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Semblance   Listen
noun
Semblance  n.  
1.
Seeming; appearance; show; figure; form. "Thier semblance kind, and mild their gestures were."
2.
Likeness; resemblance, actual or apparent; similitude; as, the semblance of worth; semblance of virtue. "Only semblances or imitations of shells."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Semblance" Quotes from Famous Books



... express. In accordance with the law of association by contiguity, whenever any one of several mental elements usually connected together is present in the mind, the others tend to arise also. So here. Seeing the semblance of tight muscles and a smiling face, I feel the emotions which have these visual associates, experience the correlated movement-sensations, project them all into the object ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... the Church than the appearance in it of a continued and abiding energy, nor a more melancholy proof of its being a corpse than torpidity. We say an energy continued and abiding, for accident will cause the activity of a moment, and an external principle give the semblance of self-motion. On the other hand, even a living body may for a while ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... measure. It was argued by the managers of the scheme that the stock would be above par in order to induce the members of the Legislature to go into the measure, but nothing in the transaction had the least semblance of a corrupt influence. No one would hesitate from motives of delicacy, to offer a member, nor for him to take, shares in a bank sooner than in a turnpike or ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power. They might urge with a semblance of reason, that the Constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication, ...
— The Federalist Papers

... the great struggle there was, of course, a great diminution of attention to matters of education. Governor Swain, with a remnant of the faculty, remained at Chapel Hill, and, with a few boys too young for service, yet retained the name and semblance of the University. Professors Hubbard, James and Charles Phillips, Hepburn, Smith, Fetter and Judge Battle were still on duty at their old posts, but Professor Martin was Colonel of the Eleventh Regiment, and almost all the students were enrolled ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore

... like him to be brought to contrition and rectitude? There was a hope, though a poor one, in the shame he must feel at the disgrace he had brought upon himself. But alas! if the whole thing was to be kept quiet, and the semblance allowed that he had got tired of business and left it, how would even what regenerating power might lie in shame be brought to bear upon him? If not brought to open shame, he would hold his head as high as ever—be arrogant under the protection of the fact ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... the allies within the walls was such a terrible surprise that all semblance of order was lost in their ranks. They began to scatter. Uraso ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay

... provided me with the clothes of a gentleman. The beard I wore, and which has since served me as a disguise in my many enterprises, was given to me in the first place by Wainewright. To perfect that beard and destroy every semblance of artificiality, I had worked at it for three years in the cunning, patient way old prisoners toil at such a task. Wainewright helped me to get to the mainland, and I was safe, with a forged ticket-of-leave in my ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... was convinced that she avoided him both from a natural shrinking and because her strong common sense compelled her to see him as he was, forbade her imagination to transmute his battered husk into the semblance of what was left of his better self. But she could love him. That was the thought that sent the blood to his head and drove ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton

... the new sovereign started forth upon a tour of the provinces, to present himself to the loyalty of his subjects. The Empress remained as regent, to govern under the guidance of the Commander-in-chief. Ovations had everywhere been prepared, and a semblance of popularity, so dear to Maximilian's heart, was the result. But immense sums were expended, and more ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson

... against the arrows of the Iroquois while the fire was being kindled. Only a small supply of wood had been collected, and even this was so placed that the flames blew away from the palisade instead of towards it. On the failure of this attempt to fire the fort all semblance of discipline was thrown to the winds. 'There also rose such disorder among them,' says Champlain, 'that one could not understand {110} another, which greatly troubled me. In vain did I shout in their ears and remonstrate to my utmost with them as to the danger to which they exposed themselves ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby

... 1917, "organized, in connivance with the Germans and Bulgarians, the invasion of Western and Eastern Macedonia. As the Liberals thus lost about sixty seats, the King might hope . . . to secure at least some semblance of success at the coming elections." On the first opportunity that the people of Macedonia, Eastern and Western alike, had of expressing their opinion—at the elections of 14 Nov., 1920—they did not return a single Venizelist.—See ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... they passed, a thousand years; and yet, in looking back on them, they seem only like one terrible breathless night. My aunt and I alone did all that was done for Annie. There were whole days and whole nights during which she talked incessantly, sometimes with such subtle semblance of her own sweet self that we could hardly believe she did not know what she said; sometimes with such wild ravings that we shook in terror, and could not look at her nor at each other. There were other days and nights through which she ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... was done, and it was a good one, he grinned again in that slow, terrible way. A grin that bore no semblance to human mirth, but was a grimace of combined anger and hatred. Once before, during the fight at the ranch, Bill Santry had seen this expression on his employer's face, but not to the degree that Dorothy now saw ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... to the rock tombs, of which there were many in the stony hills to which this street led. They were walking toward these tombs, and not toward the gate; and Diodoros whispered his suspicion to his companion, clasping his hand on an amulet in the semblance of an eye, which his Egyptian nurse had fastened round his neck long ago with an Anubic thread, to protect him against the evil-eye ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year! My hasting days fly on with full career, But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth That I to manhood am arrived so near; And inward ripeness doth much less appear That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th. Yet be it less, or more, or soon, or slow, It shall be still in strictest measure even To that same lot, however mean or high, Toward which Time ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... constitution of Athens. The first modification of the primaeval condition of things was when Ion and his companions brought the people together into a community, for then the people was first divided into the four tribes, and the tribe-kings were created. Next, and first after this, having now some semblance of a constitution, was that which took place in the reign of Theseus, consisting in a slight deviation from absolute monarchy. After this came the constitution formed under Draco, when the first code of laws was drawn up. The third was that which ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle

... behooved them to seek another protector." This was while the Breda negotiations were still pending, but when their inevitable result was very visible. There was still a reluctance at taking the last and decisive step in the rebellion, so that the semblance of loyalty was still retained; that ancient scabbard, in which the sword might yet one day be sheathed. The proposition was not adopted at the diet. A committee of nine was merely appointed to deliberate with the Prince upon the "means of obtaining foreign ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... seith the booke, That he for sorow, whiche he toke Of that he sigh his sonne dede, Of comfort knewe none other rede, But lete do make in remembrance A faire image of his semblance, And set it in the market place: Whiche openly to fore his face Stood euery day, to done hym ease; And thei that than wolden please The Fader, shuld it obeye, Whan that thei comen ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... them across the schoolroom, through the dark passage, and into a small room which had the distant semblance of a parlour. Here she lit a lamp; then, without speaking, guided them over the house, of which she appeared to be the only inhabitant. There were seven rooms; only three of them contained any furniture. Then they all returned to ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... occupied by his delegation, while Illinois paraded up and down the aisles with Goldberg. Colonel Lindsley hammered the speaker's table almost to pieces in an attempt to get order and then gave it up for a few minutes as a bad job. Captain Boyce succeeded in getting a semblance of it, when everybody got tired of carrying the candidates and of shouting. Then the secretary again started taking the vote by delegations. No one of the candidates received a majority of the votes which was ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat

... already met and crossed swords; but this is not in the least essential to the action; the play might have been to all intents and purposes the same had they never heard of each other until after the rise of the curtain. In Twelfth Night there is a semblance of a retrospective exposition in the scene between Viola and the Captain; but it is of the simplest nature, and conveys no information beyond what, at a later period, would have been ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... the semblance of indifference, and masks his feelings more readily than an Irishman, and Pat Loftus was no exception to his countrymen. When summoned by the host's whistle, he came to the door lilting a planxty merrily,—but when he re-entered ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various

... circumambulating column of infantry. Doubtless such a column has passed this way in its time, but the only columns which enter in these latter days are the columns of sheep and oxen that are sometimes seen here now; while the only semblance of heroic voices heard are the utterances of such, and of the many winds which make their passage through ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... stalk-cell, so that unless it be contended that the Fucus is really a sporophyte which does not produce spores, and that the gametophyte is represented merely by the oogonium and antheridium, there is no semblance of alternation of generation in this case. The only case among Phaeophyceae which has been considered to point to the existence of such a phenomenon is Cutleria. Here the asexual cells are borne upon the so-called Aglaozonia ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... mind of Russia—through which course streams of unduly developed intelligence in fierce revolt against the omnipresence of misery. And still above that is the shining, enameled surface rivaling that of any other nation in splendor. The Emperor may say with a semblance of truth l'etat c'est moi, but although he may combine in himself all the functions, judicial, legislative, and executive, no channels have been supplied, no finely organized system provided for conveying that triple stream to the extremities. The living currents at the top ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... Semblance, with straw and pauniered ass, they made Of potters wandering on from door to door: But life of happier sort to me pourtrayed, And other joys my fancy to allure; The bag-pipe dinning on the midnight ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge

... with no sort of check from the enemy. The Northern writers, who shortly after the battle described it, one and all depicted a scene of utter confusion and consternation as prevailing in the Federal army, crowded upon the bank of the river. Scarcely a semblance of resistance (according to these writers), was maintained—while thousands (all discipline and confidence gone), were prepared to surrender. Hundreds, unable to force their way upon the boats, plunged into the river ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... broke almost for the first time into the semblance of a smile. "You feel as if my grandmother were ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... Europe, I believe. How comes it that he is not produced here to tell your Lordships who was his informer, and what he knows of the transaction? They have not produced him, but have thought fit to rely upon this miserable, beggarly semblance of evidence, the very production of which was a crime, when brought forward for the purpose of giving color to acts of injustice and oppression. If you ask, Who is this Mr. Balfour? He is a person who was a military collector of revenue in the province of Rohilcund: a country now ruined and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... sage brush, itself gray as the sage with the dust of pounding hoofs and rushing whirlwinds, at a little distance Mancos looked like an aggregation of dead ash heaps, save where, here and there, dabs of faded paint lent a semblance of ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... countryside, began a 10-year Vietnamese occupation, and touched off almost 13 years of civil war. The 1991 Paris Peace Accords mandated democratic elections and a ceasefire, which was not fully respected by the Khmer Rouge. UN-sponsored elections in 1993 helped restore some semblance of normalcy under a coalition government. Factional fighting in 1997 ended the first coalition government, but a second round of national elections in 1998 led to the formation of another coalition government and renewed political stability. The remaining elements ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... success is rather limited, and even then deception cannot be recommended as a worthy means; for the means should be adequate to the dignity of the end, and truth can be produced by truth alone and not by deception and semblance. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... such fluency. In those days conversation was still cultivated as an art; a neat repartee was more highly valued than the crackling of thorns under a pot; and the epigram, not yet a mechanical appliance by which the dull may achieve a semblance of wit, gave sprightliness to the small talk of the urbane. It is sad that I can remember nothing of all this scintillation. But I think the conversation never settled down so comfortably as when it turned to the details of the trade which was the other ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham

... to fifty feet in height, shrubs, creepers and undergrowth, as can well be conceived of. Where the thicket is thinner the trees are larger, and the smaller they are the denser the covert. If you wish to journey through this light bush, where there is no semblance of a track, it will take you perhaps two hours to make a single mile, so thick is it. To ride through it is, of course, impossible, unless ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... to declare the king's disapprobation of it. But instead of rescinding the resolution, it received the emphatic confirmation of the assembly. This reply was sent to the governor:—"If the votes of this house are to be controlled by the direction of a minister, we have left us but a vain semblance of liberty. We have now only to inform you that this house have voted not to rescind, and that, on a division on the question, there were ninety-two nays, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... welfare of the nations. The air seemed in a moment to be full of the sound of footsteps, and of something more subtle, which the Sage and the Pilgrim knew to be wings; and as they looked, there grew before them the semblance of a court of justice, with accusers and defenders; but the judge and the criminal were one. Then was put forth that indictment which he had been making up in his soul against life and against the world; and again ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... nerves of his lips twitched, his face was haggard as by a night's deep gambling; there was a heavy dew on his forehead—it was not the face of a wholly guiltless, of a wholly unconscious man; often even as innocence may be unwittingly betrayed into what wears the semblance of self-condemnation. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... a formal call upon Isabel. They had been skating and still carried their skates, but Juliet wore white gloves and had pinned her unruly hair into some semblance of order while they waited at the door. She wore a red tam-o'-shanter on her brown curls and a white sweater under her dark green skating costume, which was short enough to show the heavy little boots, just now filling the room with the ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... when he hath filled him with all wealth, he wrings him after as a sponge: louing none but himself, and thinking euery one made, but to serue, and please him. These blinde courtiers make themselues beleeue, that they haue freends, and many that honor them: neuer considering that as they make semblance to loue, and honor euery body, so others do by them. Their superiors disdaine them, and neuer but with scorne do so much as salute them. Their inferiors salute them because they haue neede of them (I meane of their fortune, of their foode, of their apparell, ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay

... "It is such semblance of good fellowship, such a wearisome pretence of good wishes that mean nothing," he said one day. "What value is ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... encouragement. She tried hard for it, but it never came. One habit, at any rate, Lionel Verner had not acquired, amid the many strange examples of an artificial age—that of not paying considerate respect, both in semblance and reality, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... young Lewis took, 210 With deep respect and altered look; And said—"This ring our duties own; And pardon, if to worth unknown, In semblance mean obscurely veiled, Lady, in aught my folly failed. 215 Soon as the day flings wide his gates, The King shall know what suitor waits. Please you, meanwhile, in fitting bower Repose you till his waking hour; Female attendance shall obey 220 Your hest, for service ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... The semblance of a human face to be formed on the side of a mountain, or in the fracture of a small stone, by a lusus naturae. The face is an object of curiosity for years or centuries, and by and by a boy is born, whose features gradually assume the aspect of that portrait. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... or two occasions, indeed, they had been surprised in an uncanny semblance of a caress, and once in a while an almost supernatural retrospect had lit up and vanished again in an unaccustomed tender word; and to have been present then was ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne

... gentleness. The outline of that little head, so admirably poised above the long, white throat, the delicate, fine features, the subtle curves of the lips, the mobile face itself, wore an expression of delicate discretion, a faint semblance of irony suggestive of craft and insolence. Yet it would have been difficult to refuse forgiveness to those two feminine failings in her; for the lines that came out in her forehead whenever her face was not in repose, like her upward glances (that pathetic trick of manner), told unmistakably of ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac

... perverse. I am not prepared to maintain the theory of a higher nature in plants than the merely physical. It is enough for me to cling to an enormous heresy with respect to animals. Against the fiat of Christendom I will persist in granting them the semblance of a soul. I will swallow the old creed about flowers. Still, wherever they get them, they do exhibit tantalizing qualities. Perverse? That verbena knows perfectly where she ought to go, where, in the goodness of your heart, you are striving ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... and looming black against the pale sky above. Three great beams pierced the wall, and upon them the wooden tower rested. The middle beam jutted out beyond the rest to the distance of five or six feet, and the end of it was carved into the rude semblance of a dragon's head. ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle

... shall deserve it. [With increasing heat.] The country that forgets to reverence virtue; That makes no difference 'twixt the sordid wretch, Who, for reward, risks treason's penalty, And him unfortunate, whose duteous service Is, by mere accident, so chang'd in form, As to assume guilt's semblance, I serve not: Scorn to serve. I have a soldier's honour, But 't is in union with a freeman's judgment, And when I act, both prompt. Thus from my helm I tear, what once I proudly thought, the badge Of virtuous fellowship. ...
— Andre • William Dunlap

... men ye be, and not demons, thirsting for each other's blood; though ye walk abroad in the semblance of Him who died that ye might be elevated to the rank of angels! Call ye this war? Is this the glory that is made to warm the hearts of even silly and confiding women? Is the peace of families to be destroyed ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Big baulks of timber were being thrown about by the sea, in a most disconcerting manner, amongst all sorts of stores. The first duty assigned the party by the Beach Commandant was to restore some semblance of order amongst the members of a certain Labour Corps who had run wild. This was achieved in an expeditious though somewhat violent manner. The next duty was salvaging amongst the flotsam and jetsam which, with the ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett

... word. She walked up to the entrance, and pulled aside the curtain, and there stood the semblance of a man. In his extended hand was a card, on ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... were going on in the border commonwealths, the Union soldiers lay inactive along the Potomac. Constant drill had changed the mob into some semblance of an organized army, but the careful Scott feared to risk a general engagement. The hostile forces stretched in three pairs of groups across Virginia from northwest to southeast. In the southeastern part of the State, at ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... to assume an empty show of bereavement, in order that we may appear respectful to the departed. We who knew HENRY WINTER DAVIS are not content to clothe ourselves in the outward garb of grief, and call the semblance of mourning a fitting tribute to the gifted orator and statesman, so suddenly snatched from our midst in the full glory of his mental and bodily strength. We would do more than "bear about the mockery ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell

... all,' etc.: IV. vi. 159, 'Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar ... and the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold the great image of authority': V. iii. 186, 'taught me to shift Into a madman's rags; to assume a semblance That very dogs disdain'd.' Cf. Oxford ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... by fire. A hundred feet farther along was the other wagon, its tongue broken, the canvas top ripped open, while between the two were scattered odds and ends of wearing apparel and provisions, with a pile of boxes smoking grimly. The remaining mules were gone, and no semblance of life remained anywhere. Keith dropped his reins over his horse's head, and, with Winchester cocked and ready, ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... I know you better, I see that it was not all childish simplicity which made you smile so graciously upon those who sought your favor. You are a coquette, Katy, and the greater one because of that semblance of artlessness which is the perfection of art. This, however, I might forgive, were it not for one flagrant act, which, if it is not a proof of faithlessness, certainly borders upon it. You know to what I refer, or if you do not, ask your smooth-tongued saint, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... beast. In discussing elsewhere the myth of Bishop Hatto, we saw that the soul is sometimes represented in the form of a rat or mouse; and in treating of werewolves we noticed the belief that the spirits of dead ancestors, borne along in the night-wind, have taken on the semblance of howling dogs or wolves. "Consistent with these quaint ideas are ceremonies in vogue in China of bringing home in a cock (live or artificial) the spirit of a man deceased in a distant place, and of enticing into a sick man's coat the departing spirit which has already left his ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... open the door of a cabin which leaned over them, snatched two of the lifebelts from the berth and rapidly fastened one on her. There was some semblance of order on deck now that the first confusion had passed. The men were all rushing to quarters. Three of the boats had been blown into splinters upon their davits. The fourth, terribly overloaded, was being lowered. Thomson, ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... I never shall behold, With eye of sense, your outward form and semblance; Therefore to me ye never will grow old, But live forever ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... in the house, for Miss Hazeltine (like all women left to themselves) had subsisted entirely upon cake. But some of this was found, and (along with what the poets call a glass of fair, cold water) made up a semblance of a morning meal, and then down he sat undauntedly to his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Deyncourt's code, or consequently in Ruth's, though, as was natural with a generous nature, the girl did many little kindnesses to those about her, and was personally unselfish, as those who live with self-centred people are bound to be if there is to be any semblance of peace in ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... men, as they marched along the road in some semblance of military order, were eagerly discussing the recent passage between the dreaded Squire and their new champion. Their feeling about Perez seemed to be a certain odd mingling of respect, with an exultant sense of proprietorship in him as a representative ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... assured me that infants in that part of the world were very frequently carried into the open air on the day of their birth; she also hinted that my refusal would hurt the feelings of the honest people, and wear the semblance of pride more than of maternal tenderness. This idea decided my acquiescence; and my little darling, enveloped in the manufacture of her own romantic birthplace, made her first visit to her kind ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson

... But this semblance of mirth and good humour lasted no longer than while the savages were riding from the hill-top to the battle-ground, which having reached, they sprang upon the ground, and running wildly about, uttered several cries of ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... no is not worth my while to examine; certain it is that the latter, having wrought his features into a proper harmony to become the characters of Iago, Shylock, and others of the same cast, gave us a semblance of truth to the observation that was sufficient to confirm the wit of it. Indeed, we may remark, in favor of the physiognomist, though the law has made him a rogue and vagabond, that Nature is seldom curious in her works within, without employing some little pains on the ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding

... succeeded were full of stirring incidents, and it was long before the least semblance of order could be restored in the city. With Kona I went forth into the crowded, turbulent streets, and the sight that met our gaze was awful. Bodies of soldiers and civilians were lying everywhere, the faces of some, to whom death had come swiftly, so calm and composed that ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... standing by now opposite each other. The face of Archie wore the wretched semblance of a smile; hers was convulsed ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... bar-room was the only room on the lower floor except the dining-room. I always endeavored to keep out of a quarrel until self-respect forbade my making any further effort to avoid it, and I very rarely had even the semblance ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... admonished the professor. "We'll be down in a minute, my lads. Cling to anything handy. She will bounce some, but I believe we shall not be injured." The calmness of the aged scientist would have shamed the others into some semblance of order, were it needed; but both the boys were courageous, Andy Sudds did not know fear, and if Washington White was in a panic of terror, he did not get in the way of the ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood

... a progress to the north, he cast anchor on the coast of Kent, and sent some of his retainers ashore, who invited the country to join him. The gentlemen of Kent assembled some troops to oppose him; but they purposed to do more essential service than by repelling the invasion: they carried the semblance of friendship to Perkin, and invited him to come himself ashore, in order to take the command over them. But the wary youth, observing that they had more order and regularity in their movements than could be supposed in new levied ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... This is the title which, down to A.D. 1868, was borne by the real rulers of Japan. The possession of the power implied by this title enabled Yoritomo to introduce responsible government into the almost ungoverned districts of the empire, and to give to Japan for the first time in many centuries a semblance of peace. ...
— Japan • David Murray

... forgotten, But faintly their dim eyes a feared face remember, Their dull ears remember a stern voice they hated. What then, shall I waken their fear and their hatred, And then wait till fresh terror their memory awaketh, With the semblance of love that they have not to give me? Nay, nay, they are safe from my help and my justice, And I—I am freed, and fresh ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris

... the earnest believer is not apt to enact the role of Peter without compulsion. Instead of conquering the world, the church is rapidly losing what it has hitherto gained. True, it still retains a semblance of vigor and prosperity; but, like many a great political structure, its brilliancy is born of decay. It is no longer the dominating factor in social life, the heart and soul of civilization, but an annex—increasing in magnificence as wealth ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... this for days and weeks. At length, lying, the faint feeble semblance of a man, upon his bed, and speaking in a voice so low that they could only hear him by listening very near to his lips, he became quiet. It was dimly pleasant to him now, to lie there, with the window open, looking out at the summer sky and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... your hand I swear, A parent's tears I could not bear. Vouchsafe your pity, and engage To solace her unchilded age: And I shall meet whate'er betide By such assurance fortified." With sympathy and tender grief All melt in tears, Iulus chief, As filial love in other shown Recalled the semblance of his own: And, "Tell your doubting heart," he cries, "All blessings wait your high emprise: I take your mother for my own, Creusa, save in name alone, Nor lightly deem the affection due To her who bore a child like you. Come what come may, I ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... travellers there in those days were often surprised to find in the wigwams of the Indians men who acknowledged the blood of France, yet who had lost all semblance to the white man. They lived in their tepee with their Indian squaws and lolled on their blankets while the squaws cooked their venison and did all the work. They let their hair grow long and wore feathers in it; they painted ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... correspond with its name—The Wilderness. The low pines and cedars, which abound everywhere, had taken a fresh green; the deciduous trees, the tangled thickets, impenetrable in many places by horse or man, were putting forth a new, tender foliage, tinted with a delicate semblance of autumn hues. Flowers bloomed everywhere, humbly in the grass close to the soil as well as on the flaunting sprays of shrubbery and vines, filling the air with fragrance as the light touched and expanded the petals. Wood-thrushes and other birds sang as melodiously and contentedly ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... and horses were grazing in the principal square on a severe slope; the streets were paved in a fashion calculated to dislocate your feet or possibly break them if you happened to be walking out after dark. There was not the slightest semblance of drainage in any part of the town. The people flung out into the streets all that could be flung out, and also a good deal that should not be flung. The dirt was excessive all over the place when the rain did not come to the rescue and wash ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... power of creating the semblance of fact out of an ideal was too valuable a thing to be wasted on the making of stories that had no purpose beyond that of interesting or exciting the reader with such imaginations as the Martians, ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford

... serpent, which was the sign of their faith, appears, sometimes covered with Runic inscriptions; and this inscribed serpent, later, is twined round or heaped at the foot of the peculiar Scandinavian-shaped cross, the type of conversion. The serpent was sometimes altered into the partial semblance of a four-footed animal, the body and tail being lengthened and twined, and sometimes split, to give a new turn to the pattern. (Fig. 3.) All these zoomorphic patterns, as well as the human figures seen in the Book of Kells, the missal at Lambeth, ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... heart was heavy and fearful, but she knew that Royal would seek her, and she hoped much for the talk that they were to have now. She did not refuse him her hand when he came to the tea table, or her eyes, and there was friendliness, or the semblance of it, in the voice with which she said his name. That he was waiting, perhaps as fearfully as she, for his cue, was evidenced by the quick relief with which he ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... of this circle, which was paved with the semblance of tesselated marble, stood the altar of Dionysios, and beyond it rose the long, shallow stage, faced with casts from the temple of Bassae; and bearing the huge portal of the house of Paris and the gleaming battlements of Troy. Over the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... it. A similar course was pursued by the opposers of the Advent Movement. And not content with misrepresenting and exaggerating the errors of extremists and fanatics, they circulated unfavorable reports that had not the slightest semblance of truth. These persons were actuated by prejudice and hatred. Their peace was disturbed by the proclamation of Christ at the door. They feared it might be true, yet hoped it was not, and this was the secret of their warfare ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... terrible effects of her displeasure can make him inconstant to Iseria. After suffering incredible hardships, he returns to see Iseria once more before entering a monastery, but she, loyal even to the semblance of the man, refuses to allow him to ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... laugh, but it was the laugh of an embittered man, whose life had crumbled to ruin at one blow. The Cossacks whipped up the horses, and he was off on the long trail back, five thousand miles, every mile a sign post of blasted hopes. Without a word of explanation or the semblance of a trial on the false charge, he was banished out of St. Petersburg on pain of ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... of work on his hands? Congress could of course vote what committees of military inquiry it might please, and might ask questions without end; but we all know to what such questions lead, when the questioner has no power to force an answer by a penalty. If it might be possible to maintain the semblance of respect for Congress, without too much embarrassment to military secretaries, such semblance should be maintained; but if Congress chose to make itself really disagreeable, then no semblance could be kept up any longer. That, as far as I could judge, ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... that she has suffered much. I am sure she has suffered. I trust that all that is over now. I have come here to-day more to say that on my own behalf than anything else." A shadow of a shade of disappointment, the slightest semblance of a cloud, passed across her heart as she heard this. But it was well. She could not have married him, even if he had wished it, and now, as it seemed, that difficulty was over. Her mother and those lawyers had been mistaken, ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... removing misapprehension and of allaying public excitement, deem it proper to declare publicly that they have this day had a personal interview in this city, in which it has been mutually understood, without the semblance of dissent on either part, that each of them has no other than a common object, equally interesting and important to every citizen of Missouri—that of restoring peace and good order to the people of the State in subordination ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... seemed to know it all, already. That was his old manner, which he perhaps made use of now because he thought that Valentine would then be less likely to conceal or alter facts against his better knowledge. His inward agitation prevented him from perceiving in what strong contradiction this semblance of calm stood to his morbid sense of honor. Valentine did not endeavor to deepen the shadows which fell upon Fritz Nettenmair's conduct, but, knowing the old gentleman as he thought he did, he deemed it necessary to place Apollonius' actions in the brightest possible ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... Twain heard that the timber around Lake Bigler (Tahoe) promised vast wealth which could be had for the asking. He decided to locate a timber claim on its shores. He went to the Lake with a young Ohio lad, staked out a timber claim, and made a semblance of fencing it and of building a habitation, to comply with the law. They did not sleep in the house, of which Mark Twain says: "It never occurred to us for one thing, and besides, it was built to hold the ground, and that was enough. We did ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... retinue, and passed all the night in combat against the foulest throngs of monsters; and at return of daybreak she perceived fallen all over the fields diverse shapes of phantoms, and figures extraordinary to look on; and among them was seen the semblance of Thorhild herself covered with wounds. All these she piled in a heap and burnt, kindling a huge pyre, lest the foul stench of the filthy carcases might spread in pestilent vapour and hurt those who came nigh with its taint of corruption. This done, she won the throne of Sweden ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... distinctness defined in the statute. It seems to me that this object has not been completely attained in the phraseology of the second section of the bill, and that question may well arise as to the precise condition the article to be taxed must assume in order to be regarded as "made in imitation or semblance of butter, or, when so made, calculated or intended to be sold ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... rapture's fervent glow. Oft sooth the maniac's throbbing vein, And grace her simple, wilder'd strain; The tribe of Pain in fetters keep, Lull wounded Memory to sleep, And, in the mind of gloomy Care, Bid Thought an angel's semblance wear. ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham

... now we find mere pigmies, compared with the antecedent allied races. If Buffon had known of the gigantic sloth and armadillo-like animals, and of the lost Pachydermata, he might have said with a greater semblance of truth that the creative force in America had lost its power, rather than that it had never possessed great vigour. The greater number, if not all, of these extinct quadrupeds lived at a late period, and were the contemporaries of most of the existing sea-shells. Since they ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... our past. Though no more Old English than the works of Kipling, it had selected its reminiscences so adroitly that her criticism was lulled, and the guests whom it was nourishing for imperial purposes bore the outer semblance of Parson Adams or Tom Jones. Scraps of their talk jarred oddly on the ear. "Right you are! I'll cable out to Uganda this evening," came from the table behind. "Their Emperor wants war; well, let ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... the very embodiment and picture of all the most savage and debasing passions that characterise the worst specimens of humanity, and reminded me of nothing so much as a combination of snake, tiger, and monkey clothed in the outward semblance of a human form. "Heaven have mercy upon the unfortunate who stirs this brute to anger!" thought I. He was undoubtedly well aware of the feelings of horror and repulsion that he inspired in the breasts of others, and seemed rather to pride ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... whose domain extended along the Rio Verde in central Arizona, immediately adjacent to the territory over which the Apache proper held undisputed sway. With these, affiliation practically became fusion, for in outward semblance, characteristics, mode of living, and handicraft they are typically Apache; but their mother tongue, though impaired, and remnants of their native mythology are still adhered to. Through the Apache-Mohave, allied with the Apache ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... other, "but he's all smashed." They brought him in and laid him on his bed. I sent one of the party for the doctor at Viking, and myself set to work, with what appliances I had, to deal with the dreadful injuries. When the doctor came, together we made him into the semblance of a man again. His face was but slightly injured, though his head had received severe hurts. I think that I alone saw the marks on his throat; and I hid them. I guessed the cause, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the eastern sky were breaking. Through the heavy banks came a faint glimmering of moonlight. At first but a hair-line, it widened out, reaching up and across the sky, developing steadily into the semblance of a frozen flash of heat lightning, until all the eastern heavens showed a shimmering expanse, broken here and there by black clouds sullenly holding their own, which flooded the underscudding desert in beautiful ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton

... featured in the billing and he arrogated all the privileges of a real star. He was intensely and destructively jealous of any approbation he didn't himself arouse, even if it was manifested when he was not on the stage. He distended his part out of all reasonable semblance, and to the practical annihilation of the plot, by the injection into it of musty vaudeville specialties of his, which he assured the weak-kneed management were knock-outs. And his clowning and mugging made it impossible to play a legitimate ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... all, my dear Petrarch," says the prelate; "and it is wonderful that at so tender an age (Petrarch's tender age was at this time thirty-one) you can deceive the world with so much art and success. And, not content with deceiving the world, you would fain deceive Heaven itself. You make a semblance of loving St. Augustine and his works; but, in your heart, you love the poets and the philosophers. Your Laura is a phantom created by your imagination for the exercise of your poetry. Your verse, your love, your sighs, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... that is involved in the production of it" (page 7). Again: " ... Marx makes of his doctrine that labor alone produces all economic wealth" (page 7). Also: " ... that theory of production which the genius of Karl Marx invested with a semblance, at all events, of sober, scientific truth, and which ascribes all wealth to that ordinary manual labor which brings the sweat to the brow of the ordinary laboring man" (page 12).[157] All the foregoing passages ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... in the seventeenth century, never to regain more than a shadow of her former grandeur and prestige. But again she rose, in a semblance of her martial spirit, when her native sons, gathering fresh courage and inspiration from the waning powers of the mother-country in the early years of the century just closed, organized that federation which, after long years of almost hopeless struggle, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... which was such a perfect resemblance of the queen, that would his majesty be pleased to go to her house and look upon it, he would be almost ready to think it was Hermione herself. Thither then they all went; the king anxious to see the semblance of his Hermione, and Perdita longing to behold what the mother she never saw did ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... pattern of liberality. It is true, that a coward in the service seldom dares show his cowardice; that in the inferior grades passion is controlled by discipline, and in all, meanness is shamed by intimate, and social communion, into the semblance of much better feelings. Still, with all this, the blue coat, like charity, covereth a multitude of sins, and the blue water is, as yet, inefficacious to wash them ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... was, to find no semblance of a sea-port; there was neither wharf nor landing-place—nothing but a naked river bank, with the hulk of a ferry-boat, which I was told carried passengers to Huelva, lying high and dry on the sands, deserted by the ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... the son of Atreus have borne off the noble spoils of Panthoos' son, had not Phoebus Apollo grudged it to him, and aroused against him Hector peer of swift Ares, putting on the semblance of a man, of Mentes chief of the Kikones. And he spake aloud to him winged words: "Hector, now art thou hasting after things unattainable, even the horses of wise Aiakides; for hard are they to be tamed or driven by ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... opened, and a ghastly figure, shrouded in white drapery with the semblance of a bloody turban on its head, entered and stalked slowly up the apartment. Mr. Flosky was not prepared for this apparition, and made the best of his way out at the opposite door. Mr. Hilary and Marionetta followed screaming. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... Boche was putting up a fight for this bit of ground, and his guns never ceased, only in the grey hours of dawn was there any semblance of peace along the front, and then one felt that he had just temporarily put a hand over the mouth of the guns in a straining attitude of watching and listening for a movement on our part. A sudden withdrawal of that hand and they would all bark forth ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson

... once there had been a breathless pause while the entire squadron had waited to watch the killing of Trooper Weldon; more than once there had been an utterly profane pause while the officers had waited for Trooper Weldon to bring his bolting steed back into some semblance of alignment. The pause always ended with Weldon upright in his saddle, his face beaming with jovial smiles and his horse ranged up with mathematical precision. The delays were by no means helpful to discipline. Nevertheless, ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... the sad histories of thousands of these poor, lost creatures—male and female; not an asylum nurse or doctor but will sadly point out these creatures to you, bereft of every trace of reason, all sense of shame, still practicing the horrible vice that has driven every semblance of humanity from their faces and the very light of reason from ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown

... De Peyster's veil, and closely scanned her features; which, to be just to the officer, were so distorted that they bore little semblance to the Mrs. De Peyster of ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott

... always have been a miserable business; but our fathers and grandfathers had the sense to give it an outward semblance of gaiety. They went forth to battle dressed in the brightest colours they could find. They put feathers in their hats. They sewed gold braid on their coats. They hung sparkling metal about their persons. They had brass bands to march in front of them. While engaged in the business of killing ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham

... singing; but not a human voice or footstep. She began to think that the god-like figure was only the Hermes of Praxiteles, suggested to her by Goethe's classical Sabbat, and changed by a day-dream into the semblance of a living reality. The groom must have been one of those incongruities characteristic of dreams—probably a reminiscence of Lucian's statement that the tenant of the Warren Lodge had a single male attendant. It was impossible that this glorious vision of manly strength and beauty ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... beautiful little girl, beloved by everybody. She was eight years younger than I, and my especial pet. Then came the terrible fever, and for days we thought she could not live. Finally she rallied, only for us to discover that we had lost her—her brain was a wreck. The semblance of Ruth stayed with us twelve years longer, until she was eighteen years old; then she went Home. That is undoubtedly the foundation for Ilga's malicious little story; but, you see, Thistledown, ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd

... celestial, every one, Arms from the Gods themselves concealed, Far less to other men revealed. These arms to him, when earth he swayed, Mighty Krisasva, pleased, conveyed. Krisasva's sons they are indeed, Brought forth by Daksha's lovely seed, Heralds of conquest, strong and bold, Brilliant, of semblance manifold. Jaya and Vijaya, most fair, A hundred splendid weapons bare; Of Jaya, glorious as the morn, First fifty noble sons were born, Boundless in size yet viewless too, They came the demons to subdue. And fifty children also came Of Vijaya the beauteous dame, Sanharas named, of mighty force, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... for a painted semblance!" said the lady, as rising she turned toward the casement, the golden Cupid falling from her lap to the floor. In the rhythmic ease of her movement, in her very attitude, was consciousness of her own power, but to the poet-jester, surrounded ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... chanced one day that he fell upon a company of folk who overcame him by dint of numbers and taking him prisoner, pinioned him and carried him to the lord of that land wherein he was a-highwaying. This king saw his semblance and loveliness and misdoubting of him, said, "This be no robber's favour. Tell me truly, O youth, who thou art." Bihzad was ashamed to acquaint him with his condition and preferred death for himself; so he answered, "I am naught but a thief and a bandit." Quoth the king, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... coarse, brutal, sordid, and grovelling. Even that grace, almost a virtue, which has its name from courts, seems not to exist in them in a genuine form; and instead of it we find only a hollow, glittering sham, which has but an outward semblance to real courtesy, and which itself even is produced only on occasions more or less public and for purposes more or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... outer world, when they took the air in their cloistered pleasance. Guitars had tinkled against them in vain, and they had withstood the stress and storm of love tokens. But, like many other things which have had their day and time, they had retained their semblance of power, even while rattling loosely in their sockets, only because no one had ever thought of putting them to the test, and, in the strong hand of Clarence, assisted, perhaps, by the leaning figure of ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte

... point Miss Pritty gasped "oh!" and fainted—at least she went into a perfect semblance of the state of coma, but as she recovered suddenly, and appealed to the letter again with intense earnestness, it may have been something else that was the matter. She ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne

... which is surrounded by ranges, stands a broad backed butte that was once a volcano. The Rio del Norte sweeps in a curve about its base. Time and volcanic crumblings and desert wind have carved the great beast into the semblance of an elephant at rest. The giant head is slightly bowed. The curved trunk droops, but the eyes are wide open and the ears are slightly lifted. By day it is a rich, red bronze. By night, a purple that deepens to black. Watching, brooding, ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow

... and the shrill cries of the Mexicans rose higher and higher. The Spaniards were sick, wounded, beaten and terrified. Only Cortes and his captains and a few of his veterans preserved the slightest semblance of organization. ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... was reading again, and scowling; and he scarcely noticed her. She seated herself by the fire and looked into the big bare studio beyond where the electric light threw strange shadows over shrouded shapes of wet clay and blocks of marble in the rough or partly hewn into rough semblance of human figures. ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... variance that perfection must be gained by thwarting development! But the growth of the Little Ones WAS arrested! something interfered with it: what was it? Lona seemed the eldest of them, yet not more than fifteen, and had been long in charge of a multitude, in semblance and mostly in behaviour merest children, who regarded her as their mother! Were they growing at all? I doubted it. Of time they had scarcely the idea; of their own age they knew nothing! Lona herself thought she had lived always! Full of wisdom and empty of knowledge, she was at ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald

... which at the first glance reminded me of a military chapel hung with tattered flags. The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I presently recognized as the decaying vestiges of books. They had long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had left them. But here and there were warped boards and cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I been a literary man I might, perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of all ambition. But as it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force was the enormous waste ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... from time immemorial in almost all eastern countries; and as it forms neither an aliquot part of the year nor of the lunar month, those who reject the Mosaic recital will be at a loss, as Delambre remarks, to assign it to an origin having much semblance of probability. It might have been suggested by the phases of the moon, or by the number of the planets known in ancient times, an origin which is rendered more probable from the names universally given to the different days of which it is composed. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... New Zealand Jack! thou terror of all cruisers that crossed their wakes in the vicinity of the Tattoo Land? Was it not so, O Morquan! King of Japan, whose lofty jet they say at times assumed the semblance of a snow-white cross against the sky? Was it not so, O Don Miguel! thou Chilian whale, marked like an old tortoise with mystic hieroglyphics upon the back! In plain prose, here are four whales as well known to the students of Cetacean History as Marius ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... upon renewing the attempt to raise his voice above the hostile din. The sight of him unchains the House's fury afresh. The racket is increased by the mad ding-donging of "Papa" Kaempf, trying hopelessly to restore a semblance of quiet. It is useless. The House will not subside until Liebknecht is driven from the speakers' tribune. He is not to have even the chance of the lull which enabled Ledebour to say a pertinent thing or two. A score of embittered deputies advance toward the tribune, red-faced and gesticulating ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... divided into two rooms and already the hands of the two sisters had fashioned of such scant things as they possessed and dared buy from the factory on the year's debt, a semblance of comfort. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... themselves as comfortable as possible for their long journey. In your profound astonishment, you may naturally ask me of what strange material can the hearts of these Americans be made, who can view without the slightest semblance of a flutter the approach of the most appalling dangers? In your curiosity I fully participate, but, I'm sorry to say, I can't gratify it. It is one of those things that I could never ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... than to deserve it. She has prepared speeches for every occasion, and she expects they are all to be believed—in short, she is a show woman; the world is her theatre, and from it she looks for the plaudits due to her virtue; for with her the reality and the semblance are synonymous. She has a grave and imposing air, which keeps the timid at a distance; and she delivers the most common truths as if they were the most profound aphorisms. To degrade herself is her greatest fear; for, to use her own expression, there is nothing so ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... everything that in civilised countries is considered knowledge—their minds being enveloped in the most deplorable darkness—the only semblance of religion in use amongst them being ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat

... tassel was nearly at its full height, and when the silk was appearing from the ears. One rule is invariable; that is, that if the corn be not ploughed at all there will be no crop; there will be tassel, and the semblance of ears; but (upon ordinary land, at least,) there will ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various

... am good-looking enough for any one to be satisfied with the outward semblance who valued the soul within," she thought, as she turned from the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... licensed jester, seizing the Count's arm familiarly, began to march along with him, while, under a strong guard, yet forgetting no semblance of respect, he conducted the ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... so far as our sensations went. We came out and walked a little way from the crowd, and turned and regarded it. To see all that multitude changed to a picture, smitten rigid, as it were, into the semblance of realistic wax, was impossibly wonderful. It was absurd, of course; but it filled me with an irrational, an exultant sense of superior advantage. Consider the wonder of it! All that I had said, and thought, and done since ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... thought or strength. It combats ennui, lassitude, and intolerable vacuity, soothing the nerves and diverting attention from self. Sam Johnson came very near the mark: 'I wonder why a thing that costs so little trouble, yet has just sufficient semblance of doing something to break utter idleness, should go out of fashion. To be sure, it is a horrible thing blowing smoke out; but every man needs something to quiet him—as, beating ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... conflict in the 18th century with usurping Mohammedans and Dutch colonists, when family influence was undermined by political intrigues. The Dutch, after many vicissitudes, became absolute rulers of Java, though native princes, as tributaries, were suffered to retain a semblance of sovereignty. The shadowy paraphernalia of vanished power is still accorded to the Sultan of Djokjacarta, in melancholy travesty of past authority, though every hereditary privilege has been wrested from his grasp. A curious relic of primitive days remains in the al fresco ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... A. M. of the same day, the island of Fernando Noronha was made from the mast head, and as it gradually loomed to the vision, from the deck, its remarkable peak began to assume various shapes, mostly resolving themselves into the semblance of a high tower. It is on the north side of the island, and is called "the Pyramid;" is said to elevate its rocky proportions from the midst of a beautiful grove to the height of about one thousand ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... forever-save in the exciting stages of some brisk flirtation. She will live hereafter by feeding other hearts with love's lore she has learned from me, and then, Pygmalion-like, grow fond of the images she has herself endowed with semblance of divinity, until they seem to breathe back the mystery the soul can truly ...
— The Man In The Reservoir • Charles Fenno Hoffman

... number—doubled, as I understood, on my account—lay and lounged on the stoep outside. Instead of feeling them anything of a protection, I should have been much happier without them. It must be recollected that these burghers were very undisciplined and independent of authority, only a semblance of which appeared to be exercised over them. They included some of a very low type, and it appeared to be left to themselves to choose which post they would patronize. It was remarked to me they preferred the hospital, as it was sheltered, ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... grasped the truth? At first glance, indeed his gossip of oriental theories concerning the disintegration of matter, its passage through solid substances, its reassembly in far places, seemed thoroughly justified. Yet, granted that, who, in the semblance of Silas Blackburn, had they buried to vanish completely? Who, in the semblance of Silas Blackburn, had drowsed without food for three days in the ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp

... century and the art of the fifteenth century; the first suggests, the second realizes; the one gives impalpable outlines, the other gives tangible bodies; the Giottesque cares for the figure only, inasmuch as it displays an action, he reduces it to a semblance, a phantom, to the mere exponent of an idea; the man of the Renaissance cares for the figure, inasmuch as it is a living organism, he gives it substance and weight, he makes it stand out as an animate reality. But despite its early triumphs, the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... Seine, in the neighbourhood of Paris, compared with the Thames in that of London? If the almost impenetrable smoke and filth from coal-fires were charmed away—shew me, I beseech you, any view of Paris, from this, or from any point of approach, which shall presume to bear the semblance of comparison with that of London, from the descent from Shooter's Hill! The most bewitched Frenchified-Englishman, in the perfect possession of his eye sight, will not have the temerity to institute such a comparison. But as you near the barriers, your admiration increases. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... hazy, sun followed the sharp night, and only the blackened and damaged plants in the yard bore witness to the frost, which had melted to the semblance of rain on the grass. On the dappled boughs of the sycamore by the mill-race several bronze leaves hung limp and motionless, as if they were attached by silken threads to the stems, and the coating of moss on the revolving wheel shone like green enamel ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... earth? (37) Behold the heavens and earth cannot contain thee," inasmuch as they do not expressly state that God does not move from place to place, but only imply it, must be explained away till they have no further semblance of denying locomotion to the Deity. (38) So also we must believe that the sky is the habitation and throne of God, for Scripture expressly says so; and similarly many passages expressing the opinions of the prophets or the multitude, which reason ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza

... into the fish-laden atmosphere of the cannery. Walking down the aisles, flanked on both sides by huge vats and silent conveyers, they came upon a number of dark-skinned laborers whiling away the time with a scant pretense of work. Stung into a semblance of action by the sudden appearance of the boss, the men abruptly postponed their conversation and tardily plied their scrubbing brooms, meanwhile eying the ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... were gemmed with drops that still dripped. The ground was strewn with wet leaves, slippery, and affording treacherous foothold. Progress was slow and laborious. As the hillside grew steeper, a man here and there slid, lurched and fell. To maintain any semblance of formation was impossible. The fire grew hotter. Ball and buckshot and half-ounce bullets down-poured on them from above. "Death crouched behind every rock ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey

... had been tossed; here was a flat strip of canvas supported by four four-foot poles and without shelter at the sides, and the belongings of one careless miner tumbled beneath this miserable shelter; another man had striven for some semblance of a home and he had framed a five-foot walk leading up to the closed flap of his tent with stones of a regular size. But nowhere was there a sign of life, and would not be until semidarkness brought the unwilling workers back ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... was an exiled nobleman, and that he had been thus buried by order of the governor, but no one suspected for a moment that it was at the orders of the surgeon-in-chief, whose dream had frightened him into the semblance ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold

... selected personnel. Blankets and cots and barrels and cans and kitchen utensils began to arrive by the truck load and the officers in feverish haste divided the blankets, put up as many cots as they could, and established some semblance of order in the mess hall. They were pegging diligently at their tasks when the first troop trains pulled in at Disney on September 19th and unloaded the first detachment of ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman

... teacher in school, came to the door of the committee room with a paper in her hand. A semblance of order immediately fell upon ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose

... is the next point in the idea of the Master. Those who founded a religion were bound to remain wearing the body of man, fixed to the earth, bound to the outward semblance of humanity, so long as the religion lived upon earth which They had given to it. That was the rule: no liberation for the Man who founded a religion until all who belonged to that religion had themselves passed out of it, into liberation, ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant

... adorable. I have seen men on your street corners, as I have seen men on the street corners of every city of America, with bloated faces, with mangled forms, and eyes blackened by the horrible vice and orgies carried on in their dens of iniquity and drunkenness and sin. I have seen men with not a semblance of humanity in their form or in their face, and not a sentiment of manhood in their souls. I have seen these men made absolute masters of wives and children; men who reel to their homes night after ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... time less cruelty I trace In her sweet smile and form divinely fair; Less clouded doth appear The heaven of her fine eyes and lovely face. What then at last avail to me those sighs, Which from my sorrows flow, And in my semblance show The life of anguish and despair I lead? If towards her perchance I bend mine eyes, Some solace to bestow Upon my bosom's woe, Methinks Love takes my part, and lends me aid: Yet still I cannot find the conflict stay'd, Nor tranquil is my heart in every state: For, ah! my passion's heat More ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... crystal, heaped with rose and gold cushions, faced them. Before it, a fountain, in the form of a flower nodding on a curved stem, sent a spray of water into a shallow basin. The walls of the room were divided into alcoves by marble pillars, each one curved in semblance ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North

... the district within twelve months," replied Lashmore. "The gruesome cry of 'vampire' ran through the community. The fourth baron—son of Paul Dhoon—turned a deaf ear to these reports, until the mother of a child—a child who had died—traced a man, or the semblance of a man, to the gate of the Dhoon family vault. By night, secretly, the son of Paul Dhoon visited the ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... of thousands mounts up to a formidable total. The early years of the peace were so marked by crimes of violence that a frequent heading in the daily newspapers was "The Carnival of Crime." Prosperity, or the semblance of it, came in like a sudden flood. Immigration of an improved character poured into the country in greater volume than ever. Multitudes made haste to be rich, and fell into temptations and snares. The perilous ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... referred to would justify a refusal on our part to execute the cartel by which we have agreed to liberate an excess of prisoners of war in our hands, a sacred regard for plighted faith, which shrinks from the semblance of breaking a promise, precludes a resort to such an extremity, nor is it his desire to extend to any other forces of the United States the punishment merited by General Pope and such commissioned officers as choose to participate in the ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... an indefinite siege on this fragment of Serbian territory, holding Belgrade as a bridgehead for another advance toward the main Morava Valley, when the next effort to invade Serbia should be made. He would, at the same time, preserve at least a semblance of his prestige from all the calamities that had befallen his armies, enabling him to represent the campaign as a reconnaissance in force, similar to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... the closest attention; on another, a vine that carried allurement in every tendril. Here was a flower that was like a story for interest, and there was a bush that bore a secret worth the telling. Even Simeon Holly glowed into a semblance of life when David had unerringly picked out and called by name the spruce, and fir, and pine, and larch, and then, in answer to Mrs. Holly's murmured: "But, David, where's the difference? They look so much ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter

... escape the law's retribution and to hold its dictatorship, but the efforts of John South had not been altogether bootless. He had ripped away two masks, and their erstwhile wearers could no longer hold their old semblance of law-abiding philanthropists. Jesse Purvy's home was the show place of the country side. To the traveler's eye, which had grown accustomed to hovel life and squalor, it offered a reminder of the richer Bluegrass. Its walls were ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck



Words linked to "Semblance" :   pretense, irradiation, visual aspect, pretence, Identikit picture, ikon, picture, phantasma, verisimilitude, icon, camouflage, face value, pretext, gloss, simulacrum, phantasm, portrayal, phantom limb, phantom, guise



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