"Characterization" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... period had an unenviable reputation, and were widely different from the Queen's and Rossin of the present day. Some of my readers will doubtless remember John Gait's savage fling at them several years later. To parody Dr. Johnson's characterization of the famous leg of mutton, they were ill-looking, ill-smelling, ill-provided and ill-kept. In a word, they were unendurable places of sojourn for a man of fastidious tastes and sensitive nerves. Perhaps the Captain's tastes were fastidious, though I can hardly ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... common for scientists to apply the word "neoplasm" to the new growths described in this chapter. Because of the still popular use of the word "tumor," it is retained in this chapter for the designation of those new growths to which the sevenfold characterization ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... idealization. Perhaps in "The Old Curiosity Shop" these qualities are best seen in their struggle and divergence, and the result is a magnificent juxtaposition of romantic tenderness, melodramatic improbabilities, and broad farce. The humorous characterization is joyously exaggerated into caricature,—the serious characterization into romantic unreality, Richard Swiveller and Little Nell refuse to combine. There is abundant evidence of genius both in the humorous and the pathetic parts, but the artistic impression ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... remained quietly at home, and taken no part in the contest; but we are indebted to him, or to some one who has reported it as coming from him, for a genial and laughable account of the exit of what once promised to be very injurious to our State, and still more for his characterization of that wise, pushing, incomprehensible character, George N. Sanders, Member of Congress from the Seventh ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... overstated the case. Mr. O'Brien, I take a very unfavorable view of your action in this matter. You had no right to have what are at least putatively sapient beings treated in this way, and even viewing them as mere physical evidence I must agree with Mr. Brannhard's characterization of your conduct as criminally reckless. Now, speaking judicially, I order you to produce those Fuzzies immediately and return them to the ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... as these have been worked up by Browning into a consistent characterization of a man who regards himself as having foregone his chances of laureateship or "Next Poet" by devoting himself to a form of literary art which would not appeal to the powers that be as fitting him for any such position. Such ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... interesting story; it is a very admirable story, conveying in a few pages much of Russian spirituality and more of universal human nature; but I believe that all, or nearly all, of our American magazines would refuse it; not because it lacks picturesqueness, or narrative suspense, or vivid characterization—all of these it has in large measure. They would reject it because it does not seem to move rapidly, or because it lacks a vigorous climax. The Goltva swollen in flood lies under the Easter stars. As the monk Jerome ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... point of objecting to this characterization of her sister, but she thought better of it ere she spoke. After all, if these men had done all this kindness by reason of a mistake, she needed not to ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... exposures, struggles, and triumphs of the individual soul, a description of personal experience, a picture of the inner life of the Christian in a hostile world. The contents of it can be made to answer to such a characterization only by the determined exercise of an unrestrained fancy, or by the theory of a double sense, as the Swedenborgians expound it. This method of interpreting the Revelation is adopted, not by scholarly thinkers, who, by the light of learning and common sense, seek to discern what the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... mind, who, though a Greek by birth and a Venetian by training, became more Spanish than the Spaniards during his long life at Toledo, strove constantly to express the difference between the world of flesh and the world of spirit, between the body and the soul of man. More recently, the extreme characterization of Goya's sketches and portraits, the intensifying of national types found in Zuloaga and the other painters who have been exploiting with such success the peculiarities—the picturesqueness—of Spanish faces and landscapes, seem to ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... memory, till no one has patience to spin from it a continuous thread of thought." We have the defects of our qualities. Nevertheless, I am struck with the likeness between a common attribute of the Greeks and Matthew Arnold's characterization of the Americans. Greek thought, it is said, goes straight to the mark, and penetrates like an arrow. The Americans, Arnold wrote, "think straight and see clear." Greek life was adapted to meditation. American quickness and habit of taking the short cut to the goal ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... 1861, long after Trollope had left Ireland. The characterization is weak, and the plot, although the author himself thought well of ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... come to Scott after Fielding, says Mr. Stevenson, "we become suddenly conscious of the background." The remark contains an admirable characterization of romanticism; as distinguished from classicism, romanticism is consciousness of the background. With Gros, Gericault, Paul Huet, Michel, Delacroix, French painting ceased to be abstract and impersonal. Instead of continuing the classic detachment, ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... masterpiece, David and Bethsabe, was also, in many respects, a fine play, though its beauties were poetic rather than dramatic, consisting not in the characterization—which is feeble—but in the eastern luxuriance of the imagery. There ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... vol i., p. 473. This characterization seems by no means fair, and probably it would have been so regarded by the writer in calmer moments. Is indignation chiefly directed to the "indifference to animal suffering," or to the "OPEN PROFESSION" of the feeling? For men, perfectly ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... Fairholme, see his Mosaic Deluge, London, 1837, p. 358. For a very just characterization of various schemes of "reconciliation," see Shields, The ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... want of peculiarity, attached itself to her countenance, which I before mentioned in the case of the president—that is to say, only one feature of her face was sufficiently distinguished to need a separate characterization: indeed the acute Tarpaulin immediately observed that the same remark might have applied to each individual person of the party; every one of whom seemed to possess a monopoly of some particular portion of physiognomy. With the lady in question this portion ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of the close connection between Julius Caesar and Hamlet as regards date of composition and the characterization of Brutus and Hamlet, interest attaches to Professor Gollancz's theory (Julius Caesar, Temple Shakespeare) that the original of the famous speech of Brutus to the assembled Romans (III, ii) may be found in Belleforest's History ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... experiments of his two predecessors, realized the new form better than any one before him had done. For he possessed the special gifts necessary to the performance of the task. He possessed, in the first place, a miraculous power of musical characterization. Through the representative nicety of his themes, through his inordinate capacity for thematic variation and transformation, his playful and witty and colorful instrumentation, Strauss was able to impart to his music a ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... chief was in frequent consultation with his captains, securing their hearty support, and familiarizing them with his plans for action in whatever circumstances a meeting might occur. An interesting reference to this practice of Nelson's appears in a later characterization of him written by the French Admiral Decres to Napoleon. "His boastfulness," so the comment runs, "is only equalled by his ineptitude, but he has the saving quality of making no pretense to any other virtues than boldness ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... article on Shakespeare in the June number of this Magazine, we spoke of his general comprehensiveness and creativeness, of his method of characterization, and of the identity of his genius with his individuality. In the present article we purpose to treat of some particular topics included in the general theme; and as criticism on him is like coasting along a continent, we shall make little pretension to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... a general characterization, but a review, of Mr. Mill's powerful work, we should venture to take issue on some matters both general and special,—as an example of the latter, on the possible utility of protective duties. The reasoning by which he, in common ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... enthusiasm exalts the Epid. to an ideal of comic excellence (Introd. Ps. p. 27). He even goes so far as to contend that Plautus lives up to the following characterization:[25] "Nicht blos durch naturgetreue and lebhafte Charakterschilderungen und durch eine komisch gehaltene, aber die Grenzen des Wahrscheinlichen und des GraziAsen nicht A1/4berschreitende Zeichnung des tAglichen Lebens soll der Dichter des Lustspiels seine Zuschauer interessiren ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... misleading. For this is a branch of literature that is in many respects the most rational of all: it is a symptom of progress. These same critics also complain that a fantastic plot is frequently developed at the expense of characterization. To this, one may answer that at times what happens can be more important than the people to whom it happens. In essence, both charges derive from laying undue stress upon psychology as the only legitimate fibre from which a fictional cloth may be woven. Undoubtedly ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... have had. His combat scene was terrific. The statement that his voice had failed has no valid foundation; it was as good when he challenged the cavalry-men to combat as in the best of his Thespian successes. In all acting that required delicate characterization, refined conception or carefulness, Booth was at sea. But in strong physical parts, requiring fair reading and an abundance of spring and tension, he was much finer than ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... Publ. Zool., 37:13, April 10, 1931) as differing from mordax in narrower braincase, higher skull near the anterior end of the frontals, darker coloration, and seemingly smaller size. After examining the material in the U. S. National Museum no reason is seen at the present time to amend this characterization, except to add that some specimens of M. l. mordax are as dark as seasonably comparable specimens of M. ...
— Comments on the Taxonomy and Geographic Distribution of North American Microtines • E. Raymond Hall
... failure of 'Guillery' at the Theatre Francaise and 'Gaetena' at the Odeon, renounced the theatre. Indeed, his power is in odd conceptions, in the covert laugh and humorous suggestion of the phrasing, rather than in plot or characterization. He will always be best known for the tales and novels in that thoroughly French style—clear, concise, and witty—which in 1878 elected him president of the Societe des Gens de Lettres, and in 1884 won him ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... likewise, Americanism is not a final word either of blame or praise. It is a word of useful characterization. Only American books, and not books written in English in America, can adequately represent our national contribution to the world's thinking and feeling. So argued Emerson and Whitman, long ago. But the younger of these two poets came to realize in his old age that the New World and the Old ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... the one-sided conception of infinity, we must look for another characterization of the relationship between a point and a plane which are infinitely distant from one another. This requires, first of all, a proper characterization of Point ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... information and the other of being the correspondent on home and clerical affairs. I don't know how many of them—if any—are women, but I seem to trace a female hand in some of the domestic details. But the book contains strong matter, too—both of narrative and characterization; as in the dying of Armand de la Roche-Guyon, and the picture of his lover, Madame de Vigerie. And there is something of the inspiration of the Holy Grail in that "Vision Splendid" which heartens Tristram Hungerford ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... success, securing for its author a large circle of readers on both sides of the Atlantic ready to welcome the future productions of her pen. The qualities which distinguish her writings are vigor of conception, sharpness of characterization, a moral earnestness pervading the judgments and reflections, and an ardor, sometimes too exuberant, which gives intensity to the delineation even while exciting doubts of its fidelity. Similar qualities had characterized her acting, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... in many of his theories he anticipated the latter. National to the core, he embodied in his music the finest qualities of the folk-song, and noble tone-painter that he was he excelled his predecessors in his employment of the orchestra as a means of dramatic characterization. ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... theoreticians of jurisprudence in Europe, wrote, many years ago, "The way in which one utilizes his wealth is the best criterion of his character and degree of culture. The purpose that prompts the investment of his money is the safest characterization of him. The accounts of expenditures speak louder of a man's true nature than his diary." How well these words apply to the richest of the rich and to their methods ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... the first example of an action, to be repeated in these later days in prairie farms and Western ranches by women who share the same spirit, though more often young than "ancient" maids. But ancient, though in her case a just enough characterization, was a term of reproach for any who at sixteen or eighteen at the utmost, remained unmarried, and our present custom of calling every maiden under forty, "girl" would have struck the Puritan mothers with a sense of preposterousness fully equal to ours ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... large. In a biographical sketch of Audubon the Man, interspersed with anecdote, he said so many interesting things that we regret we omitted to make any notes that would enable us to indicate at least something of his characterization. No doubt just what he said will appear in an appropriate place. Audubon's portfolio, in which his precious manuscripts and drawings were so long religiously kept, which he had carried with him ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... still one more fragment of self characterization: "A chief trait in my character was the need for love, not that everyday love which limits itself to a personal pleasure and delight, but that unbounded, overflowing love which feels itself completely one with the beloved.... The ideal of marriage was before me in youth, for ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... has been to sketch the various periods and styles of architecture with the broadest possible strokes, and to mention, with such brief characterization as seemed permissible or necessary, the most important works of each period or style. Extreme condensation in presenting the leading facts of architectural history has been necessary, and much that would rightly claim place in a larger work has been omitted here. The ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... is a wizard. Meredith Nicholson, who has heard Henry talk at a dinner, in a recent number of Scribner's magazine, said of him: "He's the best talker I've ever heard. It was delightful to listen to discourse so free, so graphic in its characterization, so coloured and flavoured with the very soil," and that night at the English dinner, all of Henry's cylinders were hitting and he took every grade without changing gears. But my ears were eager for the man on Henry's right. He told some ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... where they are wanting, nothing can make up for them. Not only are the most profound thoughts and the most exquisite culture incapable of saving a work of art which is looked upon as cold, but richness of imagery, ability and certainty in the reproduction of the real, in description, characterization and composition, and all other knowledge, only serve to arouse the regret that so great a price has been paid and such labours endured, in vain. We do not ask of an artist instruction as to real facts and thoughts, nor that he should astonish us with the richness of his imagination, ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... the finest poetry is contained in picturesque passages such as these, we find verse of another order, thrilling as the trumpet's "golden cry," in the passionate invocation of Dante, enshrining the magnificently Dantesque characterization of the three divisions of ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... by a story sent in to him by an unknown writer. It was, he told me, amazing from every purely literary point of view—plot, characterization, colour, and economy of language. It had so much that it seemed strange that anything at all should be lacking. He sent for the writer, and told him ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... rest your soul on that score. I won't. I'm sick of you and your lies. Stephanie Platow—the thin stick! Cecily Haguenin—the little piece of gum! And Florence Cochrane—she looks like a dead fish!" (Aileen had a genius for characterization at times.) "If it just weren't for the way I acted toward my family in Philadelphia, and the talk it would create, and the injury it would do you financially, I'd act to-morrow. I'd leave you—that's what I'd do. And to think that I ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... assumed office in 1913. The General, very much to my surprise, intimated that back of Pershing's attitude toward him was political consideration. I tried to reassure him and, indeed, I resented this characterization of General Pershing as an unjust and unwarranted imputation upon the Commander of the American ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... of the Virgin: "The neck of a heifer, and flesh like cream or hasty-pudding, that quivers when it is touched;" or of the picture of St. Ursula's companions, by the same hand: "Their squab noses poking out of bladders of lard that did duty for their faces;" not to speak of the characterization of a "Sacred Heart" too revolting to reproduce? Surely when, after having reviled M. Tissot almost personally, he describes his works as painted with "muck, wine-sauce, and mud," it is difficult not to ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... frequently, answers to mental questions—questions, too, the answer to which none of those having their hands on the board could possibly know. Often, again, remarks are volunteered conveying information not possessed by any one of the writers. The distinct characterization of a personality is frequently seen,—and a personality of a very detestable sort. The language employed, frequently, is quite unprintable. The "ouija" lies as coolly and confidently as it tells the truth; in fact, it is dogmatically positive that its statements are correct in every case, even ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... magnificence compelled even from our apathetic traveller a shy and reluctant veneration. He tried to fix his attention upon a certain famous Guido which was attached by hinges to the wall, and which, as he had just learned from Baedeker, was a marvel of color and fine characterization; he stood for a few moments staring with a blank and helpless air, as if, for the first time in his life, he was beginning to question the finality of his own judgment. Then his eyes wandered off to the cornice of the wall, whose florid rococo ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the arch persecutor, is shown in the characterization of him by Luke, when he represented him as breathing out, "threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell
... forgotten that. I couldn't let those stipulations stand without protest, and at the same time, if I protested the characterization of Cumshaw as a practicing politician, the trial could easily end right there. So I prayed for a miracle, and Clement Sidney promptly ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... it served to brighten his eyes. Enid suggested it to him and he went out and got it. It helped him play his scenes. It gave him the glittering expression he needed in his characterization." ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... I thought, why would it be a strange looking apparatus? Why would an advanced technological age necessarily be devoid of any sense of fashion, although that would be assuming that any civilization had ever had one. Fashion is more a characterization of a culture than a basic and unchanging principle, for a desert people would wear clothes that would be most uncomfortable to a people who lived in the snow. Clothes may not make the man, but the man certainly makes the clothes, and you can judge a person ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... old-time quality, but neither was such as he would himself have perhaps rejected if he had been editor. Then he plunged at the heap, and in a fifteen-cent magazine of recent renown he found among five poems a good straight piece of realistic characterization which did much to cheer him. In this, a little piece of two stanzas, the author had got at the heart of a good deal of America. In another cheap magazine, professing to be devoted wholly to stories, he hoped for a breathing-space, and was tasked by nothing less familiar ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... play on words in the following epigrammatic characterization of a loud and violent speaker: "He ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... slaves." "If a place could be provided for their reception," said Randolph, "and a mode of sending them hence, there were [sic] hundreds, nay thousands of citizens" who would manumit their slaves.[279] Randolph's characterization of the free black was generally approved by the leaders in this movement. Caldwell used "degraded" and "ignorant" in describing this class of people. Mills said: "It will transfer to the coast of Africa the blessings of religion and civilization; ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... Gothard; then back again to Lucerne and round by the Stelvio to Venice and Verona, and finally through the Tyrol and Germany homewards. The ascent of the St. Bernard was told in a dramatic sketch of great humour and power of characterization, and a letter to Richard Fall records the night on the Rigi, when he saw the splendid sequence of storm, sunset, moonlight, and daybreak, which forms the subject of one of the most ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... come over to us; among others, the characterization of the three German Emperors: the first William as "Der greise Kaiser," the Emperor Frederick as "Der weise Kaiser," and the second William as "Der Reise Kaiser"; and there were unpleasant murmurs regarding sundry trials for petty treason. But ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... teacher's face, but the incident had jarred the old wound; Miss Leary's description of the teacher, together with Plato's characterization, had stirred lightly sleeping memories. He was more or less abstracted during the remainder of the drive, and did not recur to the conversation that had been interrupted by coming ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... and adverse criticism of "The Tyranny of God," not a single one offers an argument in answer to it. For the most part, their characterization has been that it is "pessimistic." As if by calling it "pessimistic," they refute ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... necessary if the story is to take rank above other stories. The true artist will seek to shape this living substance into the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skillful selection and arrangement of his materials, and by the most direct and appealing presentation of it in portrayal and characterization. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also" (Matt. 5:39). He would have men even avoid criticism of one another (Matt. 7:1-5). Epigrams are seductive, and there is a fascination in the dissection of character; but there is always a danger that a clever characterization, a witty label, may conclude the matter, that a possible friendship may be lost through the very ingenuity with which the man has been labelled, who might have been a friend. It is not a small matter in Jesus' eyes, he puts his view very strongly (Matt. 5:22); and, as we ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... Angelo, Tasso, Dante, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, Chatterton, Keats, Byron, are all characterized as proud. The last-named has been especially kept in the foreground by following verse-writers, as a precedent for their arrogance. Shelley's characterization of Byron ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... This entry includes a brief characterization of the system with details on the domestic and international components. The following terms and abbreviations are used throughout ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Characterization is Miss Woolson's forte. Her men and women are not mere puppets, but original, breathing, and finely contrasted ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... Miss Conant's characterization of Mr. Durant, in his own words describing James Otis, is particularly illuminating in its revelation of his temperament. In February, 1860, he said of James Otis, in an address delivered in the Boston Mercantile ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... Carolina. In the course of time, however, Satan succeeded in sowing tares among the wheat. Two opposing parties sprang up in the synod. The one, to which the great majority belonged, found its expression and embodiment in the General Synod, and is too well known to our readers to require further characterization at this place. The other was the staunch and truly Lutheran party, to which, indeed, but a small minority adhered. The majority, in agreement with a number of influential men in the Pennsylvania Synod, proposed the idea of a General Synod, which, according to their view, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... Shakespeare's extreme objectivity makes snap judgments unsafe. We cannot always be sure that his characters voice his own thoughts and judgments, but, on the other hand, we have no right to assume that they never do. The tragedies especially afford a safe basis for judgment, for in them characterization is of the greatest importance. No great character was ever created which did not spring from the poet's own soul. In Shakespeare's characters sin, lust, cruelty, are always punished; sympathy, love, kindness are everywhere glorified. The writer illustrates ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... and banks of established reputation cannot afford to deceive; they receive their compensation in the way of commissions on sales, and their characterization of the bonds may be accepted without question, for they invariably investigate the bonds, before they lend their names to them ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun
... was a master of what the ancient Greeks would have called "making the worse appear the better reason." He was able to misstate his antagonist's position so shrewdly as to deceive the very elect. And with equal skill he could escape from the real meaning of his own statements. Lincoln's characterization is apt: "Judge Douglas is playing cuttlefish—a small species of fish that has no mode of defending himself when pursued except by throwing out a black fluid which makes the water so dark the enemy cannot see ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... of the initiated, or to us of the wider outlook, there is nothing incredible in the thought of shoemakers in other worlds—but I suspect that this characterization is tactical. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... government as I have always believed or could desire them to be." The news-sheets which followed his progress from day to day coined the phrase, "era of good feeling," which has passed current ever since as a characterization of his administration. ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... to set himself outside of ordinary human morality, he is presumably on the verge of shipwreck. The Republican, while emphasizing the popular estimate of John Brown as "a hero," coupled with this the characterization of him as "a ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... and humorous characterization. Nothing more individual, and in its own way more powerful, has been done in American fiction.... The story is a work of ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... "What is the general character of the large community of native Christians formed of orphans and their descendants?" it is difficult to give a satisfactory reply, though easy enough to give one's impression. A characterization of communities is one of the most common and at the same time most unsatisfactory of operations, as the data for its being done well are so wide, recondite, and difficult to grasp. As I proceed I shall have occasion to give my views of native ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... awaited the onrush of doctor and attendant. They soon had me in hand. Each taking an arm, they marched me to my room. This took not more than half a minute, but the time was not so short as to prevent my delivering myself of one more thumb-nail characterization of the doctor. My inability to recall that delineation, verbatim, entails no loss on literature. But one remark made as the doctor seized hold of me was apt, though not impromptu. "Well, doctor," I said, "knowing you to be a truthful man, I ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... Greensboro address Page had given these men high praise. But for the assiduous idolaters of stratified dogma he entertained a contempt which he was seldom at pains to conceal. North Carolina had many clergymen of the more progressive type; these men chuckled at Page's vigorous characterization of the brethren, but those against whom it had been aimed raged with a fervour that was almost unchristian. This clerical excitement, however, did not greatly disturb the philosophic Page. The hubbub lasted for several years—for Page's Greensboro ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... watch the unconscious, resistless movements of nations, and at the same time read the crushing characterization by our teachers of the press of those who, by personal characteristics or by accident, happen to be thrust into the position of leaders, when at the most they only guide to the least harm forces which can no more be resisted permanently than can gravitation. Such would have been the role ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... novel to be published since The Glad Heart, Madame Albanesi strikes new ground. Although full of able and sympathetic characterization and that elusive charm which belongs to all her books, this story is unlike any that she has yet written. The author deals with a problem which is the outcome of emotions at once simple, even ordinary, and yet at the same ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... classification, giving examples of the best known species, east, west, and south, of thirty families of land-birds, with account of habits, and illustrative anecdotes. An appendix contains a simple non-technical characterization of the several families, in language a child ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... now give a summary characterization of zooetheism, then call attention to some of the relics of hecastotheism found therein, and proceed with a brief statement of the higher stages of theism. The apparent and easily accessible is studied first. In botany, the trees and the conspicuous flowering plants of garden, field, and ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... in a somewhat different light. Abner had got hold of the idea of limited partnership and had sought to apply it, in roundabout fashion, to the matrimonial relation. His treatment, far from suggesting an academic aloofness, was as concrete as characterization and conversation could make it; no one would have supposed, at first glance, that what chiefly moved him was a chaste abstract Platonic regard for the whole gentler sex. In short, people—such seemed to be his thesis—might very advantageously separate, and most informally too, ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... butlers up and down the land for many years. Now and again, when the part did not need any special characterization, he obtained London engagements. He was one of the known ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the great novelists who followed him, and this is almost literally true, at least so far as the male characters are concerned. In particular, this applies to his famous "Dead Souls," which contains if not the condensed characterization in full of these types, at least the readily recognized germs of them. But in this respect, his early Little Russian Stories, "Tales from a Farm-house Near Dikanka," and the companion volume, "Mirgorod," as well ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... less expressive, is Emerson's characterization of Lincoln as one who had been "permitted to do more for America than any ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... 1851-8, 4 vols.). These are marked by clearness of statement, force of argument, and felicity of illustration. The style, although less direct and simple than that of his unofficial writings, is still excellent. A large part of the interest attaching to these early papers lies in their acute characterization of the diplomatists with whom he had to deal. His analysis of their motives reveals from the outset that thorough insight into human nature which was to count for so much in his subsequent diplomatic triumphs. Of his later notes and dispatches, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the most noteworthy stories for girls issued this season. The life of Henrietta is made very real, and there is enough incident in the narrative to balance the delightful characterization."—Providence Journal. ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... des weiblichen Geschlechtes (Attempt at a Characterization of the Female Sex), Hanover, ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... implicitly in Miss Murdock's talents; he felt that the part of the ingenuous young girl in this play was ideally suited to her pleading personality, so, in conjunction with Mrs. Thomas Whiffen and Charles Cherry, he featured her in the cast. Miss Murdock's characterization amply justified Frohman's confidence, but the play failed in New York and on the road. ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... the mind of the author over a period of eight years, and resulted in a product which from the point of view of characterization and dramatic technique is almost flawless. Yet far more important is the fact that the play marked an epoch in Gogol's own literary development. When he began on it, his ambitions did not rise above making it a comedy of pure fun, but, gradually, in the course of his working ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... Seriously, this is a real request. I want your opinion, your impression. I want to see how she will affect you. I don't say I ask for your advice; that, of course, you will not undertake to give. But I desire a definition, a characterization; you know you toss off those things. I don't see why I should n't tell you all this—I have always told you everything. I have never pretended to know anything about women, but I have always supposed ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... His characterization of her motive was so distasteful that she made no reply, and left him to his conjectures, in which he did not appear unhappy. "How do you find Mrs. Maynard ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... noble Whedon, who polished Greek roots for the elegant Agnew, who bungled metaphysics to the despair of the learned Ten Brook, who murdered chemistry under the careful Douglas whose experiments never failed, and who calculated eclipses of the moon from the desk of Williams, the paternal." This characterization by a member of the class of '49 is paralleled in a more caustic estimate of a somewhat later Faculty by a member of the class of '65 who speaks of "Boise the precise, Frieze the effusive, Williams the plausible, and ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... approach to a sentimental characterization of precious stones is to be found in "A Lover's Complaint", lines 204-217. Although we have already noted most of them separately, it may be well to give the ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... is a vivid, running characterization of the foremost personalities in the socialist movement throughout the world. Such a book does real service in presenting the truly significant facts in the modern spread of socialistic propaganda and in stating in definite terms the principles ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... the title of a German story by Hermann Hesse, in which he severely criticizes the incompetency of the present school system to fully develop the youth. The characterization of the teachers' profession as Hesse puts it, does not only serve for Germany, but for all modern states in which governments strive to train the young for the purpose of making patient subjects and hurrah-screaming patriots of them. The author ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... which is little less than miracle, as in Tennyson, who was not a man among men—being shy as a whip-poor-will, seclusive as flowers which haunt the woodland shadows—yet those reading him must know how accurately he reads the human heart; and his characterization of Guinevere, Pelleas, Bedivere, Enid, the lover in Maud, a Becket, the Princess, Philip, Enoch Arden, and Dora, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... Washington Irving's immortal story has approached the original in art of expression or in vividness of scene. But, if historical record can be believed, it is the actor, rather than the dramatist, who has vied with Irving in the vitality of characterization and in the romantic ideality of figure and speech. Some of our best comedians found attraction in the ri?1/2le, yet, though Charles Burke and James A. Herne are recalled, by those who remember back so far, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... restrictions may be too great. The charge against the administration of justice in the present system is that it is nothing but a game of wits, of cunning, and of concealment, promoted by the rules of procedure. I think this characterization is most unjust and most unwise because it aids the attack on a valuable and indispensable institution without suggesting any real security for such evils and defects as there are. An experience of many years in the trial of all sorts of causes as lawyer and judge and in framing a judicial system ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... 'History of the Dutch Republic' is in my judgment a work of the highest merit. Unwearying research for years in the libraries of Europe, patience and judgment in arranging and digesting his materials, a fine historical tact, much skill in characterization, the perspective of narration, as it may be called, and a vigorous style unite to make it a very capital work, and place the name of Motley by the side of those of our great historical trio,—Bancroft, Irving, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the lines, thus dividing it into almost the exact number of scenes, with the same continuity of action as shown in the scenario. The minor details of action are omitted, of course, and there are little side remarks written in, in connection with characterization, etc., which would be out of place ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... (1) his power of visualization; (2) his choice of significant detail; (3) his originality or lack of it; (4) his range in characterization; (5) his power of suggestion as over against his vividness of delineation; (6) his economy—or lack of it—in expression. Where ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... all picturesque in style, strong in characterization, and are manifestly sketched from nature. The dry and unforced humor that distinguishes them gives them ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... characterization of the Revolution of 1688 is largely a result of his dislike of the governing ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... happy inspiration that led him to turn the story into verse, for it revealed a capacity which otherwise we could hardly have guessed him to possess. The vigor and rapidity of the action, the vivid sketching of the background, the pregnant characterization, the drollery of the humor give this piece a high place among stories in verse, and lead us to conjecture that, had he followed this vein instead of devoting his later years to the service of Johnson and Thomson, he might have won a place beside the author ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... and Phoebe were the only other pictures this year. A frieze, Music, was shown, and at the Grosvenor Gallery A Study of a fair-haired girl, in green velvet dress. 1886 was chiefly notable for the statue in bronze of The Sluggard, in which Leighton again furnished us with a plastic characterization of Sleep, which he designed by way of contrast to his statue of the struggling Athlete. It was suggested, Mr. Spielmann says, by accidental circumstances. The model who had been sitting to him fell a-yawning in his interval of rest, and charmed the artist, not ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... Betterton's adaption of Marston's The Dutch Courtezan, which the actor calls The Revenge; or, A Match in Newgate, has sometimes been erroneously ascribed to Mrs. Behn by careless writers. She has also been given The Woman Turn'd Bully, a capital comedy with some clever characterization, which was produced at Dorset Garden in June, 1675, and printed without author's name the same year. Both Prologue and Epilogue, two pretty songs, Oh, the little Delights that a Lover takes; and Ah, how charming is the shade, together with a rollicking ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... cur'ous feller," and this characterization applied equally well to his peculiar appearance and his inquiring disposition. In his confirmation nature had evidently sacrificed her love of beauty to a temporary passion for elongation. Length seemed to have been the central thought, the theme, as it were, upon which he had ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... artistic graces, also, and the structural subtilties of a more developed literary period, we must not, of course, look in 'Beowulf.' The narrative is often more dramatic than clear, and there is no thought of any minuteness of characterization. A few typical characters stand out clearly, and they were all that the poet's turbulent and not very attentive audience could understand. But the barbaric vividness and power of the poem give it much more than a merely historical interest; and the careful ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... years emancipated from St. Mary's, and far gone in taffeta. With her lustreful light hair, absent blue eyes, and her gentle voice, as small and pretty as her face and figure, it was not too difficult to justify Crailey Gray's characterization of her as one of those winsome baggages who had made an air of feminine helplessness ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... and carried forward since their time. And hence also the propaganda for a return to handicraft and household industry. So much of the work and speculations of this group of men as fairly comes under the characterization here given would have been impossible at a time when the visibly more perfect goods were ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... to me, you see, with that characterization. It was as if I'd managed to go out and take a walk and sat down in the park outside and heard the President talking to himself about the chances of war with Russia and realized he'd sat down on a bench with its back to mine and only a bush between. You see, here we were, two ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... operating on a large scale; he provided the British public with coffee for its breakfast, with drugs for its stomach, and with strange woods for its dining-room furniture and walking-sticks. He combated this ignominious characterization of his position indignantly. The new arrivals certainly gave him no hint that they considered him so lightly. This thought greatly comforted him, for he felt that in some way he was summoning to his aid all of his assets and resources ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... stare at the map, his body there but the soul of him tramping the wild woods, she recalled Vesta Lorimer's characterization of that other pair. Surely this man of hers was of the eagle brood. But there, in her mind, ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... lieutenants of our frigate call for no special characterization. If egotism, the most amusing of traits where it is not offensive, existed among them to any unusual degree, it was modified and concealed by the acquired exterior of social usage. Their interests also were wider. With them, talk was less of self and personal experience, and more upon subjects ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... said in former chapters for the characterization of Philip II. and his polity. But there had now been nearly ten years of another reign. The system, inaugurated by Charles and perfected by his son, had reached its last ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... expectations. When we study it merely as a literary performance, we shall notice the effect of the handicap under which Mrs. Stowe labored at the time of composition, as well as her imperfect conception of the art technique of the modern novel. There are faults of plot, style, and characterization. Modern fiction would call for more differentiation in the dialogue of the different characters and for more unity of structure, and yet there are stories with all these technical excellencies which ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... spent much of the following day—it was a legal holiday—with the Judge in his private den up on the third floor. This, as Camellia showed us once when the men were away, was a big, bare room—this was her characterization—principally fireplace, easy-chairs, books and windows. I liked it better than any other place in the house, for it was unencumbered with useless furniture of any sort, and the view from its windows was much finer than that ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... library. That library shows Mr. BENSON'S genius; without it I should hardly have been able to believe in the subsequent happenings, but, given this "secret garden," all the tragedy is explained. I have left myself no space in which to do justice to some admirable characterization. Keeling's wife is worthy of a place in the author's long gallery of woolly-witted matrons; while in Silverdale he has given a study of clerical futility and egotism almost savage in its detestability, a portrait at which one laughs and shudders together. Of course the book will have, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various |
