Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




More "Characterization" Quotes from Famous Books



... as these have been worked up by Browning into a consistent characterization of a man who regards himself as having foregone his chances of laureateship or "Next Poet" by devoting himself to a form of literary art which would not appeal to the powers that be as fitting him for any such position. Such ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... interesting story; it is a very admirable story, conveying in a few pages much of Russian spirituality and more of universal human nature; but I believe that all, or nearly all, of our American magazines would refuse it; not because it lacks picturesqueness, or narrative suspense, or vivid characterization—all of these it has in large measure. They would reject it because it does not seem to move rapidly, or because it lacks a vigorous climax. The Goltva swollen in flood lies under the Easter stars. As the monk Jerome ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... point of objecting to this characterization of her sister, but she thought better of it ere she spoke. After all, if these men had done all this kindness by reason of a mistake, she needed not to ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... exposures, struggles, and triumphs of the individual soul, a description of personal experience, a picture of the inner life of the Christian in a hostile world. The contents of it can be made to answer to such a characterization only by the determined exercise of an unrestrained fancy, or by the theory of a double sense, as the Swedenborgians expound it. This method of interpreting the Revelation is adopted, not by scholarly thinkers, who, by the light of learning and common sense, seek to discern what the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... mind, who, though a Greek by birth and a Venetian by training, became more Spanish than the Spaniards during his long life at Toledo, strove constantly to express the difference between the world of flesh and the world of spirit, between the body and the soul of man. More recently, the extreme characterization of Goya's sketches and portraits, the intensifying of national types found in Zuloaga and the other painters who have been exploiting with such success the peculiarities—the picturesqueness—of Spanish faces and landscapes, seem to ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... memory, till no one has patience to spin from it a continuous thread of thought." We have the defects of our qualities. Nevertheless, I am struck with the likeness between a common attribute of the Greeks and Matthew Arnold's characterization of the Americans. Greek thought, it is said, goes straight to the mark, and penetrates like an arrow. The Americans, Arnold wrote, "think straight and see clear." Greek life was adapted to meditation. American quickness and habit of taking the short cut to the goal ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... 1861, long after Trollope had left Ireland. The characterization is weak, and the plot, although the author himself thought well of ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... come to Scott after Fielding, says Mr. Stevenson, "we become suddenly conscious of the background." The remark contains an admirable characterization of romanticism; as distinguished from classicism, romanticism is consciousness of the background. With Gros, Gericault, Paul Huet, Michel, Delacroix, French painting ceased to be abstract and impersonal. Instead of continuing the classic detachment, ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... masterpiece, David and Bethsabe, was also, in many respects, a fine play, though its beauties were poetic rather than dramatic, consisting not in the characterization—which is feeble—but in the eastern luxuriance of the imagery. There ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... vol i., p. 473. This characterization seems by no means fair, and probably it would have been so regarded by the writer in calmer moments. Is indignation chiefly directed to the "indifference to animal suffering," or to the "OPEN PROFESSION" of the feeling? For men, perfectly ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... Fairholme, see his Mosaic Deluge, London, 1837, p. 358. For a very just characterization of various schemes of "reconciliation," see Shields, The ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... want of peculiarity, attached itself to her countenance, which I before mentioned in the case of the president—that is to say, only one feature of her face was sufficiently distinguished to need a separate characterization: indeed the acute Tarpaulin immediately observed that the same remark might have applied to each individual person of the party; every one of whom seemed to possess a monopoly of some particular portion of physiognomy. With the lady in question this portion ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... of the close connection between Julius Caesar and Hamlet as regards date of composition and the characterization of Brutus and Hamlet, interest attaches to Professor Gollancz's theory (Julius Caesar, Temple Shakespeare) that the original of the famous speech of Brutus to the assembled Romans (III, ii) may be found in Belleforest's History ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare

... experiments of his two predecessors, realized the new form better than any one before him had done. For he possessed the special gifts necessary to the performance of the task. He possessed, in the first place, a miraculous power of musical characterization. Through the representative nicety of his themes, through his inordinate capacity for thematic variation and transformation, his playful and witty and colorful instrumentation, Strauss was able to impart to his music a ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... chief was in frequent consultation with his captains, securing their hearty support, and familiarizing them with his plans for action in whatever circumstances a meeting might occur. An interesting reference to this practice of Nelson's appears in a later characterization of him written by the French Admiral Decres to Napoleon. "His boastfulness," so the comment runs, "is only equalled by his ineptitude, but he has the saving quality of making no pretense to any other virtues than boldness ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... article on Shakespeare in the June number of this Magazine, we spoke of his general comprehensiveness and creativeness, of his method of characterization, and of the identity of his genius with his individuality. In the present article we purpose to treat of some particular topics included in the general theme; and as criticism on him is like coasting along a continent, we shall make little pretension to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... a general characterization, but a review, of Mr. Mill's powerful work, we should venture to take issue on some matters both general and special,—as an example of the latter, on the possible utility of protective duties. The reasoning by which he, in common ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... enthusiasm exalts the Epid. to an ideal of comic excellence (Introd. Ps. p. 27). He even goes so far as to contend that Plautus lives up to the following characterization:[25] "Nicht blos durch naturgetreue and lebhafte Charakterschilderungen und durch eine komisch gehaltene, aber die Grenzen des Wahrscheinlichen und des GraziAsen nicht A1/4berschreitende Zeichnung des tAglichen Lebens soll der Dichter des Lustspiels seine Zuschauer interessiren ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke

... misleading. For this is a branch of literature that is in many respects the most rational of all: it is a symptom of progress. These same critics also complain that a fantastic plot is frequently developed at the expense of characterization. To this, one may answer that at times what happens can be more important than the people to whom it happens. In essence, both charges derive from laying undue stress upon psychology as the only legitimate fibre from which a fictional cloth may be woven. Undoubtedly ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss

... have had. His combat scene was terrific. The statement that his voice had failed has no valid foundation; it was as good when he challenged the cavalry-men to combat as in the best of his Thespian successes. In all acting that required delicate characterization, refined conception or carefulness, Booth was at sea. But in strong physical parts, requiring fair reading and an abundance of spring and tension, he was much finer than ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... Publ. Zool., 37:13, April 10, 1931) as differing from mordax in narrower braincase, higher skull near the anterior end of the frontals, darker coloration, and seemingly smaller size. After examining the material in the U. S. National Museum no reason is seen at the present time to amend this characterization, except to add that some specimens of M. l. mordax are as dark as seasonably comparable specimens of M. ...
— Comments on the Taxonomy and Geographic Distribution of North American Microtines • E. Raymond Hall

... failure of 'Guillery' at the Theatre Francaise and 'Gaetena' at the Odeon, renounced the theatre. Indeed, his power is in odd conceptions, in the covert laugh and humorous suggestion of the phrasing, rather than in plot or characterization. He will always be best known for the tales and novels in that thoroughly French style—clear, concise, and witty—which in 1878 elected him president of the Societe des Gens de Lettres, and in 1884 won him ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... likewise, Americanism is not a final word either of blame or praise. It is a word of useful characterization. Only American books, and not books written in English in America, can adequately represent our national contribution to the world's thinking and feeling. So argued Emerson and Whitman, long ago. But the younger of these two poets came to realize in his old age that the New World and the Old ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... the one-sided conception of infinity, we must look for another characterization of the relationship between a point and a plane which are infinitely distant from one another. This requires, first of all, a proper characterization of Point ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... information and the other of being the correspondent on home and clerical affairs. I don't know how many of them—if any—are women, but I seem to trace a female hand in some of the domestic details. But the book contains strong matter, too—both of narrative and characterization; as in the dying of Armand de la Roche-Guyon, and the picture of his lover, Madame de Vigerie. And there is something of the inspiration of the Holy Grail in that "Vision Splendid" which heartens Tristram Hungerford ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various

... success, securing for its author a large circle of readers on both sides of the Atlantic ready to welcome the future productions of her pen. The qualities which distinguish her writings are vigor of conception, sharpness of characterization, a moral earnestness pervading the judgments and reflections, and an ardor, sometimes too exuberant, which gives intensity to the delineation even while exciting doubts of its fidelity. Similar qualities had characterized her acting, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... in many of his theories he anticipated the latter. National to the core, he embodied in his music the finest qualities of the folk-song, and noble tone-painter that he was he excelled his predecessors in his employment of the orchestra as a means of dramatic characterization. ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore

... theoreticians of jurisprudence in Europe, wrote, many years ago, "The way in which one utilizes his wealth is the best criterion of his character and degree of culture. The purpose that prompts the investment of his money is the safest characterization of him. The accounts of expenditures speak louder of a man's true nature than his diary." How well these words apply to the richest of the rich and to their methods ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... the first example of an action, to be repeated in these later days in prairie farms and Western ranches by women who share the same spirit, though more often young than "ancient" maids. But ancient, though in her case a just enough characterization, was a term of reproach for any who at sixteen or eighteen at the utmost, remained unmarried, and our present custom of calling every maiden under forty, "girl" would have struck the Puritan mothers with a sense of preposterousness fully equal to ours ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... large. In a biographical sketch of Audubon the Man, interspersed with anecdote, he said so many interesting things that we regret we omitted to make any notes that would enable us to indicate at least something of his characterization. No doubt just what he said will appear in an appropriate place. Audubon's portfolio, in which his precious manuscripts and drawings were so long religiously kept, which he had carried with him ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various

... still one more fragment of self characterization: "A chief trait in my character was the need for love, not that everyday love which limits itself to a personal pleasure and delight, but that unbounded, overflowing love which feels itself completely one with the beloved.... The ideal of marriage was before me in youth, for ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger

... has been to sketch the various periods and styles of architecture with the broadest possible strokes, and to mention, with such brief characterization as seemed permissible or necessary, the most important works of each period or style. Extreme condensation in presenting the leading facts of architectural history has been necessary, and much that would rightly claim place in a larger work has been omitted here. The ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... is a wizard. Meredith Nicholson, who has heard Henry talk at a dinner, in a recent number of Scribner's magazine, said of him: "He's the best talker I've ever heard. It was delightful to listen to discourse so free, so graphic in its characterization, so coloured and flavoured with the very soil," and that night at the English dinner, all of Henry's cylinders were hitting and he took every grade without changing gears. But my ears were eager for the man on Henry's right. He told some ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... where they are wanting, nothing can make up for them. Not only are the most profound thoughts and the most exquisite culture incapable of saving a work of art which is looked upon as cold, but richness of imagery, ability and certainty in the reproduction of the real, in description, characterization and composition, and all other knowledge, only serve to arouse the regret that so great a price has been paid and such labours endured, in vain. We do not ask of an artist instruction as to real facts and thoughts, nor that he should astonish us with the richness of his imagination, ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... the finest poetry is contained in picturesque passages such as these, we find verse of another order, thrilling as the trumpet's "golden cry," in the passionate invocation of Dante, enshrining the magnificently Dantesque characterization of the three divisions of ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... by a story sent in to him by an unknown writer. It was, he told me, amazing from every purely literary point of view—plot, characterization, colour, and economy of language. It had so much that it seemed strange that anything at all should be lacking. He sent for the writer, and told him ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... rest your soul on that score. I won't. I'm sick of you and your lies. Stephanie Platow—the thin stick! Cecily Haguenin—the little piece of gum! And Florence Cochrane—she looks like a dead fish!" (Aileen had a genius for characterization at times.) "If it just weren't for the way I acted toward my family in Philadelphia, and the talk it would create, and the injury it would do you financially, I'd act to-morrow. I'd leave you—that's what I'd do. And to think that I ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... assumed office in 1913. The General, very much to my surprise, intimated that back of Pershing's attitude toward him was political consideration. I tried to reassure him and, indeed, I resented this characterization of General Pershing as an unjust and unwarranted imputation upon the Commander of the American ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... of the Virgin: "The neck of a heifer, and flesh like cream or hasty-pudding, that quivers when it is touched;" or of the picture of St. Ursula's companions, by the same hand: "Their squab noses poking out of bladders of lard that did duty for their faces;" not to speak of the characterization of a "Sacred Heart" too revolting to reproduce? Surely when, after having reviled M. Tissot almost personally, he describes his works as painted with "muck, wine-sauce, and mud," it is difficult not to ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... frequently, answers to mental questions—questions, too, the answer to which none of those having their hands on the board could possibly know. Often, again, remarks are volunteered conveying information not possessed by any one of the writers. The distinct characterization of a personality is frequently seen,—and a personality of a very detestable sort. The language employed, frequently, is quite unprintable. The "ouija" lies as coolly and confidently as it tells the truth; in fact, it is dogmatically positive that its statements are correct in every case, even ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... magnificence compelled even from our apathetic traveller a shy and reluctant veneration. He tried to fix his attention upon a certain famous Guido which was attached by hinges to the wall, and which, as he had just learned from Baedeker, was a marvel of color and fine characterization; he stood for a few moments staring with a blank and helpless air, as if, for the first time in his life, he was beginning to question the finality of his own judgment. Then his eyes wandered off to the cornice of the wall, whose florid rococo ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... the arch persecutor, is shown in the characterization of him by Luke, when he represented him as breathing out, "threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell

... forgotten that. I couldn't let those stipulations stand without protest, and at the same time, if I protested the characterization of Cumshaw as a practicing politician, the trial could easily end right there. So I prayed for a miracle, and Clement Sidney promptly ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire

... it served to brighten his eyes. Enid suggested it to him and he went out and got it. It helped him play his scenes. It gave him the glittering expression he needed in his characterization." ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve

... I thought, why would it be a strange looking apparatus? Why would an advanced technological age necessarily be devoid of any sense of fashion, although that would be assuming that any civilization had ever had one. Fashion is more a characterization of a culture than a basic and unchanging principle, for a desert people would wear clothes that would be most uncomfortable to a people who lived in the snow. Clothes may not make the man, but the man certainly makes the clothes, and you can judge a person ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn

... old-time quality, but neither was such as he would himself have perhaps rejected if he had been editor. Then he plunged at the heap, and in a fifteen-cent magazine of recent renown he found among five poems a good straight piece of realistic characterization which did much to cheer him. In this, a little piece of two stanzas, the author had got at the heart of a good deal of America. In another cheap magazine, professing to be devoted wholly to stories, he hoped for a breathing-space, and was tasked by nothing less familiar ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... play on words in the following epigrammatic characterization of a loud and violent speaker: "He ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter

... slaves." "If a place could be provided for their reception," said Randolph, "and a mode of sending them hence, there were [sic] hundreds, nay thousands of citizens" who would manumit their slaves.[279] Randolph's characterization of the free black was generally approved by the leaders in this movement. Caldwell used "degraded" and "ignorant" in describing this class of people. Mills said: "It will transfer to the coast of Africa the blessings of religion and civilization; ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... Gothard; then back again to Lucerne and round by the Stelvio to Venice and Verona, and finally through the Tyrol and Germany homewards. The ascent of the St. Bernard was told in a dramatic sketch of great humour and power of characterization, and a letter to Richard Fall records the night on the Rigi, when he saw the splendid sequence of storm, sunset, moonlight, and daybreak, which forms the subject of one of the most ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... come over to us; among others, the characterization of the three German Emperors: the first William as "Der greise Kaiser," the Emperor Frederick as "Der weise Kaiser," and the second William as "Der Reise Kaiser"; and there were unpleasant murmurs regarding sundry trials for petty treason. But ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... teacher's face, but the incident had jarred the old wound; Miss Leary's description of the teacher, together with Plato's characterization, had stirred lightly sleeping memories. He was more or less abstracted during the remainder of the drive, and did not recur to the conversation that had been interrupted by coming ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... and adverse criticism of "The Tyranny of God," not a single one offers an argument in answer to it. For the most part, their characterization has been that it is "pessimistic." As if by calling it "pessimistic," they refute ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis

... necessary if the story is to take rank above other stories. The true artist will seek to shape this living substance into the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skillful selection and arrangement of his materials, and by the most direct and appealing presentation of it in portrayal and characterization. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also" (Matt. 5:39). He would have men even avoid criticism of one another (Matt. 7:1-5). Epigrams are seductive, and there is a fascination in the dissection of character; but there is always a danger that a clever characterization, a witty label, may conclude the matter, that a possible friendship may be lost through the very ingenuity with which the man has been labelled, who might have been a friend. It is not a small matter in Jesus' eyes, he puts his view very strongly (Matt. 5:22); and, as we ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... Angelo, Tasso, Dante, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, Chatterton, Keats, Byron, are all characterized as proud. The last-named has been especially kept in the foreground by following verse-writers, as a precedent for their arrogance. Shelley's characterization of Byron ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... This entry includes a brief characterization of the system with details on the domestic and international components. The following terms and abbreviations are used throughout ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... Characterization is Miss Woolson's forte. Her men and women are not mere puppets, but original, breathing, and finely contrasted ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder

... Miss Conant's characterization of Mr. Durant, in his own words describing James Otis, is particularly illuminating in its revelation of his temperament. In February, 1860, he said of James Otis, in an address delivered in the Boston Mercantile ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse

... Carolina. In the course of time, however, Satan succeeded in sowing tares among the wheat. Two opposing parties sprang up in the synod. The one, to which the great majority belonged, found its expression and embodiment in the General Synod, and is too well known to our readers to require further characterization at this place. The other was the staunch and truly Lutheran party, to which, indeed, but a small minority adhered. The majority, in agreement with a number of influential men in the Pennsylvania Synod, proposed the idea of a General Synod, which, according to their view, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente

... Shakespeare's extreme objectivity makes snap judgments unsafe. We cannot always be sure that his characters voice his own thoughts and judgments, but, on the other hand, we have no right to assume that they never do. The tragedies especially afford a safe basis for judgment, for in them characterization is of the greatest importance. No great character was ever created which did not spring from the poet's own soul. In Shakespeare's characters sin, lust, cruelty, are always punished; sympathy, love, kindness are everywhere glorified. The writer illustrates ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud

... and banks of established reputation cannot afford to deceive; they receive their compensation in the way of commissions on sales, and their characterization of the bonds may be accepted without question, for they invariably investigate the bonds, before they lend their names to them ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun

... was a master of what the ancient Greeks would have called "making the worse appear the better reason." He was able to misstate his antagonist's position so shrewdly as to deceive the very elect. And with equal skill he could escape from the real meaning of his own statements. Lincoln's characterization is apt: "Judge Douglas is playing cuttlefish—a small species of fish that has no mode of defending himself when pursued except by throwing out a black fluid which makes the water so dark the enemy cannot see ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... of the initiated, or to us of the wider outlook, there is nothing incredible in the thought of shoemakers in other worlds—but I suspect that this characterization is tactical. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... government as I have always believed or could desire them to be." The news-sheets which followed his progress from day to day coined the phrase, "era of good feeling," which has passed current ever since as a characterization of his administration. ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... to set himself outside of ordinary human morality, he is presumably on the verge of shipwreck. The Republican, while emphasizing the popular estimate of John Brown as "a hero," coupled with this the characterization of him as "a ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... and humorous characterization. Nothing more individual, and in its own way more powerful, has been done in American fiction.... The story is a work of ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... "What is the general character of the large community of native Christians formed of orphans and their descendants?" it is difficult to give a satisfactory reply, though easy enough to give one's impression. A characterization of communities is one of the most common and at the same time most unsatisfactory of operations, as the data for its being done well are so wide, recondite, and difficult to grasp. As I proceed I shall have occasion to give my views of native ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... awaited the onrush of doctor and attendant. They soon had me in hand. Each taking an arm, they marched me to my room. This took not more than half a minute, but the time was not so short as to prevent my delivering myself of one more thumb-nail characterization of the doctor. My inability to recall that delineation, verbatim, entails no loss on literature. But one remark made as the doctor seized hold of me was apt, though not impromptu. "Well, doctor," I said, "knowing you to be a truthful man, I ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... Greensboro address Page had given these men high praise. But for the assiduous idolaters of stratified dogma he entertained a contempt which he was seldom at pains to conceal. North Carolina had many clergymen of the more progressive type; these men chuckled at Page's vigorous characterization of the brethren, but those against whom it had been aimed raged with a fervour that was almost unchristian. This clerical excitement, however, did not greatly disturb the philosophic Page. The hubbub lasted for several years—for Page's Greensboro ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... watch the unconscious, resistless movements of nations, and at the same time read the crushing characterization by our teachers of the press of those who, by personal characteristics or by accident, happen to be thrust into the position of leaders, when at the most they only guide to the least harm forces which can no more be resisted permanently than can gravitation. Such would have been the role ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan

... novel to be published since The Glad Heart, Madame Albanesi strikes new ground. Although full of able and sympathetic characterization and that elusive charm which belongs to all her books, this story is unlike any that she has yet written. The author deals with a problem which is the outcome of emotions at once simple, even ordinary, and yet at the same ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... classification, giving examples of the best known species, east, west, and south, of thirty families of land-birds, with account of habits, and illustrative anecdotes. An appendix contains a simple non-technical characterization of the several families, in language a child ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... now give a summary characterization of zooetheism, then call attention to some of the relics of hecastotheism found therein, and proceed with a brief statement of the higher stages of theism. The apparent and easily accessible is studied first. In botany, the trees and the conspicuous flowering plants of garden, field, and ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell

... in a somewhat different light. Abner had got hold of the idea of limited partnership and had sought to apply it, in roundabout fashion, to the matrimonial relation. His treatment, far from suggesting an academic aloofness, was as concrete as characterization and conversation could make it; no one would have supposed, at first glance, that what chiefly moved him was a chaste abstract Platonic regard for the whole gentler sex. In short, people—such seemed to be his thesis—might very advantageously separate, and most informally too, ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... butlers up and down the land for many years. Now and again, when the part did not need any special characterization, he obtained London engagements. He was one of the known ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... the great novelists who followed him, and this is almost literally true, at least so far as the male characters are concerned. In particular, this applies to his famous "Dead Souls," which contains if not the condensed characterization in full of these types, at least the readily recognized germs of them. But in this respect, his early Little Russian Stories, "Tales from a Farm-house Near Dikanka," and the companion volume, "Mirgorod," as well ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... less expressive, is Emerson's characterization of Lincoln as one who had been "permitted to do more for America than any ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... 1851-8, 4 vols.). These are marked by clearness of statement, force of argument, and felicity of illustration. The style, although less direct and simple than that of his unofficial writings, is still excellent. A large part of the interest attaching to these early papers lies in their acute characterization of the diplomatists with whom he had to deal. His analysis of their motives reveals from the outset that thorough insight into human nature which was to count for so much in his subsequent diplomatic triumphs. Of his later notes and dispatches, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... the most noteworthy stories for girls issued this season. The life of Henrietta is made very real, and there is enough incident in the narrative to balance the delightful characterization."—Providence Journal. ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs

... des weiblichen Geschlechtes (Attempt at a Characterization of the Female Sex), Hanover, ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... implicitly in Miss Murdock's talents; he felt that the part of the ingenuous young girl in this play was ideally suited to her pleading personality, so, in conjunction with Mrs. Thomas Whiffen and Charles Cherry, he featured her in the cast. Miss Murdock's characterization amply justified Frohman's confidence, but the play failed in New York and on the road. ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... the mind of the author over a period of eight years, and resulted in a product which from the point of view of characterization and dramatic technique is almost flawless. Yet far more important is the fact that the play marked an epoch in Gogol's own literary development. When he began on it, his ambitions did not rise above making it a comedy of pure fun, but, gradually, in the course of his working ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol

... Seriously, this is a real request. I want your opinion, your impression. I want to see how she will affect you. I don't say I ask for your advice; that, of course, you will not undertake to give. But I desire a definition, a characterization; you know you toss off those things. I don't see why I should n't tell you all this—I have always told you everything. I have never pretended to know anything about women, but I have always supposed ...
— Confidence • Henry James

... His characterization of her motive was so distasteful that she made no reply, and left him to his conjectures, in which he did not appear unhappy. "How do you find Mrs. Maynard ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... noble Whedon, who polished Greek roots for the elegant Agnew, who bungled metaphysics to the despair of the learned Ten Brook, who murdered chemistry under the careful Douglas whose experiments never failed, and who calculated eclipses of the moon from the desk of Williams, the paternal." This characterization by a member of the class of '49 is paralleled in a more caustic estimate of a somewhat later Faculty by a member of the class of '65 who speaks of "Boise the precise, Frieze the effusive, Williams the plausible, and ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... approach to a sentimental characterization of precious stones is to be found in "A Lover's Complaint", lines 204-217. Although we have already noted most of them separately, it may be well to give the ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz

... is a vivid, running characterization of the foremost personalities in the socialist movement throughout the world. Such a book does real service in presenting the truly significant facts in the modern spread of socialistic propaganda and in stating in definite terms the principles ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... the title of a German story by Hermann Hesse, in which he severely criticizes the incompetency of the present school system to fully develop the youth. The characterization of the teachers' profession as Hesse puts it, does not only serve for Germany, but for all modern states in which governments strive to train the young for the purpose of making patient subjects and hurrah-screaming patriots of them. The author ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various

... which is little less than miracle, as in Tennyson, who was not a man among men—being shy as a whip-poor-will, seclusive as flowers which haunt the woodland shadows—yet those reading him must know how accurately he reads the human heart; and his characterization of Guinevere, Pelleas, Bedivere, Enid, the lover in Maud, a Becket, the Princess, Philip, Enoch Arden, and Dora, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... Washington Irving's immortal story has approached the original in art of expression or in vividness of scene. But, if historical record can be believed, it is the actor, rather than the dramatist, who has vied with Irving in the vitality of characterization and in the romantic ideality of figure and speech. Some of our best comedians found attraction in the ri?1/2le, yet, though Charles Burke and James A. Herne are recalled, by those who remember back so far, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke

... restrictions may be too great. The charge against the administration of justice in the present system is that it is nothing but a game of wits, of cunning, and of concealment, promoted by the rules of procedure. I think this characterization is most unjust and most unwise because it aids the attack on a valuable and indispensable institution without suggesting any real security for such evils and defects as there are. An experience of many years in the trial of all sorts of causes as lawyer and judge and in framing a judicial system ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft

... 'History of the Dutch Republic' is in my judgment a work of the highest merit. Unwearying research for years in the libraries of Europe, patience and judgment in arranging and digesting his materials, a fine historical tact, much skill in characterization, the perspective of narration, as it may be called, and a vigorous style unite to make it a very capital work, and place the name of Motley by the side of those of our great historical trio,—Bancroft, Irving, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the lines, thus dividing it into almost the exact number of scenes, with the same continuity of action as shown in the scenario. The minor details of action are omitted, of course, and there are little side remarks written in, in connection with characterization, etc., which would be out of place ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... (1) his power of visualization; (2) his choice of significant detail; (3) his originality or lack of it; (4) his range in characterization; (5) his power of suggestion as over against his vividness of delineation; (6) his economy—or lack of it—in expression. Where ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert

... all picturesque in style, strong in characterization, and are manifestly sketched from nature. The dry and unforced humor that distinguishes them gives them ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl

... characterization of the Revolution of 1688 is largely a result of his dislike of the governing ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... happy inspiration that led him to turn the story into verse, for it revealed a capacity which otherwise we could hardly have guessed him to possess. The vigor and rapidity of the action, the vivid sketching of the background, the pregnant characterization, the drollery of the humor give this piece a high place among stories in verse, and lead us to conjecture that, had he followed this vein instead of devoting his later years to the service of Johnson and Thomson, he might have won a place beside the author ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... and Phoebe were the only other pictures this year. A frieze, Music, was shown, and at the Grosvenor Gallery A Study of a fair-haired girl, in green velvet dress. 1886 was chiefly notable for the statue in bronze of The Sluggard, in which Leighton again furnished us with a plastic characterization of Sleep, which he designed by way of contrast to his statue of the struggling Athlete. It was suggested, Mr. Spielmann says, by accidental circumstances. The model who had been sitting to him fell a-yawning in his interval of rest, and charmed the artist, not ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys

... Betterton's adaption of Marston's The Dutch Courtezan, which the actor calls The Revenge; or, A Match in Newgate, has sometimes been erroneously ascribed to Mrs. Behn by careless writers. She has also been given The Woman Turn'd Bully, a capital comedy with some clever characterization, which was produced at Dorset Garden in June, 1675, and printed without author's name the same year. Both Prologue and Epilogue, two pretty songs, Oh, the little Delights that a Lover takes; and Ah, how charming is the shade, together with a rollicking ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... cur'ous feller," and this characterization applied equally well to his peculiar appearance and his inquiring disposition. In his confirmation nature had evidently sacrificed her love of beauty to a temporary passion for elongation. Length seemed to have been the central thought, the theme, as it were, upon which he had ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... artistic graces, also, and the structural subtilties of a more developed literary period, we must not, of course, look in 'Beowulf.' The narrative is often more dramatic than clear, and there is no thought of any minuteness of characterization. A few typical characters stand out clearly, and they were all that the poet's turbulent and not very attentive audience could understand. But the barbaric vividness and power of the poem give it much more than a merely historical interest; and the careful ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... years emancipated from St. Mary's, and far gone in taffeta. With her lustreful light hair, absent blue eyes, and her gentle voice, as small and pretty as her face and figure, it was not too difficult to justify Crailey Gray's characterization of her as one of those winsome baggages who had made an air of feminine helplessness ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington

... and carried forward since their time. And hence also the propaganda for a return to handicraft and household industry. So much of the work and speculations of this group of men as fairly comes under the characterization here given would have been impossible at a time when the visibly more perfect goods were ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... to me, you see, with that characterization. It was as if I'd managed to go out and take a walk and sat down in the park outside and heard the President talking to himself about the chances of war with Russia and realized he'd sat down on a bench with its back to mine and only a bush between. You see, here we were, two ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... operating on a large scale; he provided the British public with coffee for its breakfast, with drugs for its stomach, and with strange woods for its dining-room furniture and walking-sticks. He combated this ignominious characterization of his position indignantly. The new arrivals certainly gave him no hint that they considered him so lightly. This thought greatly comforted him, for he felt that in some way he was summoning to his aid all of his assets and resources ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... stare at the map, his body there but the soul of him tramping the wild woods, she recalled Vesta Lorimer's characterization of that other pair. Surely this man of hers was of the eagle brood. But there, in her mind, ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... lieutenants of our frigate call for no special characterization. If egotism, the most amusing of traits where it is not offensive, existed among them to any unusual degree, it was modified and concealed by the acquired exterior of social usage. Their interests also were wider. With them, talk was less of self and personal experience, and more upon subjects ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... said in former chapters for the characterization of Philip II. and his polity. But there had now been nearly ten years of another reign. The system, inaugurated by Charles and perfected by his son, had reached its last ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... expectations. When we study it merely as a literary performance, we shall notice the effect of the handicap under which Mrs. Stowe labored at the time of composition, as well as her imperfect conception of the art technique of the modern novel. There are faults of plot, style, and characterization. Modern fiction would call for more differentiation in the dialogue of the different characters and for more unity of structure, and yet there are stories with all these technical excellencies which ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... spent much of the following day—it was a legal holiday—with the Judge in his private den up on the third floor. This, as Camellia showed us once when the men were away, was a big, bare room—this was her characterization—principally fireplace, easy-chairs, books and windows. I liked it better than any other place in the house, for it was unencumbered with useless furniture of any sort, and the view from its windows was much finer than that ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond

... library. That library shows Mr. BENSON'S genius; without it I should hardly have been able to believe in the subsequent happenings, but, given this "secret garden," all the tragedy is explained. I have left myself no space in which to do justice to some admirable characterization. Keeling's wife is worthy of a place in the author's long gallery of woolly-witted matrons; while in Silverdale he has given a study of clerical futility and egotism almost savage in its detestability, a portrait at which one laughs and shudders together. Of course the book will have, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various

... written in imitation of James Whitcomb Riley's most successful manner, was dedicated to Sol Smith Russell, and he for his part put into its recitation a subdued dramatic force and pathos that won from Henry Irving the comment that it was the greatest piece of American characterization he had ever witnessed. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... reader who loves a really good novel full of desperate adventure will never be disappointed when Mr. Mitford's books are in question. This is a strong and clever piece of work, the plot is ingenious and the characterization uncommonly well done." ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux

... after Fielding, says Mr. Stevenson, "we become suddenly conscious of the background." The remark contains an admirable characterization of romanticism; as distinguished from classicism, romanticism is consciousness of the background. With Gros, Gericault, Paul Huet, Michel, Delacroix, French painting ceased to be abstract and impersonal. Instead of continuing the classic detachment, it became ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... shone before and when Henry turns on his talk he is a wizard. Meredith Nicholson, who has heard Henry talk at a dinner, in a recent number of Scribner's magazine, said of him: "He's the best talker I've ever heard. It was delightful to listen to discourse so free, so graphic in its characterization, so coloured and flavoured with the very soil," and that night at the English dinner, all of Henry's cylinders were hitting and he took every grade without changing gears. But my ears were eager for the man on Henry's right. He told ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... clearly in the memory? Why, for instance, do you think Lamb was so haunted by "Rose Aylmer"? Quote from Landor's poems to illustrate his tenderness, his sensitiveness to beauty, his power of awakening emotion, his delicacy of characterization. Do you find the same qualities in his prose? Can you explain why much of his prose seems like a translation from the Greek? Compare a passage from the Imaginary Conversations with a passage from Gibbon or Johnson, to show the difference between the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... familiar with the best masters of the art, and a masterly command of all the modern musical resources, except the 'faculty divine,'"—which, we may be permitted to say, is not included in "modern musical resources." The characterization of the oratorio, however, is thoroughly pertinent and complete. It is somewhat remarkable that a work so excellent and having so many elements of popularity should not be given ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... merely a general characterization, but a review, of Mr. Mill's powerful work, we should venture to take issue on some matters both general and special,—as an example of the latter, on the possible utility of protective duties. The reasoning by which he, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... in characterization deserved good reward, and had in it a rare stroke of fortune; for as he drew up to it, the door opened, and Sturm came out, saw Nogam, ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... of Saul, the arch persecutor, is shown in the characterization of him by Luke, when he represented him as breathing out, "threatenings and slaughter against the disciples ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell

... take a very unfavorable view of your action in this matter. You had no right to have what are at least putatively sapient beings treated in this way, and even viewing them as mere physical evidence I must agree with Mr. Brannhard's characterization of your conduct as criminally reckless. Now, speaking judicially, I order you to produce those Fuzzies immediately and return them to the ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... will be seen, that, so far as the incidents are concerned, it is commonplace enough. It is not distinguished by one novel incident, or one fresh character, except, perhaps, the muscular divine. Even in the grouping and narration of its old incidents it exhibits no dramatic power, and little skill of characterization in the portraiture of its personages. And not only does a matter-of-fact air pervade the narrative, but the tale is told with such reticence of fact as well as of feeling, that it reveals but little of the real life of a London courtesan, and leaves the reader almost as ignorant as he was when he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... Jewish writers and determined their point of view as Kalamistic, Neo-Platonic or Aristotelian. There still remains as the concluding part of the introductory chapter, and before we take up the detailed exposition of the individual philosophers, to give a brief and compendious characterization of the content of medival Jewish philosophy. We shall start with the ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... been unusually struck by a story sent in to him by an unknown writer. It was, he told me, amazing from every purely literary point of view—plot, characterization, colour, and economy of language. It had so much that it seemed strange that anything at all should be lacking. He sent for the writer, and told him just what ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... Dutch Courtezan, which the actor calls The Revenge; or, A Match in Newgate, has sometimes been erroneously ascribed to Mrs. Behn by careless writers. She has also been given The Woman Turn'd Bully, a capital comedy with some clever characterization, which was produced at Dorset Garden in June, 1675, and printed without author's name the same year. Both Prologue and Epilogue, two pretty songs, Oh, the little Delights that a Lover takes; and Ah, how charming is the shade, together with a rollicking catch 'O London, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... To this characterization of Evelyn Lucy took opposing views. Her friend, as a matter of fact, wasn't in the least lonely, but was excellent company for herself, and led a full life. She was not the marrying kind. If she liked men it was only because ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris

... other school. Rossetti's influence still persisted; and its impress is visible, more strongly perhaps than ever before, in the two water-colours "Sidonia von Bork" and "Clara von Bork," painted in 1860. These little masterpieces have a directness of execution rare with the artist. In powerful characterization, combined with a decorative motive, they rival Rossetti at his best. In June of this year Burne-Jones was married to Miss Georgiana Macdonald, two of whose sisters were the wives of Sir E. Poynter and Mr J.L. Kipling, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... Heussler's objections (Der Rationalismus des 17 Jahrhunderts, 1885, pp. 82-85) to this characterization of Kuno Fischer's are not convincing. The question is not so much about a principle demonstrable by definite citations as about an unconscious motive in Spinoza's thinking. Fischer's views on this point seem to ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also" (Matt. 5:39). He would have men even avoid criticism of one another (Matt. 7:1-5). Epigrams are seductive, and there is a fascination in the dissection of character; but there is always a danger that a clever characterization, a witty label, may conclude the matter, that a possible friendship may be lost through the very ingenuity with which the man has been labelled, who might have been a friend. It is not a small matter in Jesus' eyes, he puts ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover

... but his general thesis, that the Rowley poems exhibit graces and refinements which are in marked contrast to the tenuity of idea and tautology of expression found in genuine works of the period, is supported by an argument which seems to be based on a characterization of the romances rather than on a close acquaintance with other Middle-English poetry. We notice a similar quality in what Scott says elsewhere concerning Frere's translation into Chaucerian English of the Battle of Brunanburgh: "This appears to us an exquisite imitation ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... "Cato" the strict rules of the French stage were preserved, but its stately and impressive speeches cannot be called dramatic. The "Revenge" of Young had more of tragic passion; but it wanted the force of characterization which seemed to have been buried with ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... very hard it is to read. Reade has some pretty remarkable powers,—powers of description and of characterization; but the moment he touches the social relations, and should be dramatic, he is struck with total incapacity. Indeed, what one novelist has been perfect in dialogue, making each person say just what he should and nothing else, but ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... for a "little dried-up, frightened woman in a black bonnet, with a handkerchief in her left hand"—so Mrs. Locke had written him. Haldane had smiled at the frank characterization—that, somehow, didn't sound like ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... a fairly true characterization of Sophy Decker from one of fifty people: from a salesman in a New York or Chicago wholesale millinery house; from Otis Cowan, cashier of the First National Bank of Chippewa; from Julia Gold, her head milliner and ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... benefit of his fellow-workers. The background everywhere is the rapid growth of the labor movement; but social problems are never obtruded, except, again, in the last part, and the purely human interest is always kept well before the reader's eye through variety of situation and vividness of characterization. The great charm of the book seems to me to lie in the fact that the writer knows the poor from within; he has not studied them as an outsider may, but has lived with them and felt with them, at once a participant and a keen-eyed ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... hero, its glowing love passages, and its variety of characters, captivating or engaging humorous or saturnine, villains, rascals, and men of good will. A tale strong and interesting in plot, faithful and vivid as a picture of wild mountain life, and in its characterization full of warmth ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... her place upon the platform beside him. Here the resemblance to reality ceased, for the heroine was dark and Aristide blonde and beardless, and yet this very discrimination on Olga's part seemed to point more definitely to Hermia even than if the characterization had been truthfully followed. The actors were professionals who had been well drilled in their parts and the plot developed quickly in the dialogue between Madeleine, the erring wife, and Aristide, the recreant husband, who had fled from fashionable Paris, met upon the road ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... girl," (according to Sam's disrespectful characterization of Miss Prue) she had quite given up ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry

... Williams, A Prefatory Characterization of The History of Italy, in vol. IX. of The Historians' History of the World, 25 vols., London and ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... a happy inspiration that led him to turn the story into verse, for it revealed a capacity which otherwise we could hardly have guessed him to possess. The vigor and rapidity of the action, the vivid sketching of the background, the pregnant characterization, the drollery of the humor give this piece a high place among stories in verse, and lead us to conjecture that, had he followed this vein instead of devoting his later years to the service of Johnson and Thomson, he might have won a place beside the author of the Canterbury ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... upon. The favorite poet-heroes, Aeschylus, Michael Angelo, Tasso, Dante, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, Chatterton, Keats, Byron, are all characterized as proud. The last-named has been especially kept in the foreground by following verse-writers, as a precedent for their arrogance. Shelley's characterization of Byron ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... Bethsabe, was also, in many respects, a fine play, though its beauties were poetic rather than dramatic, consisting not in the characterization—which is feeble—but in the eastern luxuriance of the imagery. There is one ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... taken up the same matter and had displayed it in a somewhat different light. Abner had got hold of the idea of limited partnership and had sought to apply it, in roundabout fashion, to the matrimonial relation. His treatment, far from suggesting an academic aloofness, was as concrete as characterization and conversation could make it; no one would have supposed, at first glance, that what chiefly moved him was a chaste abstract Platonic regard for the whole gentler sex. In short, people—such seemed to be his thesis—might ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... field of literature, likewise, Americanism is not a final word either of blame or praise. It is a word of useful characterization. Only American books, and not books written in English in America, can adequately represent our national contribution to the world's thinking and feeling. So argued Emerson and Whitman, long ago. But the younger of these two poets came to realize in his old ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... Pete. "I heard you'd had trouble with rustlers before I came, so I wasn't takin' any chances. I didn't aim t' hit him, though, only t' scare him, an' I must have winged one of them night-owls!" He chuckled at this characterization ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... I have said, only thirteen years of age, had already attained a degree of mental development sufficient for characterization. Disease had favoured the almost unhealthy predominance of the mental over the bodily powers of the child; so that, although the constitution which at one time was supposed to have entirely given way, ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... delicate grace, and the most searching pathos. The delineation of the female characters in this novel is especially admirable. Josephine and Laure are exquisite creations, and the Baroness and Jacintha, though different, are almost as perfect, considered as examples of characterization. In the invention and management of incidents, the author exhibits a sure knowledge of the means and contrivances by which expectation is stimulated, and the interest of the story kept from flagging. We hope ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... and vindictiveness are regarded as virtues. The pictures of what we regard as immoralities in the deity as given in the Iliad and in the Old Testament were not regarded as immoral by the writers. The progress in the characterization of the deity has been not by the introduction of an ethical element, but by the purification and elevation of the already ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... well in his characterization of the various prophets. His pages glow with the vital spark of each prophet's flaming figure. He has named his book fittingly "Stories of the Prophets," and interesting stories has he told. He has brought to his task not only a sympathetic appreciation of his subject, but an imaginative faculty ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman

... thing to say about H. M. Tomlinson, the thing of which you become acutely aware on making his acquaintance, is that he is a Londoner. "Nearly a pure-blooded London Saxon" is his characterization of himself. And so it is. He could have sprung from no other stock. In person and speech, in the indefinable quality of the man, in the humour which continually tempers his tremendous seriousness, he belongs ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson

... course of time, however, Satan succeeded in sowing tares among the wheat. Two opposing parties sprang up in the synod. The one, to which the great majority belonged, found its expression and embodiment in the General Synod, and is too well known to our readers to require further characterization at this place. The other was the staunch and truly Lutheran party, to which, indeed, but a small minority adhered. The majority, in agreement with a number of influential men in the Pennsylvania Synod, proposed the idea of a General Synod, which, according to their view, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente

... to light, appears from internal evidence to have been written about 1560. The scene is laid in Italy, but the manners and allusions are English, while the persons have Greek and Roman names significant of their tempers or positions. Here, again, the characterization is diversified and sustained with no little skill, while many of the incidents and situations are highly diverting. Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of the play is Cacurgus, a specimen of the professional domestic Fool that succeeded the old Vice. ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... attitude consistently maintained by General Convention towards any proposition for the change of so much as a comma in the Prayer Book, during a period of fifty years prior to the introduction of The Book Annexed, it will perhaps be concluded that for the characterization of the Committee's policy timidity is scarcely so proper a ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... submitted under the title of "John Woodvil" to Kemble, and a year later it was rejected. "John Woodvil" is poor indeed as a play; it has some capital scenes, it has some beautiful passages, but of dramatic story or characterization there is nothing. The play is concerned with the fortunes of the Woodvils, a Devonshire family, at the time of the Restoration. Sir Walter Woodvil is a Cromwellian, living in hiding with his younger son, ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold

... because seven was a large number. In the Old Testament seven is similarly used to designate a large number. A group of seven spirits, accordingly, meant no more than a miscellaneous mass of spirits, and we may therefore regard this 'song of the seven' as a general characterization of the demons who, according to this view, appear to move together in groups rather than singly. Elsewhere[355] we are told of this same group of spirits 'that they were begotten in the mountain of sunset,' i.e., in the west, 'and were reared in the mountain of sunrise,' i.e., ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... Potter's characterization of Grace. It was no easy task for a girl of eighteen to thus assume the responsibility, but she had the courage, and Larry admired ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis

... The characterization of musical keys is very strange. In different ages an entirely different capacity of expression, often an exactly opposite color, has been attributed to each separate key. In the eighteenth century G-major was still a brilliant, ingratiating, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... aspects of this governmental system it will be necessary frequently to allude to these more recent constitutional developments, and it would but involve repetition to undertake an account of them at this point. An enumeration and a brief characterization of a few of the more important will serve for the moment to impress the importance constitutionally of the period ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... and of 829, in a common line of descent. Although for 857-856, there are numerous verbal coincidences with the Balawat excerpts, it must be noted that not all the plus of our tablets appears in that document, and we can only assume a common source, a conclusion which well agrees with our characterization of the Balawat inscription as a series of mere extracts. That this common source was also the source of the Monolith seems proved by a certain similarity of phraseology as well as by the reference to Tiglath Pileser in connection with Pitru, but this similarity ...
— Assyrian Historiography • Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead

... Rosebery's Chatham or Monypenny's Disraeli afforded an occasion, Mr. Pulitzer would spend an hour before we left the table in giving us a picture of some exciting crisis in English politics, the high lights picked out in pregnant phrases of characterization, in brilliant epitome of the facts, in spontaneous epigram, and illustrative anecdote. Whether he spoke of the Holland House circle, of the genius of Cromwell, of Napoleon's campaigns, or sought to point a moral from the ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland

... slightest error in execution shows more in the small than in the large, and a fault of conception is more evident. The novella must be clearly imagined, above all things, for there is no room in it for those felicities of characterization or comment by which the artist of faltering design saves himself in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the correspondent on home and clerical affairs. I don't know how many of them—if any—are women, but I seem to trace a female hand in some of the domestic details. But the book contains strong matter, too—both of narrative and characterization; as in the dying of Armand de la Roche-Guyon, and the picture of his lover, Madame de Vigerie. And there is something of the inspiration of the Holy Grail in that "Vision Splendid" which heartens Tristram Hungerford to make sacrifice of his passion that he may ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various

... man whose magnificent talent is wasted in the role of a young gunfighter in this bland western ... uh ... he projects a sense of immediacy and aliveness endless in its delicate ramifications of feeling. His characterization is unmarred by even the slightest hint of extraneous awareness and unaccompanied by the usual continual subliminal blur which is the mark of the receptorman's frantic deletion of the actor's sublevel, irrelevant thoughts. Either Mr. Rowe is fortunate to be blessed with ...
— The Premiere • Richard Sabia

... 26, 1781, to his father. Concerning the composition of "Die Entfuhrung," Mozart delivered himself at greater length and more explicitly than about any other opera. From the above excerpt one can learn his notions touching musical characterization and delineation. ["Turkish" music, or "Janizary" music, is that in which the percussion effects of Oriental music are imitated—music utilizing the large drum, ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel

... as a whole is most interesting, and ends with a characterization, a strikingly beautiful passage in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. Hard were it to match this appreciation among ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... to every man who feels an inclination to emancipate his slaves." "If a place could be provided for their reception," said Randolph, "and a mode of sending them hence, there were [sic] hundreds, nay thousands of citizens" who would manumit their slaves.[279] Randolph's characterization of the free black was generally approved by the leaders in this movement. Caldwell used "degraded" and "ignorant" in describing this class of people. Mills said: "It will transfer to the coast of Africa the blessings of religion and civilization; and Ethiopia will soon stretch out her ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... Parlous State of Italian Opera in London and on the Continent Dr. Leopold Damrosch and His Enterprise The German Singers Amalia Materna Marianne Brandt Marie Schroeder-Hanfstngl Anton Schott, the Military Tenor Von Blow's Characterization: "A Tenor ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... gunshot giving Foster's men the alarm. For five hours it waged, most of the time across the village street, not more than sixty feet wide, and during those five hours every recruit there felt the force of Gen. Sherman's characterization—"War is hell." ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger

... mind of the author over a period of eight years, and resulted in a product which from the point of view of characterization and dramatic technique is almost flawless. Yet far more important is the fact that the play marked an epoch in Gogol's own literary development. When he began on it, his ambitions did not rise above ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol

... German tentative period and the later or foreign period, the poems of which were mostly written in Italy and in imitation of, or adapted from, foreign metres. Platen is always represented as a master of form, and, since Jacob Grimm's characterization of him, has been accused of "marble coldness." That Platen handled difficult metres with virtuosity is not to be laid against him; it is to the advantage of German verse that such poems as his ghasels ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... contributions to the theatre than for his fiction, a number having been presented by the Irish Players at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. "John Ferguson" is as serious and important a piece of work as he has ever done. In the development of his plot Mr. Ervine not only evidences a skill in characterization, but he shows also a knowledge of technique and a marked ability ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... to obstruct the progress of knowledge and crush out the spirit of investigation. While there is not in his book a word of disrespect for things sacred, he writes with a directness of speech, and a vividness of characterization and an unflinching fidelity to the facts, which show him to be in thorough earnest with his work. The 'History of the Conflict between Religion and Science' is a fitting sequel to the 'History of the Intellectual Development of Europe,' and will add to its author's already ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... why would it be a strange looking apparatus? Why would an advanced technological age necessarily be devoid of any sense of fashion, although that would be assuming that any civilization had ever had one. Fashion is more a characterization of a culture than a basic and unchanging principle, for a desert people would wear clothes that would be most uncomfortable to a people who lived in the snow. Clothes may not make the man, but the man certainly makes the ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn

... Cincinnati, an organization which is composed of many of the leading Protestant ministers. On the occasion of the club's twenty-fifth anniversary in 1919, Dr. Dwight M. Pratt, then of the Walnut Hills Congregational Church, wrote a witty and apt characterization of each member. The following is his superb sketch ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick

... appear as quiet nooks, made for a temporary halt or a permanent rest. Here some part of the passing human flow is caught as in a vessel and held till it crystallizes into a nation. These are the conspicuous areas of race characterization. The development of the various ethnic and political offspring of the Roman Empire in the naturally defined areas of Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and France illustrates the process of national differentiation which goes ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... generally termed "a cur'ous feller," and this characterization applied equally well to his peculiar appearance and his inquiring disposition. In his confirmation nature had evidently sacrificed her love of beauty to a temporary passion for elongation. Length seemed to have been the central thought, the theme, as it ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... but hardly less expressive, is Emerson's characterization of Lincoln as one who had been "permitted to do more for America ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... (BELL) is a pleasant story with something very agreeable in its quality, which however I find hard to define. Miss MARY CROSBIE has certainly a pretty gift for characterization, and this no doubt accounts for a good deal of the charm; the rest is largely a matter of atmosphere. The characters in the story whom you will most remember are Bridget herself and her father. The last especially is a continuous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various

... American colonies. But in none of them did the organization attain to such a plenitude of power as in this Province, and in none of them did it wield the sceptre of authority with so thorough an indifference to the principles of right and wrong. Its name is a rather indefinite, but not inapt characterization. Lord Durham refers to the term "Family Compact," as being not much more appropriate than party designations usually are; "inasmuch as," he writes, "there is, in truth, very little of family connexion among the persons thus united.[47]" "Much" is a saving ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... stories for girls issued this season. The life of Henrietta is made very real, and there is enough incident in the narrative to balance the delightful characterization."—Providence Journal. ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs

... as a poetic characterization. Hebel, however, possesses the additional merit—no slight one, either—of giving faithful expression to the thoughts, emotions, and passions of the simple people among whom his childhood was passed. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... notorious book Buckle's "History of Civilization," but even a large collection of the writings of George Sand and Balzac—these latter in the original tongue; for who, indeed, would ever venture to publish an English translation? As for the reading-room, was it not characterization enough to state that two Sunday newspapers, reeking fresh from Fleet Street, regularly appeared on the tables? What possibility of perusing the Standard or the Spectator in such an atmosphere? It was clear that the supporters of law and decency must ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing

... Libussa, undoubtedly reveal the advancing years of their author, in a good and in a bad sense. They lack the theatrical self-evidence of the earlier dramas. But on the other hand, they are rich in the ripest wisdom of their creator, and in significance of characterization as well as in profundity of idea they amply atone for absence of the more superficial qualities. Kaiser Rudolf II. in Brothers' Quarrels is one of the most human of the men who in the face of inevitable calamity have ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... the showman himself must be able to create from his available material, which he will find and develop in dialogue, lyrics, tuneful music, voice, singing, dancing, characterization, costumes, settings, scenery, properties, lighting, and everything else connected in any way with the stage picture or the presentation of his offering. The publicity and exploitation of the show will tax his showmanship from another angle and is of great ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... of Granada"; then, becoming dissatisfied with this form, he cultivated the French classic tragedy on the model of Racine. This he modified by combining with the regularity of the French treatment of dramatic action a richness of characterization in which he showed himself a disciple of Shakespeare, and of this mixed type his best example is "All for Love." Here he has the daring to challenge comparison with his master, and the greatest testimony to his achievement ...
— All for Love • John Dryden

... keeping with the gay and careless character of the page, Oscar, who sings it. In fact, as regards Style, Musical accent is particularly valuable in song for the purpose of setting forth the true character of the music. Hence, it may be regarded as a means of characterization. ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam

... word meaning "wild" or "unruly," and is also applied to a runaway slave. O.T. Mason, in his translation of Blumentritt's Native Tribes of the Philippines (Washington, 1901), says (p. 536) that "this characterization is given to heathen tribes of most varied affiliation, living without attachment and in poverty, chiefly posterity of the Remontados." Buzeta and Bravo (Diccionario) say that these people are "collections or tribes of infidels known by this name in the island of Luzon ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various

... felicity of illustration. The style, although less direct and simple than that of his unofficial writings, is still excellent. A large part of the interest attaching to these early papers lies in their acute characterization of the diplomatists with whom he had to deal. His analysis of their motives reveals from the outset that thorough insight into human nature which was to count for so much in his subsequent diplomatic triumphs. Of his later notes and dispatches, such as have seen the light may ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... who was as frugal as his parents, to relieve his father of the expense of his support, and to save a few pounds. Meanwhile he read widely, and wrote of his reading at great length, and with considerable power of satiric characterization, to some of his college friends. But he found himself "abundantly lonesome, uncomfortable, and out of place" in Annan, and from the first disliked teaching; while his "sentiments on the clerical profession" were "mostly ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... conference at Copah, Vice-President Ford had spoken favorably of the trainmaster, recommending him to mercy in the event of a general beheading in the Angels head-quarters. "A lame duck, like most of the desert exiles, and the homeliest man west of the Missouri River," was Ford's characterization. "He is as stubborn as a mule, but he is honest and outspoken. If you can win him over to your side, you will have at least one lieutenant whom you can trust—and who will, I think, be duly grateful for small favors. Mac couldn't get a job east of the Crosswater ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... of composure, awaited the onrush of doctor and attendant. They soon had me in hand. Each taking an arm, they marched me to my room. This took not more than half a minute, but the time was not so short as to prevent my delivering myself of one more thumb-nail characterization of the doctor. My inability to recall that delineation, verbatim, entails no loss on literature. But one remark made as the doctor seized hold of me was apt, though not impromptu. "Well, doctor," I said, "knowing you to be a truthful man, I just ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... close connection between Julius Caesar and Hamlet as regards date of composition and the characterization of Brutus and Hamlet, interest attaches to Professor Gollancz's theory (Julius Caesar, Temple Shakespeare) that the original of the famous speech of Brutus to the assembled Romans (III, ii) may be found in Belleforest's History of Hamlet, in the oration which Hamlet makes to the Danes ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare

... Charmillo, but when she decides to fly to her lover, her husband's tardy change of heart cannot alter her feelings. Her character is individual, firm, and palpable. If the story was original with Mrs. Haywood, it shows that her powers of characterization were not slight when she wished to exert them. The influence of the novella and of the Oriental tale produced ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... invaluable." The Honorable Freddie said: "A chappie can't take a step in this bally house without stumbling over that damn feller, Baxter!" The manservant and the maidservant within the gates, like Miss Willoughby, employing that crisp gift for characterization which is the property of the English lower orders, described him as ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... melody and rhythm depends, however, upon their interrelation, the concrete musical structure, the motive or melody in the complete sense, being an indissoluble unity of both. Now if we take the term will with a broad meaning, Schopenhauer's characterization of melody as an image of the will still remains the truest aesthetic interpretation of it. For, when we hear it, we not only hear, but attend to what we hear; we hear each tone in its relations of harmony or contrast or fulfillment to other tones, freighted with memories of its predecessors ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... [1] This characterization applies to the Alaskan Eskimo only; so far as is now known the other Eskimo branches do not have ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes

... every mood, playful and pathetic, witty and wise. Who can ever forget the young fellow called John, our Benjamin Franklin, the Divinity student, the school-mistress, the landlady's daughter, and the poor relation? What characterization is there here! The delightful talk of the autocrat, his humor, always infectious, his logic, his strong common sense, illumine every page. When he began to write, Dr. Holmes had no settled plan in his head. In November, 1831, he sent an article to the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... made a pretty good diagnosis, if you are not a physician," said Dr. Beswick, laughing, partly at Phillida's characterization of Christian Science and partly at his own reply, which seemed to him a remark that skillfully combined wit with a dash of polite flattery. "But, Miss Callender,—I beg your pardon for saying it,—people call ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... each has that enthralling interest which justifies its existence. Coppee possesses preeminently the gift of presenting concrete fact rather than abstraction. A sketch, for instance, is the first tale written by him, 'Une Idylle pendant le Seige' (1875). In a novel we require strong characterization, great grasp of character, and the novelist should show us the human heart and intellect in full play and activity. In 1875 appeared also 'Olivier', followed by 'L'Exilee (1876); Recits et Elegies (1878); Vingt Contes ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... that such divergent writers as Pietro Gori and William Marion Reedy find similar traits in their characterization of Emma Goldman. In a contribution to LA QUESTIONE SOCIALE, Pietro Gori calls her a "moral power, a woman who, with the vision of a sibyl, prophesies the coming of a new kingdom for the oppressed; a woman who, with logic and deep earnestness, analyses the ills of society, and portrays, with ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... have spoken only of trifles. Meyerbeer's music, as a witty woman once remarked to me, is like stage scenery—it should not be scrutinized too closely. It would be hard to find a better characterization. Meyerbeer belonged to the theater and sought above everything else theatrical effects. But that does not mean that he was indifferent to details. He was a wealthy man and he used to indemnify the theaters for the extra expense he occasioned them. He multiplied rehearsals ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... faculty for characterization serves our historian on great occasions as well as small ones. Of an intriguing nobleman like the Duke of Norfolk, he is as prompt to speak as of the harp itself: "He was one of those politicians who are never contented; who plot and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... the main, is the story of James Schuyler Grim, (Jimgrim) a remarkable characterization, beginning as an American "Lawrence in Arabia" and evolving into a human but unapproachable high priest of the occult. There is Jeff Ramsden, the strong man and his closest friend, who with the Australian, Jeremy Ross, make up the triumvirate of Grim, Ross, and Ramsden, with ...
— Materials Toward A Bibliography Of The Works Of Talbot Mundy • Bradford M. Day, Editor

... understood affairs; and one of her great charms to men of mind was the clear, logical, and yet picturesque and piquant way in which she talked of men and events. Ellen listened and laughed as heartily as any member of the circle at her repartee, her brilliant characterization, her off-hand description. ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... Mr. Phillips depends for the success of his narrative rather upon theme and plot than upon style and characterization; not that these two elements are slighted, or that they are not skillfully and masterfully handled, but that one feels that they are purposely subordinated to the subject-matter and to interest in the development of ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... find a juster or more accurate characterization of the French as pioneers. Although in the early days of settlement along the Mississippi and its tributaries they outnumbered the people of other nations, they made no deep impression. They got along admirably while they were sustained by the tonic-stimulus of excitement and variety; but when ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton

... stuff," he began at once (we had just been introduced), "is that it lacks plot. Been meaning to meet and tell you that for a long time. Your characterization's all right, and your dialogue. In fact, I think they're good. But your stuff lacks raison d'etre—if you know what ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... methods of interpreting the Scriptures. As a knowledge of these two methods is indispensable to an understanding of Rashi's exegesis, I will give some pages from the work of a recent French exegete, L. Wogue, who presents an excellent characterization of them in his Histoire de la ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... Mahler, while Hollman and Moritz Rosenthal contributed to the pattern of his moustache. Moreover, he assumed a Paderewski tuft, a rolling collar that exposed the points of his right and left clavicles, a Windsor tie, and, to preserve the unity of his characterization, a slight nondescript foreign accent, despite the circumstance that he was born in Newark, N. J. All this, however, was not an idle pose on Felix's part. He merely applied to a dry-goods store the business principles of the successful virtuoso, and he had found them so efficacious that ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass

... neck of a heifer, and flesh like cream or hasty-pudding, that quivers when it is touched;" or of the picture of St. Ursula's companions, by the same hand: "Their squab noses poking out of bladders of lard that did duty for their faces;" not to speak of the characterization of a "Sacred Heart" too revolting to reproduce? Surely when, after having reviled M. Tissot almost personally, he describes his works as painted with "muck, wine-sauce, and mud," it is difficult not to answer with a tu quoque as far as this word-painting is concerned—difficult ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... gift was characterization, and no English writer, save Shakespeare, has drawn so many and so varied characters. It would be as absurd to interpret all of these as caricatures as to deny Dickens his great and varied powers of creation. Dickens ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens

... He was by no means averse to having a companion, and Mrs. Wooler's graphic characterization had awakened his curiosity. "Tell him I shall be glad to ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher

... unfriendly, and reminded him how the President had retained him as Chief of Staff when he assumed office in 1913. The General, very much to my surprise, intimated that back of Pershing's attitude toward him was political consideration. I tried to reassure him and, indeed, I resented this characterization of General Pershing as an unjust and unwarranted imputation upon the Commander of ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... upon character. The plot is negligible— hardly exists. The setting is carefully worked out because it is essential to the characterization. By means of the shoemaker the author reveals at least a part of his philosophy of life—that there is a subtle relation between a man and his work. Each reacts on the other. If a man recognizes the Soul of Things and strives to give it proper expression, he becomes ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... the rule and will of God could set down as worldly. Frivolity, of which there was little in this sober boy, was in her eyes a vice; loud laughter almost a crime; cards, and novelles, as she called them, were such in her estimation, as to be beyond my powers of characterization. Her commonest injunction was, 'Noo be douce,'—that is sober—uttered to the soberest boy she could ever have known. But Robert was a large-hearted boy, else this life would never have had to be ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... the Pioneer Press in its characterization of the deceased journalist when it says: "From attacking the private lives of the prominent and successful men of every quarter of the union and levying blackmail as the price of silence from those whose slips or frailties his keen hyena-like appetite for filth ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... men high praise. But for the assiduous idolaters of stratified dogma he entertained a contempt which he was seldom at pains to conceal. North Carolina had many clergymen of the more progressive type; these men chuckled at Page's vigorous characterization of the brethren, but those against whom it had been aimed raged with a fervour that was almost unchristian. This clerical excitement, however, did not greatly disturb the philosophic Page. The hubbub lasted ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... to a sentimental characterization of precious stones is to be found in "A Lover's Complaint", lines 204-217. Although we have already noted most of them separately, it may be well to give the entire ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz

... he had to sing his solo in the lightest of light tenors, would still, on lapsing into dialogue, reinstate himself apologetically by using as rough and gruff a voice as he could summon. Not so Lemoyne: he was doing a consistent piece of "characterization," and he was feminine, even ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... of the tenants, all the gossip of the house and the street; and this habit of narration, of talking with her mistress like a sort of companion, of describing people and drawing silhouettes of them, had eventually developed in her a facility of animated description, of happy, unconscious characterization, a piquancy and sometimes an acrimony in her remarks that were most remarkable in the mouth of a servant. She had progressed so far that she often surprised Mademoiselle de Varandeuil by her quickness of comprehension, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... advance. Those who could appreciate brains respected him, and those whose ideas of a man related to his muscles were devoted to him. It was while he was performing the work of the store that he acquired the nickname, 'Honest Abe'—a characterization that he never dishonored, an abbreviation that he never outgrew. He was everybody's friend, the best-natured, the most sensible, the best-informed, the most modest and unassuming, the kindest, gentlest, ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... live in affectionate memory. After all, no poor ideal of womanhood is pictured in Clarissa. She is one of the heroines who are unforgettable, dear. Mr. Howells, with his stern insistence on truth in characterization, declares that she is "as freshly modern as any girl of yesterday or to-morrow. 'Clarissa Harlowe,' in spite of her eighteenth century costume and keeping, remains a masterpiece in the portraiture of that ever-womanly which is of all times ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... the good news coming as a complete surprise, but he made it part of a carefully ordered plot designed to reveal the direct intervention and mysterious workings of a particular Providence, making characterization and action consistent, and giving his play a precise theological significance. In Moore's day, however, under the impact of deism and the developing rationalism, the concept of a particular Providence in orthodox theology had ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore

... scientific characterization of inclination is possible, whether the limits of this concept can be determined, and whether it is the result of nature, culture, or both together, are questions which can receive no certain answer. We shall not ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... actually his pupil, and who was one of the few Dutch artists to paint life-sized groups, as he is known to have done in his earlier days when still under the influence of Rembrandt. The Card Players, close beside it, has marked affinities in style, and especially in the very natural characterization of the faces, which is also apparent in that of the child in the other picture, and another on the extreme left of the picture. That it cannot be Rembrandt's is quite evident; the grouping and the lighting of it proclaim the picture ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... Shakespeare in the June number of this Magazine, we spoke of his general comprehensiveness and creativeness, of his method of characterization, and of the identity of his genius with his individuality. In the present article we purpose to treat of some particular topics included in the general theme; and as criticism on him is like coasting along a continent, we shall make little pretension ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... science. Scarlatti and Bach would laugh at the efforts styled 'canon' and 'fugue,' by the aspiring tyros of the present age. Our difficulties arise, not from musical complexity, but from want of suitableness, adaptation, and characterization, together with the ever-increasing feud between choir and congregational singing. In some churches on the Continent of Europe, these two latter modes are happily blended, certain services or portions of services being left ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... never quite the same. Courage as the first necessary value of life is most naively and simply expressed, perhaps, in the Poem of the Cid; but even here the expression is, as in all art, unique, and chiefly because it is contrived through solidly imagined characters. There is splendid characterization, too, in the Song of Roland, together with a fine sense of poetic form; not fine enough, however, to avoid a prodigious deal of conventional gag. The battling is lavish, but always exciting; and in, at least, that section which ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie

... made it clear that war is sin and war is crime? Has not the Church been too easy? Has its voice sounded clear and strong on this world-evil? Surely a duty rests upon the ministry to be insistent in its characterization of war. What peace-advocates must do is to urge this upon the Church and bring it to a realization of its duty. Church members know the character of war and simply need to have the matter brought home ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... two pieces, and neither seemed to him of the old-time quality, but neither was such as he would himself have perhaps rejected if he had been editor. Then he plunged at the heap, and in a fifteen-cent magazine of recent renown he found among five poems a good straight piece of realistic characterization which did much to cheer him. In this, a little piece of two stanzas, the author had got at the heart of a good deal of America. In another cheap magazine, professing to be devoted wholly to stories, he hoped for a breathing-space, ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... WORDSWORTH'S characterization of the woman in one of his poems as "a creature not too bright or good for human nature's daily food" has always appeared to me too cannibalesque to be poetical. It directly sets one to thinking of the ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... century I have been working in schools or with teachers, and my personal observations all agree with the above characterization. I have spent five years in Cornell University, New York; one year in Zurich University in Switzerland; two years in the State University of Indiana and seven years in Stanford University in California. These institutions are widely distributed; they were all fully co-educational; ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes

... of something that would have been impossible in any child, a deepened sweetness, that completest touch of the perfect woman, "like perfume from unseen flowers, diffusing itself when the wind awakens, while we know neither whence the windy fragrance comes nor whither it flows." Perhaps this characterization is most noticeable in "Counterparts," which she called her small party of opposing temperaments: Salome, so gracious; Rose, like the spirit of a sunbeam; Sarona, so keen and incisive, his passion confronting Bernard's sweetness; and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... material of memory, till no one has patience to spin from it a continuous thread of thought." We have the defects of our qualities. Nevertheless, I am struck with the likeness between a common attribute of the Greeks and Matthew Arnold's characterization of the Americans. Greek thought, it is said, goes straight to the mark, and penetrates like an arrow. The Americans, Arnold wrote, "think straight and see clear." Greek life was adapted to meditation. American quickness and habit of taking the short cut to the goal make ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... "Tribune" also finds this subtle characterization: "The city to which Mr. Howells leads his readers is not the revelling, brilliant Florence of Ouida. It is rather the Florence of Hawthorne,—quaint and dreamful. The story reminds one of a plant which grows in Old-World ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... during the reign of Pedro the Cruel—the ally in war of the Black Prince. The well-told story records the adventures of two young English knight-errants, twin brothers, whose family motto gives the title to the book. The Spanish maid, the heroine of the romance, is a delightful characterization, and the love story, with its surprising ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... Similarly, his characterization of the Revolution of 1688 is largely a result of his dislike of the governing classes at the ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... immensity of the conception—the power of characterization!" he cried. "Just see how ...
— A Philanthropist • Josephine Daskam

... hitherto, by the very people who revere his name, though the excellent books of Messrs. Ford, Wilson, Lodge, Fiske, and others are doing much to destroy the popular canonization which made of the man a saint; in defence of my characterization of him I am able to say that the incidents and anecdotes and most of the conversations in which he ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... Incas, were called the children of the sun. They had a sacred feeling for the heavenly bodies, and worshipped the sun as the creator and ruler of the universe. They had made some progress in astronomy, by a characterization of the sun and moon and chief planets, mostly for a religious purpose. However, they had used a calendar to represent the months, the year, and the changing seasons. Here, as elsewhere in primitive civilization, religion becomes an important factor in ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... left the theater. I had chosen the play because I had fancied it would particularly appeal to him. The name part—a characterization of a race-horse tout—had been acceptably done by a competent young actor. The author had hewn as close to realism as his too clever lines would permit. There had been a wealth of Blister's own vernacular used on the stage during the evening, ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote

... no better illustration of true dialect sketch and characterization might here be offered than Colonel Johnston's simple story of "Mr. Absalom Billingslea," or the short and simple annals of his like quaint contemporaries, "Mr. Bill Williams" and "Mr. Jonas Lively." The scene is the country and the very little country town, with landscape, atmosphere, simplicity, ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley

... consideration of all perfect Philosophers. Anthropographie, is the description of the Number, Measure, Waight, figure, Situation, and colour of euery diuerse thing, conteyned in the perfect body of MAN: with certain knowledge of the Symmetrie, figure, waight, Characterization, and due locall motion, of any parcell of the sayd body, assigned: and of Numbers, to the sayd parcell appertainyng. This, is the one part of the Definition, mete for this place: Sufficient to notifie, the particularitie, and excellency ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee

... becoming excessive, and they referred to the evidence brought forward by veterinary surgeons showing that unsatisfied sexual desire in animals may produce nervous symptoms very similar to hysteria.[263] The present writer, when in 1894 briefly discussing hysteria as an element in secondary sexual characterization, ventured to reflect the view, confirmed by his own observation, that there was a tendency to unduly minimize the sexual factor in hysteria, and further pointed out that the old error of a special connection between hysteria and the female sexual organs, probably arose ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... as a bitter legacy behind him. Carlyle's merciless discourse about Coleridge and Charles Lamb, and Swinburne's carnivorous lines, which take a barbarous vengeance on him for his offence, are on the level of political rhetoric rather than of scholarly criticism or characterization. Emerson never forgot that he was dealing with human beings. He could not have long endured the asperities of Carlyle, and that "loud shout of laughter," which Mr. Ireland speaks of as one of his customary explosions, would have been discordant to Emerson's ears, which ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... liver-coloured marble top. Along the wall, near the windows, was a couch; a heavy, wheezing, fat-armed couch decked out in white ruffled cushions. I suppose the mere statement that, in Chicago, Illinois, Martha Foote kept these cushions always crisply white, would make any further characterization superfluous. The couch made you think of a plump grandmother of bygone days, a beruffled white fichu across her ample, comfortable bosom. Then there was the writing desk; a substantial structure that bore no relation to the ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... tragedy, Gorboduc, closely imitative of Seneca, but on {30} a mythical British subject and written in English blank verse, did not appear until 1562, nearly a quarter of a century later. Seneca's tragedies had little action, slight characterization, and many extremely long speeches, which often display, however, much brilliant rhetoric. Gorboduc has all these qualities except the brilliance. The history, the third of the types into which the editors of the First Folio were to divide Shakespeare's plays, was also affected ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... themes attached to the characters have the same musical appropriateness as the rest of the music: for example, neither the Valhalla nor the spear themes could, without the most ludicrous incongruity, be used for the forest bird or the unstable, delusive Loki; but for all that the musical characterization must be regarded as independent of the specific themes, since the entire elimination of the thematic system from the score would leave the characters as well distinguished musically as ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw

... Aeschylus, Michael Angelo, Tasso, Dante, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, Chatterton, Keats, Byron, are all characterized as proud. The last-named has been especially kept in the foreground by following verse-writers, as a precedent for their arrogance. Shelley's characterization of Byron ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... before the fight between Taft and Roosevelt, had unconsciously drawn a parallel closer perhaps than the facts warranted; and the reader who had been attracted by this similarity read on into Wilson's characterization of Jefferson an introduction to the achievements of his Administration with a growing hope—if he happened to be a Wilson man—that after as before election Wilson's record would ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan

... compared to a colossal frieze, while that of Sophocles resembles the pediment of a smaller temple. Or if, as in considering the Orestean trilogy, the arrangement of the pediment affords the more fitting parallel even for Aeschylus, yet the forms are so gigantic that minute touches of characterization and of contrast are omitted as superfluous. Whereas in Sophocles, it is at once the finish of the chief figure and the studied harmony of the whole, which have led his work to be compared with that of his contemporary Phidias. Such comparison, however, is useful by way of illustration ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles









Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com




Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |