"Mannerism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my dear sir!" The professor turned beamingly upon me and continued, dropping into a Whistlerian mannerism that he had sometimes: "You must not blame that great wind of a Keredec for preaching at other people to listen. It gives the poor man more room for himself ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... the chart like a boy investigating a new mechanical toy. He was so interested that he forgot himself and pushed his hair straight back off his forehead with the gesture that had become an unconscious mannerism, spoiling utterly the plastered effect which he had with so much pains given to his hair. But Hank and the fireman were neither suspicious nor observing, and only laughed at his exuberance, which they believed was going ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... teacher.—Strange as it may seem, the teacher may himself be a distraction in the classroom. Any striking mannerism, any peculiarity of manner or carriage, extreme types of dress, or any personal quality that attracts attention to itself is a distraction to the class. One teacher may have a very loud or ill-modulated voice; another may speak too low to be heard without too much ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... For Nature, who abhors mannerism, has set her heart on breaking up all styles and tricks, and it is so much easier to do what one has done before than to do a new thing, that there is a perpetual tendency to a set mode. In every conversation, even the highest, there is a certain trick, ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... confusion. "I have it yet. In those days misfortune had not curbed it. I had not learned to be charitable. When I was a child I used to ride with my father to the hunts at St. Gre, and I was too ready to pick out the weaknesses of his guests. If one of the company had a trick or a mannerism, I never failed to catch it. People used to ask me what I thought of such and such a person, and that was bad for me. I saw their failings and pretensions, but I ignored my own. It was the same at Abbaye aux Bois, the convent where I was taught. When I was presented to her Majesty I saw why people ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... conventionality, every one of the ten thousand ceremonial observances to which natives attach so vast an importance. He must grow to understand each one of the hints and doubles ententes, of which Malays make such frequent use, every little mannerism, sign and token, and, most difficult of all, every motion of the hearts, and every turn of thought, of those whom he is beginning to call his own people. He must become conscious of native Public Opinion, which is ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... walked, in which he sat, in which he stood, and, above all, in which he bowed." The Whig historian, here following the Whig tradition, formed his estimate of the whole man from what was merely a parliamentary mannerism. Pitt, as we have seen, was a prey to shyness and gaucherie; and the rigid attitude which he adopted for the House was not so much the outcome of a sense of superiority (though he had an able man's consciousness of worth) as a screen to hide those defects. A curiously stilted manner ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... a great literary school is usually signalized by the exaggeration of its characteristic traits. The manner of the Elisabethan poets was {143} pushed into mannerism by their successors. That manner, at its best, was hardly a simple one, but in the Stuart and Commonwealth writers it became mere extravagance. Thus Phineas Fletcher—a cousin of the dramatist—composed a long Spenserian allegory, the Purple ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... that the belief of them will tend to make us all more reverent and earnest in examining the utterances of others, more simple and truthful in giving vent to our own, fearing equally all prejudiced and hasty criticism, all self-willed mannerism, all display of fine words, as sins against the divine dignity of language. From these assertions I think we may conclude what is the true method of studying style. The critical examination of good authors, looking at language as an inspiration, and its laws as things independent ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... distorted. Burlesque and satire are never far away in their most serious moments. Not even the calmest and best ordered of Spanish minds can resist a tendency to excess of all sorts, to over-elaboration, to grotesquerie, to deadening mannerism. All that is greatest in their art, indeed, lies on the borderland of the extravagant, where sublime things skim the thin ice of absurdity. The great epic, Don Quixote, such plays as Calderon's La Vida es Sueno, such paintings as El ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... This set, formal mannerism is entirely inconsistent with that commanding, intellectual influence, which the teacher should exert in the administration of his school. He should work, with what an artist calls boldness and freedom of touch. Activity and enterprise ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... inclusion. The Essay on Conversation, however, seemed pretty peremptorily to challenge a place. It is in a style which Fielding was very slow to abandon, which indeed has left strong traces even on his great novels; and if its mannerism is not now very attractive, the separate traits in it are often sharp and well-drawn. The book would not have been complete without a specimen or two of Fielding's journalism. The Champion, his first attempt of this kind, has not ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... forty years of the sixteenth century. The most perfect buildings of the Italian Renaissance were produced within this short space of time. The third, again comprising about forty years, from 1540 to 1580, leads onward to the reign of mannerism and exaggeration, called by the Italians barocco. In itself the third period is distinguished by a scrupulous purism bordering upon pedantry, strict adherence to theoretical rules, and sacrifice of inventive qualities to established canons. To do more than briefly indicate the masterpieces ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Death of His Mother, should disclaim the artificial aid of the muses, saying that his own deep feeling was enough to inspire him. As the romantic movement progressed, it would be easy to show that distaste for the eighteenth century mannerism resulted in more and more flippant treatment of the goddesses. Beattie refers to a contemporary's "reptile Muse, swollen from the sty." [Footnote: See On a Report of a Monument to a Late Author.] Burns alludes to his own Muse as a "tapitless ramfeezled hizzie," [Footnote: ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... Hunt is excellently qualified for the task which he has now undertaken. His style, in spite of its mannerism, nay, partly by reason of its mannerism, is well-suited for light, garrulous, desultory ana, half critical, half biographical. We do not always agree with his literary judgments; but we find in him ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... there is no better lecture on the prevailing vices of style and thought (if thought this frothy ferment of the mind may be called) than in Cotton Mather's "Magnalia." For Mather, like a true provincial, appropriates only the mannerism, and, as is usual in such cases, betrays all its weakness by the unconscious parody ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... frighten him, not just at first—that would be time enough afterwards, or if he turned rusty—so he spoke to the little lad as smoothly as he knew how. But genuine gentle speech cannot be assumed at will. It is not a mannerism merely put on, but an outcome of kindly acts and pure thoughts; and Darby was quick to detect the false quality in Joe's tones as ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... Feuvre's qualities are very nearly the reverse of these: he has a fondness for integrity quite hostile in his case to simplicity. In his very frank appeal to one's susceptibility he is a little careless of sculptural considerations, which he is prone to sacrifice to pictorial ends. The result is a mannerism that in the end ceases to impress, and even becomes disagreeable. As nearly as may be in a French sculptor it borders on sentimentality, and finally the swaying attitudes of his figures become limp, and the startled-fawn eyes of his maidens and youths appear less touching ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... represented: but the injuries of time and neglect have been so great that it is difficult to judge them fairly. All we feel for certain is that Masolino had not yet escaped from the traditional Giottesque mannerism. Only a group of Jews stoning Stephen, and Lawrence before the tribunal, remind us by dramatic energy of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... appeared in May, 1818. It aims at comparatively little, but is perfectly successful in its aim, and unsurpassed for the incisiveness of its side strokes, and the courtly ease of a manner that never degenerates into mannerism. In Mazeppa the poet reverts to his earlier style, and that of Scott; the description of the headlong ride hurries us along with a breathless expectancy that gives it a conspicuous place among his minor efforts. The passage about the howling of the wolves, and the ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... stronger than it was. In figure she was delicate, but radiant of life and health—aglow, not ablaze. She was neither tall nor short, and was dressed simply, but in the fashion—I heard the other women discussing her clothes after she left. And she still had the mannerism that was most fascinating to me—she kept her eyes down while she was talking or listening, and raised them now and then with a full, ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... matter in question, and there to leave it. Now first I will say, that, when I became a Catholic, nothing struck me more at once than the English out-spoken manner of the Priests. It was the same at Oscott, at Old Hall Green, at Ushaw; there was nothing of that smoothness, or mannerism, which is commonly imputed to them, and they were more natural and unaffected than many an Anglican clergyman. The many years, which have passed since, have only confirmed my first impression. I have ever found it in the priests of ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... a curious thing, is it not," he said one day to the writer, "that two of the principal men on Punch, du Maurier and I, have only two eyes between them?" Yet it only made him the more careful. Free from mannerism, he never allowed carefulness to interfere with fun, and his cartoon of Britannia discovering the source of the Nile, and of Lord Beaconsfield as a peri entering the Paradise of Premiership, are among the memorably funny things of Punch. His elevation to the leading ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... it has grown to be a part of my nature, as features habituated to a mask insensibly assume to some extent its outlines. I will try to put aside my flippant hollow attempts at persiflage, which constitute my worldly mannerism, and tell you in a few simple words. When I was about your age, I think my nature must have resembled yours, for many of your ideas and views of duty in this life remind me in a mournfully vague, tender way of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... been full of Hebrew poetry and Gospel ethics; until they had struck deep root into his heart, and the very expressions had become a part of him; so that he rarely spoke without some antique idiom or Scripture mannerism that gave a raciness to the merest trivialities of talk. But the influence of the Bible did not stop here. There was more in Robert than quaint phrase and ready store of reference. He was imbued with a spirit of peace ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it in your way." He was very quick at noticing any mannerisms or favourite words. "All good writers have mannerisms, of course," he would say, "but the moment that the reader sees that it is a mannerism the charm is gone." His praise was rarely given, and when it came it was generous and rich. "That is excellent," I can hear him say, "You have filled your space exactly, and filled it well. There is not a word to add or to take away." He was always prepared ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... manifest verisimilitude, so we feel from every chapter of this book that the author has, with strictest fidelity, adhered to real life with pre-Raphaelitic accuracy but without pre-Raphaelitic servility to any tradition or set mannerism. The pencil of a reporter, the lens of the photographer, are recalled by his sketches, and not less life-like, simple and excellent are the reflections of the business office as shown in its influence in the home circle. The reader will recall the extraordinary ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... too large or too small for the scene; and his execution was likewise too softened. He winds up this part of the subject with a quotation from Diderot, that "he cannot be manner'd, either in design or colouring, who imitates nature scrupulously, and that mannerism comes of the master of the academy, of the school, and of the Antique," which we very much doubt, for the mannerism is often in the mind, the peculiar, the autographic character of the painter, which he stamps even upon nature. Were a Wynantz, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... small sequestered loveliness. The constant recurrence of similar combinations of colour and outline gradually forces upon us a sense of how the harmony has been built up, and we become familiar with something of nature's mannerism. This is the true pleasure of your 'rural voluptuary,'—not to remain awe-stricken before a Mount Chimborazo; not to sit deafened over the big drum in the orchestra, but day by day to teach himself some new beauty—to experience ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... people as a studious observer of this aspect of human nature, neither adopting their costume nor imitating their manners. She was very unostentatious and simple in her style of dress, and never, in the slightest degree, affected the mannerism ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... art should be able, before and above all, to portray humanity in its essential truth, and according to the original tendency of each type. Mannerism and affectation should forever be proscribed—unless they are imitated as an exercise—but all the excellence that chance has produced up to the present time should be incorporated ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... on the general question of their honesty, and of their internal belief in their religious professions. First, I will say that when I became a Catholic, nothing struck me more at once than the English outspoken manner of the priests. There was nothing of that smoothness or mannerism which is commonly imputed to them. Next, I was struck, when I had more opportunity of judging of the priests, by the simple faith in the Catholic creed and system, of which they always give evidence, and which ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... "Demeter," those shrivelled blossoms from the stout old laurels touched with frost of winter and old age. But I find little to dwell upon in either of them. Browning has more sap of life—Tennyson more ripe and mellow mastery. Each is here in the main reproducing his mannerism. ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... of Pathans, of drilling by companies and of agriculture; and he writes as one from whom no craft could hide its mysteries. This fascination of mere craft, this delight in the technicalities and dialect of the world's work, is not a mannerism. It is not a parade of omniscience or the madness of a note-book worm. It is fundamental in Mr Kipling. It is wrong to think of Between the Devil and the Deep Sea or of .007 as the unfortunate rioting of an amateur machinist. To those who object ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... limitation—beauty. Hence, though his span of life was short, his work is imperishable. He steadily progressed: but he was ever true, beautiful and pure, and freer than any other master from superficiality and mannerism. He produced a vast number of pictures, elevating to men of every race and of every age, and before whose immortal beauty artists of every school unite in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... been no fairies here since I was a very little girl. But once upon a time there were many—oh, a great many." It was impossible to describe the odd, sweet sound her tongue gave to the English words. It was not a dialect, hardly an accent, just a delicious, hesitating mannerism born ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... studied Miss Montague. She was blond—to his suspicious eye a trifle too blond—and she wore her hair bobbed. She was petite and, both in appearance and in mannerism, she was girlish; nevertheless, she was self-reliant, and there was a certain maturity to her well-rounded figure, a suggestion of weariness about her ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... quotation from the utterances of darling Mr. Povey on the stairs, and Sophia delivered them with an exact imitation of Mr. Povey's vocal mannerism. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... he still any marks of the ignoble world from which he sprang? Any defect of pronunciation, any native awkwardness of utterance? Impossible to judge himself infallibly, but he was conscious of no vulgar mannerism. Though it was so long since he left Whitelaw, the accent of certain of the Professors still remained with him as an example: when endeavouring to be graceful, he was wont to hear the voice of Dr Nares, or of Professor Barber who lectured on English Literature. More recently he ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... liked stories are "Death," "The Federal Capital," "Paradise," "The Conquest," and "Mirage." Netto's short stories are very popular; at one time every other youth in Brazil was imitating his every mannerism. He is particularly felicitous in his descriptions of tropical nature, which teem with glowing life ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... once made should be considered finished. The hands should not stray to the hair to re-adjust hair-pins—an absent-minded habit. The nervous toying with ear-rings or brooches, or dress buttons, is another mannerism to be guarded against. The hands should learn the grace of repose. It is a great triumph of nervous control for a woman to hold her hands still when they are not ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... our hero revelled awhile under the protection of Sir Charles Sterling, and the petting of peers, Members of Parliament, and loungers who swarm therein. Certain gentlemen of Stock Exchange mannerism and dressiness gave the protege the go-by, and even sneered at those who noticed him with kindness. But then these are of the men with whom every question is checked by money, and is balanced on the pivot of profit and loss. I dare say some of them thought the worse of Judas only ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... and a wave of strong fresh blood was sent through its veins. Without them, perhaps, we should never have had the same appeal to the imagination and the nobler instincts in the Sistine paintings, although there is not in the whole of the work one single mannerism from Signorelli's style.[93] But what is called the "Terribilita" of the older master was entirely free from the sombre melancholy which strikes so gloomy a note in the work of Michelangelo. Signorelli's greatest gift to ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... is a joy to his present company, but the eccentric mannerism of one is much easier to imitate than the charm of another, and the subjects of the habitual mimic are all too ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... frown at her newspaper deepened; otherwise she made no response. She learned with difficulty, like a Bourbon; but many years' experience had at last convinced her that her daughter's occasional mocking mannerism had to be put up with. Conceivably there were people in the world who might have liked this mild cynical way of Carlisle's, seeing in it, not indeed a good quality, but, so to say, the seamy side of a good quality; the lingering outpost of a good quality that had been routed; at least the headstone ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... though he fought to refrain from backward glances, he was now and again taken off his guard. A few of her pencil marks on the margin of a leaf in one of his books; a gesture, a little mannerism of some woman passing him in the street—and he would be ready to sink down with weariness and loneliness, like a tired ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... Davis Cup trip happened to be "Peach" for any particularly good shot by my opponent. The gallery at the Championship, quick to appreciate any mannerism of a player, and to, know him by it, enjoyed the remark on many occasions as the ball went floating by me. In my match with Kingscote in the final set, the court was very slippery owing to the heavy drizzle ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... before the "style pompadour" began to make itself shown with regard to garden design—the exaggeration of an undeniable grace by an affected mannerism. All the rococco details which had been applied to architecture now began to find their duplication in the garden rockeries—weird fantasies built of plaster and even shells ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... infinite variety is the characteristic of Dante's style, as it is of his invention. With a stronger individuality than any poet of any age or country, there is not a trace of mannerism in all his poem. The stern, the tender, the grand, simple exposition, fierce satire, and passionate appeal have each their appropriate words and their appropriate cadence. This Cary did not perceive, and has told the stories of Francesca and of Ugolino with the same Miltonian ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... vices and the eccentricities of the age. As a specimen of prose style it is remarkable for its spirit and "go," qualities which may enable us to forget how turbid, ungraceful, and harsh it is. Nash had now dropped the mannerism of the Euphuists; he had hardly gained a style of his own. "Pierce Penniless," with its chains of "letter-leaping metaphors," rattles breathlessly on, and at length abruptly ceases. Any sense of the artistic fashioning of a sentence, or of the relative harmony ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... inevitable that American music should for long be only a more or less successful employment of European methods. And there was little possibility, according to all precedents in art history, that any striking individuality should rise suddenly to found a school based upon his own mannerism. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... which will scarcely be credited. A party of negroes were seen around a card-table, with money beside them, engaged in betting; glasses of liquor were on the table, from which they ever and anon regaled themselves with all the nonchalance and affected mannerism of the most fashionable blades of the ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... writer has probably never devoted a minute's thought to, and which come upon him as a surprise when they are pointed out to him. Their detection is rendered the more easy when one knows what to look for from the fact that they are, unlike gestures and tricks of voice, permanent. A mannerism may not strike two observers in the same way, nor is it easy to compare, for it is fleeting, and the memory has to be relied upon to recall a former gesture in order to compare it with the last. It is not so with a hand-gesture in writing. The sign remains side by side ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... sister, and it was sealed in heaven, but I haven't got a license to marry, so that the Gentiles would say—that the knot wasn't tied, ye know." The last words were a lapse into common parlance. She had grown accustomed to the hybrid nature of his mannerism. ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... sun, himself, and we hasten with bits of smoked glass to view the eclipse. Happily, we have chosen the right medium: the luminousness is destroyed, but the opaqueness remains visible. Entrenched behind a mannerism so adroitly constructed as at once to invite and repel invasion, Emerson hurls out axioms and establishes precedents that prove upon examination to be either admirably varnished editions of old truths or statements of new ones of questionable legitimacy. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... appeared in 1744. Whoever, after reading that life, will turn to the other lives will be struck by the difference of style. Since Johnson had been at ease in his circumstances he had written little and had talked much. When, therefore, he, after the lapse of years, resumed his pen, the mannerism which he had contracted while he was in the constant habit of elaborate composition was less perceptible than formerly; and his diction frequently had a colloquial ease which it had formerly wanted. The improvement may be discerned ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... her are scrolls, and a sombre sky is behind the figure. Invocation, a girl in white robes with arms raised above her head, and a Portrait of Mrs. F. Lucas, were also shown; but Greek Girls playing at Ball is not only the most important, but is also a picture that shows the mannerism of Lord Leighton's treatment of drapery at its finest. Elsewhere the undulating snaky coils may be somewhat distressing, here they float in the air and help the suggestion of movement. The landscape at the back is also both typical and beautiful. An Elegy was the ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... sense than that it bears in the expression "style-book," the Danish equivalent for what in English is termed an "exercise-book," I tried to acquire a certain style, and was very near falling into mannerism, from sheer inexperience, when a sarcastic master, to my distress, reminded me one day of Heiberg's words: "The unguent of expression, smeared thickly ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... literally the promise of his Master, "I will make you fishers of men." for he was quite content to be a fisher. Let us hope that occasionally, as by a miracle, his lenient Master enabled him to catch some well-disposed sinner; but as a rule his mannerism, his set phrases, his utter lack of magnetism and appreciation of the various shades of character with which he was dealing, repelled even those who respected his motive and mission. Sensitive, sad-hearted women like Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred could ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... Mandeville would say that acting has got into a mannerism which is well described as stagey, and is supposed to be natural to the stage; just as half the modern poets write in a recognized form of literary manufacture, without the least impulse from within, and not with the purpose of saying anything, but of turning out a piece of literary work. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the felicity with which Toepffer illustrates the true aim of Art, as being the expression, the idealization, and not the rigid copy of Nature. He maintains that Nature should be the only teacher, and that we are to be wedded to no man's mannerism. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... most careful not to indicate by some mannerism that his hand is trickless. By pulling a card before it is his turn to play, by apparent lack of interest, or by allowing himself to be wrapped in gloom, he may give the Declarer as much information as if he spread his ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... whole thing, from the beginning," the newsman was saying. "So I checked. If you recall, the actor impersonating Salgath gestured rather freely with his hands, in imitation of a well-known mannerism of the real Salgath Trod; at one point, the ball of his right thumb was presented directly to the pickup. Here's a still of ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... de Mena introduces Villena into his "Laberinto," in an agreeable stanza, which has something of the mannerism of Dante. ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... theatre music. We can merely guess at what his employers asked him to provide. We can never know the means they placed at his disposal. One significant thing must be noted here: the music itself—its style, spirit, even mannerism—affords us no trustworthy clue as to when any particular piece may have been written. For ages the biographical copyists have not ceased to marvel at a boy of fourteen writing the Macbeth music. It is silly rubbish, with which I believe Purcell had nothing whatever to do. They marvelled ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... long for this world. The only actor upon the French or English stage with whom we can compare him is the veteran Farren. But the comparison is to the advantage of the Frenchman, whose chief characteristic is his entire freedom from mannerism and stage trick. Mr. Farren is of the old and sterling school of actors, of which, unfortunately, so few remain. He stands first in his line upon the English boards, and deserves to be spoken of with all respect. Would that we had a dozen as good. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... issue the thoughts whose significance the world is ever more and more ready to acknowledge. France even, selfish and proud of its past supremacy in all things, has within the last quarter of a century laid aside much of its exclusiveness, and a Germanic infusion is perceptible through all the mannerism of the latest and best productions of the French school. Comparatively of late years is it, that the English mind has fairly come in contact with this German culture. Its first loud manifestation may be heard in the prose of Carlyle and his school; yet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... of his mind, which proves to us his acquired mastery in art, as this shows us the extent of his original capacity for it, is his wonderful variety, nay universality; his entire freedom from the Mannerism. We read Goethe for years, before we come to see wherein the distinguishing peculiarity of his understanding, of his disposition, even of his way of writing, consists. It seems quite a simple style that of his; remarkable chiefly ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... retrogrades: having reached its meridian point, when the hour of perfection has gone by, it must verge to its decline. In all Art, perfection lapses into that weakened state too often dignified as classical imitation; but it sinks into mannerism, and wantons into affectation, till it shoots out into fantastic novelties. When all languishes in a state of mediocrity, or is deformed by false tastes, then is reserved for a fortunate genius the glory of restoring another golden age of invention. The history ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... of the schools of Italy, and especially of the followers of Michael Angelo and Raphael, into mannerism and exaggeration, fitly expressed in delineation of heathen gods and goddesses, there arose a cluster of painters in the North of Italy who had considerable influence ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... by side I show my parody of his style and composition—not, as you will observe, a caricature of any one picture, but a boiling down of all into an original picture of my own in which I emphasise his mannerisms. Furthermore, in my catalogue I parodied the same artist's mannerism in drawing in black and white, and with one or two exceptions this applies to all the works I exhibited. I hit upon a new idea for the illustrated catalogue. The illustrations, with few exceptions, did ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... at the end a 'deliver us'—from evil it might be, certainly from no great temptation. Let the world believe it—it will some day—English thought is at present exhausted, stagnant, and imitative. It is cursed with mannerism, even as the Chinese are cursed, and every honest man of mind knows it. In such a state of national art it is cheerful to open a volume like these poems, in which one hears, as it were, the first lark-notes of an early dawn ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... been by Johnson, Gibbon poured balm upon my bruises by condescending once or twice in the course of the evening to talk with me. The great historian was light and playful, suiting his matter to the capacity of the boy: but it was done more suo—still his mannerism prevailed, still he tapped his snuff-box, still he smirked and smiled, and rounded his periods with the same air of good-breeding, as if he were conversing with men. His mouth, mellifluous as Plato's, was a round hole nearly in the centre of his visage." ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... in their combination of high thought with deep feeling, have rarely, if at all, been surpassed. The rhetorical manner was so essentially part of Seneca's nature, that the warm colouring and perpetual mannerism of his language does not imply any insincerity or want of earnestness. In spite of the laboured style, there is no failure either in lucidity or in force, and even where the rhetoric is most profuse, it seldom is without a solid ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... sinks to accents of awe when they reflect upon the incidents of their former serfdom. Now Samson stands forth. In a broad arioso, half recitative, half cantilena, wholly in the oratorio style when it does not drop into the mannerism of Meyerbeerian opera, he admonishes his brethren of their need to trust in God, their duty to worship Him, of His promises to aid them, of the wonders that He had already wrought in their behalf; he bids them to put off their doubts and ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... maturer mind has perceived the error. It is a common thing to hear such and such statues, or pictures, recommended as models. If the advice is followed,—as it too often is literally,—the consequence must be an offensive mannerism; for, if repeating himself makes an artist a mannerist, he is still more likely to become one if he repeat another. There is but one model that will not lead him astray,—which is Nature: we do not mean what ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... its own; whimsical, contorted, and overloaded with ornament as it is, it yet compels admiration by its vigorous life and movement. The art of the sei-cento in Venice was extravagant, but it was alive. It escaped the most deadly of all faults, a cold and academic mannerism—and this at a time when the rest of Italy was given over to the inflated followers of Michelangelo and the calculated elaborations of ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... The mannerism of Professor Legros is still, of course, a common denominator for the older men, and the younger artists evince a familiarity with drawing unusual in England, due to the admirable training of Professor Brown and Mr. Henry Tonks. The Spartan Mr. Tonks may not ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... which he has gathered in the course of his experience, he proceeds to construct a drama or novel, a picture or statue. Now, the first period, says Taine, is that of genuine art; the second is that of mannerism. Our author cites the case of Michael Angelo, a man who was one of the most colossal embodiments of physical and mental energy that the world has ever seen. In Michael Angelo's case, the period of growth, of genuine art, may be said to have lasted until after his sixtieth ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... angular, so suggestive of blood-drip and brooding horror; its rooms so peeled, meagre and creaking—depravity so sincere. Crime certainly had not been spared around the world to furnish its living actors for Treasure Island Inn. All the ragtag was there—not a lust nor a mannerism missing. ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... a mannerism which amused the House at the time, but did nothing to obscure the genuine qualities of Sir Walter, or lessen the esteem in which he was held. It cannot be said that the House of Commons was habitually moved by his argument in debate. But he was held in its warmest esteem, and his memory ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Empedocles, ruled by two human-like antitheses, Love and Hate. Even to Thales, an observing, positive spirit that calculates eclipses, the world is full of daemons, remains of primitive animism.[63] In Plato, even leaving out his theory of Ideas, the employment of myth is not merely a playful mannerism, but ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... rested, we looked at the pictures in Malines. The "Miraculous Draught of Fishes" is thought by many to be the chef-d'oeuvre of Rubens, but, after conceding it a hardy conception and magnificent colouring, I think one finds too much of the coarse mannerism of the artist, even for such a subject. The most curious part of the study of the different schools is to observe how much all have been influenced by external objects, and how completely conventional, after ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... elsewhere, in order to act more strongly on the human emotions by the effect of contrast. In describing the ugly it awakens desire for the beautiful. Art should be spontaneous and exuberant with the truth of conviction; it should be free from mannerism and all dogmatism, intellectual or moral. The positive aesthetic sentiment, or sentiment of beauty is very relative, and depends essentially on the phylogenetic adaptation of the human sentiments, as well as on individual habits and popular customs. ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... in study of the picture, Mr. Sumner continued: "There is a singular mannerism in the backgrounds of Leonardo's pictures. It is the representation of running water between rocks,—a strange fancy. We see the suggestion of it through the window behind Christ in the Last Supper, and it forms the entire background of the famous ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... chalky white, his violet shadows on pale faces, his love of green. [Mr. Ellis finds this 'predilection for green' significant as anticipating one of the characteristics of the Spanish palette.] His distorted fever of movement—the lean, twisted bodies, the frenzied, gesticulating arms, the mannerism of large calves that taper down to pointed toes—usually fails to convince us. But in the audacities of his colouring he revealed the possibilities of new harmonies, of higher, brighter, cooler keys." The Count Orgaz burial scene at Toledo Mr. Ellis does not rank ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... his head from side to side in the strange racial mannerism. "Now hol' on a minnet, jedge," he said, defensively. "'Tain't like as if I didn't 'preciate what the docteh done. 'Tain't that. Docteh Trescott is er kind man, an' 'tain't like as if I didn't ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... of colonists have travelled and even lived in more lands than one. They have encountered vicissitudes and seen much that is odd and varied in nature and human nature. In consequence they are often pleasant and interesting talkers, refreshingly free from mannerism or self-consciousness. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... education; that, in fine, he, Dr. Dilman, if Paul consented, would take the younger, Eugene, with him into the city, where his education could be attended to, and where he, at least, might be saved from the influence of the barbarous mannerism and irreligious taint of these country "common schools." His reverence the doctor furthermore added, that Mr. Prying had no objection to the arrangement he proposed, and that he had conquered the repugnance that Mrs. Prying had to the separation of the brothers by the very flattering ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... walking towards him from the Marble Arch, and he saw that no mannerism of her gait had been changed. It was good to find her still Maisie, and, so to speak, his next-door neighbour. No greeting passed between them, because there had been ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... study. He did not ape. He sought principles. He drew up lists of effective and fetching mannerisms, till out of many such, culled from many writers, he was able to induce the general principle of mannerism, and, thus equipped, to cast about for new and original ones of his own, and to weigh and measure and appraise them properly. In similar manner he collected lists of strong phrases, the phrases of living language, phrases that ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... innermost recesses, and as slowly unfolded it. He always handled money in that careful fashion—a habit which he had inherited from his father and his grandfather before him, and of which he was entirely unconscious. Filtering down through so many generations, the mannerism had ceased at last to be merely a physical peculiarity, and had become strangely spiritual in its suggestion. The craving for possession, the singleness of desire, the tenacity of grasp, the dread of relinquishment, the cold-blooded ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... his edition was a failure. Johnson distrusted conjecture; but that there is not one happy conjectural emendation is only less glaringly untrue than the other assertion that there is not one new ingenious and satisfactory explanation. Even though we make allowance for Macaulay's mannerism, it is difficult to believe that he had honestly consulted the edition. Those who have worked with it know the force of Johnson's claim that not a single passage in the whole work had appeared to him corrupt which he had not attempted to restore, or obscure which he had not endeavoured to illustrate. ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... ordinary speech or even oral narration. What Anderson employs here is a stylized version of the American language, sometimes rising to quite formal rhetorical patterns and sometimes sinking to a self-conscious mannerism. But at its best, Anderson's prose style in Winesburg, Ohio is a supple instrument, yielding that "low fine music" which he admired so much in the stories ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... away daily increased, and the implacable St. Michael seemed to command that course. "You are not for him. You represent a whole artificial world in which he cannot breathe. I, the finest incarnation of the most exquisite mannerism of a bygone time, am your spiritual spouse, and you may not lightly renounce me. You have devoted yourself to graceful irrealities and must now abide by your choice." Thus the St. Michael had spoken in a dream ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... may have been fogs for centuries in London. I dare say there were. But no one saw them, and so we do not know anything about them. They did not exist till Art had invented them. Now, it must be admitted, fogs are carried to excess. They have become the mere mannerism of a clique, and the exaggerated realism of their method gives dull people bronchitis. Where the cultured catch an effect, the uncultured catch cold. And so, let us be humane, and invite Art to turn her wonderful eyes elsewhere. She has done so ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... something in common between these hands. They belong to men who are blood-relatives. It may be most obvious to you in the Greek e's, but to me there are many small points which indicate the same thing. I have no doubt at all that a family mannerism can be traced in these two specimens of writing. I am only, of course, giving you the leading results now of my examination of the paper. There were twenty-three other deductions which would be of more interest to experts than to you. They all tend to ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... called affected, as was his art, because it wasn't exactly like everybody else's. I have never yet come across the genius whose manner was exactly like everybody else's, and shyness, self-consciousness, counted for something in his, at least at the start. He had only to exaggerate this manner, or mannerism, to set London talking. It was the easier because rumours quickly began to go about of the darkened room in which he worked, of his turning night into day and day into night like Huysmans's hero, and of this or of that ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... dreamily. All are handsome, distinguished-looking, with good figures. In contrast to the piercing notes of the music, their dancing is smooth, noiseless, light. At the first musical phrase, they circle around; at the second, they gracefully part and join again. There is a slight mannerism ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... through his illness. The drawings of Amboise, the coast of Genoa, and the Glacier des Bois, though published later, were made before he had exchanged fancy for fact; and they bear, on the face of them, the obvious marks of an unhealthy state of mind. Harding, whose robust common-sense and breezy mannerism endeared him to the British amateur of his generation, was just the man to correct any morbid tendency. He had religious views in sympathy with his pupil, and he soon inoculated Ruskin with his contempt for the ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... magnificent; the Alban Hills of an intenser broken purple than I had yet seen them—their white towns blooming upon it like vague projected lights. It was like a piece of very modern painting, and a good example of how Nature has at times a sort of mannerism which ought to make us careful how we condemn out of hand the more refined and affected artists. The collection of marbles in the Casino (Winckelmann's) admirable and to be seen again. The famous Antinous crowned with lotus a strangely beautiful ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... clever man, Mason. I noted at dinner that in some manner you had destroyed Haggerty's photograph of your finger-tips. But I recognize you, and know you—your gestures, the turn of your head, every little mannerism. And if you do not do as I bid, I'll take my oath in court as to your identity. Besides,"—with a nod toward the suitcases—"if you're not the man, why this hurry? An hour. I see, fortunately, you have already changed your clothes. ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... Not one of the interrupters, if drafted on to the hustings, could have given a lucid or intelligent statement of his views, or indication that he was furnished with any, and yet not one slip on the part of a candidate, one inconsistent point, personal mannerism or peccadillo, but was remarked in an astonishingly humorous and ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... Cardinal's career, whether in old days or later, must have been struck with this feature of his character, his naturalness, the freshness and freedom with which he addressed a friend or expressed an opinion, the absence of all mannerism and formality; and, where he had to keep his dignity, both his loyal obedience to the authority which enjoined it and the half-amused, half-bored impatience that he should be the person round whom all these grand ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... your stance you will do well to give full effect to some such mannerism as Mr. WARNER'S trick of hitching up the left side of the trousers and tapping the ground seven times. And just as the bowler is about to start his run you can disconcert him by suddenly whipping round to see if they have moved another ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... said of an author's written language. Only, where shall we find an example of such perfection? Always easy, always lucid, always correct, we may find them; but who is the writer, easy, lucid, and correct, who has not impregnated his writing with something of that personal flavour which we call mannerism? To speak of authors well known to all readers—Does not The Rambler taste of Johnson; The Decline and Fall, of Gibbon; The Middle Ages, of Hallam; The History of England, of Macaulay; and The Invasion of the Crimea, of Kinglake? Do we not know the elephantine tread of The ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... only the faintest suggestion of the derisive inflection. After all, it might have been but a mannerism. The man had such a mild face and such a ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... the change. To him it had appeared chiefly as an increased womanliness, a gentle softness of speech and mannerism very charming and attractive. Those few days at sea together had been like a dream to him. He had come on board as nearly broken-hearted as a strong man could be, and fiercely anxious to reach his destination and know the whole, cruel truth. In a few hours all had ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... place. He spread out the diagram, finishing it as he talked. His nervous, faint smile appeared as the mannerism of ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... dress ball, the brilliance of his eyes heightened by the powder, his hand on his sword-guard, at the age of ten, plump and spirited as one of Fragonard's Cupids." Here we have the younger of the Goncourts, delineated with all the subtlety of a delicate mannerism. Edmond was eighteen at the time. Scarcely free of the ferule of his pedagogues, he already looked at life with that air of keen astonishment which was never to leave him, and which was to kindle in his eye the sort of phosphorescent reflection that shone there to his last hour. ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... sergeant bawled, "All recruits!"—paused and glared about the room and drew breath for further discharge. This mannerism Sabre was also to become accustomed to: in the Army, always "the cautionary word" first when an order was given. The sergeant then discharged: "All recruits past the doctor proceed to the room under this for swearing in. When sworn, ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... restrictions, and those mostly moral, that controlled the old writers; and our work, though not identical with theirs, will have the proper similarity. True, a modern author may not be able to reproduce, without a palpable betrayal of affectation and mannerism, the precise characteristics of a bygone style. Chattertons are not numerous. It is easier to secure for the brass andirons and mahogany dining chairs of our own manufacture the look of those that belonged to our grandfathers ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... tries the reader's patience is acknowledged, and we might easily fill column after column with extracts, to show that the style of Mr Carlyle, especially when it is necessary for him to descend to the common track of history, can degenerate into a mannerism scarce tolerable, for which no term of literary censure, would be too severe. We have, however, no disposition to make any such extracts; and our readers, we are sure, would have little delight in perusing them. On the other hand, when he does ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... being undisciplined in the ways of life, at great odds, when they come to the actual and practical battle. A man should be armed at all points, and not subject himself, like good George Fox, Jacob Behmen, and other holy men, to the taunts of the mob, on account of any awkward gait, mannerism, or ignorance of men and affairs. Paul had none of these absurdities about him; but was an accomplished person, as well as a divine speaker. His doctrine of being all things to all men, that he might ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... the grim iron door of the shirt factory where she worked, his one hip flung out, bamboo cane bent almost double, and, in his further zeal to attitudinize, one finger screwing up furiously at a vacant upper lip. That was a favorite comedy mannerism, screwing at where ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... lights are kept broad and bright, and yet are found on near approach to be charged with intricate design. This, again, is a part of the great system of treatment which I shall hereafter call "Proutism;" much of what is thought mannerism and imperfection in Prout's work, being the result of his determined resolution that minor details shall never break up his large ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... in to "the springs of thought and will," with the conscious aim that He should so warm and enrich them with His presence that they shall overflow for blessing around us, in the life of Christian love. I do not mean for a moment that we should set ourselves to construct a spiritual mannerism of speech or of habit. The matter is one not of manufacture but of culture; it is a call to "nourish and cherish" the gift of God which is in us, and to give to it the humble co-operation of our definite wish and will that it may be manifested in the ways ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... moment that is due to come may seem even more frightening because it is you who are slipping. Soon or late you find that some familiar mannerism of your spouse displeases you. It may be a slight uncouthness at table, a peculiar back-country phrase or pronunciation, some gesture of timidity or swaggering. Once you loved it as a part of the individuality of ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... be the result of over-indulgence in liquor or want of rest; he is thin and poorly clad, his face is cleanly shaven. At every pause in his speech he runs his fingers through his thick dishevelled black hair, and finishes this mannerism with wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. His delivery is awkward and these repeated movements ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... old Corthell beyond doubting or denial. Not a single inflection of his low-pitched, gently modulated voice was wanting; not a single infinitesimal mannerism was changed, even to the little tilting of the chin when he spoke, or the quick winking of the eyelids, or the smile that narrowed the corners of the eyes themselves, or the trick of perfect repose of his whole body. Even his handkerchief, ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... in an article in Punch on the advantage to a cricketer of some harmless mannerism, giving as an instance Mr. P.F. WARNER'S habit of hitching up the left side of his trousers and patting the ground seven times with his bat. This homely touch reminded me irresistibly of Rankin. Not that Rankin resembles Mr. WARNER even remotely in any other ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... away, glanced at him again with the old, sweet expression of childlike innocence which had so often made him wonder whether it was merely a mannerism, or was a trick, or was indeed a beam from a pure soul. "I'm foolish still—in certain ways," ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... little mannerism of talking through closed teeth and but slightly parted lips. In conversation, she used her lips as little as possible. It may have been that she wished to keep them from wearing out, or perhaps, she considered it unladylike to open her mouth ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... one of them suspiciously. Perhaps there had been a shade too much cocksureness in the hakim's voice, but he acted faultlessly when he answered. Voice, accent, mannerism, ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... style, fashion, way; bearing, demeanor, mien, air, carriage, deportment; mannerism, affectation, peculiarity; sort, kind, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... in such an environment art is everywhere. An artistic people no more dreams of creating art than a great nobleman of consciously exhibiting a distinguished manner. Distinction lies in his slightest mannerism without his being conscious of the fact. So, among artistic peoples, the most ordinary and humble objects have style. And this style, furthermore, is in perfect harmony with the purpose of the object. ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... to think naturally, clearly, logically, and to express himself intelligibly and earnestly, let him give his days and nights to WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE. His ear will thus accustom itself to forms of phrase whose only mannerism is occasioned by the fulness of thought and the directness of expression; and he will not easily, through the habits which either his understanding or his ear will acquire, fall into the fluent cadences of that sort of writing in which words are used without discrimination of their nice meanings,—where ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... the stage. Mephistopheles is not really among Irving's great parts, but it is among his picturesque parts. With his restless strut, a blithe and aged tripping of the feet to some not quite human measure, he is like some spectral marionette, playing a game only partly his own. In such a part no mannerism can seem unnatural, and the image with its solemn mask lives in a kind of galvanic life of its own, seductively, with some mocking suggestion of his "cousin the snake." Here and there some of the ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... hand with a sweep of authority—this being the only mannerism acquired during his emperorship which had not been dropped. There was no fear of Praestberg coming to them, he told her. He had heard that the old man had been invited to a drinking bout at a fisherman's but here in the Ashdales, but so far he had ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... life, wantoning so to say in a free atmosphere, now joining, caressing, and even, as it were, speaking, the whole evincing such intense solicitude for gracefulness that at times there seems to be undue mannerism, though every hand has its particular expression, each varying expression of the enjoyment or pain which the sense of touch can bring. And yet there was nothing effeminate or false about the painter's work: on all sides a sort of virile pride was apparent, an atmosphere of superb ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... handle the pencil; but the caricaturist, like the poet, nasciiur non fit, and a hundred or even a thousand queer faces or eccentric figures, without the gift of invention or originality, will not of themselves constitute the designer a comic artist. The truth is that with Kenny Meadows mannerism takes the place of genius. You will recognise his hand anywhere without the familiar "K.M." appended to it, for all his faces are chubby (not to say puffy), and their arms and legs look for all the world as if the hand ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... her epistolary style was his very own, every turn of phrase, every little mannerism. The mystery of it overwhelmed him again, though he had grown somewhat accustomed to the idea during the last twelvemonth. Why was she so anxious he should marry Julia? Had he, situated as he was, the right to win the love of this splendid creature, in ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... it is also quite as evident that the veriest daub, if its subject be attractive, is enjoyed no less thoroughly. There are prigs of course, the children of the "prignorant," who babble of Botticelli, and profess to disdain any picture not conceived with "high art" mannerism. Yet even these will forget their pretence, and roar over a Comic Cuts found on the seat of a railway carriage, or stand delighted before some unspeakable poster of a melodrama. It is well to ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... instruction that may tend to perpetuate mannerism, to cramp originality, and fetter genius, has of late years led to considerable opposition to art-academies generally, whenever more is contemplated by them than the mere school-teaching of the pupil, and the affording him assistance at the outset of his professional life. Haydon was fond of ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... thereof, indicating that he has red or reddish hair. His chin recedes slightly and is pointed, with a slight cleft parallel with the mouth and situated equidistant from the base of the chin and the lower lip. A nervous mannerism of the latter periodically reveals the lower teeth, one of which, that immediately below the left canine, is much discolored. He is clean-shaven, but may at some time have worn whiskers. His eyes are small and ferret-like, set very closely together and of a ruddy ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... similar questions, I will ask, Why does she wish always to remain Jenny Lind? why does she endeavor to preserve her voice as long as possible? why does she select operas in which she may use her pure, artistic, refined mode of singing, which permits no mannerism, no hypocritical sentiment, and which possesses an ideal beauty? why does she choose operas in which she can give the most perfect possible image of her own personality? why operas in which she may allow the marvellous union of her powers of song to shine conspicuously, ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... masturbator is recognized by a marked facial expression, by a characteristic mannerism, and by ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... his heady violence, all the real, the essential charm of the place. Nature was not what Turner depicted it; and he did not even develop and heighten its beauty, but substituted for the real charm an almost grotesque personal mannerism. Turner's idea of nature seemed to Hugh often purely theatrical and melodramatic, wanting in restraint, in repose. The appeal of Turner seemed to him to be constantly an appeal to childish and unperceptive minds, that ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the boat-load in the likeness of Biagio da Cesena, the pope's master of ceremonies, is another to match him. A modern fop with banged hair is stepping from the boat to the shore of hell. This is said to be the best painted portion of the picture,—most life-like and free from mannerism. It is a mighty work, and too little appreciated, like many other works of art, chiefly owing to the critics, who do not understand it, and write a lingo of their own which is not easy to make out and does not ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... impressed most agreeably with the absence of mannerism in Miss Nichols' work, as well as with the pronounced artistic treatment of her subjects. Her sketches of sea and river scenery are attractive; the views from her home county, Norfolk, have a delightful feeling about them. "Norwich River at Evening" is ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... his voice was extremely effective. Mr. Tree is the perfect Proteus of actors. He can wear the dress of any century and the appearance of any age, and has a marvellous capacity of absorbing his personality into the character he is creating. To have method without mannerism is given only to a few, but among the few is Mr. Tree. Miss Alma Murray does not possess the physique requisite for our conception of Helen, but the beauty of her movements and the extremely sympathetic quality of her voice gave an indefinable charm to her performance. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... at all, for a lack of mannerism," said Vera briskly. "It's too bad of you. Here I am as so much ballast for your party, and when I begin to make myself useful, you pretend I'm not there. But I am there, ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... luxury. Paucity of money gave rise to that habit of barter and dicker in trade which was a mannerism of our fathers. Agriculture formed the basal industry, especially in the Southern colonies; yet in New England and Pennsylvania both manufactures and commerce thrived. Pennsylvania's yearly foreign commerce exceeded 1,000,000 pounds sterling, requiring 500 vessels ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... belief, which was wrought outside of them, is plainly visible in the change in the style of Art. Byzantine models stiffened, formalized, and gradually destroyed the spirit of the early paintings. Richness of vestment and mannerism of expression took the place of simplicity and straightforwardness. The Art which is still the popular Art in Italy began to exhibit its lower round of subjects. Saints of all kinds were preferred to the personages of Scripture. The time of suffering and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... art in general. He does not see that, in art, the style in which a thing is said or done is of more importance than the thing said or done. Indeed, he does not appear to know what style means. Browning has an immense deal of mannerism—which in art is always bad;—he has, in his few best passages, manner, which as far as it goes is good; but of style—that indescribable reposeful 'breath of a pure and unique individuality'—I recognise no trace, though I find it distinctly enough in almost every other English poet who has ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... you were well recommended." The old man's manner, his emotion, his earnestness, somewhat embarrassed her. "Why does he look at me so earnestly?" she thought. Perhaps it was a mannerism peculiar to a man of ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... he was barred from ever knowing. Yet, while his interest had gone to sleep and his energy was consumed in the endless battles he waged, he knew every trick of the light on her hair, every quick denote mannerism of movement, every line of her figure as expounded by her tailor-made gowns. Several times, six months or so apart, he had increased her salary, until now she was receiving ninety dollars a month. Beyond ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... the last ray of doubt fled from my mind, for to my trained ear the fellow's voice and accent were but feeble imitations of what they ought to be, and I fancied I could detect a little trick of mannerism I had observed in Cuthbert Mackenzie. It was time for me to show the iron hand, and I did not hesitate ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... no affectation of seriousness in the assembly, no mannerism of worship; some would say too little of the manner of worship. They think of nothing, in fact, save what meets their intelligence and enters into them by that method. They appear like men who have a digestion for strong meat, and have no conception that trifles more delicate ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... contact with; he had learned an eager and winning sort of courtesy, which grew and increased every year. On one point we wholly and entirely agreed—namely, in thinking rudeness of any kind to be not a mannerism, but a deadly sin. "I find injustice or offensiveness to myself or anyone else," he once wrote, "the hardest of all things to forgive." We concurred in detesting the habit of licensing oneself to speak one's mind, and the unpleasant ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... public has long needed a work on West-Point, and we have here a very clever volume, by one who has retained with great accuracy in his memory its predominant characteristics, and repeated them in a very readable form. Occasional stiffness and 'mannerism' are in it compensated for by many vivid pictures of cadet-life, and we can well imagine the interest with which every page will be perused by old graduates of the institution, and others familiar with ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... one way or the other. For instance, you make a certain effect,—it goes well. You think you will make it a little more pronounced next time. And so it goes on, until before you know it you have acquired a definite habit, which the critics will call a mannerism and advise you to get rid of. So the artist has to be constantly on the watch, to guard against these ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... from Europe, from any one. How things change, become effaced and forgotten. Here I am accommodating myself to this finical Japan and dwindling down to its affected mannerism; I feel that my thoughts run in smaller grooves, my tastes incline to smaller things,—things which suggest nothing greater than a smile. I am becoming used to tiny and ingenious furniture, to doll-like desks, to miniature bowls with which to play at dinner, to the immaculate ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... man is in opposition to Senator Lodge there is no guarantee that he has freed himself from the routineer's habit of mind. A prejudice against some mannerism or a dislike of pretensions may merely cloak some other kind of routine. Take the "good government" attitude. No fresh insight is behind that. It does not promise anything; it does not offer to contribute new values to human life. The ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... little too much speed, and a little too little tact. The martinet is always bent upon thinking, saying, doing, and having, every thing after a nicer fashion than other people, until his nicety runs into downright mannerism; all his ideas become "clipped taffeta," and all his eggs are known to have "two yolks." He rarely comes of age or is thoroughly ripe till near forty, before which he may be a little of the precise fop, and after which he changes to the somewhat foppish precisian, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... hesitated an her early thirties it came to an abrupt decision just afterward and completely left her. A tentative outlay of wrinkles on her face suddenly deepened and flesh collected rapidly on her legs and hips and arms. Her mannerism of drawing her brows together had become an expression—it was habitual when she was reading or speaking and even while she slept. ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... that get on the nerves of certain others; the only way to avoid this acute suffering is to avoid meeting the person who causes it. But imagine a cloister where dwells a. man you simply can not endure: every word he says, every motion he makes, every single mannerism of walk and speech is intolerable. Now you must live with this man until one of you dies: you must sit opposite to him at meals, you can not escape constant contact. Your only resource is profane soliloquies: but if you have a sufficiently ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... with Wilkie Collins, that it is all plot, or, as with George Eliot, that there is no plot. The story comes naturally without calling for too much attention, and is thus proof of the completeness of the man's intellect. His language is clear, good, intelligible English, but it is defaced by mannerism. In all that he did, ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... seriously. "In every human heart, Cary, there is a place where the man or the woman dwells inside all the frippery and mannerism; the real creature itself, stripped of all disguises. Dig down to that place if you ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... gas globe. You also know that he was in need of money. The next point is rather a curious one. When Benson was telling us his story the day after the murder I observed that he kept smoothing his long hair down on his forehead. There was something in the action that suggested more than a mannerism. The night after I discovered the door in the wall, I left it open in order to watch the next room. During the night Benson entered and searched the dead man's chamber. I do not know what he was looking for—he did not find it, whatever it was—but during the ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... the Republic. In 1916 they all but grumbled themselves into revolution. One heard revolt whispered in a thousand places. But they did not revolt. They will not revolt. Grumbling is a mere outer mannerism. In their hearts they ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White |
