"Portray" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself into his grave over the description of a landscape, a room, a gesture—while the dramatist grins. The dramatist may have to imagine a landscape, a room, or a gesture; but he has not got to write it—and it is the writing which hastens death. If a dramatist and a novelist set out to portray a clever woman, they are almost equally matched, because each has to make the creature say things and do things. But if they set out to portray a charming woman, the dramatist can recline in an easy chair and smoke while the novelist is ruining ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... not often seen charming old paintings that make you gaze at them indefinitely, because they portray the period in which their owners lived, the ballets in which the farthingales of all those beautiful pink ladies whirled around, and the sword-thrusts which those noblemen gave each other with their rapiers? Here ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... and naturally teach it, I determined to do justice to the honesty of my object by speaking out. In drawing the two characters, whose actions bring about the darker scenes of my story, I did not forget that it was my duty, while striving to portray them naturally, to put them to a good moral use; and at some sacrifice, in certain places, of dramatic effect (though I trust with no sacrifice of truth to Nature), I have shown the conduct of the vile, as always, in a greater or less degree, associated with something that ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... of fiction, called the modern novel, by introducing into his romance of pseudo-knighthood a faithful description of the lower classes, and intermingling the phases of popular life. But he had no one-sided tendency to portray the vulgar only; he brought together the higher and the lower in society, to serve as light and shade, and the aristocratic element was as prominent as the popular. This noble and chivalrous element disappears in the novels of the English ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... with pure childishness is a unique subject for art, and one which few have had the genius to portray. Two great painters are famous in history for their remarkable success in this line of work,—Van Dyck, of Belgium, ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... despising, degrading and lying, so flashed and fleshed through this vast hanging darkness that the Doer never sees the Deed and the Victim knows not the Victor and Each hates All in wild and bitter ignorance. Listen, O Isles, to these Voices from within the Veil, for they portray the most human hurt of the Twentieth Cycle of that poor Jesus ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... linger in the rooms where once they walked—their shades seem to protect the books they once handled. What Browning felt about frescoes may be applied—mutatis mutandis—to books in such an asylum as I am trying to portray: ...
— Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods - The Rede Lecture Delivered June 13, 1894 • J. W. Clark
... not portray the life we led; how by sheer brute force and will power I fought my way up until I was next in power to the captain himself. I could fill a volume in narrating the battles we fought and the hair-breadth escapes we had, but whoever reads these lines must imagine ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... God" was written to express the truth as I see it—to portray life, not as we would like to have it, but ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... remarks more fitting close than by describing briefly the surroundings which set their impress upon the character of the men whose lives I have attempted to portray. The picture is full of meaning, dignity, and simplicity. In this time "Canetuckee" was still a part of Virginia. The grounds on which, as boys, they played were held by their fathers under what is known as a "tomahawk claim." "Beyond lay endless ...
— Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell
... natural philosopher, an exact observer of nature, he was at the same time a learned statistician, an indefatigable social observer, an unwearied philanthropist, and the most powerful describer of nature that perhaps ever undertook to portray her great and glorious features. It is this extraordinary combination of qualities that render his works so surprising and valuable. The intellectual and imaginative powers rarely coexist in remarkable vigour in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... favourable than that of her predecessors; but it is to be noted that in almost every particular it is confirmed by the latest authority, Captain Burton. And the evidence goes to show that they are not the simple, generous, primitive, guileless Arcadians which it had pleased some fanciful minds to portray. ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... formerly tabooed are now thrust before the public. The plain-spoken publications of social hygiene societies are distributed by hundreds of thousands. Public exhibits, setting forth the horrors of venereal diseases, are sent from place to place. Motion-picture films portray white slavers, prostitutes, and restricted districts, and show exactly how an innocent girl may be seduced, betrayed, and sold. The stage finds it profitable to offer problem plays concerned with illicit love, with prostitution, and even with the results of venereal ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... district which is their home. As we should expect, they treat chiefly of warlike themes, of the chieftain's doughty deeds, the moss-trooper's daring and skill, of the knight's courtesies and gallant feats of arms, and the feuds of rival clans; in fact, they portray for us vividly the time of which they treat, and in a few graphic touches bring before us the very spirit of the period. In direct and simple phrases the narrative proceeds, giving with rare power just the necessary expression to ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... a contrast in that face portray'd, Where care and study cast alternate shade; But view it well, and ask thy heart the cause, Then chide, with honest warmth, that cold applause Which counteracts the fostering breath of praise, And shades with cypress the young poet's bays: Pale and dejected, mark, how genius strives With ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... while the Haberdasher was propounding his problem of the triangle, this young Squire was standing in the background making a drawing of some kind; for "He could songs make and well indite, Joust and eke dance, and well portray ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... trying not to let his face portray his feelings of defeat. This after all was a probationary assignment, and the supervisor had the power to send Ronny Bronston back to the drudgery of his office job at ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... society, however, considered drunkenness as a very good joke, and even went so far as to portray it in their tomb decorations. One sees men carried home from a feast across the shoulders of three of their companions, or ignominiously hauled out of the house by their ankles and the scruff of ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... It will doubtless strike the reader as being peculiar that an educated and refined woman such as I have endeavoured to portray in Mrs. Raymond would allow a servant to address her by her Christian name. But the explanation is very simple: In many European families living in Polynesia and in Micronesia the native servants usually address their masters and mistresses and their children by their Christian names— ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... retired from the world, and embraced this dismal life in expiation of some crime. He was a melancholy man, who pursued his art in the solitude of his cell, but made it a source of penance to him. His employment was to portray, either on canvas or in waxen models, the human face and human form, in the agonies of death and in all the stages of dissolution and decay. The fearful mysteries of the charnel house were unfolded in his labors—the loathsome banquet of the beetle and the worm.—I turn with shuddering ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... that was all. We were better friends than ever. Do you wonder that I liked my principal? If so, it is only because I am unable to portray him as he really was. The age of chivalry is past; but still it is no exaggeration to say I would have died cheerfully if my dying ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... at Bologna, Dresden, Madrid, Hampton Court, and executed numerous commissions for Leo X.; and Madonnas, holy families, portraits, etc., for others. Raphael stands unrivaled, chiefly in his power to portray lofty sentiments which persons of all nationalities can feel, but few can describe. He also excelled in invention, composition, simplicity and grandeur. For moral force in allegory and history, and for fidelity in portrait, Raphael was unsurpassed. His last and most ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... of Callot, or Rembrandt, or of Goya to portray the bizarre, hideous, almost fantastical appearance of this multitude. Almost all, men, women, children, were dressed in old masquerading costumes; those who had not been able to obtain this luxury had fastened on their clothes old rags, of flaunting colors; some young ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... divine brother have perished, and now we know that there was nothing unusual about His appearance, nor did any effulgent light blaze forth from His person. Whether or not unique beauty of face and form was His we do not know. Coins and statues portray for us the Roman emperors and the Greek scholars. Yet art has broken down utterly in the attempt to combine in one face Christ's majesty and meekness, strength and gentleness, suffering and victory. All that we can know of His personal appearance must ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the colonel, his daughters, the spruce lieutenant, and the Irish deserter with such familiarity that the reader would think that he had spent most of his life in a garrison, and his ability to portray vividly life in the mines, where his actual experience was so very slight, ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... picture being permitted to be hung upon the walls until it has been subjected to the scrutiny, and received the approval, of a Hanging Committee of artistic members. Looking more closely at these pictures, we note that—with the exception of the photographs, which mostly portray scenery of an exceptionally grand or otherwise remarkable character—they all illustrate some singular incident or adventure. Here, for example, is a water-colour sketch of a rent and collapsed balloon falling to the earth from a height ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... artist might have made a good sketch of him—if the artist, of course, had been any good. The sketch, to be perfect, would need to portray a tall, slim, blonde person with feminine features. But no crayon could convey an idea of the squeaky ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... story, both because it moves his own heart, and because he wishes it to move that of others, begs you, dear reader, to pardon him, if he now briefly passes over a considerable space of time, only cursorily mentioning the events that marked it. He knows well that he might portray skilfully, step by step, how Huldbrand's heart began to turn from Undine to Bertalda; how Bertalda more and more responded with ardent affection to the young knight, and how they both looked upon the poor wife as a mysterious being rather to be ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... oft" has the sweet, sweet word been sung in song and told in story. And he sang sweetest of home, who had never a home on earth. If one to whom home was only a poet's dream, could portray its charms by only imagination, until a million hearts thrilled with responsive echo, how deeper, how more intense must be his longings and recollections who treasures, deep down in his heart the sweet delights and pure associations that he has known, but never may know again. We do ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... plans. An ignorant voter may be an honest one but unless he is intelligent enough to study public questions for himself he is an easy prey for the political sharper. It is beyond the power of the pen to portray what a magnificent government would be possible with an educated electorate. The idea can be approximated only when we consider how much we have been able to accomplish even with all the inefficiency, vice and ignorance which ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... there still much jovial heartiness in the festive revelry of the mountaineers. One scene, in which I was a participator, I will endeavour to portray—it is impressed on my memory by more than one token of grateful reminiscence. It was in the summer of 1825 that I left London for a few weeks, and sought among my native hills a reparation of the wear and tear of half-a-dozen years of hard and unceasing toil. Two days after my arrival ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... thought rather than those of his Greek literary sources. And yet the irrepressible Servius was so reckless as to say that the whole book had been "transferred" from Apollonius. Fortunately we have in this case the alleged source, and can meet the scholiast with a sweeping denial. Both authors portray the love of a woman, and there the similarity ends. Apollonius is wholly dependent upon a literal Cupid and his shafts. Vergil, to be sure, is so far obedient to Greek convention as to play with the motive—Cupid came to the banquet in the form ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... space and subject permitted, it would be pleasant to portray the romantic life of those pastoral days. Arcadian conditions were then more nearly attained than perhaps at any other time in the world's history. The picturesque, easy, idle, pleasant, fiery, aristocratic life has been elsewhere so well depicted that it has taken on ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... Casey Ryan, tanned as they were by wind and sun to a fair imitation of leather, were never meant to portray mixed emotions. His face, therefore, remained impassive except for a queer, cornered look in his eyes. With a sick feeling at the pit of his stomach he wondered just how much of his impassioned soliloquy ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... were written, it is true, but they were hopelessly dull imitations of classic models. Imitative and uninspired likewise were statues and paintings and poems. One merit they possessed. If a French painter lacked force and originality, he could at least portray with elegance and charm a group of fine ladies angling in an artificial pool. Elegance, indeed, redeemed the eighteenth century from imitative dullness and stupid ostentation: elegance expressed more often in perfumes, laces, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... typical characteristics. These are they who are generally known as "commonplace people," and this class comprises, of course, the immense majority of mankind. Authors, as a rule, attempt to select and portray types rarely met with in their entirety, but these types are nevertheless more real than real ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... magnificence, and the high breeding of the Lindons, but anything less high-bred than the head of the Lindons, in his moments of wrath, it would be hard to conceive. His language I will not attempt to portray,—but his observations consisted, mainly, of abuse of Paul, glorification of the Lindons, ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... richest curtains. What I tell I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate or soothe I will have purposes as health or heat or snow has and be as regardless of observation. What I experience or portray shall go from my composition without a shred of my composition. You shall stand by my side and look in the mirror ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... nodding his head; at last he bent down, putting his arm in front of him, and raising it like an elephant's trunk, walking with the measured steps of that animal, so as fully to make them Understand that he intended to portray an elephant. ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... the descriptions, are all exalted above the level of common converse, as high as the imagination of the poet can carry them, with proportion to verisimility. Tragedy is wont to image to us the minds and fortunes of noble persons; and to portray these exactly, heroic rhyme is nearest nature, as being the noblest kind of modern verse. Verse, it is true, is not the effect of sudden thought; but this hinders not that sudden thought may be represented in verse, since these thoughts are such as must be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... read Baudelaire, the more he felt the ineffable charm of this writer who, in an age when verse served only to portray the external semblance of beings and things, had succeeded in expressing the inexpressible in a muscular and brawny language; who, more than any other writer possessed a marvelous power to define with a strange robustness of expression, the most fugitive and tentative morbidities ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... varied of hue, is reflected in the transparent green water, the reflections softening the awful grandeur of the reality. Nothing, certes, in nature can surpass this scene; no imagination can prefigure, no pen or pencil adequately portray it. Nor can the future fortunes of the district vulgarize it! The Tarn, by reason of its remoteness, its inaccessibility—and, to descend to material considerations, its expensiveness as an excursion—can never, fortunately, become one of the cheap ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Eden of the deep blue sea, By gentle breezes only fann'd, Upon whose soil, from sorrow free, Grew only pure felicity! Who would not brave the stormiest main Within that blissful isle to be, Exempt from sight or sense of pain? There is a land we cannot see, Whose joys no pen can e'er portray; And yet, so narrow is the road, From it our spirits ever stray— Shed light upon that path, O God! And lead us in the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... to genius: its real origin is not to be found in such education; it has, so to speak, only a metaphysical source, a metaphysical home. But for the genius to make his appearance; for him to emerge from among the people; to portray the reflected picture, as it were, the dazzling brilliancy of the peculiar colours of this people; to depict the noble destiny of a people in the similitude of an individual in a work which will last for ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... cheeks, why praise them so? The northern-lights, on new fall'n snow,— I know of cheeks whose rosy warnings Portray at ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... Yet they were obsessed by the sensitive, covert dread of exposure that ever lurks spectrally under pharisaism's specious robe, so when there appeared this work of a "miserable Indian," who dared to portray them and the conditions that their control produced exactly as they were—for the indefinable touch by which the author gives an air of unimpeachable veracity to his story is perhaps its greatest artistic ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... has undergone modifications even more significant than those of hedonism, and involving at least one radically new group of conceptions. Among the Greeks rationalism and hedonism alike are eudaemonistic. They aim to portray the fulness of life that makes "the happy man." In the ethics of Aristotle, whose synthetic mind weaves together these different strands, the Greek ideal finds its most complete expression as "the high-minded man," with ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... heart—viz. the introduction of the entire workshop. The second painting in the centre of the opposite wall, represented Mr Clayton. The likeness was a failure, and the colours were coarse and glaring; but there needed no instruction to know that the carefully framed production attempted to portray the unenviable man, who, in spite of his immorality and shameless life, was still revered and idolized by the blind disciples who had taken him for their guide. This portrait was Mrs Thompson's peculiar property. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... Priest stories, Irvin S. Cobb has described the rural towns of Kentucky; and Corra Harris from personal experience has given striking pictures of the rural South principally in relation to religion. The short stories of Harris Dickson portray the negro of the Mississippi towns. The stories of Thomas Nelson Page and of Ruth McEnery Stuart should also be mentioned. Owen Wister has drawn a striking picture of Charleston in Lady Baltimore (1906), while Henry Sydnor Harrison in ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... structures, until at eight next morning the French, not daring to wait longer, set fire to both, leaving seven thousand of their followers in Studjenka. They burned also the wooden track they had constructed through the swamps. The Russian accounts of what was seen in the morning light portray scenes unparalleled in history: a thousand or more charred corpses were frozen fast on the surface of the river, many of the ghastly heads being those of women and children; the huts of the town ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... our poet drew the characters of life as he found them, but bad as his characters are, they exhibit only a vulgar wickedness. Unable to portray a Clytaemnestra, he revels in the continual paltriness of a Menelaus or Ulysses. As if he took a delight in the black side of humanity, he loves to show the strength of false reasoning, of sophistry antagonistic ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... Miraculous cures—he and his stage were gone; And he who, when the crisis of his tale Came, and all stood breathless with hope and fear, Sent round his cap; and he who thrumm'd his wire And sang, with pleading look and plaintive strain Melting the passenger. Thy thousand cries [62], So well portray'd and by a son of thine, Whose voice had swell'd the hubbub in his youth, Were hush'd, BOLOGNA, silence in the streets, The squares, when hark, the clattering of fleet hoofs; And soon a courier, posting ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... I describe it! How can I portray these woods and rocks in this liquid setting, their lower parts dark and sullen, their upper parts tinted red in this light whose intensity was doubled by the reflecting power of the waters! We scaled rocks that crumbled behind us, collapsing in enormous sections with ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... understand these terms; he recommended a scrupulous observance of nature, and that every writer should draw as close to it as possible, but only in order to interpret it, to reveal it with a true feeling, yet without a too intimate analysis, and that no one should attempt to portray it exactly or servilely copy it. "Of what use is art," he says, "if it is only a reduplication of existence? We see around us only too much of the sadness and disenchantment of reality." The three novels that compose the volume 'Servitude et Grandeur ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... of one of the houses of the Palais Royal, will serve to portray the whole of this French pandemonium. On the ground floor is a jeweller's shop, where may be purchased diamonds, pearls, emeralds, and every description of female ornament, such as only can be possessed by those who have very ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... head-gear as graces the burgomasters of Rembrandt; his Flemish garb remained but his features, no longer agitated with the fury of the chase, were changed to such a state of awful and stern composure, as might best portray the first proprietor of Monkbarns, such as he had been described to Lovel by his descendants in the course of the preceding evening. As this metamorphosis took place, the hubbub among the other personages in ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... carry important dispatches to the war department at Washington. Lieutenant Beale, who was still a great invalid, was permitted to accompany him. In order to show the regard which Kit Carson entertained for this brave officer, and also to portray to the reader the goodness of heart which has ever been the actuating impulse in all of Kit Carson's actions, we will give his own words in relating this part of his adventures. He says: "Lieutenant Beale went with me as bearer of dispatches intended for ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... arose, historical novels were comparatively unknown. He made romance instructive, rather than merely amusing, and added the charm of life to the dry annals of the past. Cervantes does not portray a single great character known in Spanish history in his "Don Quixote," but he paints life as he has seen it. So does Goldsmith. So does George Eliot in "Silas Marner." She presents life, indeed, in "Romola,"—not, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... must now suffice. A disquisition on the Society of Jesus would be without end. No religious order has ever united in itself so much to be admired and so much to be detested. Unmixed praise has been poured on its Canadian members. It is not for me to eulogize them, but to portray them as they were. ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... of the first three stanzas portray? The last three stanzas describe the sights and ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... a long while—myself all well, able, strong and happy—to portray power, freedom, health. But after a while she seems to fancy, may-be I can see and understand it all better by being deprived of ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... thousand copies, weighing fifty-five tons, were disposed of in the short period of eight weeks. So high a degree of popularity could not rest on an insufficient foundation.[2] The book is a species of novel or story, designed to portray in vivid colours negro-life in the slave states of America; and such is the graphic and truth-like way in which the authoress, Harriet Beecher Stowe, has strung the whole together, that the production has not only enlisted the sympathy ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... to flourish; although a long time was to elapse before any one could approach the merits of the first inventor. In all ages, I suppose, the great artist, whether dramatist or epic poet or novelist, has more or less consciously had the aim which Fielding implicitly claims for himself; that is, to portray human nature. Every great artist, again, must, in one sense, be thoroughly 'realistic.' The word has acquired an irrelevant connotation: but I mean that his vision of the world must correspond to the genuine living convictions of his time. He only ceases to be a realist ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... The Guardian's Instruction is portrayed for us—or is allowed to portray himself—rather as an honest country squire, who had himself spent a year or so of his youth at the University, but had withdrawn when Oxford was invaded by the Court and the trouble between King Charles and Parliament ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in her countenance so peculiarly repulsive, unwomanly, and hideous, that on approaching their hut, they felt a very unusual and disagreeable sensation steal over them. The descriptions of an elf or a black dwarf in the Arabian Nights Entertainments, or modern romances, would serve well to portray the form and lineaments of this ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... man and the poet were a single individuality, we shall also portray the latter when we speak of the former. Irritability and versatility, the accompaniments of poetical and of rhetorical talents, dominated him to a high degree, but an acquired rather than an innate moderation kept them in equilibrium. Our friend was capable ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... a preliminary trial, six artists were selected and a further test was imposed. They were directed to make a bronze relief of given size and shape, the subject being the Sacrifice of Isaac. Few themes could have been better chosen, as the artist had to show his capacity to portray youth and age, draped and undraped figures, as well as landscape and animal life. The trial plaques were to be sent to the judges within twelve months. Donatello did not compete, being only a boy, but he must have been familiar with every ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... times. The first sight of it elicited a cry of admiration from Zillah; and she found not the least of its attractions in the figure of the old Earl—himself a monument of the past—whose figure, as he stood on the steps to welcome them, formed a fore-ground which an artist would have loved to portray. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... be." Speaking of the scene of Mr Herman's drama, the beautiful county of Devonshire, where the greater part of the story takes place, the Manchester Courier says: "The author's descriptive powers vividly portray the lovely spots by the winding Tamar, while the rich dialect of the district is so faithfully reproduced as to become not the least feature ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... at that time, the attitude in many of these poems is quite different from the attitude he expressed in his many Christian books from the 1930s on. Attempts in movies and on stage plays to portray Lewis as a sheltered professor who knew little about pain until the death of his wife late in life, have to deal not only with the many tragedies he experienced from a boy on, but also with the disturbing issues he faced in many of ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... cares little more how many it crushes than the car of the idol of Juggernaut. The whole of the ancient society which I have endeavoured to portray has disappeared. Brehat has passed out of existence. I revisited it six years ago and should not have known it again. Some genius in the capital of the department has discovered that certain ancient usages of the island are not in keeping with some article ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... of semi-barbarous life may seem to portray it in some attractive colours, so that indolent and licentious persons might ask: Is it not preferable to our sophisticated state of society? We are not judges of other people's taste, but we can see in it nothing desirable. Its evils are numerous and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... his sword, and drawing his bow, as his horses carry his car over the prostrate bodies of the slain, are drawn with much spirit, and the position of the arms gives a perfect idea of the action which the artist intended to portray; still, the same imperfections of style, and want of truth, are observed; there is action, but no sentiment, expression of the passions, nor life in the features; it is a figure ready formed, and mechanically varied into movement, and whatever position it is made to assume, the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... what we Occidentals call dancing—acting accompanied with extraordinary waving of sleeves and fans, and with a play of eyes and features, sweet, subtle, subdued, wholly Oriental. There are more voluptuous dances known to geisha, but upon ordinary occasions and before refined audiences they portray beautiful old Japanese traditions, like the legend of the fisher Urashima, beloved by the Sea God's daughter; and at intervals they sing ancient Chinese poems, expressing a natural emotion with delicious ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... written, I have not as yet begun. I see so many beautiful horizons, such infinitely varied tints, that the palette of the Divine Painter will alone, after the darkness of this life, be able to supply me with the colours wherewith I may portray the wonders that my soul descries. Since, however, you have expressed a desire to penetrate into the hidden sanctuary of my heart, and to have in writing what was the most consoling dream of my life, I will end this story of my soul, by an act of obedience. If you will allow me, it is ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... social system revealed in the myths is superior in many regards to that of the Redmen, but the theistic scheme is crude.[1744] The few Mexican myths that have come down to us (probably only the remains out of a large mass) show reflection and portray human experiences.[1745] Both in Mexico and in Peru the Spanish conquest appears to have destroyed no little material that, if preserved, would have illustrated the mythical constructions of these lands. In Peru, further, it may be that the monotheistic tinge of the ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... is, he is a young saint himself, mother. He is too good for this world; he is here to portray the blessed, and then to go away and be with ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... excepting that a man in this state assuredly does not appear cheerful or good-tempered. If indeed these feelings break out into overt acts, rage takes their place, and will be plainly exhibited. Painters can hardly portray suspicion, jealousy, envy, &c., except by the aid of accessories which tell the tale; and poets use such vague and fanciful expressions as "green-eyed jealousy." Spenser describes suspicion as "Foul, ill-favoured, and grim, under his eyebrows looking still ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... the South has been noted for its beautiful Quadroon women. Bottles of ink, and reams of paper, have been used to portray the "finely-cut and well-moulded features," the "silken curls," the "dark and brilliant eyes," the "splendid forms," the "fascinating smiles," and "accomplished manners" of these impassioned and voluptuous daughters of the two races,—the unlawful product of the crime of human ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... sanctifying the soul. For it is the difficulties and the hindrances that men find in their age which give the form to their character and habits, and when mastered become the means of divine grace and their titles to glory. Indicate these, and you portray that type of sanctity in which the life of the Church will find its ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... St. Leon were undoubtedly coloured faintly by those of Lewis's Monk (1794) and Mrs. Radcliffe's Italian (1798); but it is characteristic of Godwin that instead of trying to portray the terror of the shadowy hall, he chooses rather to present the argumentative speeches of St. Leon and the Inquisitor. The aged stranger, who bestows on St. Leon the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life, has the piercing eye so familiar ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... of the poem is Spenser explains in a prefatory letter to Sir Walter Ralegh. The whole is a vast epic allegory, aiming, in the first place, to portray the virtues which make up the character of a perfect knight; an ideal embodiment, seen through Renaissance conceptions, of the best in the chivalrous system which in Spenser's time had passed away, but to which some choice spirits still looked back with regretful ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... which has been so generally and so justly manifested. Far from attempting to excite your emotions, I must try to repress my own; and yet, I fear, that instead of the language of a public speaker, you will hear only the lamentations of a wailing friend. But I will struggle with my bursting heart, to portray that heroic spirit, which has flown to the ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... complaint when existence might have been so delightful a boon without it, full of affinities and communities in every direction. She had not, I am convinced, any of the notions of a crusader upon this popular subject, nor may I portray her either shocked or revolted, only rather bored, being a creature whom it was unkind to hamper; and she would have explained quite in these simple terms the reason why Stephen Arnold's saving ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... sentiment of love with the heyday of the blood seems to require that in order to portray it in vivid tints, which every youth and maid should confess to be true to their throbbing experience, one must not be too old. The delicious fancies of youth reject the least savor of a mature philosophy, as chilling ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... high-class outline pictures the artists have caught the true spirit of Lincoln's humor, and while showing the laughable side of many incidents in his career, they are true to life in the scenes and characters they portray. ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... written by Addison during his sojourn in that city, in the year 1720, and is in the form of a letter, supposed to be written to a friend on earth. In it he essays to portray the expansion of mind he has experienced in his new home through the ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... understanding of the facts of Cicero's life, the whole correspondence should be taken as it was written. It has been published in this shape as well as in the other, and will be used in this shape in my effort to portray the life of ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... failings, rather than the merits and the virtues, of the commonplace Russian individual; and the characters which revolve around him have also been selected for the purpose of demonstrating our national weaknesses and shortcomings. As for men and women of the better sort, I propose to portray them in subsequent volumes. Probably much of what I have described is improbable and does not happen as things customarily happen in Russia; and the reason for that is that for me to learn all that I have wished to do has been impossible, in that human life is not sufficiently ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... faction and conflict, and had preserved its liberties through carefully regulated strife, his work has been held to be that of some avenging angel who came, not to renew, but to destroy. There is truth in both these pictures; but the Gracchus whom they portray as the force that annihilated centuries of crafty workmanship, as the first precursor of the coming monarchy, is the Gracchus who rightly lives in the historic imagination which, unfettered by conditions of space or time, prefers the contemplation ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... frolicking about the White House, a licensed intruder everywhere. Another flood of anecdotes preserve the stupefying grief of his father after the child's death. Of these latter, the most extreme which portray Lincoln toward the close of February so unnerved as to be incapable of public duty, may be dismissed as apocryphal. But there can be no doubt that his unhappiness was too great for the vain measurement of descriptive words; that it intensified the nervous mood which ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... worse. Its most ardent admirer hardly paints it into his picture of the Golden Age. It is difficult to associate it with one's fancies of the noblest manhood, and Miss Muloch reasonably defies the human imagination to portray Shakspeare or Dante with pipe in mouth. Goethe detested it; so did Napoleon, save in the form of snuff, which he apparently used on Talleyrand's principle, that diplomacy was impossible without it. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... to portray a man flourishing in the last century with the train of mind and sentiment peculiar to the present; describing a life, and not its dramatic epitome, the historical characters introduced are not closely woven with the main ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ascribed to the northern city so marked a superiority over their own country. When the hero was once created and firmly established in his position, there was little difficulty in inventing a story about him which would portray him as a paragon and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... my relations and friends; so that, when they have lost me, which they will soon do, they may find in it some features of my condition and humours; and by this means keep up more completely, and in a more lively manner, the knowledge they have of me." In his Essays he meant to portray himself, his habits, his modes of thought, his opinions, what fruit of wisdom he had gathered from experience sweet and bitter; and the task he has executed with wonderful fidelity. He does not make himself a hero. Cromwell would have his warts painted; and Montaigne paints his, and paints them ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... its side clearly, that all might read it, is the inscription which he had himself chosen; it is in Norman French, which was still the language spoken by the English Court, and in the same spirit which moved the designer of Archbishop Chichele's tomb to portray the living man and the mouldering skeleton, this epitaph contrasts the glories of the Prince's life—his wealth, beauty, and power—with the decay and corruption of the grave. It is distinctly pagan in thought, and reminds one strongly of the laments of the dead Homeric heroes as they ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... not thus caught in its meshes to realize its horrors so as to seek its destruction but one course is possible; namely, To study the evil. Let the teacher tell of its ravages; let the minister proclaim its curses; let the poet sing it; the painter paint it; the editor report it; the novelist portray it; the scientist describe it; the philosopher decry it; the sisters and wives and mothers denounce it—until all shall unite in smiting it to ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... Governments of Russia and Austria, and, on the other, by the ignoring of all the reports of the Polish National Government—all its obvious facts, its printed documents, its acts everywhere known and seen, its seizures of papers and documents—and to portray it as a fraud, a myth, a dream of the imagination, a wild hallucination of a disordered brain, it suggests to us the thought that the tardy and present truths here given us of Poland may perhaps have the same origin as that famous description in one of the St. Petersburg papers, of 'the at ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... feeling for oriental light and color, who unfortunately was killed in battle at twenty-seven years of age. He was an artist of promise, and has left several notable canvases. Among the younger men who portray the historical subject in an elevated style mention should be made of Cormon (1845-), Benjamin-Constant (1845-[14]), and Rochegrosse. As painters of portraits Aman-Jean and Carriere[15] have long held rank, and each succeeding Salon brings ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... Omnipotent unfolds The world's harmonious volume, there to read 100 The transcript of Himself. On every part They trace the bright impressions of his hand: In earth or air, the meadow's purple stores, The moon's mild radiance, or the virgin's form Blooming with rosy smiles, they see portray'd That uncreated beauty, which delights The Mind Supreme. They also feel her charms, Enamour'd; ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... down their impressions of the volcano. A distinguished statesman had been there a few days before us, and had written a long account of his impressions, closing with this oratorical sentence: "No pen, however gifted, can describe, no brush, however brilliant, can portray, the wonders we have been permitted to behold." I could not refrain from writing under it, "I have seen the orthodox hell, and it's ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... in the inquisition? Was it not felt in the massacre of St. Bartholomew? I will not stop to ask the power and control of a Madame Maintenon, or Du Barry: nor whose influences controlled them. Does not all history portray their ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... experience, that evil has transfused itself through humanity like leaven, serves to bring out in deeper relief the comforting converse truth which Christ has embodied in this parable. The universal diffusion of corruption in the world becomes a dark ground whereon the Lord may more vividly portray the progress and final triumph of holiness. Good introduced among the good is not much noticed; but when good assails, overcomes, and transforms evil, its power and beauty are conspicuously displayed. Employing the sad facts already stated as shadows filled in to make the lines of light more ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... this very number of the Spectator we have George Powell, who was cast for Orestes in Mr. Philips' tragedy, writing that the grief which he is required to portray will seem almost real enough to choke his utterance. Here is what ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... punishment for the wealthy offender, and was overcome by sorrow and contrition when the prophet made application of his parable by the fateful words, "Thou art the man."[655] The story of the vineyard, which though fenced and well-tended yet brought forth only wild, useless fruit, was used by Isaiah to portray the sinful state of Israel in his attempt to awaken the people to lives ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... of God the Father. For since the Ten Commandments have taught that we are to have not more than one God, the question might be asked, What kind of a person is God? What does He do? How can we praise or portray and describe Him, that He may be known? Now, that is taught in this and in the following article, so that the Creed is nothing else than the answer and confession of Christians arranged with respect to the First Commandment. As if you were to ask a little child: My dear, what ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... the completeness and success of our work; information too, often afforded at great inconvenience and labor. We commit our book, then, to the loyal women of our country, as an earnest and conscientious effort to portray some phases of a heroism which will make American women famous in all the future ages of history; and with the full conviction that thousands more only lacked the opportunity, not the will or endurance, to ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... in St. Swithin's Chair from vol. i. Waverley.—Sir W. Beechey.—We confess ourselves far from pleased with this picture. There is a want of freedom in it which is any thing but characteristic of the incident which it is intended to portray. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... meagre MAY-FLOWER history and its collaterals had already permitted the author and others to construct mentally, and one which confirms in general the conceptions wrought out by the best artists and students who have attempted to portray the historic ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... him in the opinion of others. Such persons consequently do not give themselves out for what they actually are; their secret escapes from them unwittingly, or against their will. Rightly, therefore, to portray such characters, the poet must lend us his own peculiar talent for observation, that we may fully understand them. His art consists in making the character appear through slight hints and stolen glimpses, and in so placing the spectator, that whatever delicacy of observation it ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... casemates of the royal palace. New ideas germinated in the youth. The difference of sex was forgotten. Shoulder to shoulder fought the men and the women. The Russian woman! Who shall ever do justice or adequately portray her heroism and self-sacrifice, her loyalty and devotion? Holy, Turgeniev calls her in his great prose poem, ON ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... have made excellent use of their opportunities. An actor, like the late Frank Rodney, who could on one night competently portray Bolingbroke in Richard II. and on the following night the clown Feste in Twelfth Night with equal effect, clearly realised something of the virtue of Shakespearean versatility. Mr Benson's leading comedian, Mr Weir, whose power of presenting Shakespeare's humorists shows, besides ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... say but 'Gorgon! a girl a Gorgon!' and it struck Woodseer as intensely unreasonable, considering that he had seen the girl whom, in his effort to portray her, he had likened to a beautiful Gorgon. He recounted the scene of the meeting with her, pictured it in effective colours, but his companion gave no response, nor a nod. They ceased to converse, and when the young lord's hired carriage drew up on the road, Woodseer required ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... excellence. These narratives may be regarded as separate cantos of a war epic, which is fairly comparable for its vividness of portrayal to Stephen Crane's masterpiece, "The Red Badge of Courage." Few writers, other than these two, have been able to portray the naked ugliness of warfare, and the passions which warfare engenders, with more brutal power. Time alone will tell whether these stories have a chance of permanence, but I am disposed to rank them with that other portrait of the mercilessness of war, "Under ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the aim of art is to portray nature in perfect form, not with the imperfections seen around us; and Herbert Spencer defined art as the attempt to realize the ideal in the present. The artist tries to make his picture more perfect than what he sees around him. The poet, the sculptor, the musician, the craftsman, the mechanic, ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... was clearly visible for a one-mile radius around the Nautilus. What a sight! What pen could describe it? Who could portray the effects of this light through these translucent sheets of water, the subtlety of its progressive shadings into the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... engraved by the murderer Cavaglia on his pitcher, representing his crime, imprisonment, and suicide. Books, crockery, guns, all the utensils criminals have in constant use, serve as a canvas on which to portray their exploits. ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... why is it I cannot portray Thy form and features? Do I stand too near thee? Or dost thou hold my hand, and draw me back, As being thy disciple, not thy master? Let him who knows not what old age is like Have patience till it comes, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... some natural object, some noble tree or mossy cliff or singing brook, that is forever associated with their thoughts of childhood. To others the tale will have added interest in that it is supposed to portray the character of Emerson as Hawthorne ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... be brief in descanting upon this part of her career. As I cannot describe the mysteries of freemasonry, although I have a shrewd idea that it is a humbug, so an uninitiated man cannot take upon himself to portray the great world accurately, and had best keep his opinions ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a long absence, under the peculiar circumstances which we are describing, we need not feel surprised that the heart of the stranger was filled with such a conflicting tumult of feelings and recollections as it is utterly impossible to portray. ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... was a most deplorable state of things; but, unfortunately, we cannot limit the truth of our descriptions to the scenes we have just attempted to portray. The misery which prevailed, as it had more than one source, so had it more than one aspect. There were, in the first place, studded over the country, a vast number of strong farmers with bursting granaries and immense ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... all. But in the first place, it is not given to every man to explore all More's gifts. And then I wonder whether he will tolerate being depicted by an indifferent artist; for I think it no less a task to portray More than it would be to portray Alexander the Great or Achilles, and they were no more deserving of immortality than he is. Such a subject requires in short the pencil of an Apelles; but I fear that I ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... of Chicago—who shall portray it! This vast ruck of life that had sprung suddenly into existence upon the dank marshes ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... first essential of a great dramatic director—a psychologic mind in the study of the various human natures of his actors and of the ideas they attempted to portray. ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... retribution proceed within the soul and not from sources outside of it. That is the philosophic drift of the poet's thought expressed and implied in his poem. It was Man, in his mortal ordeal—the motive, cause, and necessity of which remain a mystery—whom he desired and aimed to portray; it was not merely the triumph of a mocking devil, temporarily victorious through ministration to animal lust and intellectual revolt, over the weakness of the carnal creature and the embittered bewilderment ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... ordinary than Mr. Osborne in manner and appearance. I do not presume to judge his real merits, for I did not notice him sufficiently to properly portray him to you, even if I had the gift of description, which I think you will admit I have not. He lives in my memory only as a something tall, spare, coarse of texture, red, hairy, and redolent of ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... portray salient characteristics of the life on the island, to describe the various acts of the reigning government, to point out the evils of colonial rule, and to figure the general historical and geographical conditions in a manner that enables the reader to form a ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... ground presents a level surface, and there are springs of everflowing water. The spot is entirely cut off and separated from all [ordinary] means of approach. Around it are many lakes and groves, and flowers in bloom at all seasons of the year; so that the very spot seems to portray the rape of the damsel, with which story, from our very infancy, we have been familiar. Close by, there is a cavern with its face towards the north, of an immense depth, from which they say that father Pluto, in his chariot, suddenly emerged, and carrying off the maiden, bore her away from ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... send up their flames by night and their smoke by day. It was splendid, it was magnificent, it was insurpassably picturesque. People must have painted it often, but if some bravest artist-soul would come, reverently, not patronizingly, and portray the sight in its naked ugliness, he would create one of the most beautiful masterpieces in the world. On our first morning the sun, when it climbed to the upper heavens, found a little hole in the dun pall, and shone down through it, and tried to pierce ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... maple, the pale straw-colour of the beech, the copper hues of the oaks; and, indeed, Sophy found that she could exhaust all the brightest colours of her paint-box, and yet not give sufficient variety or brilliancy to portray correctly the gorgeous tints of the landscape spread out before the window; nor was there blue to be found equal to the blue of the lake, still less of the sky above it. She was glad that she had finished her drawing in time, for a strong north wind sprang up, and a sharp frost ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... little volume the author has endeavored to portray disease as life under conditions which differ from the usual. Life embraces much that is unknown and in so far as disease is a condition of living things it too presents many problems which are insoluble with our present knowledge. Fifty years ago the extent of the unknown, and at that time insoluble ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... painters. Here and there a green island or a fishing-boat rested upon the surface of the tranquil blue. For miles and miles the eye followed indented grassy slopes, that rolled away on either side of the harbor, and the most delicate pencil could scarcely portray the exquisite line of creamy sand that skirted their edges and melted off in the clear margin of the water. Occasional little cottages nestle among these green banks, not the Acadian houses of the poem, "with thatched roofs, and dormer ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... the disguise, and wrote to the publisher declaring his opinion that Adam Bede was written by a woman. When this was denied, he still persisted in his conviction, detecting the womanly insight into character, her failure adequately to portray men, while of women "she seemed ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... instruction from various artists, but his greatest teacher was Nature. So he turned from the schools of Paris, and the artificial standards of his fellow artists there, to study for himself, at first hand, the peasant life he wished to portray. What a delightful place Barbizon was for such work we have seen from ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... what pen may portray! the wild anguish of some expressed in incoherent words, shrieks of terror, and cries for help, as they seemed to hear amid the roar of the elements the hurried footsteps of the assassins, and to see in the lightning's flash the glitter of their steel; the mute agony of others as in the ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... motif a little," he said. "I simply want to portray the quicksilver of after-war conditions—England in transition." At this time Delancey seemed to me the least little tiny bit depressed. The income he was sacrificing rose (in his conversation) from 5,000 to 7,000 pounds. He dined out less, avoided his club and Christie's. Also, he kept ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... sensations when under condemnation of death and expecting the immediate catastrophe are also minutely given from his own never paling recollection. Then there are allusions to Russian contemporary authors, which occur, to be sure, in his other books. One reason why Dostoevski is able to portray with such detail the thoughts and fancies of abnormal persons is because he was so abnormal himself; and because his own life had been filled with such an amazing variety of amazing experiences. Every single one of his later novels is a footnote to actual ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... chronicle,[153] let us make effort to capture and portray the spirit of Masonry in American history, if so that all may see how this great order actually presided over the birth of the republic, with whose growth it has had so much to do. For example, no one need be told what patriotic memories cluster about ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... almshouse stood, we are told, at the corner of Twelfth and Spruce Streets; but the belief is quite general (and we incline decidedly to that) that our beloved poet intended by his description to portray the quaint building formerly known as the Friends' Almshouse, which stood in Walnut Place (opening off of Walnut Street below Fourth), and which was torn down in 1872 or 1873 to give place to railroad and ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... interlude in a drama calling forth more masculine passions than that of love, it is because I foresee that the occasion will but rarely recur. If I linger on the description of Irene and her hidden affection, rather than wait for circumstances to portray them better than the author's words can, it is because I foresee that that loving and lovely image must continue to the last rather a shadow than a portrait,—thrown in the background, as is the real ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... locked up and frozen from all eternity. The bottom of accountability had fallen out. My first business was to put it in again." The coldness and indifference of the Church, which ministers usually employ the vivid language of the Bible regarding the ways of Zion to portray, he described in the equally vivid, but less dignified New England vernacular. "What did I do at Litchfield but to 'boost'? They all lay on me, and moved very little, except as myself and God moved them. I spent sixteen of the best years of my life at a dead lift in boosting." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... various city streets, Mercer Street (three), Nelson Street, Cuffe Street, and so on. In other words, the most original part of this poet's production is founded on reality. This does not mean that he lacks imagination; for it is only by imagination that a writer can portray and interpret familiar scenes. The more widely and easily their veracity can be verified by readers, the greater is the challenge to the ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... perfect, demands this degree of tonal excellence. Singing on the breath and coloratura are indeed very closely allied. The modern school of musical criticism does not hold coloratura singing in very high esteem. We demand nowadays expression, passion, and emotion; we want vocal music to portray definite sentiments, to express concrete feelings. Florid singing is not adapted to this form of expressiveness. It is only sensuously beautiful; it speaks to the ear, but does not ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... those adulators who have accused the persons about him with having dissuaded him from peace. Did he not say at St. Helena, in speaking of the negotiations at Chatillon, "A thunderbolt alone could have saved us: to treat, to conclude, was to yield foolishly to the enemy." These words forcibly portray Napoleon's character. It must also be borne in mind how much he was captivated by the immortality of the great names which history has bequeathed to our admiration, and which are perpetuated from generation ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... every beauty. The artist of the Renaissance on the other hand delighted not so much in the type as in the variation from it. Preoccupied with the unique mystery of the individual soul—a sense of which was Christianity's gift to Christendom—he endeavored to portray that wherein a particular person is unique and singular. Acutely conscious also of his own individuality, instead of effacing it he made his work the vehicle and expression of that individuality. The history of Renaissance architecture, as Symonds has pointed out, ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... protuberance with a grotesque likeness, or the height of the whole; others again are like clumsy arrogant initials carved on the venerable bark. I shall use some of them, but for the most part I shall use Borrow's own brush both to portray ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... only of his personal prestige but of what he imagined, or pretended to imagine, were the rights of a small nation, Castro tried throughout to portray the situation in such a light as to induce the other Hispanic republics also to view foreign interference as a dire peril to their own independence and sovereignty; and he further endeavored to involve the United States in a struggle with European powers ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... diametrically opposite conclusions as to the fighting temper and capacity of the quarry. Even old hunters—who indeed, as a class, are very narrow-minded and opinionated—often generalize just as rashly as beginners. One will portray all bears as very dangerous; another will speak and act as if he deemed them of no more consequence than so many rabbits. I knew one old hunter who had killed a score without ever seeing one show fight. On the other ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... hard. It was his fashion at this time to stand at his desk—a rude thing built for him by the village carpenter—and in the pauses which came in between his actual spells of writing, to stride about his limited territory, enacting the scenes he was striving to portray, and shaping his sentences in such an impassioned undertone as an actor will employ in the study of a part. He was at the limit of his walk from the window, thus engaged, when the door was violently and without warning broken open in such fashion that ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... still golden and bushy; but it was ragged and too long in front of the ears and also on his neck. His face still expressed insolence and vanity; but it had a certain tragic bitterness, as if it were trying to portray the emotions of a lofty spirit flinging defiance at destiny from a slough of despair. It was plain that he had been drinking heavily—the whites of his eyes were yellow and bloodshot, the muscles of his eyelids and mouth ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... grief, suffering, revenge upon somebody, loss or gain. The reporter who is behind the scenes sees the tumult of passions, and not rarely a human heroism that redeems all the rest. It is his task so to portray it that we can all see its meaning, or at all events catch the human drift of it, not merely the foulness and the reek of blood. If he can do that, he has performed a signal service, and his murder story ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... masks their temporary relations, and elevate to their natural position. Sometimes I have not known these persons intimately,—oftener I have; for it is only in the deepest hours that this light is likely to break out. But some of those I have best befriended I cannot thus portray, and very few men I can. It does not depend at all on the beauty of their forms, at present; it is in the eye and the smile, that the hope shines through. I can see exactly how —— will look: not like this angel in the paper; she will not bring flowers, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... citizen of that world. He would have, if nothing else, the distinction of his unmeasured millions, which would form a poetry, however sordid; the note of the world we mean is indistinction, and the protagonist of the fiction seeking to portray its fads and characters must not have more than two or three millions at the most. He, or better she, were better perhaps with only a million, or a million and a half, or enough to live handsomely in eminent inns, either at home ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... the real battle-god of the later epic; though in its original form Indra was still the warrior's refuge, as attests the stereotyped phraseology. In III. 225-232 honor and praise are ascribed to Skanda in much the same language with that used to portray his father, Civa. "The god of a thousand arms, the Lord of all, the creator of gods and demons" are phrases used in his eulogy. He too has a list of names; his nurse is the "maiden of the red (bloody) sea," called Loh[i]t[a]yan[i]. His terrible ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... alarming to his daughters. Seldom had they seen him so moved, especially over such a seemingly simple matter as the announcement of a new moving picture drama. He and the girls, in common with the other members of the Comet Film Company, had to portray many different scenes in the course of a season's work, and though some of it was distasteful, it was seldom objected to by anyone, unless perhaps by Pepper Sneed, the "grouch," or perhaps by Mr. Wellington Bunn, an actor of the old ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope |
