"Delineate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stories, more akin to the usual narrative of fiction. "The Scarlet Letter," a work of pure imagination, was the climax of his tales, the furthest reach of his romantic allegorizing moral art in creation; but he now undertook to utilize his experience and observation in the attempt to delineate life in its commoner and more realistic aspects of character and scene. He began "The House of the Seven Gables" in September and finished it early in January. He wrote regularly, but the story went on ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... during another winter in this city, her novel, "Ramona," a book composed with the greatest rapidity, and printed first in the Christian Union, afterward appearing in a volume in 1884. Its sole object was further to delineate the wrongs of the aborigines. Besides these two books, she wrote, during this later period, some children's stories, "Nelly's Silver Mine, a Story of Colorado Life" (1878), and three little volumes of tales about cats. But her life-work, as she ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... aim have we presumed, Adventurous, to delineate Nature's form; Whether in vast, majestic pomp array'd, 440 Or dress'd for pleasing wonder, or serene In Beauty's rosy smile. It now remains, Through various being's fair proportion'd scale, To trace the rising lustre of her charms, From their first twilight, shining forth ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... two pleasant little paragraphs to describe his visit to Fort-George and his entertainment there by Sir Eyre Coote. I have always admired the Doctor's sly way of avoiding a description of the Fort: "I cannot," he says, "delineate it scientifically, and a loose and popular description is of use only when the imagination is to ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... speaking, a humbug, and that the old English sailing craft and the old English stage-coach are, after all, the only modes of conveyance worthy the patronage of Britons. Against exaggerated hoop-skirts he has all along set his face, and seldom, if ever, condescends to delineate a lady in crinoline. His beau-ideal of female beauty is comprised in an hour-glass waist, a skirt that fits close to the form, a sandalled shoe, and very long ringlets; whereas tight lacing, narrow skirts, sandalled shoes, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... my chapter I'll read you the letter. And then remember that our story is to be built up solely upon this document. There are to be no characters in the story except those mentioned in the letter, and our task must be to delineate them in such a way that they are in keeping with the suggestions the letter gives us. Here ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... People of the State of New York: THE three last numbers of this paper have been dedicated to an enumeration of the dangers to which we should be exposed, in a state of disunion, from the arms and arts of foreign nations. I shall now proceed to delineate dangers of a different and, perhaps, still more alarming kind—those which will in all probability flow from dissensions between the States themselves, and from domestic factions and convulsions. These have been already in some instances ...
— The Federalist Papers
... moulds himself into the Divine image (and not himself only, but other men), and is the creator of the virtues private as well as public. When mankind see that the happiness of states is only to be found in that image, will they be angry with us for attempting to delineate it? 'Certainly not. But what will be the process of delineation?' The artist will do nothing until he has made a tabula rasa; on this he will inscribe the constitution of a state, glancing often at the divine truth of nature, and from that deriving the godlike among men, mingling ...
— The Republic • Plato
... the reviewers, in regard to the 'Songs of the Ark,' seemed to think that a sufficiency of eastern scenery did not obtain in them. Doubtless this was correct; but I remark, that if my object in the undertaking had been to delineate scenery, I would not have turned my attention to the East, the scenes of which I never saw. Human nature being radically the same everywhere, a man, through the sympathies of that nature, can know to a certain extent what ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... is, so to narrate them that their characteristic elements shall be shown; to give such an account of the general career as may make it clear what these chosen events really were,—to show their respective bearings to one another; to delineate what is expressive in such a manner as to ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the part of the poet, and just so much merit allowed, even to the object of his censure, as to make his picture natural. It is a child alone who fears the aggravated terrors of a Saracen's head; the painter, who would move the awe of an enlightened spectator, must delineate his tyrant with human features. It seems likely, that Dryden considered the portrait of Shaftesbury, in the first edition of "Absalom and Achitophel," as somewhat deficient in this respect; at least the second edition contains ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... Spirits; how without remorse The ruin of so many glorious once And perfet while they stood; how last unfould The secrets of another world, perhaps Not lawful to reveal? yet for thy good 570 This is dispenc't, and what surmounts the reach Of human sense, I shall delineate so, By lik'ning spiritual to corporal forms, As may express them best, though what if Earth Be but the shaddow of Heav'n, and things therein Each to other like, more then on earth is thought? As yet this ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... more anxious to delineate fully the person and habits of Wouter Van Twiller, from the consideration that he was not only the first but also the best governor that ever presided over this ancient and respectable province; and so tranquil ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... energy and enthusiasm shown by Mr. Percival Lowell in founding an observatory in regions where the planets can be studied under the most favorable conditions, they cannot lose sight of the fact that the ablest and most experienced observers are liable to error when they attempt to delineate the features of a body 50,000,000 or 100,000,000 miles away through such a disturbing medium as our atmosphere. Even on such a subject as the canals of Mars doubts may still be felt. That certain markings to which Schiaparelli gave the name of canals ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... reader to look at the pictures we are about to sketch, with less surprise than he might otherwise feel; and a few additional explanations may carry him back in imagination to the precise condition of society that we desire to delineate. It is matter of history that the settlements on the eastern shores of the Hudson, such as Claverack, Kinderhook, and even Poughkeepsie, were not regarded as safe from Indian incursions a century since; and there is still standing on the banks of the same river, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... of genius. I shall ever esteem it one of the great privileges of my life that I was permitted to know him well, and call him friend. These papers are given to the public with the hope that they may be of more than ordinary interest to the intelligent reader, and that they may delineate Landor in more truthful colors than those in which he has heretofore been painted. In repeating conversations, I have endeavored to stand in the background, where I very properly belong. For the inevitable egotism of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... extreme quaintnesses and singularities of circumstance, in order to confer upon their weak portraitures some vigor of outline. It takes a Giotto to draw readily a nearly perfect O; but a nearly perfect triangle any one can draw. Shakspeare is able to delineate a Gentleman,—one, that is, who, while nobly and profoundly a man, is so delicately individualized, that the impression of him, however vigorous and commanding, cannot be harsh: Shakspeare is equal to this task, but even so very able a painter as Fielding is not. His Squire Western ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... came, his address secured him friends, whom his necessities soon alienated; so that he had, perhaps, a more numerous acquaintance than any man ever before attained, there being scarcely any person eminent on any account to whom he was not known, or whose character he was not, in some degree, able to delineate. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... Eight principal stars delineate its outline; two are of the first magnitude, five of the second, and one of the third (Fig. 12). The most brilliant are Betelgeuse ([alpha]) and Rigel ([beta]): the former marking the right shoulder of the Colossus ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... to delineate an escape wheel for a detached lever. We place a piece of good drawing-paper on our drawing-board and provide ourselves with a very hard (HHH) drawing-pencil and a bottle of liquid India ink. After placing our paper on the board, we draw, with ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... that it did not enjoy the light of the true religion), yet very superior to it in point of material well-being. Not a race of cannibals, as the credulous Diodorus Siculus, on the strength of some vague tradition, was pleased to delineate; but a people acquainted with the use of the precious metals, with the manufacture of fine tissues, fond of music and of song, enjoying its literature and its books; often disturbed, it is true, by feuds and contentions, but, on the whole, living happily under the patriarchal ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... extraordinary, that it should be the most difficult thing in the world to be natural, and that it should be harder to hit off the manners of real life, and to delineate such characters as we converse with every day, than to imagine such as do not exist. But caricature is much easier than an exact outline, and the colouring of fancy less difficult ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... own emotions will not permit me to attempt a description which language, indeed, has not power to delineate. It is sufficient to say that it was affecting beyond measure; and that the last words uttered by Mrs. Donner in tears and sobs to Mr. Eddy were, "Oh, save, save ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... information of the reader, sketch out the situation of the then British colonies as they bordered on each other, and extended along the sea coast, from the gulf of St. Lawrence as far south as the country of Florida. We shall enumerate the Indian nations that lie scattered about their confines, and delineate the manner in which the French hemmed them in by a surprising line of fortifications. Should we comprehend Hudson's Bay, with the adjacent countries, and the banks of Newfoundland, in this geographical detail, we might affirm that Great Britain ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... confusion in my brain, which refuses to delineate distinctly succeeding events. Sometimes the irradiation of my friend's gentle smile comes before me; and methinks its light spans and fills eternity—then, again, I feel the ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... hour of twelve at night when the lamp was extinguished. The miserable king had ceased to breathe. The ensuing scene no pen can delineate or pencil paint. The courtiers, totally forgetful of French etiquette, rushed down the stairs, crowded into their carriages, and the silence of night was disturbed by the clattering of the horses' hoofs, as they were ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... but his Life; which, great and good as he was, must not be supposed to be entirely perfect. To be as he was, is indeed subject of panegyrick enough to any man in this state of being; but in every picture there should be shade as well as light, and when I delineate him without reserve, I do what he himself recommended, both by ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... Constantine is considered, even in the present age, as an object either of satire or of panegyric. By the impartial union of those defects which are confessed by his warmest admirers, and of those virtues which are acknowledged by his most-implacable enemies, we might hope to delineate a just portrait of that extraordinary man, which the truth and candor of history should adopt without a blush. But it would soon appear, that the vain attempt to blend such discordant colors, and to reconcile such inconsistent qualities, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the Author endeavoured to delineate, in a simple and popular form, the leading facts relating to the Intellectual Powers, and to trace the principles which ought to guide us in the Investigation of Truth. The volume which he now offers to the public attention, is intended as a sequel to these Inquiries; and his object in it is to ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... office. He was a tubby man, with eyes like boiled gooseberries. No one could guess from his face what manner of man he might be, whether generous or mean, hot-tempered or good-humoured, because all those marks which are supposed to delineate character were in him obliterated by adipose tissue. You had to take him as you found him. But for the rest he was a merchant who owned a lucrative business and a few small blunt-nosed steamers that traded along the coasts adjacent to ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... are the scenes herein described, gives you but a faint idea of the awful reality. The anguish, the agony of mind, resulting from a thousand little circumstances impossible to delineate on paper, can be known by those only who have been in similar situations. Pray for us, my dear brother and sister, that these heavy afflictions may not be in vain, but may be blessed to our spiritual good, and the advancement of Christ's Church ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... subject of history is man. History has for its object to record his doings and experiences. It may then be concisely defined as a narrative of past events in which men have been concerned. To describe the earth, the abode of man, to delineate the different kingdoms of nature, and to inquire into the origin of them, or to explain the physical or mental constitution of human beings, is no part of the office of history. All this belongs to the departments of natural ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... and endurance, written to delineate the upward progress of a boy whose moral attributes were of the lowest order, in consequence of neglected education, but in whom high religious principles were ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... formed into habits of acting together by frequent repetition, while they are yet separately obedient to the will; as is evident from the difficulty we experience in gaining so exact an idea of the front of St. Paul's church, as to be able to delineate it with accuracy, or in recollecting a ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... poetically, not only in Paul and Virginia, but in Chaumiere Indienne and Etudes de la Nature. The science which these two writers lacked, Buffon possessed in a high degree; but he had not the power to delineate Nature and feeling in combination: he lacked insight into the hidden analogies between the movements of the mind and the phenomena of the outer world. Chateaubriand, on the contrary, had this faculty to its full modern ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... the strong and accurate delineation of the characters themselves. Not only is this to be noted in the passages where the poet has taken pains openly to portray their various characteristics, but there are many passages, or single lines perhaps, which serve more subtly to delineate them. What proud reserve, what sorrow painfully restrained, the following line, for example, contains: "Two evenings after ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... her publisher that at all events his share of the offering is appreciated, whatever hers may be! We are also favoured with some valuable suggestions from Mr. Clarke, the Royal librarian, respecting a very remarkable clergyman. He is anxious that Miss Austen should delineate one who 'should pass his time between the metropolis and the country, something like Beattie's minstrel, entirely engaged in literature, and no man's enemy but his own.' Failing to impress this character upon the authoress, he makes a fresh suggestion, and proposes that she should ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... [Jap.]; diagram, monogram. map, plan, chart, ground plan, projection, elevation (plan) 626. ichnography^, cartography; atlas; outline, scheme; view &c (painting) 556; radiograph, scotograph^, sciagraph^; spectrogram, heliogram^. V. represent, delineate; depict, depicture^; portray; take a likeness, catch a likeness &c n.; hit off, photograph, daguerreotype; snapshot; figure, shadow forth, shadow out; adumbrate; body forth; describe &c 594; trace, copy; mold. dress up; illustrate, symbolize. paint ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... thus fatally excepted, I have no purpose to delineate. Lampoon itself would disdain to speak ill of him, of whom no man speaks well. It is sufficient, that he is expelled the house of commons, and confined in gaol, as being legally convicted of sedition ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... were as multifarious as have been portrayed by the whole band of Italian painters; but, as a wizard in words, he resembled the magician in mosaic, who can delineate in stone every feature of those portraits because he can discriminate and imitate shades of color more numberless than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... harmony, and her trustful reverence, free from pretence and cant. It is not unlikely that the surviving sharers of her love and friendship may feel the inadequateness of this brief memorial, for I close it with the consciousness of having failed to fully delineate the picture which my memory holds of a wise and brave, but tender and loving woman, of whom it might well have been said, in the words of the old Hebrew text, "Many, daughters have done virtuously, but ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... flower" will hang therein "its pensive head," while all along the line of the stream the black alder will make its appearance in the lowlands, no matter how far its current may be diverted from its original channel, or how distant the supply of natural seeds. For nature's sternest painter can only delineate her as "instinct with music ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... an internal one, dealing as little as possible with outward events, and taking hold of these only where it cannot be helped, in order by means of them to delineate the history of a mind bewildered in certain errors. We would not willingly, if we could, give a lively and picturesque surrounding to this delineation, but it is necessary that we should advert to the circumstances of the time in which this inward history was passing. We will say, therefore, ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the pen of a Tacitus to delineate with accuracy the character of such a man, who, to use the words of the lamented Moreau, "had covered the French name with such shame and disgrace, that it would be almost a disgrace to bear it; and who had brought upon that unhappy country the curses ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... all reasonable accuracy, and to attain it I used for six years such winter leisures as the exacting duties of a busy professional life permitted, to collect notes of the dress, hours, sports, habits and talk of the various types of men and women I meant to delineate. I burned a hundred pages of these carefully gathered materials soon after I had found time, in a summer holiday, to write the book for which these ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... would be a certain resultant force experienced by it dependent upon the distribution of electricity producing the field. When we know the strength and direction of this resultant force, we know all the properties of the field, and we can express them numerically or delineate them graphically, Faraday (Exp. Res., 3122 et seq.) showed how the distribution of the forces in any electric field can be graphically depicted by drawing lines (which he called lines of force) whose direction at every point coincides with the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... in our Meditation on Police, will expressly forbid his wife to receive the visits of a celibate whom he suspects of being her lover, and whom she has promised never again to see. Some minor scenes of the domestic interior we leave for matrimonial imaginations to conjure up; a husband can delineate them much better than we can; he will betake himself in thought back to those days when delightful longings invited sincere confidences and when the workings of his policy put into motion certain ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... body to their surface. So is it also with Animal substances; the dead body of an Ant, or such little creature, does almost instantly shrivel and dry, and your object shall be quite another thing, before you can half delineate it, which proceeds not from the extraordinary exhalation, but from the small proportion of body and juices, to the usual drying of bodies in the Air, especially if warm. For which inconvenience, where I could not otherwise remove it, I thought of ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... a bird on the bough; and sang forth, free and offhand, never knowing the troubles of other men. Not so; with no man is it so. How could a man travel forward from rustic deer-poaching to such tragedy-writing, and not fall-in with sorrows by the way? Or, still better, how could a man delineate a Hamlet, a Coriolanus, a Macbeth, so many suffering heroic hearts, if his own heroic heart had never suffered?—And now, in contrast with all this, observe his mirthfulness, his genuine overflowing love of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... barely survey modern pursuits to be convinced how little they are connected with wisdom. Since, to describe the nature of some particular place, the form, situation and magnitude of a certain city; to trace the windings of a river to its source, or delineate the aspect of a pleasant mountain; to calculate the fineness of the silkworm's threads, and arrange the gaudy colours of butterflies; in short, to pursue matter through its infinite divisions, and wander in ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus |
