"Distinguishing characteristic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... most interesting as well as the most deadly of the North American serpents. Its chief distinguishing characteristic is the rattle at the end of tail. Curator Ditmars, of the New York Zoological Park, says that although he has "studied living examples of many species of deadly snakes—the South American bushmaster and the fer-de-lance, the African puff adder and the berg adder, and ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... poetic culmination of modern times. Shakespeare is the drama; and the drama, which with the same breath moulds the grotesque and the sublime, the terrible and the absurd, tragedy and comedy—the drama is the distinguishing characteristic of the third epoch of poetry, of the literature of ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... conversation ever since I laughed at his asserting that the English tongue was spoke with more propriety at Edinburgh than at London. Looking at me with a double squeeze of souring in his aspect, 'If the old definition be true (said he), that risibility is the distinguishing characteristic of a rational creature, the English are the most distinguished for rationality of any people I ever knew.' I owned, that the English were easily struck with any thing that appeared ludicrous, and apt to laugh accordingly; but it did not follow, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... establishment is realised from two sources- -meat and grain. And this is the distinguishing characteristic of English farming generally. Not a pound of hay, straw, or roots is sold off the estate. Indeed, this is usually prohibited by the conditions of the contract with the landlord. So completely has Mr. ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... maintained in 'The Asinaeum,' that most magnificent and metaphorical of journals!),—in other words, the police will nab thee at last; and thou wilt have the distinguished fate, as thou already hast the distinguishing characteristic, of Absalom!" ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... largest islands of the world, such as Borneo, New Guinea and Madagascar, show no such independent ethnic development. This is the distinguishing characteristic of the largest land-masses. Europe, except on the basis of its size and peninsula form, has no title to the name of continent; certainly not on anthropo-geographical grounds. Its classification as a continent arose in the Mediterranean among the Greeks, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... he ceased, he raised up on one elbow, he spat blood, and something that rattled on the gravel. A tooth! His grimy hand went trembling to his blood-stained mouth. He felt of his front teeth. One was gone, others were loose. Vanity, Dick's distinguishing characteristic, suffered a terrible blow. Staggering to his feet, fetching a stone with him, he ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... at first some Basque and Gascon horsemen in the French service, whose peculiarly distinguishing characteristic was a skilful use in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... detailed; in short, every thing which may be supposed to be brought on the tapis in an exclusive meeting of the fair sex. Nature is every where the same; and I presume, whether in a bath at Stamboul, a Parisian saloon, or a drawing-room in London, a similar love of gossip is their distinguishing characteristic. Almost every quarter of Stamboul is furnished with its baths or hummums; and the houses of all rich Turks possess this desirable luxury, which is used by the male part of the family in the morning, and by the females afterwards. The plan on which ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... reads:[35] "Mother Earth, to thee have we committed the bones of Fortunata, to thee who dost come near to thy children as a mother," and Professor Harkness thoughtfully remarks in this connection that "the love of nature and appreciation of its beauties, which form a distinguishing characteristic of Roman literature in contrast to all the other literatures of antiquity, are the outgrowth of this feeling of kinship which the Italians entertained ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott |
