"Figurative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Dean of Faculty and Mr. Penney, joined to that of some four or five hundred respectable ladies of both sexes besides, all sticking out around him in cubes, hexagons, and prisms, like cleft almonds in a bishop-cake. Hardly inferior in the figurative is the passage which follows: 'The Doctor (Dr. Chalmers) rides on at a rickety trot,—Messrs. Cunningham, Begg, and Candlish by turns whipping up the wornout Rosenante, and making the rider believe that windmills are Church principles, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... The cries and figurative language of Pippo attracted the attention of the multitude, who were additionally amused by the mixture of dialects in which he uttered his appeals. The least important trifles, by giving a new direction to popular sympathies, frequently become the parents of ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... at times into very ridiculous blunders. I once heard him say, after having spent some time in explaining his text, "But that I may devil-hope the subject a little more fully, I would observe, that the words are mephitical." He, of course, meant to say, metaphorical, figurative, not mephitical which means of a bad smell. My plan secured me against ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... to whom it was dictated. It ran thus:—"We go upon the principle that, in order to pull the matter out of the fire, a fourth of a fifth of a loaf is better than no bread, which the terms proposed are."] See the section on figurative language (p. 76) in Nichols' English Composition. But do not take Nichols himself as a model; I find him writing thus:—"Avoid an accumulation of little words. The luggage of particles is an impediment to strong speech and a jar in the harmony of style," which is nearly as funny ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... her friend, and her eyes twinkled. It was evident that some mystery was in the air, and that the word 'tonic' was used in a figurative rather than a literal sense. Mellicent pondered, hit on the solution of chocolates, and being an inveterate sweet-tooth, found consolation in the prospect. Perhaps Peggy was going to present her with some of the treasures ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... trace it back to a few hundred monosyllabic roots, each expressing with analytic precision some definite material object, from which roots the whole subsequent must be derived by etymologic spinning-out, by agglutination, and by figurative heightening of meaning. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... clear! more natural! more agreeable to the true spirit of simplicity! Here are no tropes,—no figurative expressions,—not even so much as an invocation to the Muse. He does not detain his readers by any needless circumlocution; by unnecessarily informing them, what he is going to sing; or still more unnecessarily enumerating ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... what's in the damned thing, you know, Mr. Vandemark; and the truth being a seamless web, if a lawyer knows all about the law in one book, he's prone to make a hell of a straight guess at what's in the rest of 'em. Hence beware of the man of one book. I may safely lay claim to being that man—in a figurative way; though there are half a dozen volumes or so back there—the small pedestal on which I stand reaching up toward a place on the Supreme Bench ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... expresses much more beautifully and more exactly than does any rendering from the Latin or Greek the various marks and characteristics of the shepherd's life and duties. The oriental languages, like the people who speak them, are exceedingly figurative and poetic in their modes of expression; and hence, for our present purpose, it is only by getting back as closely as we can to the original that we are able adequately to appreciate the beauty and poetry of that simple but charming life about ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... freight of imperishable literature, revealing a learning positively prodigious, a style that flows with a sonorous majesty and crashes with a vitriolic and destroying power, a lavish richness in figurative language, a beauty of Aeolian harps, of sapphire seas, of the flushed and ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... we have creative power, not in a figurative sense, but in reality. Everything in the material universe about us had its origin first in spirit, in thought, and from this it took its form. The very world in which we live, with all its manifold ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... from every stage and process of the social training of men. Things long hidden appeared discovered with an amazing clearness and nakedness. These men who had awakened, laughed dissolvent laughs, and the old muddle of schools and colleges, books and traditions, the old fumbling, half-figurative, half-formal teaching of the Churches, the complex of weakening and confusing suggestions and hints, amidst which the pride and honor of adolescence doubted and stumbled and fell, became nothing but ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... messenger, and in general to be subject to his directions. It gave to the aid the office of chief and rendered probable his election as the successor of his principal after the decease of the latter. In their figurative language these aids of the sachems were styled "Braces in the Long House," which symbolized ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... jolly fellow, a lover of fun and good dinners, and of an amiability and personal popularity that have aided not a little the popularity of his writings in verse and prose—for he writes prose too, prettier, quainter, more figurative, and more poetic if anything, than his poetry. He is also a professor at ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... unusual metaphor, for example—may often be used in the beginning of an article to arouse curiosity. As the comparison in a metaphor is implied rather than expressed, the points of likeness may not immediately be evident to the reader and thus the figurative statement piques his curiosity. A comparison in the form of a simile, or in that of a parable or allegory, may ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... not believe in any literal heaven and hell, but considers these as figurative expressions of the state of the soul, whether in this life or the life to come. The Aryas therefore do not perform the shradhh ceremony nor offer oblations to the dead, and in abolishing these they reduce enormously the power and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... Indians of different tribes were going to attack the British garrison at Michili-Makinak, and endeavour to destroy all the English in Upper Canada. Henry did not pay over much attention to this warning, because "the Indian manner of speech is so extravagantly figurative". ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... figurative. Polly, why have you gone back to braids and bows? You look very infantile for a ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... with, bring absolutely to an end, especially as something hostile, hindering, or harmful, was formerly used of persons and material objects, a usage now obsolete except in poetry or highly figurative speech. Abolish is now used of institutions, customs, and conditions, especially those wide-spread and long existing; as, to abolish slavery, ignorance, intemperance, poverty. A building that is burned to the ground is said to be destroyed by fire. Annihilate, as a philosophical term, signifies ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... by a friend as to the circumstances which would be sufficient to legalize a "nuncupative [Footnote: "Nuncupative" is a legal term for an oral as distinguished from a written will.] death-bed will." Kinglake wrote a figurative account of an imaginary case in much detail, and by the next post received a solemn affidavit from the man setting out Kinglake's own exact series of incidents as ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... from the probability that, as contemporaries resident in the same provincial town, Ely, they were well acquainted with each other, leave little doubt that the two were personal friends. Bulleyn's figurative description of the poet, quoted at p. xxvii., is scarcely complete without the following verses, which are appended to it by way of summary of his teachings (similar verses are appended to the descriptions of Chaucer, Gower, &c.):—[Barclay ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... hearth, lighting up with a ruddy glow the heavy panelings and the time-worn tapestries. Dinner was just over, the dessert was on the table, and two gentlemen were sitting over their wine—though this is to be taken rather in a figurative sense, for their conversation was so engrossing as to make them oblivious of even the charms of the old ancestral port of rare vintage which Lord Chetwynde had produced to do honor to his guest. Nor is this to be wondered at. Friends ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... among the New-Brunswick Indians frequently wear a round hat, a shawl, and short clothes, resembling the short gown and petticoat worn by the French and Dutch women. The Indian language is bold and figurative, abounding in hyperbolical expressions, and is said to be susceptible of much elegance. To give the reader some notion of the manner in which these people conduct their conferences with each other, and with Europeans, ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... centre-piece is in illustration of the text in the Apocalypse (v. 12): "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing." One may question, indeed, if figurative language of the kind in question can ever be successfully transferred to canvas; whether this literal lamb, on its red-damasked table, in the midst of these carefully marshalled squadrons of Apostles, ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... this unprecedented occurrence, I made a discovery,—that of Sergeant Marigold's sense of humour. To that sense of humour my upbraidings, often, I must confess, couched in picturesque and figurative terms so as not too greatly to hurt his feelings, had made constant appeal for the past fifteen years. Hitherto he had hidden all signs of humorous titillation behind his impassive mask. To-night, a spark of ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... often taken to mean unreal, fanciful, figurative. For man is earthly in his views as well as in his feelings, and therefore regards visible and material things as the emphatic realities. Hence he employs material objects as the ultimate standard, by which he measures the reality of all other things. The natural man has more consciousness ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... never did. Various greedy sinners of the congregation drank in the comfortable doctrine with relief. It was worth the while having come to church that Sunday morning! All was plain. The Bible, as usual, meant nothing in particular; it was merely an obscure and figurative school-copybook; and if a man were only respectable, he was a man after God's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it is allowed to emerge into the light of consciousness. And if the fugitive elements want to venture forth they must be correspondingly disguised, in order to pass the censor. Freud calls this disguising or paraphrasing process the dream disfigurement. The literal is thereby displaced by the figurative, an allusion intimated through a nebulous atmosphere. Thus, in the following example, an unconscious death wish is exhibited. In the examination of a lady's dream it struck me that the motive of a dead child occurred repeatedly, generally in connection ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... and figurative expression beyond her, paused in her knitting and looked anxiously at Phoebe, to see how she would take it. After a moment of thought, the young woman admitted ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... not these clumsy drawings, too, reveal that which, considering their environment, is talent—original and unacademic. Here is the sheer beginning, the spontaneous germ of art, the labouring of a savage soul controlled by wilful aesthetic emotions. For these pictures are not figurative, not mere signs and symbols capable of elucidation, but the earliest and only efforts of an illiterate race, a race in intellectual infancy, towards the ideal—a forlorn but none the less sincere attempt to reach the "light that quickens dreams ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... however, are limited to relatively few of a population. The raison d'etre of the greater number of minor mental inefficiencies the psychanalyst puts down to handicaps in the unconscious. Again he mistakes figurative imagery for explanations. The conception of endocrine diversity in the make-up supplies us with the rationale of the vast majority of organic and functional defects and inferiorities, in short, subnormalities of any group, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... commentaries, eh? and shapes of helmets. Well. What shape does it take? Why, my dear, you know of course that those expressions are figurative. I think it takes the shape of a certain composure and peace of mind which the Christian soul feels, and justly feels, in regarding the provision made for its welfare in the gospel. It is spoken of as the helmet of salvation; and there is the ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... hear everything," he interposed quickly; for an idea came to him—if Mrs. Dickson had to hear the tale she should hear it from him, with certain little embellishments and figurative allusions, which would effectually destroy any chance Ailleen might have of making capital out ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... with Wordsworth's Ode on the Intimations of Immortality. Francis Quarles' Divine Emblems long remained a favorite book with religious readers, both in Old and New England. Emblem books, in which engravings of a figurative design were accompanied with explanatory letterpress in verse, were a popular class of literature in the 17th century. The most famous of them all ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... though seldom—sages never: But speakers, bards, diplomatists, and dancers, Little that's great, but much of what is clever; Most orators, but very few financiers, Though all Exchequer Chancellors endeavour, Of late years, to dispense with Cocker's rigours,[804] And grow quite figurative with their figures. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... philosophy, be it Plato's or Hegel's, recognises in what actually is, the rational, the realisation of eternal, rational ideas. This realisation, or the process of what we call creation, can never be conceived by us otherwise than figuratively. But we can make this figurative presentation clearer and clearer. That the world was made by a wood cutter, as was originally implied in the Hebrew word bara, and in the German schoepfer, schaffer, in the English shaper, or ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... formed according to the figurative sense of a word, or the mental conception of the thing spoken of, and not according to the literal or common use of the term; it is therefore in general connected with some figure of rhetoric: as "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us, and we beheld ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... in the same language, forgetting himself, in the excitement of the moment, and unconsciously using the same figurative diction, "or the fountain of the red stream may be dried up before the medicine-man comes. Hasten! It is noble to do good, and the Great Spirit shall ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... with his kindly half-caste wife, we visit the gilded and dragon-carved mansion of a leading Chinese merchant, friendly, hospitable, and delighted to exhibit his household gods, both in literal and figurative form. A visit to the Joss Temple follows, liberally supported by this smiling Celestial, whose zeal and charity may perchance plead for him in that purer sanctuary not made with hands, and as yet unrevealed to his spiritual sight. The ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... the figurative politeness of a negro chief, he assured me that his town, his forests, his slaves, his wives, were mine (he was quite sincere with regard to ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... chemical philosopher should adopt the simplest style and manner; he will avoid all ornaments as something injurious to his subject, and should bear in mind the saying of the first king of Great Britain respecting a sermon which was excellent in doctrine but overcharged with poetical allusions and figurative language, "that the tropes and metaphors of the speaker were like the brilliant wild flowers in a field of corn—very pretty, but which did very much hurt the corn." In announcing even the greatest and most important discoveries, the true philosopher will communicate ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... have anything like justice in him, how is he to reprove, in his children, vices in which he himself so long indulged? These vices of youth are varnished over by the saying, that there must be time for 'sowing the wild oats,' and that 'wildest colts make the best horses.' These figurative oats are, however, generally like the literal ones; they are never to be eradicated from the soil; and as to the colts, wildness in them is an indication of high animal spirit, having nothing at all to do with the mind, which is invariably debilitated and debased ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... and even with God himself, the center and source of all being; through his active will he is increasingly creator of his environment. Man is thus in a true sense creating the conditions which make him to be what he is. Thus in no figurative sense, but literally and actually, man is in the process of creating himself. He is realizing the latent and hitherto unsuspected potentialities of his nature. He is creating a world in which to express himself; ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... incident of the leper, Tertullian argues that the prohibition of contact with a leper was figurative, applying really to the contact with sin. But the Godhead is incapable of pollution, and therefore Jesus touched the leper. It would be in vain for Marcion to suggest that this was done in contempt of the law. For, upon his own (Docetic) theory, the body of Jesus was phantasmal, and ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... to observe, children, that we have no real authority for the reveries to which it is owing. We are told nothing distinctly of the heavenly world; except that it will be free from sorrow, and pure from sin. What is said of pearl gates, golden floors, and the like, is accepted as merely figurative by religious enthusiasts themselves; and whatever they pass their time in conceiving, whether of the happiness of risen souls, of their intercourse, or of the appearance and employment of the heavenly powers, is entirely the product of their own imagination; ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... oldest documents there are certain ideograms that, when we are warned, remind us of the natural objects from which their forms have been taken, but the connection is slight and difficult of apprehension. Even in the case of those characters whose forms most clearly suggest their true figurative origin, it would have been impossible to assign its prototype to each without the help of later texts, where, with more or less modification, they formed parts of sentences whose general significance was known. Finally, the Assyrian ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... said, very seriously. "It is kind of you.... But, do you know, I was speaking rather of figurative sugar." ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... acquaintance I had made on our former visit, and who was now located on the island Mahonta (lat. 17d 58' S., long. 24d 6' E.). The villagers looked as we may suppose people do who see a ghost, and in their figurative way of speaking said, "He has dropped among us from the clouds, yet came riding on the back of a hippopotamus! We Makololo thought no one could cross the Chobe without our knowledge, but here he drops among us like ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... equally accepted; and a grateful world insisted upon styling the new science, as it was deemed, "Galvanism." Thus a word was added to all the languages, which has been found useful in its literal sense, and forcible in its figurative. Whatever we may think of Galvani's philosophy, we cannot deny that he immortalized his name. He died a few years after, fully satisfied with his theory, but having no suspicion of the many, the peculiar, the marvellous results that were to flow from the chance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... its middle or quattrocento age of evolution. It remained for Buonarroti to cover the vault and the whole western end with masterpieces displaying what Vasari called the "modern" style in its most sublime and imposing manifestation. At the same time he closed the cycle of the figurative arts, and rendered any further progress on the same lines impossible. The growth which began with Niccolo of Pisa and with Cimabue, which advanced through Giotto and his school, Perugino and Pinturicchio, Piero della Francesca and Signorelli, Fra Angelico and Benozzo Gozzoli, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... to my saying on the general question of miracles: Why these dubious miracles?—such as curing blindness that may have been cured by a process?—since the unity given to the act of healing is probably (more probably than otherwise) but the figurative unity of the tendency to mythus; or else it is that unity misapprehended and mistranslated by the reporters. Such, again, as the miracles of the loaves—so liable to be utterly gossip, so incapable of being watched or examined amongst a crowd of 7,000 people. Besides, were these people mad? ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... prisoner remained in the dock. The days of the years of his pilgrimage were not few, and quite probably, except in a figurative sense, not evil. He was of sturdy build, quiet manners, and his countenance was indicative of great sincerity. In a voice extremely deferential he stated that he had once ministered to a dying Confederate, and it was impossible for him to take ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... Saviour's arms, and taken even into himself. Assuredly, if we put on the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall not make provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof; such a warning would then be wholly unnecessary. Or, if we do not like language thus figurative, let us put it, if we will, into the plainest words that shall express the same meaning; let us call it praying to Christ, thinking of him, hoping in him, earnestly loving him; these, at least, are words without a figure, which all can surely understand. Let us ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... 15th verse of the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians, instead of being taken in a figurative sense, as it generally has been, be understood literally, it will be found to furnish the means of determining, with a tolerably near approach to certainty, the particular nature of the disease under which St. Paul is supposed ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... has a strong temper within him, and he can redden up beautifully all over when his equanimity is disturbed. If you tread upon his ecclesiastical bunions he will give you either a dark mooner or an eye opener—we use these classical terms in a figurative sense. He will keep quiet so long as you do; but if you make an antagonistic move be will punish you if possible. He can wield a clever pen; his style is cogent, scholarly, and, unless overburdened with temper, dignified. He can fling the shafts of satire or distil the balm of pathos; can ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... second meaning attached in Scripture to the expression God dwells in man. According to the first meaning, we understand it in the most plain and literal sense the words are capable of conveying. According to the second, we understand His dwelling in a figurative sense, implying this—that He gives an acquaintance with Himself to man. So, for instance, when Judas asked, "Lord, how is it, that Thou wilt manifest Thyself to us and not to the world?" Our Redeemer's reply was this—"If a ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... to burn incense, as at that time his lot was, "The whole multitude of the people were praying without." (Luke 1:9,10) They left him where he was, near to God, between God and them, mediating of them; for the offering of incense by the chief priest was a figurative making of intercession for the people, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Oecolampadius, in their anti-literal and figurative interpretation of the words of institution, endeavour to support it by Scriptural analogies, more or less appropriate, but in the practical objections they raised, which Luther treated as over-curious subtleties of human reason, they were actuated ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... more distinct than the object it reflects; and if Mr. Clerk's version can be trusted (it appears to be more literal though less rhetorical than MacPherson's) the Gaelic is often concrete and sharp where MacPherson is general; often plain where he is figurative or ornate; and sometimes of a meaning quite different from his rendering. Take, e.g., the closing passage of the second ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... metamorphosed into a cascade in a pantomime is full as sublime an effort of genius. I do not know whether the Arabian Nights are of Oriental origin or not:(641) I should think not, because I never saw any other Oriental composition that was not bombast without genius, and figurative without nature; like an Indian screen, where you see little men on the foreground, and larger men hunting tigers above in the air, which they take for perspective. I do not think the Sultaness's narratives very natural or very probable, but there is a wildness in them that ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... here speaks of 'light,' not 'the light,'—that is, he is speaking now not of Christian character, which he had likened to light, but of physical light to which he had likened it, and is backing up his figurative statement as to the reproving and manifesting effects of the former, by the plain fact as to the latter, that, when daylight shines on anything, it is revealed, and, as it were, becomes light. He clenches his exhortation by quoting probably an early Christian hymn, which regards Christ as the great ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... Natche may be considered, from the above account of it, as merely figurative. For the small quantity of yams, which we saw the first day, could not be intended as a general contribution; and, indeed, we were given to understand, that they were a portion consecrated to the Otooa, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... to drop all figurative expression, what hopes can we ever have of engaging mankind to a practice which we confess full of austerity and rigour? Or what theory of morals can ever serve any useful purpose, unless it can show, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... horrid ritual, in order to secure an unearthly guardian to their treasures. They killed a negro or Spaniard, and buried him with the treasure, believing that his spirit would haunt the spot, and terrify away all intruders." There is a figurative peculiarity in the language in which Joshua denounced the man who should dare rebuild Jericho, that seems to point at some ancient pagan rite of this kind. Nor does it seem improbable that a practice which existed in times so little remote as those of the buccaneers, may have first begun ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... more clear! more natural! more agreeable to the true spirit of simplicity? Here are no tropes, no figurative expressions, not even so much as an invocation to the Muse. He does not detain his readers by any needless circumlocution, by unnecessarily informing them what he is going to sing, or still more unnecessarily enumerating what he ...
— English Satires • Various
... me to place you here an excuse I am conscious of owing you, for having, perhaps, too much affected the figurative style; though surely, it can pass nowhere more allowable than in a subject which is so properly the province of poetry, nay, is poetry itself, pregnant with every flower of imagination and loving metaphors, even ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... transmutation-processes—in the sensations, feelings, perceptions, images, ideas—in short, in all that is going on at the point where (I necessarily express myself in terms of spatial relations, though in this connection these are figurative) my sentience and ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... preposition "de" conveys the general idea of separation from a source or starting point, in space (literal or figurative), or in time (89, 131). This meaning develops into that of the source from which connection or ownership arises (49), and also into that of the agency from which an act is done or a condition caused (169). ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... do not dull thy palm with entertainment/Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade] The literal sense is, Do not make thy palm callous by shaking every man by the hand. The figurative meaning may be, Do not by promiscuous conversation make thy mind insensible ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... act practically—according to the literality of the legal, implied, figurative, allegorical significations of the Great National ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... have none, unless you learn to cook him." These words recurred to me, just as I was on the point of taking a life partner, in a figurative sense. ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... case, indeed, can try so severely, or put upon record so conspicuously, this indestructible propensity for seeking light out of darkness—this thirst for looking into the future by the aid of dice, real or figurative, as the fact of men eminent for piety having yielded to the temptation. We give one instance—the instance of a person who, in practical theology, has been, perhaps, more popular than any other in any church. Dr. Doddridge, in his ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... professes to contain all the words used in South France, with their meaning in French, their proper and figurative acceptations, augmentatives, diminutives, with examples and quotations. Along with each word we have all its various forms as they appear in the different dialects, its forms in the older dialects, the closely related forms in the other Romance languages, and its etymology. A special feature ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... Chapters ix.-xiv. of the book of Zechariah illustrate this custom,—chapters which apparently come from the last Old Testament period, the Greek or Maccabean. The habit of presenting prophetic truth in the highly figurative, symbolic form, of the apocalypse also became prominent in later Judaism. This has already been noted in the study of the growth of the New Testament, and is illustrated by the book of Revelation. ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... a beautiful diction, it will always be found that it consists in this happy relation between external freedom and internal necessity. The principal features that contribute to this freedom of the imagination are the individualizing of objects and the figurative or inexact expression of a thing; the former employed to give force to its sensuousness, the latter to produce it where it does not exist. When we express a species or kind by an individual, and portray a conception in a single case, we remove from fancy the chains which the understanding ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... little Fyne less solemn. He hissed through his teeth in unexpectedly figurative style that it would take a lot to persuade him to "push under the head of a poor devil of a girl quite sufficiently plucky"—and snorted. He was still gazing at the distant quarry, and I think he was affected by that ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... those professors of religion who still preach a heaven of golden streets and pearly gates, of idleness and everlasting psalm-singing, of restful and innocuous bliss. Mark Twain wanted to point out the absurdity of taking the allegories and the figurative language of the Bible literally. Of course everybody called for a harp and a halo as soon as they reached heaven. They were given the harps and halos—indeed nothing harmless and reasonable was refused them. But they found these things the merest accessories. ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... been entrusted a high destiny, and who know not at what hour they may be called to give an account of their stewardship,[34] bids men look forward with certainty and hope to a glorious consummation of the kingdom. Though many of our Lord's sayings with regard to His second coming are couched in figurative language, we cannot believe that He intended to teach that the kingdom itself was to be brought about in a spectacular or material way. He bids His disciples take heed lest they be deceived by a visible Christ, or led away by merely outward signs.[35] His coming ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... of sensuous intuition, which is possible and necessary a priori, may be called figurative (synthesis speciosa), in contradistinction to that which is cogitated in the mere category in regard to the manifold of an intuition in general, and is called connection or conjunction of the understanding (synthesis intellectualis). Both are transcendental, not merely because ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... novice who neglected to sweep out the Council room, hence was reborn as a broom,(!) therefore the wisest of all the world's sages stands accused of idiotic superstition. Why not try and understand the true meaning of the figurative statement before criticising? Is or is not that which is called magnetic effluvia a something, a stuff or a substance, invisible and imponderable though it be?... The mesmeric or magnetic fluid which emanates from man to man, or even from ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... Legislation,' it must be understood that 'legislation' is here to be understood in a figurative sense only. When we speak of legislation in everyday language, we mean that process of parliamentary activity by which Municipal Statutes are called into existence. Municipal Legislation presupposes a sovereign power, which prescribes rules of conduct to its subjects. ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... carking cares and tribulations of the present life, were kept in view the far more important realities of the life that is to come, and the souls of the people were enbraved and strengthened for the conflicts, both literal and figurative, to which ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... insisted on by our theologians and the framers of our Confessions, is that a passage of Scripture is always to be taken in its natural, plain and literal sense, unless there is something in the text itself, or in the context, that clearly indicates that it is intended to convey a figurative sense. ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... But in the house, if "faither was in," they were quiet as mice. In short, Hob moved through life in a great peace - the reward of any one who shall have killed his man, with any formidable and figurative circumstance, in the midst of a country ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by their form of teeth, the character of their stomachs, and the shortness of their bowels, and fed, for the time they remained in it, exclusively on vegetable substances, which, in ordinary circumstances, their lacteals could not have converted into chyle. Certain figurative expressions in Scripture taken literally, which refer to a class of wild animals whose real destiny is rather, it would seem, to be extirpated than to be changed, coupled with the belief, now no longer ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... white man, and of noble Castilian race, had been enabled to give us something which, on the other side of the sea,* was sought for as very precious. (* 'Por alla,' or, 'del otro lado del charco,' (properly 'beyond,' or 'on the other side of the great lake'), a figurative expression, by which the people in the Spanish colonies denote Europe.) I here acquit myself of the promise I made to this worthy man, who disinterestedly refused to accept of the slightest retribution. The Pearl Coast presents ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... theories of their own to support. The image of a vinculum juris colours and pervades every part of the Roman law of Contract and Delict. The law bound the parties together, and the chain could only be undone by the process called solutio, an expression still figurative, to which our word "payment" is only occasionally and incidentally equivalent. The consistency with which the figurative image was allowed to present itself, explains an otherwise puzzling peculiarity of Roman legal phraseology, the fact that "Obligation" ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... figurative monkey. Aunt Olive put six quarts of milk in a kettle on the stove, and as it warmed, thickened it slightly with about a pint ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... against us, amid the ripeness of its gardens, the dark red residence, with its formal facings and its vacant windows, seemed to make the past definite and massive; the little village, nestling between park and palace, around a patch of turfy common, with its taverns of figurative names, its ivy-towered church, its mossy roofs, looked like the property of a feudal lord. It was in this dark composite light that I had read the British classics; it was this mild moist air that had blown from the pages of the poets; while I seemed ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... come down to look into the matter. As his people were then holding a grand council fire at the forks of the Delaware, they did not wish to put it out and build another council fire on this side of the Delaware. The reason which he gave for this was figurative and Indian-like. ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... the home-life that needs the fullest sympathy, Granville had no true companionship. He went out alone to parties and the theatres. Nothing in his house appealed to him. A huge Crucifix that hung between his bed and Angelique's seemed figurative of his destiny. Does it not represent a murdered Divinity, a Man-God, done to death in all the prime of life and beauty? The ivory of that cross was less cold than Angelique crucifying her husband ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... Annotations, on its first pages, a "Preface declaring the reason and use of the Book;" and at the last pages a "Table directing to some principal things observed in the Annotations of the Psalms," a list of "Hebrew phrases observed which are somewhat hard and figurative," and also some ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the word 'founded' in a literal as well as figurative sense. While the merchants, in their year of victories, threw down the walls of the war-towers, they as eagerly and diligently set their best craftsmen to lift higher the walls of their churches. For the most part, the Early Norman or Basilican ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... highly respectable in the beginning of its career. I have here used the term in the figurative sense; it is in truth an epigram into which all political abomination ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... monstris liberat Perseus frees the land from monsters (literal separation—actual motion is expressed) (b) Perseus terram tristitia liberat Perseus frees the land from sorrow (figurative ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... know it—nor do I think it; nor what is more, do you think it; for you are sharp enough to know that where there are so many figurative terms in use to signify murder, it is not probable that had they, on this occasion, wished to signify murder, they would have used a phrase which every one knows expresses an intention to drive a man out of the country. Yes, sir, ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... of biological equality of the two sexes must use the word in a figurative sense, not ignoring the differentiation of the two sexes, as extreme feminists are inclined to do. To this differentiation we ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... how much might be done in the way of enticing the youthful and unwary, and shoving the old and helpless, into the wrong buss, and carrying them off, until, reduced to despair, they ransomed themselves by the payment of sixpence a-head, or, to adopt his own figurative expression in all its native beauty, 'till they was rig'larly done over, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... INFLUENCE.—It is true to nature, although it be expressed in a figurative form, that a mother is both the morning and the evening star of life. The light of her eye is always the first to rise, and often the last to set upon man's day of trial. She wields a power more decisive far than syllogisms ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... with a stick until the sparks rose like quail out of the grass, Dr. Slavens vowed solemnly that he would win that fee or take in his shingle—which, of course, was a figurative shingle only at that time—and Agnes pledged herself to stand by and help him do it as faithfully as if they were already in the future and bound to sustain each other's hands in the bitter and the ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... Professor Tyndall, endeavoring to write poetically of the sun, tells you that "The Lilies of the field are his workmanship," you may observe, first, that since the sun is not a man, nothing that he does is workmanship; while even the figurative statement that he rejoices as a strong man to run his course, is one which Professor Tyndall has no intention whatever of admitting. And you may then observe, in the second place, that, if even in that figurative sense, the lilies of ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... the Bible whether national or personal, are nothing else than statements of the universal law of Cause and Effect applied to the inmost principles of our being, and that therefore it is not mere rhapsody, but the figurative expression of a great truth when the Psalmist says '"The Lord is my Shepherd," and "Thou art my God and ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... laid out. The notching took a tedious time, and the bows of the blunt scissors left purple furrows upon thumb and fingers. Uncle Ike had given me an empty raisin box. I lined it with Musidora's own mattress and quilt, spread the "pinked" cambric on them, laid the remains (no figurative phrase in this connection) upon this bed, folding the one arm left to the unfortunate across her breast, and wrapped the edges of the winding-sheet over her face. With difficulty I coaxed the points of four projecting nails left ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... apart from their usefulness, is an appetising occupation, and to exchange bald, uniform shillings for a fine big, figurative knick-knack, such as a windmill, a gross of green spectacles, or a cocked hat, gives us a direct and emphatic sense of gain. We have had many shillings before, as good as these; but this is the first time we have possessed a windmill. Upon these principles ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had seen beside all the usual events in the life of that savage region, the author violates no probability in putting into his mouth the most strange and characteristic stories. The whole are told with a fictitious reproduction of the teser and somewhat monotonous, yet figurative style, proper to all savages. La Grande Kabylie recounts the personal experiences of the author in that yet unconquered country of the Arabs, whither he went with Marshal Bugeaud in his last expedition. Kabylia ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... as she is faithful to tradition, i.e., orthodox, must as a matter of course agree with that of Rome. (2) Irenaeus asserts that every Church, i.e., believers in all parts of the world, must agree with this Church ("convenire" is to be understood in a figurative sense; the literal acceptation "every Church must come to that of Rome" is not admissible). However, this "must" is not meant as an imperative, but [Greek: anagke] "it cannot be otherwise." In reference to principalitas [Greek: authentia] (see I. 31. 1: ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... boy from Apple Orchard to his lodge in the wilderness, and shown how he passed many of his hours in the hills, it is proper now that we should mount—in a figurative and metaphorical sense—behind Mr. Rushton, and see whither that gentleman also bends his steps. We shall thus arrive at the real theatre of our brief history—we mean at ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... be measured by thermometers was not the kind that was causing two groups of men in two hotels, only a few blocks apart on the East Side of New York's Midtown, to break out in sweat, both figurative and literal. ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... lived with their mother. She turned out to be in a rather remote manner "one of us," and had about her, very faint and dim, like an antique lavender bag, the odour of Ashbridge. She lived like the lilies of the field, without toiling or spinning, either literally or with the more figurative work of the mind; indeed, she can scarcely be said to have had any mind at all, for, as with drugs, she had sapped it away by a practically unremitting perusal of all the fiction that makes the average reader wonder why it was written. In fact, she supplied the answer to that perplexing ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... will be easy to put an end to this dispute. No man will disagree from another's judgment concerning the dignity of style in heroic poetry; but all reasonable men will conclude it necessary, that sublime subjects ought to be adorned with the sublimest, and consequently often, with the most figurative expressions. In the mean time I will not run into their fault of imposing my opinions on other men, any more than I would my writings on their taste: I have only laid down, and that superficially enough, my present thoughts; and shall ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... Father, who was in the beginning? Has not Jesus himself stated (iii. 13) that no man hath ascended up to heaven except him who came down from heaven, that is from God, and that no one has seen the Father, save he which is of God, that is the Son (vi. 46)? These are, of course, figurative expressions, but their meaning cannot be doubtful. When Nathanael called Jesus, Rabbi, King of Israel, and Son of God, his ideas may still have been very immature, but in time the true meaning of the Son of God breaks ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... we are, in the first place, to acquaint our-selves with the figurative language of the Prophets. This language is taken from the analogy between the world natural, and an empire or kingdom considered ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... of the French was pounded to powder in a bowl. This is literal, not figurative. To attempt to describe Sedan after Victor Hugo has described it for all mankind were a work futile and foolish. To Hugo we concede the palm among all writers, ancient and modern, as a delineator of battle. His description of the battle of Waterloo will outlast the tumulus and the lion which ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... a figurative way this explains how we have come to take our present attitude toward the problem of drill or training in the process of education. Drill means the repetition of a process until it has become mechanical or automatic. It means the kind of discipline ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... responded to in Adrian's figurative speech, instructed Austin that the baronet was waiting for his son, in a posture of statuesque offended paternity, before he would receive his daughter-in-law and grandson. That was what Adrian meant by the efforts of the System ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Puritanism in Dr. Sill's Christianity which to some minds imported an unnecessary strictness of view, but none could quarrel with it, for he practised his austerities upon himself, not toward others. Certain precepts of the Sermon on the Mount usually interpreted in a figurative sense he took literally as rules of action. "Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away" was one of these. His literal fidelity to this precept afforded him the deep satisfaction of giving aid to honest neighbors in distress; it enabled him to come to ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... over to his views; and the frequent success that attended such efforts is their highest praise. He seldom attempted an ambitious flight, and when he did his best friends felt it was not his true line. He dealt but little in figurative language, except when argument failed him; still he has left some specimens of much beauty in this style. In his great speech introducing Catholic Emancipation in 1829, he told Parliament it had but two courses to follow—to advance ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... word to signify those compartments which he feigns in his Hell." (Per similitudine di quelle valigie, che s'aprono per lo lungo, a guisa di cassa, significa quegli spartimenti, che Dante finge nell' Inferno.) The reader will think of the homely figurative names in Bunyan, and the contempt which great and awful states of mind have for conventional notions of rank in phraseology. It is a part, if well considered, of ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... the figurative expression of the great evangelical principle, that works of righteousness must follow, not precede, the restoration of the soul. We are justified not by works, but for works, or, as the Apostle puts it in a passage which ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... up the argument against him, and maintained that no man ever thinks of the NOSE OF THE MIND, not adverting that though that figurative sense seems strange to us, as very unusual, it is truly not more forced than Hamlet's 'In my MIND'S EYE, Horatio.' He persisted much too long, and appeared to Johnson as putting himself forward as his antagonist ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... or might not have been figurative, but he had allowed himself the pleasure of wishing the tester ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... side a street, you cross over to the attic of your opposite neighbour. The white stone, where clean, has a beautiful effect, and, even where worn, a grand one. But I must not write a literal Bath guide, and a figurative one Anstey (348) has all to himself. I will only tell you in brief, yet in truth, it looks a city of palaces, a town of hills, and a hill of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... Well, who said they did? The language was intended to be figurative, wholly figurative. Anybody that knows anything will know that I meant that the boy should shake ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... to attend his instructions with the silence necessary; and however old age and a long state of beggary seem to have reduced his writing faculties to a state of imbecility, in those days his language occasionally rose to the bold and figurative: for, when he was in despair to stop their chattering, his ordinary phrase was, "Ladies, if you will not hold your peace, not all the powers in heaven can make you!" Once he was missing for a day or two: he had run ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... interpretation, we must not attribute to the above-mentioned symbolic and less intelligible passages any meaning inconsistent with that announcement. The arguments I have adduced respecting the interpretation of the figurative statements contained in the latter half of chap. xx. are directed to showing that these figures do, in fact, admit of meanings consistent with the gospel revelations given in chap. xxi. 1-4. It is of so much importance, as regards the Scriptural doctrine of immortality, ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... Isaac is an only son, is offered in sacrifice, has secured for him a bride in a most unusual manner. This again in many ways illustrates the attitude and work of the Savior. But Joseph is perhaps more highly figurative of the Redeemer. His being hated and cast out by his brethren is like the rejection of Jesus; the way his wicked brethren came to him in their extremity and received forgiveness and sustenance suggest how a sinner finds mercy and life ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... legends. The attempt is made to prove that, in the common speech of the undivided Aryan race, many words for splendid or glowing natural phenomena existed, and that natural processes were described in a figurative style. As the various Aryan families separated, the sense of the old words and names became dim, the nomina developed into numina, the names into gods, the descriptions of elemental processes into myths. As this system ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... be supposed not to be encumbered with existing prejudices, which in the nature of things might more or less interfere with expressing an honest opinion about the Association football player of the past or his colleagues and successors, I will introduce them to you, and in figurative language allow them to tell their own unvarnished tale. My last advice, however, to you, my old friends, before leaving you to the tender mercies of a scribbler, is not to answer all the questions he thinks proper to put. Please don't tell him what ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... misty air, A ghost, by glimpses, may present Of imitable lineament, And give the phantom an array That less should scorn the abandoned clay; Then let him hew with patient stroke An Ossian out of mural rock, And leave the figurative Man— Upon thy margin, roaring Bran!— Fixed like the Templar of the steep, An everlasting watch to keep; With local sanctities in trust, More precious than a hermit's dust; And virtues through the mass infused, Which ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... part, and the appearance of the Grecian Helen in the second; but whereas the popular tradition makes Fust's great discovery the fruit of his alliance with the powers of Evil, Mr. Browning represents it as an act of atonement for the figurative devil-worship which was involved in a disorderly and ostentatious life. Fust has by his own admission sinned to this extent.[139] He has obeyed the father of lies. He has also accepted with thankfulness the chance of redeeming his soul by a signal service rendered to the cause of Truth. ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... something great in the half-success that has attended the effort of turning into an emotional religion, Bald Conduct, without any appeal, or almost none, to the figurative, mysterious, and constitutive facts of life. Not that conduct is not constitutive, but dear! it's dreary! On the whole, conduct is better dealt with on the cast-iron 'gentleman' and duty formula, with as little fervour and poetry ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson |
