"Characterization" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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 and good nature, ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... 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
... characterization must have held in ancient times. And, after all, as Graetz himself admits, the poet of Canticles locates his shepherd in Gilead, the wild jasmine and other flowers of whose pastures (the "lilies" of the ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... 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
... 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 ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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
... 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 ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... 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
... 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. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... 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
... republican 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 ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... 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
... This entry includes a brief characterization of the system with details on the domestic and international components. The following terms and abbreviations ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... 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
... 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 skilful selection and arrangement of his materials, and by the most direct and appealing presentation of it in portrayal and characterization. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 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
... "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 ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... 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 of disposing ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... 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
... and humorous characterization. Nothing more individual, and in its own way more powerful, has been done in American fiction.... The story is a work ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... 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 |
