the jugglers, or looking on at the pantomimic ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... nodded. He beckoned to the servant woman, with an eloquent pantomimic command, to bring his sire a drink. The girl silently obeyed, leaving ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... seems to me to have been a victim of this vague relativism. "The Food of the Gods" is, like Mr. Bernard Shaw's play, in essence a study of the Superman idea. And it lies, I think, even through the veil of a half-pantomimic allegory, open to the same intellectual attack. We cannot be expected to have any regard for a great creature if he does not in any manner conform to our standards. For unless he passes our standard ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... and separated only by a few feet. Thus, for instance, a Japanese house interior may be seen cheek by jowl with an ordinary prison cell, flanked by a mining-camp, which in turn stands next to a drawing-room set, and in each a set of appropriate characters in pantomimic motion. The action is incessant, for in any dramatic representation intended for the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... cried Betty, with real gratitude in her voice. "But you don't have to take us away back to camp. If you will drop us at the end of the road we can walk back." All this despite sundry vigorous and desperate shakings of Grace's head and pantomimic pointings toward her feet. At the conclusion of Betty's sentence she groaned, but brightened up again ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... faint creaking sound, and looking behind him, it was to see that the inner office door was open, and Pringle standing there framed as it were, and going through a pantomimic performance expressive of his intense delight, grimacing, rubbing his hands, and laughing silently. Then he gesticulated and pointed toward the private office, and rubbed his hands again, till there was a sound in the private ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... booths before appearing. The result was a splendid triumph for them all. "The Child's Dream of Fairyland," by the Jacob Grimm booth, was a delicately conceived tableau. The quick changing of the beautiful representation of "Peg Woffington," which might properly be termed a pantomimic representation of a drama, was efficiently executed, the characters all entering into the spirit, to the delight of the interested spectators. The Alhambra booth, with its wilderness of eastern magnificence, presented "The ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... commencement of the Roman literature. It began with the Drama. Dramatic exhibitions were first introduced at Rome from Etruria in B.C. 363, on the occasion of a severe pestilence, in order to avert the anger of the gods. But these exhibitions were only pantomimic scenes to the music of the flute, without any song or dialogue. It was not till B.C. 240 that a drama with a regular plot was performed at Rome. Its author was M. LIVIUS ANDRONICUS, a native of ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... find the lighter out For all the blue smoke's pantomimic gesture— His name or nature, sex or age or vesture! The fire was lit by human care, no doubt— But now the smoke is Nature's tributary, Dancing 'twixt man and ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... heart of the monster. The worst of it was, that he had been so cautious and noncommittal in his declarations, that she could not upbraid him for his perfidy. With a cold calculation worthy of a demon, he had made love in the pantomimic way, and eschewed written or verbal communications of an erotic nature. No jury could have muleted him one cent for damages in a breach-of-promise case, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... many other presents, but that it was not necessary to unpack them, as we were about to return with them to visit another king, who lived some days' journey distant. "Don't go; don't go away," said the headman and his companions. "Kamrasi will—" Here an unmistakable pantomimic action explained their meaning better than words; throwing their heads well back, they sawed across their throats with their forefingers, making horrible grimaces, indicative of the cutting of throats. I could not resist laughing at the terror that ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... of the Moon, which is certainly as Lowe says 'one of the best pantomimic farces ever seen' on the English boards at any rate, was produced with great success at the Duke's Theatre, Dorset Garden, in 1687. The character of Scaramouch was admirably suited to Tony Leigh, a low ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... carried material for the road bed, there were licensed fools, mummers, and droll mimics, who by their antics revived the lagging spirits of the gangs. There is an unsuspected capacity for mimicry in what are called savage men. I have seen Red Indians give excellent pantomimic entertainments, and aborigines in other lands exhibit high mumming talent. In the railroad battalion there was an eccentric negro who was a very king of jesters. From the Sirdar and the Khalifa downwards—for he was an ex-dervish and had played ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... been witness to a series of pantomimic actions that interested him more than Amabel's conduct under this final examination. Frederick, who had evidently some request to make or direction to give, had sent a written line to the coroner, who, on reading it, had passed it over to Knapp, who a few minutes later was to be seen in conference ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... some hundred or two of men and women represented our mortal race before the refinements of the arts and sciences, and loves and graces, came on earth to soften them. I never saw anything more effective. Generally speaking, the pantomimic action of the Italians is more remarkable for its sudden and impetuous character than for its delicate expression, but, in this case, the drooping monotony: the weary, miserable, listless, moping life: the ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... it—with the mean hope that this movement in the nape of my neck would be taken as sufficient proof that I had read, marked, and learned. I do not forgive myself for this pantomimic falsehood, but I was young and morally timorous, and Vorticella's personality had an effect on me something like that of a powerful mesmeriser when he directs all his ten fingers towards your eyes, as unpleasantly ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... The Baron tried to hint at this with his own head, but his neck, which was like a prize-bull's, would not lend itself to the illustration. "That wheel was ferry smooth—with a sharp gorner. His noce touch that corner." The Baron said no more in words, but pantomimic action and a whistle showed plainly how the wheel-rim had glided on the bridge of Mr. Harrisson's nose. "It took off the gewdiggle, and made a sgar. Your hussband's noce has that ferry sgar. That affected my imatchination. It is easy ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... a photoplay as being a story prepared for pantomimic development before the camera; a story told in action, with inserted descriptive matter where the thought might be obscure without its help; a story told in one or more reels, each reel containing from ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... swimmer. To wrestle, the boy, without doubt, began almost as soon as he was able to stand alone; and to dance was learned without a master, whether according to the figures practised in the ring of pleasure, or the more active steps taken in the pantomimic fight. Shooting with the bow, the gun, and the pistol, is an exercise for Circassian boys at an age when those of countries more civilized are spelling, syllable by syllable, the lessons of the primer and the catechism. ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... fact of death ushers in a perfect transformation scene, more wonderful than anything thought of or devised by man, nor should we be accounted irreverent did we describe the language of the book of Revelation as pantomimic in the exuberance of its splendour. All sorrow is supposed to cease as if by magic, the sun shines perpetually, it is eternal noon; the home of the blessed is a wondrous city, built four-square, whose streets are of pure gold, whose rivers are ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... stay here, skulls being brought to us every day for sale. Their weapons are invariably adorned with human hair, and human bones are used as ornaments in almost all their household furniture; they also often gave us to understand by pantomimic gestures that human flesh was regarded by them as ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Hill. Oporto itself was in a state of uproar. Drums were beating, trumpets sounding, bells clanging, while from the house-tops the population, men and women, were waving their handkerchiefs to the English, gesticulating and making all sorts of pantomimic ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... he bounded, brave Signor Leon, to the greatest height of all: let this vague agility, in any case, connect him with that revelation of the ballet, the sentimental-pastoral, of other years, which, in The Four Lovers for example, a pantomimic lesson as in words of one syllable, but all quick and gay and droll, would have affected us as classic, I am sure, had we then had at our disposal that term of appreciation. When we read in English story-books ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... seem a little singular to combine the convivial music of "St. Patrick's day in the morning" with such diabolical grimaces and gestures as those which the Great Chief used in the pantomimic expression of his sentiments. But the people were prepared for originality, and they had it. At any rate the performance received their loud applause. At last, however, it was over: the successive scenes of the programme had come ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... old feller,' said Charly. As he said it, Master Bates caught up an end of his neckerchief; and, holding it erect in the air, dropped his head on his shoulder, and jerked a curious sound through his teeth; thereby indicating, by a lively pantomimic representation, that scragging and hanging were ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... But Tom was now making pantomimic signs for refreshments. He was touching his mouth, which he opened into a round O, pointing at the cake and honey, and going on altogether in a way that distracted poor Susy. And just as Susy looked up Kathleen looked up, and the latter burst into ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... strong traces of her lineage in her features—a resemblance which was confirmed by a pretty little petulance of temper—made it convenient now and again to convey a number of tea cakes into Mingo's hat, which happened to be sitting near, the conveyance taking place in spite of laughable pantomimic protests on the part of the old man, ranging from appealing nods and grimaces to indignant frowns ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... I went even so far as to make a few pantomimic gestures suggestive of the horror I was experiencing, and finally I covered my face with my handkerchief. I regret to say that Mrs. Mulcahy took my modesty ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... this pantomimic history of Don Juan, with its huge nonchalance and audacious cynicism, is the invasion of the literary field by the godless rabble, the rabble who take no stock of the preserves of art, and go picnicking and rollicking and scattering their beer-bottles and their orange-peel ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... a man in this Gawd-forsaken country wouldn't lope at the chance to die for her—but the women!" Leander's pantomimic indication of absolute ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... his victim in this way, he was not satisfied, for the dull lecture still went on in the other room, and he fired an imaginary revolver several times at an imaginary head; still the droning speaker proceeded; and now began the greatest pantomimic scene of all, namely, murder by poison, after the manner in which the player King is disposed of in 'Hamlet.' Thackeray had found a small phial on the mantel-shelf and out of it he proceeded to pour the imaginary 'juice of cursed hebenon' into the imaginary porches of somebody's ears. The ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... from limb from a gun, and then put him together again; the only mistake being that the unfortunate official's head was turned the wrong way. So this Constable, too, looking backwards, as had done the poor pantomimic policeman, remembered all the slights, insults, and injuries, publicly inflicted on his cloth for many years, and now rejoiced—Ha! ha!—at last at having the Clown, the original JOEY, nay, the last of the JOEYS, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... success of the few good plays that have been written out of the rich life which we now live—the most varied, fruitful, and dramatically suggestive—ought to rid us forever of the buskin-fustian, except as a pantomimic or spectacular curiosity. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to amuse Young William. He stood behind the goldsmith's chair, holding his sides to suppress his laughter, and making pantomimic signs to Garstang, who looked on with stolid composure and ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... or a dozen dancers and soloists including drummers, through the incomparable pageantry of the buffalo, the eagle, the snowbird, and other varying types of small dances, the mastery of the redman in the art of gesture, the art of symbolized pantomimic expression. It is the buffalo, the eagle, and the deer dances that show you their essential greatness as artists. You find a species of rhythm so perfected in its relation to racial interpretation as hardly to admit of witnessing ever again the ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... at all; the punishment is too small, and the efforts are too obvious. It has not any of the effectiveness of the old savage martyrdom, because it does not leave the victim absolutely alone with his cause, so that his cause alone can support him. At the same time it has about it that element of the pantomimic and the absurd, which was the cruellest part of the slaying and the mocking of the real prophets. St. Peter was crucified upside down as a huge inhuman joke; but his human seriousness survived the inhuman joke, because, in whatever ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... study. They read a sentence. A sentence is supposed to express a complete thought. They must get the proper inflection by reading it out loud. No method of expression is brought into play yet. By that I mean no pantomimic by-play or facial expression. They are only reading at first. In most of the amateur shows, the players never do anything else but read the parts. They read, crossing back and forth whenever the coach thinks they ought to cross, and it doesn't mean a thing. I watched ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... Partly by pantomimic signs interwoven with a few French words which he had picked up within the last year, Hosmer succeeded in making himself understood to the old man, and rode away leaving Fanny ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... comedy. He could get ten or twelve inflections out of a speech of about four lines; he had a wonderful method of getting the actors to accept and project these tones over the footlights. He got what he wanted from them in the most extraordinary way. With his disjointed, pantomimic method of instruction he was able to transfer to them, as if by telepathy, what ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... visit each other. We introduced the matter, and persisted in it; till at last Von Reineck resolved to go out with us one Sunday afternoon. The greeting of the two old gentlemen was very laconic, indeed almost pantomimic; and they walked up and down by the long pink frames with true diplomatic strides. The display was really extraordinarily beautiful: and the particular forms and colors of the different flowers, the advantages of one over the other, and their rarity, gave at last occasion to a sort of conversation ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... or emotional occasions among Indians are invariably accompanied by singing and dancing. These are frequently derived from the movements of animals and are both pantomimic and symbolic. ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... cross-legged in a public vehicle. Do savages ever sit thus when in close company? I have never been able to imagine what special human sin this ingenious mode of annoyance was meant to punish. It has been suggested that it might be the man's pantomimic protest against sitting at all. But the saddest commentary upon this vice of our hero is, that by some mysterious magnetism of awkwardness and ill-breeding, he has betrayed into imitation of it men whose early education has been ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... in fact, and that did not make a crowd. None of the Chinamen came down, and there were no Indians in town that day. The only unpleasant circumstance was the persistent repetition by a deaf-mute of a pantomimic representation of the disaster that he believed was to overwhelm us. "Dummy," as we called him, showed us that we would be upset, and, unable to scale the cliffs, would surely all be drowned. This picture, as vividly presented as possible, seemed to give him and his brother ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... whistles, or inflexions of voice, would suffice for their purpose. With the dominant race, on the other hand, the continued multiplication of ideas which it was desirable to communicate rapidly, would exhaust the power of pantomimic gesture and of all possible inflexions of the voice—therefore by a succession of efforts this race arrived at the utterance of articulate sounds. A few only would be at first made use of, and these would be supplemented by inflexions of the voice: presently they would increase in number, variety, ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... impulse, he suddenly opened the door of the outer office, and there found that Mr. Roland's industry had, for the present, come to an end. He was standing before the window, making pantomimic signs through the glass to a friend of his, Knivett. His right thumb was pointed over his shoulder towards the door of Mr. Galloway's private room; no doubt, to indicate a warning that that gentleman was within, and that the office, consequently, was not free for promiscuous ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... make everything quite in order was for us to go together to the clergyman of the parish of Tragheim. This proved a strange enough visit. It took place the morning preceding the performance to be given for our benefit, in which Minna had chosen, the pantomimic role of Fenella; her costume was not ready yet, and there was still a great deal to be done. The rainy cold November weather made us feel out of humour, when, to add to our vexation, we were kept standing ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... casual observer that she was bent upon arson, at the least. At the occasional crunch of the gravel she scowled; the well meant effort of a speckled gray hen, escaped from some distant part of the grounds, to bear her company, produced a succession of pantomimic dismissals that alarmed the hen to the point of frenzy, so that her clacks and cackles resounded far beyond the trim hedge that separated the drying-ground from ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... most important single element in the play. In the original version the scene in the chancel was carried by dialogue but production showed the mistake. From the time that the music begins, it, with the pantomimic action of the actors is all sufficient to interpret the mood and meaning ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... combination and construction of words to image delicate, and varying shades of thought, and to express vehement manifestations of passion; admitting of greater and more sudden variations in pitch, than is permissable in English oratory, and encouraging pantomimic gesture, for greater force and effect. In other words it was not a cold, artificial, mechanical medium for the expression of thought or emotion, or the concealment of either, but was constructed, as we may fancy, much as was the tuneful ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... dancer and danseuse before the dazzled eyes of each other, acted as love's signal, and was used to express alternate admiration and indifference, shyness and audacity, fear and transport, coyness and coquetry, as the dance proceeded. I need not say that Enriquez' pantomimic illustration of these emotions was peculiarly extravagant; but it was always performed and accepted with a gravity that was an essential feature of the dance. At such times sighs would escape him which were supposed to portray the incipient stages ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... influence of a bad dream, and hoping to wake up in his own quarters by-and-by, to find that he had never really undertaken to make a pudding in a hat, and smash a gentleman's watch and produce it intact from some unexpected place of concealment, the spectators rocked and roared. Then there was a Pantomimic Interlude, with a great deal of genuine knockabout, and, the crowning item of the entertainment, a comic song and stump-speech, announced to be given by The Anonymous Mammoth Comique—an incognito not dimly suspected to conceal ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the only Duke of Buckingham that interested Pope was not the Villiers that so profoundly interested Dryden and his own generation, but in every sense a mock Duke of Buckingham, a pantomimic duke, that is known only for having built a palace as fine as gilt gingerbread, and for having built a pauper poem. Some time after the death of the Villiers duke, and the consequent extinction of the title, Sheffield, Lord Mulgrave, obtained a patent creating him, not Duke of Buckingham, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... laughter, and feeling that he was somehow an object of ridicule to this tall, bright-haired maiden, he ceased his pantomimic gestures abruptly and stood looking at her with a slight flush of embarrassment on ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... that of any other pigeons; and it is in seeing these little birds wing themselves so far into the skies that the fanciers take such delight. For four or five hours tumblers have been known to keep on the wing; and it is when they are almost lost to the power of human vision that they exhibit those pantomimic feats which give them their name, and which are marked by a tumbling over-and-over process, which suggests the idea of their having suddenly become giddy, been deprived of their self-control, or overtaken by some calamity. This acrobatic propensity in these pigeons has ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... a lonely way, he burst out again in song and pantomimic celebration of his estate. His ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... these stages had its own "set" of scenery and was arranged for scenes. On two, action of scenes was taking place while the energetic directors were endeavoring to get out of their people the pantomimic representation of the ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... luckily for them, found themselves planted in the midst of Pauncefote's adherents, so that they experienced no difficulty at all in making up their minds how they should vote. They either did not see or did not notice a few threatening shouts and pantomimic gestures addressed to them by some of Duffield's supporters in a remote corner of the room, and held up their hands for his opponent with the clear conscience of men who ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed |
