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Characterize   Listen
verb
Characterize  v. t.  (past & past part. characterized; pres. part. characterizing)  
1.
To make distinct and recognizable by peculiar marks or traits; to make with distinctive features. "European, Asiatic, Chinese, African, and Grecian faces are Characterized."
2.
To engrave or imprint. (Obs.)
3.
To indicate the character of; to describe. "Under the name of Tamerlane he intended to characterize King William."
4.
To be a characteristic of; to make, or express the character of. "The softness and effeminacy which characterize the men of rank in most countries."
5.
(Chem.) To identify the structure or nature of; as, the antibiotic activity in the sample was characterized by HPLC, and proved to be erythromycin.
Synonyms: To describe; distinguish; mark; designate; style; particularize; entitle.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Characterize" Quotes from Famous Books



... elementary agitations to subsist, show alterations in the immediate assent, in the will, and the primitive belief and must be considered as psychoses. Below could be placed the disorders of elementary intelligence, the disorder of the perceptive and social functions which characterize the mental deficiencies of imbeciles and idiots. One might also distinguish these disorders according to the degree of depth the destruction of the edifice has reached, according to the more or less distant state of evolution to which the ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... in the symbolism, observe, are only because the artists are thinking of separate powers: they do not necessarily involve any national distinction in feeling. But the differences I have next to indicate are essential, and characterize the two opposed national ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... the gravity which should characterize a paper addressed to the Congress of the nation by the Chief Magistrate of the nation. Nor do I forget that some of you are my seniors, nor that many of you have more experience than I in the conduct of public affairs. Yet I trust that in view of the great ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln

... Oriental nature has been mirrored in the literature and art of the East. Its products lack the measure, the grace and symmetry, and the human interest, which characterize the creations of the European mind. In the mechanical arts, invention and discovery push on progress to a certain point, then languish ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... often learning things which they did not care to tell us in public. Then came another open meeting at which the actual organization of the province was effected and the officials were appointed and sworn in. After this there was a long formal dinner, with the endless courses which characterize such functions in the Philippines, and then came a ball which lasted till the wee small hours. When at last we got on board, tired out, our steamer sailed, and often brought us to some ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... characterize as bold, out-spoken, and humorous, in the true sense of humour. In the midst of every difficulty and danger arises that old Norse feeling of making the best of everything, and keeping a good face to the foe. The language and tone are ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... have just come from a consultation with those whom the journals characterize as 'princes of science.' For a quarter of an hour I have had to listen to the most contradictory opinions. On one point, however, all agreed: that my patient was a dead man. Finally they compromised and decided that the poor wretch's torture should be needlessly ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... less, and knew better how to manage his passion, than my mother. She likewise proving with child, they agreed to keep a shop: my step-mother, if, being an illegitimate offspring, I may venture thus to characterize her, having obtained a sum of a rich relation, for ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... is so potent as the silent lesson of a good [20] example. Works, more than words, should characterize Christian Scientists. Most people condemn evil-doing, evil-speaking; yet nothing circulates so rapidly: even gold is less current. Christian Scientists have a strong race to run, and foes in ambush; but bear in mind that, in the [25] long ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... up through his single eyeglass at the bellying canvas, a gentle smile upon his strongly marked face betrays considerable satisfaction. Lord Mavourneen is a very successful man, and his smile and his yacht have been elements of no small importance in his success. They characterize him historically, like the tear which always trembles under the left eyelid of Prince Bismarck, like the gray overcoat of Bonaparte, the black tights and gloomy looks of Hamlet the Dane, or Richelieu's kitten. Lord Mavourneen is a man of action, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... esthetics;—such the ideas of God, the soul, and immortality, which rule in the domains of religion, and determine man a religious being. These constitute the identity of human nature under all circumstances; these characterize humanity in all conditions. Like permanent germs in vegetable life, always producing the same species of plants; or like fundamental types in the animal kingdom, securing the same homologous structures in all classes and orders; so these ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... special history of even the leading Netherland provinces, during the five centuries which we have thus rapidly sought to characterize, is foreign to our purpose. By holding the clue of Holland's history, the general maze of dynastic transformations throughout the country may, however, be swiftly threaded. From the time of the first Dirk to the close of the thirteenth century there were nearly four hundred years ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... unusual degree—an imagination that goes straight to the heart of whatever he writes about, combined with a verbal magic that re-creates what he has seen. Things are felicitously seen by Mr. Burroughs, and then felicitously said. A dainty bit in Sidney's "Apologie for Poetrie" seems to me aptly to characterize our author's prose: "The uttering sweetly and properly the conceits of the minde, which ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... of nature and art. Groves and streams, rustic bridges and flowing fountains, shrubby labyrinths and flowery dells, were grouped in happiest harmony. Received by the General with the genial hospitality which should characterize the presiding spirit of such an Eden, dispensing itself in so many pleasant ways, we were led from house to garden, and from vineyard to wine press, where all were temptingly lured to taste the ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... analyze anatomize anglicize apologize apostrophize apprize (to value) authorize baptize brutalize canonize catechize catholicize cauterize centralize characterize christianize civilize colonize criticize crystallize demoralize dogmatize economize emphasize epitomize equalize eulogize evangelize extemporize familiarize fertilize fossilize fraternize galvanize generalize gormandize harmonize ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton

... should be treated as such. They are easily elated, easily discouraged. They delight in playing tricks on each other and on the sailors, are usually good-natured, and when they are sulky there is no profit in being vexed with them. The methods which children characterize as "jollying" are best for such emergencies. Their mercurial temperament is Nature's provision for carrying them through the long dark night, for if they were morose like the North American Indians, the whole tribe would long ago have lain down and died of discouragement, ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... other General," says Tempelhof, "would such a notion of besieging Dresden have occurred; or if it had suggested itself, the hideous difficulties would at once have banished it again, or left it only as a pious wish. But it is strokes of this kind that characterize the great man. Often enough they have succeeded, been decisive of great campaigns and wars, and become splendid in the eyes of all mankind; sometimes, as in this case, they have only deserved to succeed, and to be splendid in the eyes of judges. How get these masses of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... characterize in proper terms the infamy of these proceedings. The Free State party would take no part in the proposed election on December 21, and it resulted, for the constitution with slavery, 6,226 votes, of which 2,720 ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... no possible system of manners that will serve to exhibit at once the uncivility and the high refinement which should characterize the man of fashion. He must therefore have no manners at all. He must behave with tame and passive insolence, never breaking into active effrontery excepting towards unprotected women and clergymen. Persons of no importance he does not see, and is not conscious of their ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman

... to perceive that they all had good feeling or good taste enough to preserve, throughout their drive and the services which followed it, a quiet and reverent demeanor. It may seem strange to some, that I should characterize this as a possible effect of "good taste;" but in my opinion, he who does not pay the tribute at least of outward respect to this holy day, is incapable not only of that high, spiritual communion which brings man near to his Creator, but of that tender sympathy which binds him to his fellow-creatures, ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh

... tribe saw power concentrated in the will and word of the chief and those nearest him, while submission to his command was the condition of survival. And no doubt, with the loss of that individual liberty and that self-reliance which characterize the lower animals, there also died away a certain joyousness and zest of spontaneous self-fulfilment, such as we observe in wild creatures so long as they are free from hunger and thirst and secure from the pursuit ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit

... significant fungus, the Chinaman. Many great doors are shut and clamped and grown gray with cobweb; many street windows are nailed up; half the balconies are begrimed and rust-eaten, and many of the humid arches and alleys which characterize the older Franco-Spanish piles of stuccoed brick betray ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable

... for their presumption induced your advance upon Texas, with your boasted veteran army, mustering a force nearly equal to the whole population of this country at that time. You besieged and took the Alamo: but under what circumstances? Not those, surely, which should characterize a general of the nineteenth century. You assailed one hundred and fifty men, destitute of every supply requisite for the defence of that place. Its brave defenders, worn by vigilance and duty beyond the power ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... a good deal of amusement, and some profit, in the perusal of those little items which characterize the manners and circumstances of the country. New England was then in a state incomparably more picturesque than at present, or than it has been within the memory of man; there being, as yet, only ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... fuller etymology and syntax. In United States history we are beginning to adopt a similar plan of repetitions, and the frequent reviews in arithmetic are designed to make good the lack of thoroughness and mastery which should characterize each successive grade of work. The course of religious instruction given in European schools is based upon the same reiteration year by year of essential religious ideas. The whole plan, as illustrated by different studies, is based upon ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... Professor Masson. A book unpublished when he wrote, Ball's life of Dr. John Preston, Master of Emmanuel, vestige of an entire continent of submerged Puritanism, also contributes much to the appreciation of the place and time. We can here but briefly characterize the University as an institution undergoing modification, rather by the decay of the old than by the intrusion of the new. The revolution by which mathematics became the principal instrument of culture was still to be deferred forty years. Milton, who tells us that ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... into two hostile camps. There are no lukewarm friends on his side; and from those who have never acquired a taste for the strong wine of his muse, it is sometimes difficult to extort recognition of the vigor, the insight, the tenderness, and the variety of intellectual sympathy which characterize the man, even, if we make abstraction of the poet. An industrious and enthusiastic society devoted itself during his lifetime to the promotion of a taste for his writings, but even that singular tribute to the strength of his personality does ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... that time, is, so far as we can find, the first Latin author who speaks of falconers, and the art of teaching one species of birds to fly after and catch others. The occupation of these functionaries has now, however, all but ceased. New and nobler efforts characterize the aims of mankind in the development of their civilization, and the sports of the field have, to a large extent, been superseded by other exercises, it may be less healthful and invigorating, but certainly more elegant, intellectual, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... words are necessary in order to characterize Cicero's estimate of the Peripatetic and Epicurean schools. The former was not very powerfully represented during his lifetime. The philosophical descendants of the author of the Organon were notorious for their ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... this kind I must characterize as being in strife with the Union between the Kingdoms as confirmed by ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund

... the French nation; a trait in some individuals elevated to a sublime self-devotion, and in others degraded to mere excitability. The vivacity, gesticulation, and grimace, which characterize most of them, are the external signs of this nature; the calm heroism of the seventeenth century, and the insane devotion of the nineteenth, were alike its fruits. The voyageur possessed it, in ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... had cast them. Then, moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair. But, as respects the majority of my corps of veterans, there will be no wrong done, if I characterize them generally as a set of wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing worth preservation from their varied experience of life. They seemed to have flung away all the golden grain of practical wisdom, which they had enjoyed so many ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... solution of regality and aristocracy in Europe, and in Italy as elsewhere. It does not mean the old-fashioned revolution; it means simply the effacement of all social differences by equal industrial obligations. So far as the Socialists can characterize it, therefore, the actual municipal government of Rome is as antimonarchical as it is antipapal. But the syndic of Rome is a man of education, of culture, of intelligence, and he is evidently a man of consummate tact. He has known how to reconcile the warring elements, which made peace ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... analysis of a concept that most abstractly describes reality, follows it through its countless conflicts and contradictions, and finally reaches the highest category which, including all the foregoing categories in organic unity, is alone adequate to characterize the universe as an organism. What these categories are and what Hegel's procedure is in showing their necessary sequential development, can here not ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... sin to bear false testimony against one individual, how can we characterize the crime of those who calumniate three hundred millions of human beings, by attributing to them doctrines and practices which they repudiate and abhor. I do not wonder that the Church is hated by ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... comprehensiveness of our thought, whether we are asleep or awake, no doubt depends largely upon our idiosyncrasies, constitution, habits, and mental capacity. But whatever may be the nature of our dreams, the mental processes that characterize them are analogous to those which go on when the mind is not held to attention ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... trance or ecstasy; or when it is in a state of repose, without tendency to change. Secondly, the organism is self-complete when it is at the highest possible point of tone, of functional efficiency, of enhanced life. Then a combination of favorable stimulation and repose would characterize ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... in the kind of vibration. There are three things which characterize sounds; namely, pitch, intensity and character. Pitch depends on the rapidity of the vibrations; intensity on the extent or the amplitude of the vibrations; and character on the substance or instrument producing them. To ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay

... frequently sets forth the doctrine, that, from all eternity, God decreed whatever should come to pass, not excepting, but expressly including, the deliberations and "volitions of men," and by his own power now executes his decree. As we do not wish to use opprobrious names, we shall characterize these three several schemes of doctrine by the appellations given to them by their advocates. The first we shall call, "materialistic fatalism;" the second, "Stoical fatalism;" and the third we shall designate ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... that characterize the plays of Plautus include both his consciously employed means of producing his comic effects, and the peculiarities and abnormalities that evidence his attitude of mind in writing them. We should make bold to ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke

... appears to have been a Bohemian of the lowest order." Between such authorship and the anonymous there does not seem to be much to choose. But the dying confession sounds in my ears as decidedly apocryphal. As for the letter, I had rather characterize it than reproduce it. It is an offence to decency and a disgrace to the national record on which it is found. This letter of "George W. M'Crackin" passed into the hands of Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State. Most gentlemen, I think, would have destroyed it on the spot, as it ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... "him," as she chose to characterize it, in the hollow of her hand, the head between her thumb and forefinger, with the forefinger of her free hand petting it the while she laughed and kissed it. It was not so much bird-love as the ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... few exceptions, they are from the lower classes of a single province of Kwan-tung—Cantonese coolies. The Chinese might as fairly form their opinion of Americans from our day-labourers. But there are able men in the Celestial Empire. Bishop Andrews returned from China to characterize the Chinese as "a people of brains.'' When Viceroy Li Hung Chang visited this country, all who met him unhesitatingly pronounced him a great man. The New York Tribune characterizes the late Liu Kun Yi, Viceroy ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... and brilliancy characterize nearly all the California flowers, and nearly all are so strange, so different from the other members of their families, that they would be an ornament to any greenhouse. The alfileria, for instance, is the richest and strongest fodder in the world. It is the main-stay ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner

... unannounced, into the room where we then were, rising like a phantom beside her husband and herself, in the hour between daylight and dark, and pouring forth those profound, unexpected, and delightful things which seem to belong to him alone, which characterize his correspondence also, and ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... countrymen has cemented, but to be true to yourselves and the principles of honor, of rectitude, of temperance, of virtue, which have always characterized the great and successful soldier, and must always characterize such ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... changes and development in the business of this vast country and drew again the dividing line between interstate and intrastate commerce where the Constitution intended it to be. It refused to permit local incidents of a great interstate movement, which taken alone were intrastate, to characterize the movement as such."[436] Of special significance, however, is the part of the opinion which was devoted to showing the relation between future sales and cash sales, and hence the effect of the former upon the interstate grain trade. The test, said ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... she rather resembled my original image of the wan and spiritless Priscilla than the flowery May-queen of a few moments ago. These sudden transformations, only to be accounted for by an extreme nervous susceptibility, always continued to characterize the girl, though with diminished frequency as her health ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... a vivid consciousness of personal dignity and worth, could not fail to characterize the samurai, born and bred to value the duties and privileges of their profession. Though the word ordinarily given now-a-days as the translation of Honor was not used freely, yet the idea was conveyed by such terms as na (name) men-moku (countenance), ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... under the stress of overwhelming affection; in other words, there is little possibility that such women will be interested in the strictly mechanical, non-affectionate, and unsentimental sexual relations which must inevitably characterize the ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow

... women's scandals are no more of a luxury to a detective than their legs were to the bus-driver of tradition or to any one in knee-skirted 1916. Mr. Hodshon was a good man as good men go, though he was capable of the little dishonesties and compromises with truth that characterize every profession. A man simply cannot succeed as a teacher, lawyer, doctor, merchant, thief, author, scientist, or anything else if he blurts out everything he knows or believes. No preacher could occupy a pulpit for two Sundays who told just what he actually thought or knew or could find ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... known,—to be recognized as such, it must needs be accompanied by the same relative character by which is tested every other pleasure coming under that denomination; namely, by the entire absence of self, that is, by the same freedom from all personal consideration which has been shown to characterize the true effect of the Three leading Ideas already considered. But if to this also it be further objected, that in certain particular cases, as of personal danger,—from which the sublime emotion has often been experienced,—some ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... of the head are modifications of these. These nine attitudes characterize states, that is, sentiments, but sentiments which are fugitive. Either of these attitudes may be affected until it becomes habitual. But there are movements which cannot be habitually affected, which can only modify types ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... Mr. Rollo's being alarmed at this, as another man might, it was answered by a certain humourous play of face; a slight significance of lip and air, quite difficult to characterize. It was not arrogant, nor arbitrary; I do not know how to call it masterful; and yet certainly it expressed no dismay and no apprehension. Perhaps it expressed that he intended to be in a different category from other men. Perhaps he thought Mrs. Bywank ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... establishment of breweries, of dye-works, of slate-quarries, of brick-yards, we may see the same truth. So that, both in general and in detail, these industrial specializations of the social organism which characterize separate districts, primarily depend on local circumstances. Of the originally-similar units making up the social mass, different groups assume the different functions which their respective positions entail; ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... Poland are sometimes colloquially called "comedians," as distinguished from their more pretentious brethren of the metropolitan stage in Warsaw. The word, however, does not characterize a player of comedy parts. Indeed, the provincials, usually performing in open air theatres, play every conceivable role, and as in the case of Janina, the heroine of this story, the life of the Comedienne often embraces ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... simplicity; the language is neither overloaded with ornament, nor made to abound with well-rounded terms, at the sacrifice of perspicuity and truth; but there is throughout the work an air of impartiality and patient investigation which should uniformly characterize historical narrative. We make a few selections from various parts of the volume towards what may be termed a personal portrait of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various

... words in flagrant violation of all the rules of quantity, and when he came to give the English meaning, his translation was a ludicrous farrago of nonsense. Yet, poor Mr. Crabb did not dare, apparently, to characterize it as ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger

... sad want of social diversion and cheer, and of variety in her course of thought and occupation; she suffered from the want; but Esther did not sink into idleness and stagnation. She worked like a beaver; that is, so far as diligence and purpose characterize those singular animals' working. She studied resolutely and eagerly the things she had studied with Pitt, and which he had charged her to go on with. His influence was a spur to her constantly; for he had wished it, and he would be coming home by and by for the long vacation, and then he would ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... compared with that of fifty years ago is also partly responsible; but the brunt of the charge must be borne by our habitual attitude of nervous hurry, our impatience with slow processes of any kind, and the demand for constant change of sensation that is coming to characterize Americans of all ages and classes. It is doubtless unfortunate that conditions are as they are; but since the attitude of our audiences has admittedly undergone a decided change, it behooves the program maker to face conditions as they actually exist, rather than to pretend that ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens

... to characterize his teaching, I should say that while it conveyed the best results of his sagacious and extended observation, it was singularly modest, cautious, simple, sincere. Nothing was for show, for self-love; there was no rhetoric, ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Old Man, as depicted in the stories told of him by the Blackfeet, is a curious mixture of opposite attributes. In the serious tales, such as those of the creation, he is spoken of respectfully, and there is no hint of the impish qualities which characterize him in other stories, in which he is powerful, but also at times impotent; full of all wisdom, yet at times so helpless that he has to ask aid from the animals. Sometimes he sympathizes with the people, and at others, out of pure spitefulness, he plays them malicious ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell

... title, empty name; handle to one's name; namesake. term, expression, noun;.byword; convertible terms &c. 522; technical term; cant &c. 563. V. name, call, term, denominate designate, style, entitle, clepe[obs3], dub, christen, baptize, characterize, specify, define, distinguish by the name of; label &c. (mark) 550. be -called &c v.; take the name of, bean the name of, go by the name of, be known by the name of, go under the name of, pass under the name of, rejoice in the name of. Adj. named &c. v.; hight[obs3], ycleped, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... addressed her: "Madame: How could the Parisians, who are so capable of distinguishing what is good, delicate, and noble, let slip this opportunity of paying their homage to the profound tenderness, the touching grace, the true dignity that characterize Your Majesty? The happy influence of these rare qualities already makes itself felt in all classes of society, and while your august spouse elevates France in glory, you inspire it to resume the first rank among the races most renowned for urbanity." ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... that human beings are not equal and that codes and rituals must vary according to temperament and capacity. Three conditions of men, called the animal, heroic and divine,[712] are often mentioned and are said to characterize three periods of life—youth, manhood and age, or three classes of mankind, non-tantrists, ordinary tantrists, and adepts. These three conditions clearly correspond to the three Gunas. Also men, or rather Hindus, belong to one of seven groups, or stages, according to the ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... of a great city. There, everything should be subordinated to the shortest road. The sewer has, nowadays, assumed a certain official aspect. The very police reports, of which it sometimes forms the subject, no longer are wanting in respect towards it. The words which characterize it in administrative language are sonorous and dignified. What used to be called a gut is now called a gallery; what used to be called a hole is now called a surveying orifice. Villon would no longer meet with his ancient temporary provisional lodging. This net-work of cellars ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... thoughts; and with that charity which is expansive in its exercise, and never faileth in the heart in which it hath taken root, but always delights in doing good, he resolved to be the helper of these two orphan boys. But, with the prudence which ought ever to characterize every Christian effort, he began his task with caution, lest the endeavour to do good might only be ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers

... Huxley has pointed out, human society tries to fit as many as possible to survive, and we may add, not only to survive, but to live well. Altruism and its resulting coperation have come especially to characterize human social evolution. To some extent this is due, no doubt, to the necessities of group survival; for only that nation, for example, can survive that can maintain the most loyal citizenship, the best institutions, and the largest spirit of self-sacrifice in its members. ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood

... and briefly characterize the amendments which have been appended to the constitution of ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... accomplished lying, I conceive to be a good memory, a fertile fancy, a ready wit, fluency of speech, and a brazen countenance, so that you shall tell a man a most bare-faced falsehood, and afterwards adduce such connected proofs as especially characterize actual facts. The following dialogue is a specimen of the talents of the aforementioned ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various

... it is the universal prayer of American citizens that justice and humanity and civilization shall characterize the final settlement of peace as they have distinguished the progress of ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... this figure give place to complex structures (at which | >q. q q| is replaced by | >q. q q;q. q q|, for example) may conceivably be hastened or retarded by other factors than that of the simple rate of succession. The degrees of segregation and accentuation which characterize the rhythmic unit are elements which may thus affect the higher synthesis. Increase in either of these directions gives greater definition to the rhythmic figure and should tend to preserve the ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... of the small room referred to, she showed a neat bed, a chair, a wash-stand, and a few hooks from which clothing might be hung. It was plain enough, but there was an air of neatness which did not characterize his present room. ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger

... to him to be no less moral than social, the young man took his way back to the village, laboring with all the incoherence of unaccustomed thought, to strike out some process by which to find a solution for those mysteries which were supposed to characterize the conduct of the stranger. He had just turned out of the gorge leading from Calvert's house into the settlement, when he encountered the person to whom his meditations were given, on horseback; and going at a moderate ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... Tyler's well-known 'History,' these monographs have much of the brevity of their original purpose; and they are marked by the same picturesqueness of treatment, the same vivacity of expression, and the same felicity of statement, that characterize the author's larger ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... fourth generation—I suppose it will be grip and grind and gouge in the twentieth generation. The thirst for intoxicants has burned down through the arteries of a hundred and fifty years. Pugnacity or combativeness characterize other families. Sometimes one form of evil, sometimes ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... Owen observes, "On comparing the osteology of the 'Talegalla' with that of other birds, it exhibits all the essential modifications which characterize the gallinaceous tribe; and among the Rasores, it most nearly resembles the ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... hand when I am compelled to destroy with the other. In pruning an old tree, we guard against destruction of the buds and fruit. You know that as well as any one. You are a wise and learned man; you have a thoughtful mind. The terms by which you characterize the fanatics of our day are strong enough to reassure the most suspicious imaginations as to your intentions; but you conclude in favor of the abolition of property! You wish to abolish the most powerful motor of the human mind; you attack the paternal ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... allusion to episcopacy from beginning to end. Though the writer's ideas of the Person of Christ practically leave nothing to be desired, yet these ideas are still held in solution, and have not yet crystallized into the dogmatic forms which characterize the later generation. And from first to last this Epistle is silent upon those questions which interested the Church in the second half of the second century. Of Montanism, of the Paschal controversy, of the developed Gnostic heresies of this period, it ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... exultation into the avenue from the central court. He had not been there before. The first thing he did was to stand fully five minutes gazing at the immensity of the enclosure trying to comprehend it, instinctively but vainly seeking adjectives with which to characterize it, and finally giving it all up, as a man gives up trying to measure the ocean or count the stars, conceding it to be too vast and wonderful for the range alike of his vision and his mind. No one told him which way ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... add a greater number of examples of this fallacy, as well as of the others which I have attempted to characterize. But a more copious exemplification does not seem to be necessary; and the intelligent reader will have little difficulty in adding to the catalogue from his own reading and experience. We shall, therefore, here close our exposition of the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... was unbroken. From the west high above the reach of the heaviest gun, and almost beyond the carry of the rifle, came the long-expected vanguard of the migrating hosts of heaven. Flock upon flock, each in the wedge-shaped phalanx of two converging lines, which ever characterize the flight of these birds, each headed by a wary, powerful leader, whose clarion call came shrill and clear down through the still ether, came in one common line of flight, hundreds and thousands of geese. All that afternoon their passage was incessant, but no open pool offered rest and food to ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... could well be more unjust and untrue, for both men were of far too honorable a character and too ardently patriotic to justify the slander and give even the slightest color to the misrepresentation. Were it necessary more emphatically to characterize the slander as false, one might confidently point to the happy relations of the Otises with the other patriots of the time—to men of the stamp of the two Adams statesmen, to Hancock, Randolph, Warren, and other leaders of the Revolutionary era, ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... decrease in the perspiration. If, however, the increase in the quantity of urine secreted occurs independently of any normal cause and is accompanied by an unthrifty and weakened condition of the animal, it would then characterize disease. Tissues may undergo changes in order to adapt themselves to different environments, or as a means of protecting themselves against injuries. The coat of a horse becomes heavy and appears rough if the animal is exposed to severe cold. A rough, staring coat is very common ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... defending the facade in spite of its architectural isolation from the building in its rear, points out that the chief objection to the west front is that it is wanting in that repose and refinement of detail which characterize the rest of the building, and that its design is entirely out of keeping therewith, and also complains that "the ragged outline at the angles produced by the high relief and rather clumsy sections of the decorative detail has a very bad effect." It has been suggested that as from ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White

... Roman Catholic Service called the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified followed by the ceremony of Creeping to the Cross was true. When Majendie departed, the Lima Street Missioner jumped a long way forward in one leap. There were many other practices which he (the Bishop) could only characterize as highly objectionable and quite contrary to the spirit of the Church of England, and would Mr. Lidderdale pay him a visit at Fulham Palace as soon as possible. Lidderdale went, and he argued with the Bishop until the Chaplain thought his Lordship had heard ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... middle ages, especially in France and Spain, and of which we have a doughty exemplar in the Morte D'Arthur, which dates nearly a century before Shakspere's day. Loose construction and no attempt to deal with the close eye of observation, characterize these earlier romances, which were in the main conglomerates of story using the double appeal of ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... lack of acid jealousies and unchristian recrimination. In almost every sect "New Light" separated from "Old Light," "New Side" from "Old Side," in most unfraternal division. Gilbert Tennant, imitating Whitefield and out-heroding Herod, exhausted ecclesiastical billingsgate in quest of terms to characterize those clergymen—Congregational or Presbyterian or Anglican; those "letter-learned Pharisees," those "moral negroes," those "plastered hypocrites"—who stood out in stiff-necked opposition to revivalist methods of inculcating vital ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... [Washington's] house; his table is good, but not ostentatious; and no deviation is seen from regularity and domestic economy. Mrs. Washington superintends the whole, and joins to the qualities of an excellent housewife that simple dignity which ought to characterize a woman whose husband has acted the greatest part on the theater of human affairs; while she possesses that amenity and manifests that attention to strangers which ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... intelligence were very signal characteristics of the Athenian people in ancient times; everybody will feel that. Openness of mind and flexibility of intelligence are remarkable characteristics of the French people in modern times,—at any rate, they strikingly characterize them as compared with us; I think everybody, or almost everybody, will feel that. I will not now ask what more the Athenian or the French spirit has than this, nor what shortcomings either of them may have as a set-off against this; all I want now to point out ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... society-verse, but even in its serious moments too smart and too pretty to be taken very gravely; with a certain glitter, knowingness, and flippancy about it, and an absence of that self-forgetfulness and intense absorption in its theme which characterize the work of the higher imagination. This is rather the product of fancy and wit. Wit, indeed, in the old sense of quickness in the perception of analogies, is the staple of his mind. His resources in the way of figure, illustration, allusion, and ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... therefore work to the same end as his previous removal from the paralyzing effect of custom in the old home country. Activity is youth and sluggishness or paralysis is age. Hence the energy, initiative, adaptability, and receptivity to new ideas—all youthful qualities—which characterize the Anglo-Saxon American as well as the English Africander, can be traced back to the stimulating influences, not of a bracing or variable climate, but of the abundant opportunities offered by a great, rich, unexploited country. Variation under ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... follower of Thought wherever she might lead him, above all, as a confessor of that Truth which is forever revealing itself to the seeker, and is the more loved because never wholly revealable, he is an ennobling possession of mankind. Let his own striking words characterize him:— ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... of liberty were only for individual cases. Villainage as an institution continued to exist and to characterize the position of the mass of the peasantry. The number of freemen through the country was larger, but the serfdom of the great majority can scarcely have been much influenced by these individual cases. The commutation of services, however, and still more the abandonment of demesne farming by ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... of Geneva, composed with rapidity under the pressure of the times, but with the skill and fine literary finish that are wont to characterize even the most hurried of Calvin's productions, has maintained its position undisputed to the present time, being the oldest of existing forms of worship in the reformed churches. The gradual change in the French ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... of learned and gentlemanly professors, and in the society and under the direction of a father who has been exercised in military arts, and who has acquired the bearing, the clean and orderly habits, and the taste for respectable attire, which characterize the soldier. The children of these countries spend the first six years of their lives in homes which are well regulated. They are during this time accustomed to orderly habits, to neat and clean clothes, and to ideas of the value of instruction, of the respect due to the teachers, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various

... place, entirely too apt to ignore the fact that man, while comparatively a "superior being," is in simple fact one species of the animals that are found upon the earth; and that, as a species, he has traits which distinguish him characteristically just as certain well-known traits characterize those animals that we designate as "lower." If a traveller from the Sun should print his observations of the inhabitants of the different planets, he would have to say of those of the Earth something ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... Changeable sxangxebla. Channel kanalo. Chant kantado. Chaos hxaoso. Chaotic hxaosa. Chapel kapelo. Chaplain ekleziulo. Chapter cxapitro. Char bruleti. Character karaktero. Character (theatre) rolo. Characterize karakterizi. Charge (attack) atakegi. Charge (price) kosto. Chariot cxaro. Charitable bonfarada. Charity bonfarado. Charity (alms) almozo. Charlatan cxarlatano. Charm cxarmi. Charm cxarmo. Charm talismano. Charming cxarma. Charnel house karnejo. Chart ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... is so fresh, so full of gaiety and of charming melodies, that it might be compared with Lortzing's "Czar and Zimmermann", if only the text were as well done. Unhappily it lacks all the advantages which characterize the opera just named, as it is frivolous, without possessing the grace and "esprit", which distinguish French ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... of the characteristics of the Pentecostal anointing. John the Baptist, minister of the gospel and preacher of genuine regeneration, said of Jesus that "he should baptize with the Holy Ghost and fire," thus using a most powerful symbol to characterize the nature of the work of the Holy Ghost. Everyone is familiar with the action of fire; it burns everything combustible with which it comes ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees

... stern, reserved and tyrannical. The youth was also unlike his father in personal appearance, his hair being of a rich brown, his eyes of a soft blue, and the general expression of his countenance indicating the fairest and most endearing qualities which can possibly characterize human nature. ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... on the nation. However full of painful interest these details may be, as details they belong to the province of the ecclesiastical historian. The Four Masters record the work of desecration in touching and mournful strains. They tell of the heresy which broke out in England, and graphically characterize it as "the effect of pride, vain-glory, avarice, and sensual desire." They mention how "the King and Council enacted new laws and statutes after their own will." They observe that all the property of the religious orders was seized for the King; ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... speedily realized! May the coarseness, brutality and contempt for woman which characterize the Moslem hareem, give way to the refinement, intelligence, and mutual affection which belong ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... externally would be beneficial, so this also was done. It was not a dressing favorable to an aseptic condition of the wound, perhaps, nor was there anything in the quid of tobacco calculated to withdraw the poison or neutralize its effects, so the doctors may characterize this as a very foolish proceeding; but country people skilled in simples and herb remedies might tell some of these ultra scientific surgeons that the application of a quid of tobacco or of a leaf of tobacco to the sting of ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker

... the observations may be considered valuable for elucidating the connexion of atmospheric waves with rotatory storms (other motives being balanced), it might be desirable to keep the ship near the margin—provided she is not carried beyond the influence of the winds which characterize the latter half of the storm—until the barometer has nearly attained its usual elevation. By this means some notion might be formed of the general direction of the line of barometric pressure preceding or ...
— The Hurricane Guide - Being An Attempt To Connect The Rotary Gale Or Revolving - Storm With Atmospheric Waves. • William Radcliff Birt

... more tranquil and gentle existence, sustained by the gifts, and gladdened by the splendor, of the earth. In that careful distinction of species, and richness of delicate and undisturbed organization, which characterize the Gothic design, there is the history of rural and thoughtful life, influenced by habitual tenderness, and devoted to subtle inquiry; and every discriminating and delicate touch of the chisel, as it rounds the petal or guides the branch, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... meaning to the same word; and in few instances has this been more striking, than in disputes concerning the present subject. If a man chooses to call every composition a poem, which is rhyme, or measure, or both, I must leave his opinion uncontroverted. The distinction is at least competent to characterize the writer's intention. If it were subjoined, that the whole is likewise entertaining or affecting, as a tale, or as a series of interesting reflections; I of course admit this as another fit ingredient ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... thrust his hands into his pockets, looking down at the newspaper page. He had altered during the last year in a way difficult to characterize. It was not that he looked older or more hard, there was no bitterness in the strong face, but he looked like a man who stood in the shadow instead ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... structure, and although among the mammals the Quadrumana are most nearly allied to him, this will not be denied, not only that man is strongly distinguished from the Quadrumana by a great superiority of intelligence, but he is also very considerably so in several structural features which characterize him. ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... and closed with the offer: this gave him an annual salary of L300, besides the separate payments for any articles that he wrote. The Song of the Shirt, which it would be futile to praise or even to characterize, came out, anonymously of course, in the Christmas number of Punch for 1843: it ran like wildfire, and rang like a tocsin, through the land. Immediately afterwards, in January 1844, Hood's connection with the New Monthly closed, and he started a publication of his own, Hood's ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... straight line, until it curves inward under the abacus (Fig. 51); in the post-classical period it is low and sometimes quite conical (Fig. 60). In general, the degeneracy of post-classical Greek architecture is in nothing more marked than in the loss of those subtle curves which characterize the best Greek work. Other differences must be ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... since it seemed to him that "religious suggestion," was the only hope left. He, by the way, had diagnosed her case as one of hysteria. "It had a result," he writes, "which I, though an unbeliever, can characterize only as marvellous. Marie Cools returned completely, absolutely cured. No trace of paralysis or anaesthesia. She is actually on her feet; and, two hospital servants having been stricken by typhoid, she is taking the place of one ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson

... wives and children, and later, when they became sedentary, their flocks and their stores of grain. In many different localities we find the remains of camps and fortifications, which, to avoid using a more ambitious term, we may characterize generally as enclosures.[209] ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... which we have made in reference to the treatment of the question of miracles, we certainly have undertaken only to characterize the superficial skirmishing which took place between the two opposing views of the world, but not the labors of more recent theological science. But that skirmish has made, like all superficiality, the ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... mislead them. But there is nothing in these fearful signs of the times to shake our faith or excite our fears, because the faithful Bible student finds the condition of our world just such as the Scriptures have foretold. All the surroundings that characterize the conduct of infidels; their expertness in ridicule; their extreme folly and resoluteness; their licentiousness and anxiety for change in laws as well as society; the snares laid out by them to catch the unsteadfast, and ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various

... bought and sold, a mere animal; but was indeed a human being possessing all the qualities of mind and heart that belong to the rest of mankind, capable of receiving education and imparting it to his fellow man, able to think, act, feel, and develop those intellectual and moral qualities, such as characterize ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... of celebrating the first day of the year is a very ancient one. The exchange of gifts, the paying of calls, the making of good resolutions for the new year and feasting often characterize the day. The custom of ringing the church bells is of the ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various

... reasoning and elegant composition, approaches very near that of a man who was undoubtedly, at that time, one of the greatest geniuses in Europe. A few trivial indiscretions and indecorums may be said to characterize the harangue of the monarch, and mark it for his own. And, in general, so open and avowed a declaration in favor of a measure, while he had taken no care, by any precaution or intrigue, to insure success, may ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... intellectually overwhelming—does betoken mental agency in Nature, we immediately find it impossible to determine the probable character of such a mind, even supposing that it exists. We cannot conceive of it as presenting any one of the qualities which essentially characterize what we know as mind in ourselves; and therefore the word Mind, as applied to the supposed agency, stands for a blank. Further, even if we disregard this difficulty, and assume that in some way or other incomprehensible ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes

... vibration of their fins to keep themselves from going down with the current, while their bodies yield indolently to all its soothing curves. He chooses his language for its rich canorousness rather than for intensity of meaning. To characterize his style in a single word, I should call it costly. None but the daintiest and nicest phrases will serve him, and he allures us from one to the other with such cunning baits of alliteration, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... been a constant menace to the peace of a community which looked with peculiar jealousy upon the colored man in his new estate. This might have been endured with no evil results had their prosperity been attended with that humility which should characterize a race so lately lifted from servitude to liberty. It was the "impudent" assertion of their "rights" that so aggravated and enraged the people among whom they dwelt. It was not so much the fact of their having valuable possessions, and being entitled to pay for their ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... first arrival among them, with astonishment. I had seen many at Cape Coast; but not till I advanced into the forest up the windings of the river Gaboon, could I form any idea of their multitude, or of the various habits which characterize their savage lives. The first time the reality burst upon me, was in going up a creek of that river to reach the town of Naaengo when the most deafening screams were to be heard over head, mixed with squeaks and sundry strange noises. These ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... rescued me from the sea. His height was probably five feet ten inches, or ten and a half; but my first impression, or feel of the man, was not of this, but of his strength. And yet, while he was of massive build, with broad shoulders and deep chest, I could not characterize his strength as massive. It was what might be termed a sinewy, knotty strength, of the kind we ascribe to lean and wiry men, but which, in him, because of his heavy build, partook more of the enlarged gorilla order. Not that in appearance he seemed in the least gorilla-like. What I am striving ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... describing the Kingdom and its glories might be added. All these blessed words mean exactly what they say. Righteousness and peace will characterize that world-wide Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. His glory will cover the earth as the waters cover the deep. Nations will worship Him. "Yea, all Kings shall fall down before Him; all nations shall serve Him." "He shall have dominion also from sea ...
— The Work Of Christ - Past, Present and Future • A. C. Gaebelein

... to respect the flag of any friendly nation or the just rights of its citizens, nor to exact the like treatment for our own. Calmness, justice, and consideration should characterize our diplomacy. The offices of an intelligent diplomacy or of friendly arbitration in proper cases should be adequate to the peaceful adjustment of all international difficulties. By such methods we will make our ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... well-aired houses, almost to a man escaped. Fourthly, those who exposed themselves to the sun, suffered most. And, lastly, the new comer from Europe was more subject to take this terrible fever, which the medical men characterize as a mixture of the yellow fever of the West and the bilious fever of the ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson

... that the refusal to confess under torture ought to be of itself sufficient proof of dealings with the Prince of Darkness. "Towards such," says he, "we would show no mercy; I would burn them myself." Black magic or witchcraft he proceeds to characterize as the greatest sin a human being can be guilty of, as, in fact, high treason against ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... Independence, delivered at Philadelphia in August 1776, and published here, is the only complete address of his which has come down to us. It was translated into French and published in Paris, and it is believed that Napoleon borrowed from it the phrase, "A Nation of Shopkeepers," to characterize the English. ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... the power-houses of our political system. Party sentiment finds its first public expression there—often it has its beginnings there in the free conversations which characterize such American political societies. You will find the "leaders" gathering there, too; and in the talks among these men those plans gradually take form by which nominations are made and even ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... me not only every expression of Mona's marvelous voice, but also every feature and every grace which had formerly so bewitched me. If I had loved her passionately when we were together in the body, it would be difficult to characterize my feelings now that she was present only in memory. These sensations swept over me rapidly, but before I could utter a word my ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... ballads exquisitely, worships Jenny Lind, and knows Frederica Bremer intimately. He added an element of gentleness and softness to the material furnished by our cast-iron "man of facts" and our acrid poet, that was very agreeable. In speaking of Arnold, I was ineffably amused at hearing Mrs. Grote characterize him as a "very weak man," which struck me as very funny. The Esprit Forte, however, I take it, merely referred to his belief in the immortality of the soul, the existence of a God, and a few other similar "superstitions." They seemed all to agree ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... citizen must expand with joy when he reflects how near our Government has approached to perfection; that in respect to it we have no essential improvement to make; that the great object is to preserve it in the essential principles and features which characterize it, and that is to be done by preserving the virtue and enlightening the minds of the people; and as a security against foreign dangers to adopt such arrangements as are indispensable to the support of our independence, our rights ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... to have certain tricks of style, such as are apt to characterize a body of anonymous folk-poetry. Such is their use of conventional epithets; "the red, red gold," "the good, green wood," "the gray goose wing." Such are certain recurring ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... Germans, some of whom could not speak the English language. I came near losing my life by the bayonet of one of them, because he could not understand a request that I made of him. The house was infested by insects whose name I will not call; but the reader will recognize their nature when I characterize them as malodorous, and blood-sucking. We could expel them from our bunks, but not from the walls and the ceiling, from the holes and the cracks of which they swarmed at night, rendering ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway

... go deeper, Harwood reflected, for Sylvia's charm, and it dawned upon him that it was in the girl's self, born of an alert, clear-thinking mind and a kind and generous heart. Individuality, personality, were words with which he sought to characterize her; and as he struggled with terms, he found that she was carrying the ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... now; to admitting frankly the charm which he was still calling sensuous, and which, in the moments of insight recurring, as often as they can be borne, to the imaginative, and vouchsafed now and then even to the wayfaring, he was still disposed to characterize as an appeal to that which ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... colonies extend the length of the Holy Land and support some 5,000 Jews in their yield of olives, dates, wine, sugar, cotton, grain, and cattle. Broad streets, clean homes with gardens, and orchard land characterize the standard of living in the colonies, as machinery and agricultural school students characterize their modern standard of gaining their livelihood.[28] A constantly increasing number of emigrants are streaming into ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... have innocently aroused in Miserrimus Dexter a feeling toward you which I need not attempt to characterize. There is a certain something—I saw it myself—in your figure, and in some of your movements, which does recall the late Mrs. Eustace to those who knew her well, and which has evidently had its effect on Dexter's ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins

... and limbs. With the limbs extended the front of the hoofs and the convex aspect of the bent pasterns and fetlocks will look toward that flank in which lie the head and shoulders. On examination still higher the smooth, even outline of the knee and its bend, looking toward the hind parts, characterize the fore limb, while the sharp prominence of the point of the hock and the bend on the opposite side of the joint, looking toward the head, indicate the hind limb. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... obscured by other events. Besides slaying demons he has all along been sensitive to feminine needs, arousing in women passionate adoration and at the same time fulfilling the most intense of their physical desires. It is these qualities which characterize his ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer

... Arthur's vision of the Faerie Queene. 2. Interpret his search for her as an allegory of the young man's quest after his ideal. 3. Observe in xvii an allusion to Spenser's patron, Lord Leicester, who was a favored suitor for Elizabeth's hand. 4. What presents did the Knights exchange at parting? 5. Characterize Sir Trevisan by his appearance, speech, and actions. What does he symbolize? 6. Note the skill with which Spenser arouses interest before telling of the interview with Despair. 7. What was the fate of Sir Terwin? Its moral significance? 8. Describe the Cave of Despair, and show what effects ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser

... of the Greek tyrannies. He was a native of Ionia, but passed much of his time at the court of Polycrates of Samos. He seems to have enjoyed to the full the gay and easy life of a courtier, and sung so voluptuously of love and wine and festivity that the term "Anacreontic" has come to be used to characterize all poetry over- redolent ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... not this one word characterize all religious persecution? and then my mind wandered back over the whole melancholy tale of what is called Christian history. When Archbishop Cranmer overpowered the reluctance of young Edward VI. to burn to death the pious and innocent Joan of Kent, who moreover was as mystical and ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... Hardly had the public recovered from the shock of this terrible disaster when the Tariffville calamity added its list of dead and wounded to the long roll already charged to the ignorance and recklessness which characterize so much of the management of the public works ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose

... fresh and charming, and the rich cadences of her cultivated voice gave Ringfield pleasure, slightly recalling Miss Clairville's accents, and he was happy in experiencing for the first time in his life that amiable naturalness, inimitable airiness, ease and adaptability, which characterize the Anglican clergy and their method of doing things. Attenuated tennis, Lilliputian Badminton, swings, a greased pole, potato and sack races, fiddling, and dancing on a platform, for the French, all these he passed in review with Mrs. Abercorn and the English ladies, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... circle of the readers of that journal,—a journal to which I am eager to say I think this nation has been very largely indebted for the loyalty, the good sense, and the high tone which seem always to characterize it. During the war, the pictorial journals had immense influence in the army, and they used this influence with an undeviating regard to the true ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale

... I. "You must allow at least, that the amor sceleratus habendi was also, in some moderate degree, shared by the Pudor and Fides which characterize your party; otherwise, I am at a loss how to account for the tough struggle against us we have lately ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and American magazines, especially in the Christmas numbers. They mention no winding-sheets, coffins, skeletons, graveyards, no sulphurous flames, curses, blood-curdling groans, no clanking chains, nor any of the time-honoured trappings that characterize this rather feeble literature of the supernatural. On the contrary, the scenes enacted in houses that appear to be really haunted are generally very simple and insignificant, not to say dull and commonplace. ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... take a wider view of their situation than most of them seem to do; that they should look above and beyond the ranks of partisans for the light they need; that they should listen to those who will discuss their problem with the coolness, the disinterestedness, the unhesitating honesty which characterize the leading scientists of the day in other fields of inquiry. Such are the speakers and writers they should invite to their assistance. Instead of wasting their breath in expressions of self-admiration, in threadbare platitudes about the nobility and rights of labor, in appeals to the omnipresent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... was justified in forming, the assistance of such a body of disciplined troops would have sufficed to ensure the defence of that important post; and the injury which the common cause has sustained on this occasion can be ascribed only to the tardiness and indecision which so strongly characterize the Austrian Government."[271] Most tactfully he bade Eden refrain from reproaches on this occasion and to use it merely as an argument for throwing greater ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... straight lines and to whom the most absurd linking of facts is the most satisfactory answer in any question. The crudeness of their intellect, which may go together with ample knowledge in other fields, predestines them to be deceived and puts a premium on the imposture. I may try to characterize some varieties of crooked thinking from chance tests of the correspondence with which the underworld has besieged me. I have only the letters of most ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... bring to the industry learners prepared to be taught those things that characterize the industry, the "tricks of the trade," and the "secrets of the craft," now become standard, and free to all. Such teaching Scientific Management is prepared to give. The results of such teaching of Scientific Management will be a worker ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth

... and yet admiring young man was silent, though he watched her singularly interesting air, and lovely features, with all the intenseness that seemed to characterize her own deportment. As no sound followed that which Alida had heard or fancied she had heard, she resumed her seat, and appeared to lend her attention ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper



Words linked to "Characterize" :   mark, think of, character, individuate, characterise, qualify, define, differentiate, characterization



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