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Delineate   Listen
verb
Delineate  v. t.  (past & past part. delineated; pres. part. delineating)  
1.
To indicate by lines drawn in the form or figure of; to represent by sketch, design, or diagram; to sketch out; to portray; to picture; in drawing and engraving, to represent in lines, as with the pen, pencil, or graver; hence, to represent with accuracy and minuteness. See Delineation. "Adventurous to delineate nature's form."
2.
To portray to the mind or understanding by words; to set forth; to describe. "Customs or habits delineated with great accuracy."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Delineate" Quotes from Famous Books



... emancipists, the splendour of their equipage, and the luxurious profligacy of their lives, were exhibited as the larger prizes of a fruitful lottery. Among these works, the most popular, that of Cunningham, professed to delineate the sentiments of the prisoners, from which it might be inferred that few conditions of human life offered so many chances of gaiety ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... and his daughter resided, but for the sake of saving both labour and expense, he had had his bed removed into it; and though anything but comfortable, a solitary, impoverished, and yet gorgeous appearance pervaded the whole, such as those who delineate interiors, loving small lights and deep shadows, would covet to convey to their canvass. The bed upon which the old man lay was canopied, and of heavy crimson damask. In the dim light of that spacious ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... to write a love scene, very warm and impassioned, and I could not do it, confined as I was. Now that I am loose, I can give loose to the reins of my imagination, and delineate with the arrow of Cupid's self. My heroine is reclining, with her hand on her cheek; put yourself in that attitude, my dear dear Valerie, as if you were meditating upon the prolonged absence of one dear to you. Exactly— beautiful—true to nature—but ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... I had but a pencil and a morsel of paper, I could make a lovelier sketch than hers, admitting I had the power to delineate faithfully what ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... love now combined every shade of affection which our powers of analysis can discern, and which modern society has created; one of the most remarkable men of our age, whose death is a recent loss to the world of letters, Beyle (Stendhal), was the first to delineate ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... mind. For we need but barely survey modern pursuits to be convinced how little they are connected with wisdom. Since, to describe the nature of some particular place, the form, situation and magnitude of a certain city; to trace the windings of a river to its source, or delineate the aspect of a pleasant mountain; to calculate the fineness of the silkworm's threads, and arrange the gaudy colours of butterflies; in short, to pursue matter through its infinite divisions, and wander in its dark labyrinths, is the employment of the ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus

... philanthropic interest, she wrote, during another winter in this city, her novel, "Ramona," a book composed with the greatest rapidity, and printed first in the Christian Union, afterward appearing in a volume in 1884. Its sole object was further to delineate the wrongs of the aborigines. Besides these two books, she wrote, during this later period, some children's stories, "Nelly's Silver Mine, a Story of Colorado Life" (1878), and three little volumes of tales about cats. But her life-work, as she viewed it at the end, was in her two ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various

... work of Malthus on Population? It is one of the ablest I have ever seen. Although his main object is to delineate the effects of redundancy of population, and to test the poor laws of England, and other palliations for that evil, several important questions in political economy, allied to his subject incidentally, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... the ingenious Angler, according to Art, in shape, colour and proportion like the Natural Fly, of Fur, Wool, Silk, Feathers, &c. To delineate which I must confess my self not so accurate and skilful a Painter, nor can any Pen-drawing illustrate their Various Colours so, as to direct their Artificial Counterfeit; Nature will help him in this by Observation, curiously Flourishing their several Orient and bright ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett

... records of ancient life are not nearly full enough to justify any one who may Assert that the pictures in our pages are not as accurate as those in the British Museum. Anyhow, what they ought to have been, rather than what the ancient were, our artist has striven to delineate.] ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster

... considerable extent, and being in such an elevated situation, those who profess to delineate panoramas may here find ample scope to display their abilities; for there is not only a view of the following churches, but the towns and villages wherein they are situated, are several of them under the eye of the spectator from this lofty eminence, viz. Walsall, Willenhall, ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye

... in uniting conjunction, you may both remain to formulate ideas and to delineate. You are no doubt desirous of the full enfranchisement of the human race. You seem just and liberal, as read by these various lights, amid contentions, yet with one central apex—the ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara

... for me to delineate the occurrences incident to my hunting days. The story told in full would fill a volume, but if it were not in connection with my father's family and how we got along, when I was at home with him, I should not mention it at all. As it is, I will try to describe one day's ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin

... begun. She was to read, to study, to depict by a gesture, a look, the passions she was to delineate on the boards; lessons dangerous, in truth, to some, but not to the pure enthusiasm that comes from art; for the mind that rightly conceives art is but a mirror which gives back what is cast on its surface faithfully only—while unsullied. She seized on nature ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... thy hospitable roof Ulysses graced, confirm by faithful proof; Delineate to my view my warlike lord, His form, his habit, and his ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... arguments in regard to a nation of forty-seven millions of people can be bolstered up by instancing the imperfect acquaintance of a Japanese pastry-cook with the English language? The writer does not in so many words delineate the future of Japan as it appears to him, but he suggests it, and his Japan of the future is quite evidently to be nothing more or less than a kind of international dustheap whereon Europe and America have dumped all that is bad and rotten and deplorable in their ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... has attempted to delineate that group of beliefs which stood in close connection with the Roman religion, and among the subjects treated are Dreams, Nature Worship, Roman Magic, Divination, Holy Places, Victims, etc. Thus the book is, apart from its immediate subject, ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... ideograph, hieroglyphic, anaglyph, kanji [Jap.]; diagram, monogram. map, plan, chart, ground plan, projection, elevation (plan) 626. ichnography^, cartography; atlas; outline, scheme; view &c (painting) 556; radiograph, scotograph^, sciagraph^; spectrogram, heliogram^. V. represent, delineate; depict, depicture^; portray; take a likeness, catch a likeness &c n.; hit off, photograph, daguerreotype; snapshot; figure, shadow forth, shadow out; adumbrate; body forth; describe &c 594; trace, copy; mold. dress up; illustrate, symbolize. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... short of the truth, they are, I feel, in the absence of any nearer approach to the truth, capable of rendering excellent service. However faintly and hazily the outlines of Deity be shown in them, the Deity whom they so imperfectly delineate is yet one to whom may justly be ascribed glory in the highest, one worthy of all trust, love, and adoration—of an adoration, too, inclusive not more of ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... proceeded to delineate, in minute terms, the portraiture of the mysterious lady who had inspired Agnes on three occasions with so much terror, and whom Agnes herself had depicted ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... rationale of their becoming. It is for the historian with sympathy and imagination to find out what their inherent reason was. One other thing distinguishes Baur as church historian from his predecessors. He realised that before one can delineate one must investigate. One must go to the sources. One must estimate the value of those sources. One must have ground in the sources for every judgment. Baur was himself a great investigator. Yet the movement for the investigation of the sources of biblical and ecclesiastical ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... whereof he writes. The divine Hyspiros depicts murderers, cowards, and slaves in his sublime Tragedies,—but thinkest thou it was essential for him to become a murderer, coward, and slave himself in order to delineate these characters? And I ... I write of Love,—love spiritual, love eternal,—love fitted for the angels I have dreamt of—but not for such animals as men,—and what matters it that I know naught of such love, . . unless perchance I knew it years ago in some far-off fairer sphere! ... ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... one of these Indians," writes Mackenzie, "by a bribe of some beads, to describe the surrounding country upon the sand. This singular map he immediately undertook to delineate, and accordingly traced out a very long point of land between the rivers ... which he represented as running into the great lake, at the extremity of which he had been told by Indians of other nations there was a white ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... see that the labourer, who, on hearing certain notes in the adjacent hedge, can describe the particular form and colours of the bird making them; and the astronomer, who, having calculated a transit of Venus, can delineate the black spot entering on the sun's disc, as it will appear through the telescope, at a specified hour; do essentially the same thing. Each knows that on fulfilling the requisite conditions, he shall have a preconceived impression—that after a definite series of actions will come a group ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... body were placed there, there would be a certain resultant force experienced by it dependent upon the distribution of electricity producing the field. When we know the strength and direction of this resultant force, we know all the properties of the field, and we can express them numerically or delineate them graphically, Faraday (Exp. Res., 3122 et seq.) showed how the distribution of the forces in any electric field can be graphically depicted by drawing lines (which he called lines of force) whose direction at every point coincides with the direction ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various

... visits of a celibate whom he suspects of being her lover, and whom she has promised never again to see. Some minor scenes of the domestic interior we leave for matrimonial imaginations to conjure up; a husband can delineate them much better than we can; he will betake himself in thought back to those days when delightful longings invited sincere confidences and when the workings of his policy put into motion certain ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... with the milk of the Amalthaean goat. By the virtue of Acheron, he justled, bulled, and lastauriated in one day the third part of the world, beasts and people, floods and mountains; that was Europa. For this grand subagitatory achievement the Ammonians caused draw, delineate, and paint him in the figure and shape of a ram ramming, and horned ram. But I know well enough how to shield and preserve myself from that horned champion. He will not, trust me, have to deal in my person with a sottish, dunsical Amphitryon, nor with a silly witless Argus, for all his ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... of the epic. Every romance is intended, or ought to be, a new Iliad or Odyssey; in other words, a poetic representation of a course of events consistent with the highest laws of moral government, whether it delineate the general history of a people, or narrate the fortunes of a chosen hero. * * * The excellence of a romance, like that of an epic or a drama, lies in the apprehension and truthful exhibition of the ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... should only have to present to the reader a man, whose conversation was nothing but alternate jest and quotation—a due union of Yorick and Partridge. This would, however, be rendering great injustice to the character I wish to delineate. There were times when Vincent was earnestly engrossed in discussion in which a jest rarely escaped him, and quotation was introduced only as a serious illustration, not as a humorous peculiarity. He possessed great miscellaneous erudition, and a memory perfectly ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to reveal truth so much as to expose error. And yet it was his object to attain correct ideas as to moral obligations. He proclaimed the sovereignty of virtue and the immutability of justice. He sought to delineate and enforce the practical duties of life. His great object was the elucidation of morals; and he was the first to teach ethics systematically from the immutable principles of moral obligation. Moral certitude was the lofty platform ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... every reason to believe he was actually paying his address to Miss Angelina Porter, a daughter of Old Joe Porter, who kept the groggery. This, of course, was very distasteful even to Mr. and Miss Sealy; but language would fail us in any attempt we might make to delineate the utter consternation of the high-toned Mrs. Sealy when she became satisfied that the rumor was founded on fact. She had again and again remonstrated with him, but without effect, as he had treated her remonstrances with good-natured contempt; and when she resorted ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... sensibility, of refined culture, I have found on either side, and be they French or German, I have nearly always found their behaviour correspond to that which I have here tried to delineate. ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... thou seated at the foss, Faulchion in hand, chace thence the airy forms Afar, nor suffer them to approach the blood, Till with Tiresias thou have first conferr'd. Then, glorious Chief! the Prophet shall himself Appear, who will instruct thee, and thy course Delineate, measuring from place to place Thy whole return athwart the fishy flood. While thus she spake, the golden dawn arose, When, putting on me my attire, the nymph 660 Next, cloath'd herself, and girding to her waist With an embroider'd zone ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... aim have we presumed, Adventurous, to delineate Nature's form; Whether in vast, majestic pomp array'd, 440 Or dress'd for pleasing wonder, or serene In Beauty's rosy smile. It now remains, Through various being's fair proportion'd scale, To trace the rising lustre of ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... deciduous, declivity, decompose, decorous, dedicatory, deduction, deferential, deficiency, deglutition, dehiscence, delectable, delete, deleterious, delineate, deliquescent, demarcation, demimonde, demoniac, denizen, denouement, deprecate, depreciate, derelict, derogatory, despicable, desuetude, desultory, deteriorate, diacritical, diagnosis, diaphanous, diatribe, didactic, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... sublime than the denunciation of these great enemies by Ezekiel; and the well-known statement in the Apocalypse fastened the Hebrew feeling regarding them with a new meaning into the mind of the early Church: hence it was that the medieval map-makers took great pains to delineate these monsters and their habitations on the maps. For centuries no map was considered orthodox which did not ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... narrative invention in Lowell, that, unlike Longfellow and Holmes, he never tried his hand at a novel. One of the most important parts of a novelist's equipment he certainly possesses; namely, an insight into character, and an ability to delineate it. This gift is seen especially in his sketch of Parson Wilbur, who edited the Biglow Papers with a delightfully pedantic introduction, glossary, and notes; in the prose essay On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners, and in the uncompleted ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... not analogous to the Brahmanic works called sutras, and they have no close parallel in later Indian literature. There is little personal background in the Upanishads, none at all in the Sankhya and Vedanta sutras. But the Sutta Pitaka is an attempt to delineate a personality as well as to record a doctrine. Though the idea of writing biography has not yet been clearly conceived, yet almost every discourse brings before us the figure of the Lord: though the doctrine can be detached from the preacher, yet one feels that the hearers of the Pitaka hungered ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... happy beyond the dreams of heaven," she said, dreamily. "Search your memory for the picture of a beautiful girl—she was only a girl, not yet twenty, when my story begins—and make this one of whom I speak thrice more beautiful than the picture you delineate. She was your sister. She is your sister. You are her brother in the story I shall relate to you. You two are fatherless and motherless; you are all that is left of your family, once famous, and seemingly destined through you to become so again. You are a favorite with ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman

... the artist to choose beautiful scenery, and delineate it with accuracy. He must not be a mere copyist. Something higher and more subtle is required. He must create, or at any rate interpret, as ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock

... for the energy and enthusiasm shown by Mr. Percival Lowell in founding an observatory in regions where the planets can be studied under the most favorable conditions, they cannot lose sight of the fact that the ablest and most experienced observers are liable to error when they attempt to delineate the features of a body 50,000,000 or 100,000,000 miles away through such a disturbing medium as our atmosphere. Even on such a subject as the canals of Mars doubts may still be felt. That certain markings to which Schiaparelli gave ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... my wedded life, too much absorbed in the feeling of bliss, to analyze it. I believed in her love,—that was sufficient for me. In after years I resolved the impression into its prismatic elements, and thus it is I am able to delineate them. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... IDLE TO TALK ABOUT NOT RESORTING TO FORCE. Every body must look to the introduction of force of some kind or other—and it is in truth a question of expediency; of moral justice; of political good faith—whether we shall fairly delineate our whole system on the face of the bill, or leave the acquisition of extorted consent to other processes. The real question—the only question of magnitude to be settled, is the great preliminary question—Do you intend to send ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... candle which always burned beneath it seemed to her eager sight to crown that fair head with a bishop's mitre—a cardinal's hat—aye, at times she even saw the triple crown of the Vicar of Christ resting upon those raven locks. Jose knew this. If her own pen did not always correctly delineate her towering hopes, his astute uncle did not fail to fill in whatever hiatus remained. And the pressure of filial devotion and pride of race at times completely smothered within him the voice of Truth which Carmen continually sounded, and made him resolve often that on the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... of English Poverty" is written as if with the heart's blood of the writer; and we may all of us ponder it well, lest some day its graphic but melancholy outlines may only too vividly delineate the condition of our own poor. Let it teach every man of us to strive without ceasing to bridge the wide chasm almost necessarily dividing rich and poor. Let us untiringly pour into that chasm love, pity, help, forbearance, our best of constructive thinking, but last as well as first, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... appeared in such different lights in the successive stages of life, it is no easy matter to delineate his character without an uncommon mixture and vast variety of colours. He was in the British empire not unlike one of those strange and erratic meteors which appear now and then in the system of nature. In his youth, as he often confessed and lamented, he was gay, giddy ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt

... been right in the main, in the general tenor of his opinion; for this country, in its ordinary aspects, probably presents as barren a field to the writer of fiction, and to the dramatist, as any other on earth; we are not certain that we might not say the most barren. We believe that no attempt to delineate ordinary American life, either on the stage, or in the pages of a novel, has been rewarded with success. Even those works in which the desire to illustrate a principle has been the aim, when the picture has been brought within this homely frame, have ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... and the vesture stained red; on the lower part of the arm, a man and woman; on one side of the Cross, the appearance of a half moon, with a face; on the other side, the sun; on the top of the Cross, the letters I.H.S.; on the left arm, a man and woman dancing, with an effort to delineate the female's dress; under which, initials.' Another seaman 'had, on the lower part of the right arm, the device of a sailor and a female; the man holding the Union Jack with a streamer, the folds of which waved over her head, and the end of it was held ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... Moor is a character such as young poets always delight to contemplate or delineate; to Schiller the analogy of their situations must have peculiarly recommended him. Moor is animated into action by feelings similar to those under which his author was then suffering and longing to act. ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

... characters themselves. Not only is this to be noted in the passages where the poet has taken pains openly to portray their various characteristics, but there are many passages, or single lines perhaps, which serve more subtly to delineate them. What proud reserve, what sorrow painfully restrained, the following line, for example, contains: "Two evenings after he had heard ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... long, lone hours with our heads in our hands, the toil, the patient study, the rough carving of the outlines, the dainty, delicate finishing touches, the growing into the soul of the being we delineate, the picture of his outward semblance, his voice, his gait, his speech, all amount to a labour of such stress and strain, of such loving anxiety and care, that they can be compared in my mind only to a mother's pains. ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles

... scholar asked, or in silent, hopeless poverty seemed to ask, his aid, will he demonstrated most clearly by relating shortly one example of his generosity, where the applicant had no pretensions to literary renown, and no claim whatever, except perhaps honest penury. It is delightful to attempt to delineate from various points of view a creature of infinite moral beauty,—but one instance must suffice; an ample volume might be composed of such tales, but one may be selected, because it contains a large admixture of that ingredient which is essential to the conversion ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various

... delighted, above all things, in observing the habits of animals; and it was his fondness for this study that gave rise, while he was yet a boy, to his first attempts in drawing. Long before he had received instruction in that art, he used to delineate his favourites of the lower creation with great accuracy and spirit. His introduction to the regular study of his future profession was purely accidental. He was in the habit of exercising his genius by covering ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various

... every-day concerns of the people, and missionary life as it now exists; the two to form a succinct whole, illustrating each other.' The volume before us has been written in fulfilment of the foregoing pledge. In it the writer has attempted to delineate that which came within his immediate observation, during a residence of four years on the Group. As a description of the familiar life of a people, in a novel and interesting position, one which may with propriety be termed a state ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... as much as possible, the tracks of former navigators. I have now only to add, that if the fur trade should become a fixed object of Indian commerce, frequent opportunities will occur of completing whatever may be left unfinished, in the voyage of which I have here ventured to delineate the outlines. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... have seen and experienced, I have been governed by no partial motives whatever. On the contrary, I have laboured to represent every object faithfully as it has affected my senses. I am, however, conscious at the same time, that it requires an abler pen than mine to delineate adequately the sublime and majestic works of nature in the regions I have been describing, and to portray them to the imagination in all their simplicity, beauty, and grandeur. Siberia does not possess the climate of Italy, nor the luxurious productions ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... men of genius. I shall ever esteem it one of the great privileges of my life that I was permitted to know him well, and call him friend. These papers are given to the public with the hope that they may be of more than ordinary interest to the intelligent reader, and that they may delineate Landor in more truthful colors than those in which he has heretofore been painted. In repeating conversations, I have endeavored to stand in the background, where I very properly belong. For the inevitable egotism of the personal pronoun, I hope ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... before us. There has scarcely appeared a really great man whose character has been more admired in his lifetime or less correctly understood by his admirers. When it is comprehended it is no easy task to delineate its excellencies in such a manner as to give the portrait both interest and resemblance, for it requires thought and study to understand the true ground of the superiority of his character over many others, whom he resembled in the principles of action and even in the ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... privilege ... they shall be riches and privilege ... they shall perceive who the most affluent man is. The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself. The American bard shall delineate no class of persons nor one or two out of the strata of interests nor love most nor truth most nor the soul most nor the body most ... and not be for the eastern states more than the western or the northern states more ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... Goldsmith's 'Vicar of Wakefield,' just at the critical moment of his mental development; and he attributed to it much of his best education. The reading of a prose 'Life of Gotz vou Berlichingen' afterwards stimulated him to delineate his character in a poetic form. "The figure of a rude, well-meaning self-helper," he said, "in a wild anarchic time, excited ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... nearest was twenty or thirty miles from us, to be tinged with a red colour, which, contrasted with the snow on their summits and the deep azure sky above, against which their huge forms appeared to lean, produced a scene as difficult to delineate as it was sublime ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... Men and Women (which it followed after an interval of nine years) is a collection of dramatic monologues, in each of which it is attempted to delineate a single character or a single mood by setting the "imaginary person" in some revealing situation. Of the two possible methods, speech and soliloquy, Browning for the most part prefers the former. In Dramatis Personae, however, he recurs, rather more frequently than usual, to the latter; and ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... more courageous literature: we may hope to see the drama free itself from sensualism and frivolity, and rise to the Shaksperian dignity of true passion; while the romance will learn better its true ground, and will create, rather than portray—delineate, rather than dissect human sentiment ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... term "ink" may be said to characterize an immense number of fluid compounds, the function of which in connection with a marking instrument is to delineate conventional signs, characters and letters as put together and commonly called writing, on paper or ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... Strabo. l. 16. p. 1095. The epithet [Greek: peptokos] could not properly be given to a serpent: but to a building decayed, and in ruins nothing is more applicable. A serpent creeps upon its belly, and is even with the ground, which he goes over, and cannot fall lower. The moderns indeed delineate dragons with legs: but I do not know that this ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant

... to the left; there is but one course for you. You must go forward, or the ruin of your child is sealed. You have come to an important crisis in the history of your child, and if you need motive to influence you to act, you may delineate as upon a map his temporal and eternal destiny—these mainly depend upon the issue of the present struggle. If you succeed, your child is saved; if you fail, he is lost. You may think perhaps your child will die before he will yield. We had almost ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... traditions of the manners indicating conduct, reproved unwonted licences assumed by Lady Grace; who, in allusion to Hymen's weaving of a cousinship between the earldom of Southweare and that of Cantor, of which Mr. Sowerby sprang, set her mouth and fan at work to delineate total distinctions, as it were from the egg to the empyrean. Her stature was rather short, all of it conversational, at the eyebrows, the shoulders, the finger-tips, the twisting shape; a ballerina's expressiveness; and her tongue dashed half sentences through ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... as multifarious as have been portrayed by the whole band of Italian painters; but, as a wizard in words, he resembled the magician in mosaic, who can delineate in stone every feature of those portraits because he can discriminate and imitate shades of color more numberless than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... denounced as "inventions of the ancients." But he did not stop at that: "Men believe that the gods are born, are clothed and shaped and speak like themselves"; "if oxen and horses and lions could draw and paint, they would delineate their gods in their own image"; "the Negroes believe that their gods are flat-nosed and black, the Thracians that theirs have blue eyes and red hair." Thus he attacked directly the popular belief that the gods are ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... seeking to know what the F minor sonata means. Most obviously it means music, but it means music that is an expression of one of those psychological struggles which Beethoven felt called upon more and more to delineate as he was more and more shut out from the companionship of the external world. Such struggles are in the truest sense of the word tempests. The motive, which, according to the story, Beethoven himself said, indicates, ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven

... narrative of fiction. "The Scarlet Letter," a work of pure imagination, was the climax of his tales, the furthest reach of his romantic allegorizing moral art in creation; but he now undertook to utilize his experience and observation in the attempt to delineate life in its commoner and more realistic aspects of character and scene. He began "The House of the Seven Gables" in September and finished it early in January. He wrote regularly, but the story went on more slowly than he had hoped, requiring ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... the Author endeavoured to delineate, in a simple and popular form, the leading facts relating to the Intellectual Powers, and to trace the principles which ought to guide us in the Investigation of Truth. The volume which he now offers to the public ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie

... singularities of circumstance, in order to confer upon their weak portraitures some vigor of outline. It takes a Giotto to draw readily a nearly perfect O; but a nearly perfect triangle any one can draw. Shakspeare is able to delineate a Gentleman,—one, that is, who, while nobly and profoundly a man, is so delicately individualized, that the impression of him, however vigorous and commanding, cannot be harsh: Shakspeare is equal to this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... assigned him, by the order of nature, and moves in the highest sphere of earthly being. By the useful and interesting study of physiology, we are enabled to define the construction of his system, to delineate the muscles, nerves, veins and fibres, and the complicated mass that forms the man, with all their separate dependencies upon each other. But the mind, the great moving spring of action that gives motion to the whole, who can analyze or delineate? That will live forever, when the stillness ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... case in the Greek tragedies. They are not insensible to the effect of a high moral tone, or the development of poetical justice; but they did not regard either as the principal object, or even a material part, of dramatic composition. To delineate the play of the passions was their great object: Aristotle says expressly that was the end of tragedy. To that object they devoted all their powers; they succeeded in laying bare the human heart in its most agonized ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... to consider himself wanting in the finer gifts of character-shading and delicate portrayal. Remembering Huck Finn, and the rare presentation of Joan of Arc, we may not altogether agree with him. Certainly, he was never qualified to delineate those fine artificialities of life which we are likely to associate with culture, and perhaps it was something of this sort that caused the hesitation confessed in the letter that follows. Whether the plan suggested interested Howells or not we do not know. In later ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... thus fatally excepted, I have no purpose to delineate. Lampoon itself would disdain to speak ill of him, of whom no man speaks well. It is sufficient, that he is expelled the house of commons, and confined in gaol, as being legally ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... justice to this matchless picture. Baptized himself with the spirit of love, his inspired pencil could best portray the lights and shadows in this lovely and loving household. Pre-eminently like his Lord, he could best delineate the scene of all others where the tenderness of that tender Saviour shone most conspicuous. He was the disciple who had leant on His bosom—who had been admitted by Him to nearest and most confiding fellowship. He would have the Church, to the latest period ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff

... monogram. map, plan, chart, ground plan, projection, elevation (plan) 626. ichnography[obs3], cartography; atlas; outline, scheme; view &c. (painting) 556; radiograph, scotograph[obs3], sciagraph[obs3]; spectrogram, heliogram[obs3]. V. represent, delineate; depict, depicture[obs3]; portray; take a likeness, catch a likeness &c. n.; hit off, photograph, daguerreotype; snapshot; figure, shadow forth, shadow out; adumbrate; body forth; describe &c. 594; trace, copy; mold. dress up; illustrate, symbolize. paint &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... audience of five thousand, so evidently and discriminatingly intelligent, addressed for two hours by Bryant, with all his cool, judicious, deliberate criticism, warmed into glowing appreciation of the most delicate and peculiar beauties of the character and literary services he was to delineate,—and this rich banquet fittingly desserted by the periods of Everett,—such an evening was worthy of the subject, and worthy to be remembered. The heartiness and the genial insight into Irving's best traits which the poet displayed were peculiarly gratifying to the nearer friends and relatives. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... at last, with a groan, he dropped into a chair, where, crossing his arms upon his breast, he remained for awhile lost in thought. Who can say what were the reflections that filled his mind? Was he considering whether the painter meant to delineate insanity, or whether it was not a delusion springing from ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... that some of the greatest works of art in this age were paintings of Death and Hell, Heaven and Judgment. Orcagna, in the Strozzi Chapel of S. Maria Novella, set forth these scenes with a wonderful blending of beauty and grotesque invention. In the treatment of the Inferno he strove to delineate the whole geography of Dante's first cantica, tracing the successive circles and introducing the various episodes commemorated by the poet. Interesting as this work may be for the illustration of the "Divine Comedy" ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... for experience, applicable, at all times, to the actual affairs of life. The history of a country ought to show the origin and progress of its institutions, political, civil, and ecclesiastical; it ought to show the effects of those institutions upon the state of the people; it ought to delineate the measures of the government at the several epochs; and, having clearly described the state of the people at the several periods, it ought to show the cause of their freedom, good morals, and happiness; or of their misery, immorality, and slavery; ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... story of adventure and endurance, written to delineate the upward progress of a boy whose moral attributes were of the lowest order, in consequence of neglected education, but in whom high religious principles were afterwards ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... many other things proves how deeply a man may be read in human nature, what an insight he may acquire into the springs of action and feeling, and yet how incapable he may be of making any practical application of the knowledge he has acquired and the result of which he can faithfully delineate. He gives a list of the books he had read at eighteen which appears incredible, particularly as he says that he was always idle, and eight years after Scott says he did not appear well read either in poetry or history. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... teach our neighboring Yankees just exactly what we are, whence we came, and where we mean to go. [Laughter and applause.] The colossal ignorance of the ordinary New Englander [laughter and applause]—I mean in regard to the Dutch [laughter]—is something that I would delineate were it not for the presence of the President of the Mayflower Society. [Renewed laughter.] Why, it was only the other night that at one of these entertainments when I was representing you and doing the best I could with my medal and my ribbon, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... about at the waist by a neatly-knotted Indian belt, while the flowing folds below streamed gracefully aside in the wind, he displayed one of those compact, shapely figures, which the old Grecian sculptors so delighted to delineate. And in addition to these advantages of figure, he possessed an extremely fine set of features, which were shown off effectively by the profusion of short, jetty locks, that curled naturally around his white temples and ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... country beyond it, little was positively known or accurately understood. A wandering Indian would imperfectly delineate upon the sand, a feeble outline of its more prominent physical features—its magnificent rivers, with their numerous tributaries—its lofty mountains, its dark forests, its extended plains and its vast extent. A voyage in a canoe, ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley

... it is certain, that much of the ostentation and a multitude of the luxuries which subsist in European and Asiatic society are just topics of regret, and that, if ever those improvements in civilisation take place which philosophy has essayed to delineate, there would be a great abridgment of the manual labour that we now see around us, and the humbler classes of the community would enter into the inheritance of a more considerable portion of leisure than at ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... Langhorne's Translation, 1838, p. 699), was introduced partly to pacify the Countess Guiccioli, who had quarrelled with him for maintaining that "love was not the loftiest theme for true tragedy," and, in part, to prove that he was not a slave to his own ideals, and could imagine and delineate a woman who was both passionate and high-minded. Diodorus (Bibl. Hist., lib. iii. p. 130) records the exploits of Myrina, Queen of the Amazons, but it is probable that Byron named his Ionian slave after Mirra, who gives her name to Alfieri's tragedy, which brought ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... desired his companionship and the great love which every true woman needs. I answered with spirit, and just as I felt, that while his love might be boundless, it could no longer be anything for me. I knew his soul was capable of maintaining the appearance of purity of thought long enough to delineate its outline on canvas, and while I admired his talent in verse, I had tasted the bitter dregs of his falseness, and was now thoroughly undeceived as to his character. Never again could I be misled by the semblance of a love which had no reality beneath its honeyed words. I told him also that ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell

... for France; St Pierre portrayed it poetically, not only in Paul and Virginia, but in Chaumiere Indienne and Etudes de la Nature. The science which these two writers lacked, Buffon possessed in a high degree; but he had not the power to delineate Nature and feeling in combination: he lacked insight into the hidden analogies between the movements of the mind and the phenomena of the outer world. Chateaubriand, on the contrary, had this faculty to its full modern extent. It is true that his ego was constantly to the fore, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... HISTORY.—The subject of history is man. History has for its object to record his doings and experiences. It may then be concisely defined as a narrative of past events in which men have been concerned. To describe the earth, the abode of man, to delineate the different kingdoms of nature, and to inquire into the origin of them, or to explain the physical or mental constitution of human beings, is no part of the office of history. All this belongs to the departments of natural ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... for the high and ennobling morality and Christian grace, which not only pervade her entire writings, but which shine forth with undimmed beauty in the new novel, Robert Graham. It sustains the character which is very difficult to well delineate in a work of fiction—a religious missionary. All who read the work will bear testimony to the entire success ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... allude to 'The Robbers.' The whole moral world had accused the author of high treason. He has no other excuse to offer than the climate under which this piece was born. If any of the numberless censures launched against 'The Robbers' be just, it is this, that I had the presumption to delineate men two years before I knew anything about them." He was but twenty-one when The "Robbers" appeared in print and was produced upon the stage, and while he was hailed on all sides as the German Shakespeare, he lived ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... around, and many of them wanted me to stay in the neighborhood and deliver a lecture the next night on Phrenology. But as we were billed at Elkhart for that date, it was impossible to do so. We remained over night with the school director, and the next morning he requested me to delineate the character of his son by ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston

... the most valuable, mode of conveying knowledge of this nature, he would have made a far better book. But in commencing to describe scenes, and perhaps he may add characters, that were so familiar to his own youth, there was a constant temptation to delineate that which he had known, rather than that which he might have imagined. This rigid adhesion to truth, an indispensable requisite in history and travels, destroys the charm of fiction; for all that is necessary to be conveyed to the mind by the latter had better be done by delineations ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... a painful confusion in my brain, which refuses to delineate distinctly succeeding events. Sometimes the irradiation of my friend's gentle smile comes before me; and methinks its light spans and fills eternity—then, again, I ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... searched the sea for prey. The creature had an ink-bag, with which it could muddle the water around it, to protect itself from more powerful animals, and, strange to say, this has been found so well preserved that an artist has used it in one instance as a paint, wherewith to delineate ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... art of Christian Science is to be a Chris- [5] tian Scientist; and it demands more than a Raphael to delineate this art. ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... perfectly silent. Domini was now wide awake. The feeling of calm serenity had left her. She was nervously troubled by this presence near her, and swiftly recalled the few trifling incidents of the day which had begun to delineate a character for her. They were, she found, all unpleasant, all, at least, faintly disagreeable. Yet, in sum, what was their meaning? The sketch they traced was so slight, so confused, that it told little. The last incident was the strangest. ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... type, the ideal of what a woman in Beatrice's position might desire, in the safety, peace, and Honour of a home, in the trust and constancy and honest confiding love of its partner! He did not paint an elysium,—he described a haven; he did not glowingly delineate a hero of romance,—he soberly portrayed that Representative of the Respectable and the Real which a woman turns to when romance begins to seem to her but delusion. Verily, if you could have looked into the heart of the person he addressed, and heard him speak, you would have cried admiringly, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... brocade or embroidered silk by ladies not of the highest class; enjoined simplicity in costumes for the no dance, in children's toys, in women's pipes, or tobacco-pouches, and in ladies' hairpins or hairdress; forbade gold lacquer in any form except to delineate family crests; limited the size of dolls; vetoed banquets, musical entertainments, and all idle pleasures except such as were justified by social status, and actually went to the length of ordering women to dress their own hair, dispensing entirely with professional Hairdressers, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... "satire of the American selfishness which is the main strength of the cry against the cheap labour of the Chinese,'' and that "it would not be easy for a moderately intelligent man to avoid seeing that Mr. Bret Harte wished to delineate the Chinese simply as beating the Yankee at his own evil game, and to delineate the Yankee as not at all disposed to take offense at the "cheap labour'' of his Oriental rival, until he discovered that he could not cheat the cheap labourer half so completely ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... watching each other across the thin bridge of nose,—a receding chin and a narrow cranium, combined with an expression which was hypocritically humble, yet sly,—this was the type Angela Sovrani had chosen to delineate, sparing nothing, softening no line, and introducing no redeeming point,—a type mercilessly true to the life; the face of a priest,—"A servant of Christ," as she called him. The title, united with that wicked and repulsive countenance, was a terribly significant ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... of all beauty and harmony, and her trustful reverence, free from pretence and cant. It is not unlikely that the surviving sharers of her love and friendship may feel the inadequateness of this brief memorial, for I close it with the consciousness of having failed to fully delineate the picture which my memory holds of a wise and brave, but tender and loving woman, of whom it might well have been said, in the words of the old Hebrew text, "Many, daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... as he pleasantly regarded it, was perhaps rather stronger in him as a man than in his boyhood. He has himself declared that he wrote "Seein' Things at Night" more to solace his own feelings than to delineate the sufferings of childhood, however aptly it may describe them. And when he put into rhythm that "any color, so long as it's red, is the color that suits me best," he spoke not only as a poet but as a man, for red conveyed to him the idea of warmth and cheeriness, and seemed to express ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field

... not permit me to attempt a description which language, indeed, has not power to delineate. It is sufficient to say that it was affecting beyond measure; and that the last words uttered by Mrs. Donner in tears and sobs to Mr. Eddy were, "Oh, save, ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... to speak of Herschel's pioneering work in the skies. To explore with line and plummet the shining zone of the Milky Way, to delineate its form, measure its dimensions, and search out the intricacies of its construction, was the primary task of his life, which he never lost sight of, and to which all his other investigations were subordinate. He was absolutely alone in this bold endeavour. Unaided, he had to devise methods, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... is instead a carefully considered part of the final design, copied from the drawing previously done on the spot. As the horse in the drawing is the mirror image of that in the print, we can feel certain that the drawing came first and not the etching. Two other drawings[12] (figures 4 and 5) delineate the clump of trees, in form and placement very similar to the print. A fourth[13] (figure 6) is a sketch of a hay barn of the type shown in the print, evidently quite common in the Dutch countryside, and a fifth[14] (figure 7) foreshadows ...
— Rembrandt's Etching Technique: An Example • Peter Morse

... fields of which I was writing the other day, I found an artist at work at his easel; and a pleasant nook be had chosen. His brush did its work with a steady and sure stroke that indicated command of his materials. He could delineate whatever he selected with technical skill at all events. He had pitched his easel where two hedges formed an angle, and one of them was full of oak-trees. The hedge was singularly full of "bits"—bryony, tangles of grasses, berries, boughs half-tinted and boughs green, hung as ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... a groom.' The author herself would probably disclaim any intention to represent a type. She is one of those writers who doubt the existence of types in the ordinary meaning of the term, and she certainly makes no conscious attempt to delineate them. ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... The worst of all these biographical sketches of remarkable men is, that delicacy, discretion, or some other euphemistically named form of hesitancy, induces writers to suppress the incidents which supply the very angles of the form they want to delineate; and it is especially so in Shelley's case. I am sure, that, if Mary, or my father, or any of those with whom Shelley conversed most thoroughly, had related some of the more extravagant incidents of his early life exactly as they occurred, we should ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... would have delightedly sketched in another. Have ever I described my favorite's appearance? I believe not; and yet there was much in her face and figure to arrest and enchant younger eyes than mine. I could not, if I would, delineate her features, for I only recall their charm of emotion, their attractive variety of sentiment. Her eyes were gray, with dark lashes, and their expression was at once brilliant and melancholy, and the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... in the "best" society of some American metropolis, when he has never been out of his native village, and knows nothing of the class with which he deals except through the society column of his newspaper. Therefore he will of course "fall flat when he attempts to delineate manners. It is too evident that he has not had the entree to the circle he would describe: his gentlemen commit too many blunders, his ladies are from the wrong side of the town, the love-passages are silly and vulgar, the whole result is stupid ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett

... action, rather than the study of character, which makes Scott a perennial favorite of the young. The same element of excitement is what causes mature readers to turn from Scott to better novelists, who have more power to delineate human character, and to create, or discover, a romantic interest in the incidents of everyday life rather than in ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... sketches, in which an attempt is made to delineate, just as they occurred, those scenes which, to my mind at least, were new and interesting, were originally penned for the private perusal of those whom I esteem; and by their persuasion they are now offered to the public eye. Amongst them I must be permitted to ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr

... have——However, I didn't, and she couldn't. How full is life of these missed opportunities! ("You're leaving out his nose, Guv'nor!" from a Blazer, and giggles from idiotic girls in front.) I feel very forlorn and friendless up here. Professor has finished measuring, and is preparing to "delineate" me. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various

... communicated itself, influencing her; in fact her best work had often had the least care bestowed upon it. Did her inability to transfer to canvas a living copy of her own face argue that she herself was without character—had she failed because there was in truth nothing to delineate? Or was it because she sought to see something unreal—sought to control a purely inherent impulse? It was a problem ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... youthful, but aged in experience. Bonnetless, her luxuriant hair is set high upon her head, held by a square tortoise-shell comb, and carelessly thrown off her forehead with a parting on one side. Be sure some sad story underlies her career. She is of just that gypsy cast that painters love to delineate. They sit down at a side table and order ices, cake, and champagne. These are consumed amid jests and laughter, the spurious champagne, at a fabulous cost, is drunk merrily, the hours creep on, and the couple retire to give place to others, after having furnished a picture of ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... crags that hang here and there above the gorge hold in their rugged rock sculpture no facial similitudes, no suggestions. The jagged outlines of shelving bluffs delineate no gigantic profile against the sky beyond. One might seek far and near, and scan the vast slope with alert and expectant gaze, and view naught of the semblance that from time immemorial has given the mountain its name. Yet the imagination needs but scant aid when suddenly ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... which occurred between the time of being "hatcheled" and that of being "woven," that it exceeds my powers to delineate. All around me seemed to be in a state of inextricable confusion, out of which order finally appeared in the shape of a piece of cambric, of a quality that brought the workmen far and near to visit it. We were a single ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper

... great heiress, whose name is Aurelia, was the most celebrated beauty of the whole country; if I said the whole kingdom, or indeed all Europe, perhaps I should barely do her justice. I don't pretend to be a limner, gemmen; nor does it become me to delineate such excellence; but surely I may presume to ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... many glorious once And perfet while they stood; how last unfould The secrets of another world, perhaps Not lawful to reveal? yet for thy good 570 This is dispenc't, and what surmounts the reach Of human sense, I shall delineate so, By lik'ning spiritual to corporal forms, As may express them best, though what if Earth Be but the shaddow of Heav'n, and things therein Each to other like, more then on earth is thought? As yet this world was not, and Chaos wilde Reignd where these Heav'ns ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... reproduction of the people it describes, but a glowing, vivid portrayal of them, with all the pulsating sympathy of one who understands them, their thoughts and feelings, with all the picturesque fidelity of the artist who appreciates the spiritual significance of that which he seeks to delineate.—Hebrew Journal. ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... history, such as Lu of the Han and Wu of the T'ang dynasties, but she has no law providing for the succession of a female under any conditions. A female reign is abnormal, and the ruler a monstrosity. Her character is always blackened so as to make it difficult to delineate. Yet in every instance those women have possessed rare talent; for without uncommon gifts it must have been impossible to seize a sceptre in the face of such prejudices, and to sway it over a submissive people. Usually they are described much ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... sensed the war to better advantage than at Luxeuil or Bar-le-Duc. When there is activity on the lines the rumble of heavy artillery reaches us in a heavy volume of sound. From the field one can see the line of sausage-shaped observation balloons, which delineate the front, and beyond them the high-flying airplanes, darting like swallows in the shrapnel puffs of anti-air-craft fire. The roar of motors that are being tested, is punctuated by the staccato barking of machine ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell

... his office. He was a tubby man, with eyes like boiled gooseberries. No one could guess from his face what manner of man he might be, whether generous or mean, hot-tempered or good-humoured, because all those marks which are supposed to delineate character were in him obliterated by adipose tissue. You had to take him as you found him. But for the rest he was a merchant who owned a lucrative business and a few small blunt-nosed steamers that traded along the ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... at an understanding of its purpose. such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be altogether ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... in their nature, so freely applicable to all times and places, that the artist may be allowed to delineate any people, anywhere, at any time. Nursery rhymes, so often alluded to, lend themselves to an endless variety of imaginary people and places. The old woman might be living still in her shoe and whipping her children soundly, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... up by the roots, with rain and dew and earth still clinging to them, giving a freshness and a fragrance not otherwise to be conveyed. In other cases, as in the few poems of shipwreck or of mental conflict, we can only wonder at the gift of vivid imagination by which this recluse woman can delineate, by a few touches, the very crises of physical or mental struggle. And sometimes again we catch glimpses of a lyric strain, sustained perhaps but for a line or two at a time, and making the reader regret its sudden cessation. But the main quality of these poems is that of extraordinary ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson

... not gained a place on the French stage, it nevertheless possesses some fine passages. Molire wished to create a counterpart of Sganarelle, the type of ridiculous jealousy, and to delineate passionate jealousy, its doubts, fears, perplexities and anxieties, and in this he has succeeded admirably. However noble-minded Don Garcia may be, there rages within his soul a mean passion which tortures and degrades him incessantly. When at last he is banished from the presence of the fair object ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere

... so many glorious once And perfect while they stood? how last unfold The secrets of another world, perhaps Not lawful to reveal? yet for thy good This is dispensed; and what surmounts the reach Of human sense, I shall delineate so, By likening spiritual to corporal forms, As may express them best; though what if Earth Be but a shadow of Heaven, and things therein Each to other like, more than on earth is thought? As yet this world was not, and Chaos wild ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... at everybody else laughed at herself, and set her critical instinct to estimate her own capacity. To Mr. Clarke, the librarian of Carlton House, who had requested her to "delineate a clergyman" of earnestness, enthusiasm, and learning, she replied:—"I am quite honored by your thinking me capable of drawing such a clergyman as you gave the sketch of in your note. But I assure you I am not. The comic part of the character I might be equal to, but not the good, the enthusiastic, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... conduct which would bitterly have scandalised Lady Foljambe, could she have seen it. By the time that Kate returned with the articles prescribed, Agatha had possessed herself of a lighted candle, wherein she burnt the end of the cork, and with it proceeded to delineate, in the middle of the sheet, a very clever sketch of a ferocious Turk, with moustaches of stupendous length. Then elevating the long mop till it reached about a yard above her head, she instructed Kate to arrange the sheet thereon in such ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... Alms-house itself, its Governors, and Inhabitants, I have not much to offer in favour of the subject or of the character. One of these, Sir Denys Brand, may be considered as too highly placed for an author, who seldom ventures above middle life, to delineate; and, indeed, I had some idea of reserving him for another occasion, where he might have appeared with those in his own rank: but then it is most uncertain whether he would ever appear, and he has been so many years prepared for the public, whenever opportunity might ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... to delineate an escape wheel for a detached lever. We place a piece of good drawing-paper on our drawing-board and provide ourselves with a very hard (HHH) drawing-pencil and a bottle of liquid India ink. After placing our paper on the board, we draw, with the aid of our T-square, a line ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous

... generically speaking, a humbug, and that the old English sailing craft and the old English stage-coach are, after all, the only modes of conveyance worthy the patronage of Britons. Against exaggerated hoop-skirts he has all along set his face, and seldom, if ever, condescends to delineate a lady in crinoline. His beau-ideal of female beauty is comprised in an hour-glass waist, a skirt that fits close to the form, a sandalled shoe, and very long ringlets; whereas tight lacing, narrow skirts, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... which there are several lateral and one central, all of which run parallel and warpwise. The main figures are four, two grotesquely suggestive of a crocodile but more nearly portraying a turtle, and two that delineate the fanciful figure of a woman. The intermediate parts of the panels consist of reticulations whose general design depends upon the skill and whim of ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... and notable enterprise of that worthie Gentleman maister Thomas Sackford, in procuring the Charts of the seuerall prouinces of this realme to be set foorth, we are in hope that in time he will delineate this whole land so perfectlie, as shall be comparable or beyond anie delineation heretofore made of anie other region; and therefore leaue that to his well deserued praise. If any well willer will imitate him in so praiseworthie a worke for the two other regions, we will be glad ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (1 of 12) - William the Conqueror • Raphael Holinshed

... have been the more anxious to delineate fully the person and habits of Wouter Van Twiller, from the consideration that he was not only the first but also the best governor that ever presided over this ancient and respectable province; and so tranquil and benevolent was his reign, that I do not find ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... own personal state before God, is that of seeing its evidences shed lustre over the disposition and conduct of others. Bright was the exhibition of the union between true Christian enjoyment and Christian exertion, in the character whose moral and spiritual features I am attempting to delineate. ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond

... of this book is to tell the story of Burton's life, to delineate as vividly as possible his remarkable character—his magnetic personality, and to defend him alike from enemy and friend. In writing it my difficulties have been two. First, Burton himself was woefully inaccurate ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... word does not satisfy me, nor can I think of one that will delineate my idea. I must make use of a phrase, "picturesquely beautiful," to express my admiration of the scenery of those shores. I have no hesitation in pronouncing it ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... of the past will prepare the reader to look at the pictures we are about to sketch, with less surprise than he might otherwise feel; and a few additional explanations may carry him back in imagination to the precise condition of society that we desire to delineate. It is matter of history that the settlements on the eastern shores of the Hudson, such as Claverack, Kinderhook, and even Poughkeepsie, were not regarded as safe from Indian incursions a century since; and there is still standing ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... memory, and thus implore His regard. Perishable and imperfect is everything human: but in these very qualities I find the best reason for striving to attain what is least so. Would not any father be gratified by seeing his child attempt to delineate his features? And would not the gratification be rather increased than diminished by his incapacity? How long shall the narrow mind of man stand between goodness and omnipotence? Perhaps the effigy of your ancestor Isknos is unlike ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... had to confront about myself was that I was being a compassionate fool. I needed to learn how to maintain my own personal boundaries, and clearly delineate what stuff in my mind and my body was really mine and what was another's. I needed to apply certain mental techniques of self-protection known to and practiced by many healers. I knew beyond doubt that I had developed sympathetic breast cancer ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... some figures that cannot be painted, as there are some melodies which cannot be uttered by the softest wind which ever swept the harp of Aeolus. You can scarcely delineate a star, and the glories of the sunset die away, and live not upon canvas. How difficult, then, the task you have imposed upon me, amigo mio—to seal up in a wicker flask that moonlight; chain down, by words, that flitting and almost imperceptible ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... These marks delineate his various excursions in the town; and I follow the lines on, through street and lane; and across broad squares; and penetrate with them into the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... we are about to delineate, were whole-souled enough to elicit the respect of all who knew them, hence they made lasting friends, whilst to their own immediate family their loss is irreparable, and it is hard to realize that they are no more; for who is there among us who does not know what it is ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles

... landscapes and figures. He was a sober, diligent, and ingenious young man, and greatly regretted by Mr Banks; who hoped, by his means, to have gratified his friends in England with representations of this country and its inhabitants, which no other person on board could delineate with the same accuracy and elegance. He had always been subject to epileptic fits, one of which seized him on the mountains of Terra del Fuego, and this disorder being aggravated by a bilious complaint which he contracted on board the ship, at ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... old stock of information. And if this be the case in general, how much more must be gained by the particular voyages now under consideration? Besides naval officers equally skilled to examine the coasts they might approach, as to delineate them accurately upon their charts, artists[51] were engaged, who, by their drawings, might illustrate what could only be imperfectly described; mathematicians,[52] who might treasure up an extensive series of scientific observations; and persons versed in the various departments ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... I profess only to delineate in this work the rise and fall of the Athenians, so I shall not deem it at present necessary to do more than glance at the condition of the continent of Greece previous to the time of Solon. Sparta alone will demand a ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... I am to describe in the last few pages of this volume! The task is far beyond my strength. In the future, some writer may delineate that hideous dream—to do so to-day, in this year 1868, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke



Words linked to "Delineate" :   diagrammatic, undelineated, define, outline, trace, limn, depicted, contour, delimitate, circumscribe, diagrammatical, line, determine, draw, depict, redefine



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