"Literal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him to me (a me lo 'ntrodussi); but Boccaccio here uses the word introdurre in its rarer literal sense to lead, to ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... from another life—she had asked her mother to show her Norway on the map, and her strange convictions concerning the trees had seized her. When her mother said that they had come from that northernmost land of Europe, Ellen, to whose childhood all truth was naked and literal, immediately conceived to herself those veritable trees advancing over the frozen seas around the pole, and down through the vast regions which were painted blue on her map, straight to her father's west yard. There they stood and sang the songs of their own country, with a melancholy sweetness ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... place within the last seventeen years. There has been no exaggeration as to their extent, no great departure from their details; the means employed, even that which seems most far-fetched,—the instrument of the poisoned ring,—have their foundation in literal facts. Nor have I much altered the social position of the criminals, nor in the least overrated their attainments and intelligence. In those more salient essentials which will most, perhaps, provoke the Reader's incredulous wonder, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... failed in his interpretations of prophecy, is not unfrequently mistaken, even in this more enlightened age. He never considered or understood, that all prophecy is delivered in figurative language; every prophecy in the Old Testament having first a literal and incomplete fulfilment, the complete and spiritual fulfilment being future. He did not see that the Jews, according to the flesh, were types of the Spiritual Israel; that David was the emblem of the Saviour; and that the universal kingdom promised to the seed of David, was no other than ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... ourselves. Of another class of virtues—of all those which admit of being directly contrasted with justice, and which may for shortness' sake be without much inaccuracy comprehended under the general designation of generosity—it may, with literal truth, be said that the practice of them is no part of our duty to our neighbour. Provided we are careful to let every one have what, between him and us, are his bare dues, we may be selfish, mean, sordid to excess, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... Teachings regarding the Animals and Man. Ancient and medieval representations of the creation of man Literal acceptance of the book of Genesis by the Christian fathers By the Reformers By modern theologians, Catholic and Protestant Theological reasoning as to the divisions of the animal kingdom The Physiologus, the Bestiaries, the Exempila Beginnings ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... which we call "Character" is the workings of the Law of Karma. There is no such thing as Chance. Nothing ever "happens." All is regulated by the Law of Cause and Effect or Karma. As a man sows so shall he reap, in a literal sense. You are what you are to-day, by reason of what you were in your last life. And in your next life you will be what you are making of yourself to-day. You are your own judge, and executioner—your own bestower of rewards. But ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... not at the disposal of the author of a "History of Java." As I have embodied in the text some extracts from Raffles' translations, it may be well to say a word as to the value of these versions. What Vreede says of a particular passage is true of these renderings in general: "They are not literal translations, but the spirit of the work is ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... seen that a few words of this letter are in cipher. It is published, however, as written, because enough of it is literal to interest the reader, to whom also a specimen of the cipher, used by the Author, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... word "dizening" is perhaps the most literal translation of [Greek: kosmos], which, however, here means the whole preparations for the funeral. Something like it is ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... the literal sense of the word, which actually write the message as with a pen, and make a copy or facsimile of the original, have been invented from time to time. Such are the "telegraphic pen" of Mr. E. A. Cowper, and the "telautographs" of Mr. J. H. Robertson ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... be found complete in the book of Ruth in the Old Testament by those who wish the literal Bible narrative as it ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... education of music teachers for schools, organists for churches, and singers for the stage. Although I try to do my best with the unsatisfactory and often contradictory newspaper reports and dictionary articles from which I have to draw my data, I cannot vouch for the literal correctness of my notes. In making use of Sowinski's work I am constantly reminded of Voltaire's definition of dictionaries: "Immenses archives de mensonges et d'un peu de verite." Happy he who need not consult them! In 1816 Elsner was entrusted by ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... extremities of their exhaustion, and very fast approaching to that final stage of privation and killing misery beyond which few or none could have lived, but also, happily for themselves, fast approaching (in a literal sense) that final 5 stage of their long pilgrimage at which they would meet hospitality on a scale of royal magnificence and full protection from their enemies. These enemies, however, as yet, still were hanging on their rear as fiercely as ever, though this day was destined ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... watching him quietly, with those wistful, earnest eyes, as a cat watches a mouse-hole; watching him with mute inquiry, as if she expected each moment to see him do something different from what the rest of us expected of him. Slowly I gathered that Hilda Wade, in the most literal sense, had come to Nathaniel's, as she herself expressed it, "to ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... and eminent Greeks too, who took the legends of their gods and heroes in their literal sense. But what do these say of Homer and Hesiod? Xenophanes, the contemporary of Pythagoras, holds Homer and Hesiod responsible for the popular superstitions of Greece. In this he agrees with Herodotus, when he declares that these two poets made the theogony for the Greeks, and gave to the gods ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... the Glossary the editors found it necessary to abandon a literal and exact translation of Heyne for several reasons, and among others from the fact that Heyne seems to be wrong in the translation of some of his illustrative quotations, and even translates the same passage in two or three different ways under different headings. ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... order of administration totally distinct from that which actually exists in the visible Church of God. And, accordingly, various Calvinistic communions, which have separated from the Church since the Reformation, have attempted a literal "fellowship of saints," presuming to discriminate from the mass of nominal Christians those who have experienced the conclusive and saving change of Calvinistic conversion, and admitting such only to the full enjoyment of Church privileges ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... the best adapted for translation into stone (Fig. 114). During the thirteenth century the more advanced stages of plant growth, and leaves more complex and detailed, furnished the models for the carver, who displayed his skill in a closer and more literal imitation of their minute veinings and indentations (Fig. 115). This artistic adaptation of natural forms to architectural decoration degenerated later into a minutely realistic copying of natural foliage, in which cleverness of execution took ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... 'increase' and 'diffusion' should receive literal interpretation in accordance with the evident intention of the testator; that such terms being logically distinct, the two purposes mentioned in the bequest were to be kept in view in the organization of the ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... it is true, was a practical dramatist. His background characters are often present in the plays not in order to be entirely real but in order to furnish amusement; and even in the case of the chief ones, just as in the treatment of incidents, he is always perfectly ready to sacrifice literal truth to dramatic effect. But these things are only the corollaries of all successful playwriting and ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... silence. I am not the man calmly to let pass black insinuations against the character of a friend. No, I stood up for him. I am glad to think how I stood up for him, not only metaphorically, but in the most literal sense of the term; for I found myself continually getting up, and Marston as often pulling me down again ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... particle of it—as with matter no atom—is ever added to or removed from the universe. Now, if we could succeed in removing from this inexpansible, universal ocean of ether even the most ultimate portion, there would be a literal vacuum with nothing to fill it, and the equilibrium of the universe would be destroyed. Now, gentlemen, is or is ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... bard were well known; and a decision favourable to the clergy was the result. This decision was given in a short poem of four quatrains which is preserved in the preface to the "Martyrology" of Aengus. The following is a literal translation:— ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... miller got up to leave, and was followed by Mrs. Shchapoff. Hardly had she shut the door, when I heard, as though from far off, a deep drawn wail. The voice seemed familiar to me. Overcome with an unaccountable horror I rushed to the door, and there in the passage I saw a literal pillar of fire, in the middle of which, draped in flame, stood Mrs. Shchapoff. . . . I rushed to put it out with my hands, but I found it burned them badly, as if they were sticking to burning pitch. A sort of ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... The words of Holy Writ express different sets of ideas, bearing a certain relation to each other, the one set having reference to physical, the other to spiritual, qualities. By applying this rule, he thinks that nearly all discrepancies between the literal interpretation of the Bible and his own philosophic theories disappear. Having passed over the domain of metaphysical speculation, he finally reaches the consideration of the practical side of the Bible, that is to say, the Mosaic legislation. These last investigations of his are ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... and the letters of the Marquis de Lauraguais, have held up to such unsparing ridicule and contempt. This milky and cheese-producing Brie, this inexhaustible Io, was, at the epoch of the regent Orleans and his deplorable successor, a literal cavern of pleasures, in the most impure acceptation of the term; every chateau which the Black Band has not demolished is, as it were, a half-volume of memoirs in which may be read the entire history of the times. Here ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... two individual," or, as the Chinaman puts it, in pidgin English, "two piecey man." For in this respect Chinese resembles Japanese, though in very little else, and pidgin English is nothing but the literal translation of the Chinese idiom into Anglo-Saxon words. The necessity for such elaborate qualification arises from the excessive simplicity of the Japanese nouns. As we have seen, the noun is so indefinite a ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... the serjeant, who was his first acquaintance among these military gentlemen. Unluckily that worthy officer having, in a literal sense, taken his fill of liquor, had been some time retired to his bolster, where he was snoring so loud that it was not easy to convey a noise in at his ears capable of drowning that which issued from ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... families that to this day show their Highland origin in their names and in their faces, but never a trace of it in their speech or in their customs.[2] The Americans were longer in coming back. But, after more than a hundred years they, too, were to come again, not to destroy but in a very literal sense to build; their many charming cottages now stretch along the shore of the Bay that looks across ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... this age of indifferentism, holds on with both hands to the creed of the Pilgrims, writes of Margaret, whom she saw but once:—"She looked very sensible, but as if contending with ill health and duties. She lay, all the day and evening, on the sofa, and catechized me, who told my literal ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... genius and morals. A mighty fondness, it is true, and attachment, he expresses to his consort, and often professes that he never would embrace any measures which she disapproved: but such declarations of civility and confidence are not always to be taken in a full, literal sense. And so legitimate an affection, avowed by the laws of God and man, may perhaps be excusable towards a woman of beauty and spirit, even ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... modern interest to allow it. We require every possible help and attraction of sound in our language to smooth the way for the admission of things so remote from our present concerns. My own notion of translation is, that it cannot be too literal, provided these faults be avoided: baldness, in which I include all that takes from dignity; and strangeness, or uncouthness, including harshness; and lastly, attempts to convey meanings which, as they cannot be given but by languid circumlocutions, cannot in fact be said to ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... which one takes off from one's own person, to bestow upon a messenger of good tidings or any other whom it is desired especially to honour. The literal meaning of the phrase, here rendered "he bestowed on him a dress of honour," is "he put off on him [that which was upon himself." A Khilaah commonly includes a horse, a sword, a girdle or waist-cloth and other articles, according to the ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... l. 3, for baste read haste; p. 336, l. 6, the speaker should evidently be not Do. (the reading of the MS.) but Sis., and noble Sir Richard should be noble Sir Francis; p. 422, l. 12, del. comma between Gaston and Paris. Some literal errors may, perhaps, still have escaped me, but such words as anottomye for anatomy, or dietie for deity must not be classed as misprints. They are recognised though erroneous forms, and instances of their occurrence will be given in ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... picture was a joking, profligate, careless king, nominally absolute—the heads of great houses paying court to, but in reality governing, that king, whilst revelling with him on the plunder of a nation, and a set of crouching, grovelling vassals (the literal meaning of vassal is a wretch), who, after allowing themselves to be horsewhipped, would take a bone if flung to them, and be grateful; so that in love with mummery, though he knew what Christianity was, no wonder he admired ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... his friends who are left? As we read over the story of the sorrow of the Bethany home we find the answer to our question. You say, "He brought back their dead, thus comforting them with the literal undoing of the work of death and grief. If only he would do this now, in every case where love cries to him, that would be comfort indeed." But we must remember that the return of Lazarus to his home ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... race—our business is with the question What is he? rather than with the inquiry, Whence did he come? The shortest argument, however—and, if the assumption be admitted, the most conclusive—is that, which assumes the literal truth of the Mosaic account of the creation of man; for from this it directly follows, that the aboriginal races are descendants of Asiatic emigrants; and the minor questions, as to the route they followed—whether across the Pacific, or ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... that it often proves a very difficult matter to trace the connexion between the figurative and the literal sense of the stanza. The essentials in the composition of the pantun, for such these little pieces are called, the longer being called dendang, are the rhythmus and the figure, particularly the latter, which they ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... religious book, and, instead of understanding each sentence according to the main purpose and intention, interpret every phrase in its literal sense as conveying, and designed to convey, a metaphysical verity, or historical fact:—what a strange medley of doctrines should we not educe? And yet this is the way in which we are constantly in the habit of treating the ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... evaded the spirit of Mr. Skinner's ultimatum while conforming to its literal terms, Cappy Ricks hurried home leaving his general manager a stunned and horrified man. In this instance, however, Cappy had erred in his strategy. Skinner was calm, cold-blooded, suave, politic and deferential, but in his kind of fight he never bluffed. He never played his ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... weather, with light airs, calms, and squalls. In lat. 28 N., long. 177 W., his water going rotten, and misled by Hoyt's North Pacific Directory, which informed him there was a coaling station on the island, Captain Trent put in to Midway Island. He found it a literal sandbank, surrounded by a coral reef mostly submerged. Birds were very plenty, there was good fish in the lagoon, but no firewood; and the water, which could be obtained by digging, brackish. He found good holding-ground off the north end ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... very things which he declares to be so widely different as not even to have a "necessary connexion." Errors of this kind are very common in all our English grammars. Two instances occur in the following sentence; which also contains an error in doctrine, and is moreover obscure, or rather, in its literal sense, palpably absurd: "To substantives belong gender, number, and case; and they are all of the third person when spoken of, and of the second person when spoken to."—Murray's Gram., p. 38; Alger's Murray, 16; Merchant's, 23; Bacon's, 12; Maltby's, 12; Lyon's, 7; Guy's, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... himself at the Ear of Eve under the [form [4]] of a Toad, in order to produce vain Dreams and Imaginations, is a Circumstance of the same Nature; as his starting up in his own Form is wonderfully fine, both in the Literal Description, and in the Moral which is concealed under it. His Answer upon his being discovered, and demanded to give an Account of himself, [is [5]] conformable to the Pride and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... finite man, does arrival in one place necessitate withdrawal from another. Jesus uttered a saying concerning himself so mysterious and seemingly contradictory that many attempts have been made to explain away its literal and obvious meaning: "And no man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven"—Christ on earth, and yet in glory; here and there, at the same time, just as a thought which we embody ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... in feminine guise, like 'L'Ingenu' of Voltaire, struck, as was Huron, with all that was illogical in our social code; but she did not make, after his fashion, a too literal application of its rules, and knew where to draw the line, if she found herself on the point of making some hazardous remark, declaring frankly: "I was about to say something foolish!" which lent ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Christians have as foolish notions as any one else. Some think that they win Heaven by believing something with their minds about our Lord's atonement. Some think they go to Heaven by soaring up through the air. Some of them, taking in its literal meaning the glorious imagery of the Apocalypse, picture to themselves streets of beaten gold and walls of flashing emerald and jasper, and the wearing of crowns and the singing of Psalms over and over again through ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... four hundred and twenty-six marginal changes, a very large proportion, quite one-half, and we should think more, are mere insignificant literal changes or additions, such as an editor in supervising manuscript, or an author in reading proof, passes over, and leaves to the proof-readers of the printing-office, by whom they are called "literals," we believe. Such are the change of "Whon yond same starre" to "When yond," etc.; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... violently and beat upon the soft earth. The incident of surprise and disgust helped Dorn at least in one way. His mind had been set upon a strange and supreme condition of his being there, of an emotion about to overcome him. The bite of a rat, drawing blood, made a literal fact of his being a soldier, in a dugout at the front waiting in the blackness for his call to go on guard. This incident proved to Dorn his limitations, and that he was too terribly concerned with his feelings ever to last long as a soldier. But he could not ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... lead. Then followed the heavy naval guns, then the munition and baggage waggons; the troops of the Line, the Marines, and the National Guard were ordered to cover the retreat. It was no easy matter to descend from the plateau to Rosny. The frost had made the road a literal ice-hill. The drivers walked by the side of their animals, holding the reins and pulling them up when they stumbled. Until four o'clock, however, everything went well. The march slowly continued, and the Prussian batteries were comparatively calm. ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... obscenities of Zola, whereat Ouida protested that they were alike in their complacent preoccupation with mere filth. The Frenchman is the sounder critic, it must be said, for while d'Annunzio frequently parallels some of the most unclean—in the literal, not the moral sense—scenes and incidents in Zola, his attitude about sex is as unlike Zola's as that of the late W. D. Howells. Only in "Nana" did Zola describe the life and emotions of a woman whose whole life ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... the same time, true, in that the material of which they are moulded consists of facts,—facts as precise as painstaking observation and anxious regard for truth can make them. Certain of the stories, of course, are true literally. Literal truth may be attained by stories which treat of a single incident, or of action so restricted as to lie within the scope of a single observation. When, on the other hand, a story follows the career of a wild creature ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... grasp or take in thus actively are not the sensations themselves, but the relations between these sensations, and it is of these relations, more truly than of the sensations themselves, that a shape is, in the most literal sense, made up. And it is this making up of shapes, this grasping or taking in of their constituent relations, which is an active process on our part, and one which we can either perform or not perform. When, instead of merely seeing a colour, we look at ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... which the foreign litigant came. The expedient to which they resorted was that of selecting the rules of law common to Rome and to the different Italian communities in which the immigrants were born. In other words, they set themselves to form a system answering to the primitive and literal meaning of Jus Gentium, that is, Law common to all Nations. Jus Gentium was, in fact, the sum of the common ingredients in the customs of the old Italian tribes, for they were all the nations whom the Romans had the means of observing, and who sent successive swarms of immigrants to Roman soil. ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... to death with his preaching. I know he thinks her fairy stories are lies. He told Mrs. Curtis that Tania never spoke the truth." Madge lowered her voice. "I am sure we have never caught her in a lie. I suppose this Philip will think my exaggerations are as bad as Tania's fairy stories. I hate too literal people." ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... evening, the 1st of September, we arrived at the Blackfoot crossing of the Bow River, one hundred and eighteen miles from where we forded the Red Deer River. The Bow River is a noble stream. The current is pretty rapid, but at this "ridge under the water" (which is the literal translation of the Blackfoot name for the ford) the bed of the river is pebbly and the footing consequently good. Though we found the water almost as deep as at the Red Deer River, yet under the guidance of Mr. French, a small trader who lives ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... meaning to the interpreters of the chiefs of Africa, in whatever tongue it may be spoken; being that which they use in translation; and when they are addressed in this phraseology, they convey their ideas with more perspicuity and literal interpretation. But to return to ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... fighting and carnage, and as an interesting glimpse of the monotheistic ideas which underlie the Hindu religion. The hymn does not readily lend itself to metrical translation, and I have not attempted here to give a faithful rendering of the whole. A literal version of the text and the commentary given in the Calcutta edition will be ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... have a stye on the eye. Again, a stye on the eye was removable by rubbing it with a wedding ring. I suspect these two superstitions are portions of an ancient allegory, which, in time loosing their figurative meanings, came to be treated as literal facts. ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... Mr. Taylor, who commanded the Bell Rock tender, and had in his possession one of the Protection Medals. Unfortunately, however, for Dall, the Regulating Officer thought proper to disregard these documents, as, according to the strict and literal interpretation of the Admiralty regulations, a seaman does not stand protected unless he is actually on board of his ship, or in a boat belonging to her, or has the Admiralty protection in his possession. This order of the Board, however, cannot ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and crept through my whole frame. I have often wondered whether the sensation of moral suffering is as nearly allied to physical pain in every one else as in myself. The expression of an aching heart has always appeared to me to have a literal as well as a figurative sense; there is a sort of positive pain that accompanies certain kinds of mental sufferings, different in its nature from the feeling of grief, even in its highest degree; and disappointment in its various forms is perhaps the species ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... scarcely free in any measure from trammels and Popes, and, what is worse, when flippancy of language was too apt to accompany immaturity of opinion. The miscellaneous verses are, still more than the chief poem, 'childish things' in a strict literal sense, and the whole volume is of little interest even to its writer except for personal reasons—except for the traces of dear affections, since rudely wounded, and of that love of poetry which began with her sooner than ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... main purpose, when the reader finishes it he should feel that his understanding of life and of people has been increased and broadened. But it should always be remembered that truth is quite as much a matter of general spirit and impression as of literal accuracy in details of fact. The essential question is not, Is the presentation of life and character perfect in a photographic fashion? but Does it convey the underlying realities? 2. Other things being equal, the value of a book, and especially ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... to convey faithfully the meaning of the author, and although not rigorously literal, he has, he trusts, avoided such wild departures from the text as are found in the versions of Echard, Cooke, ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... Retz far surpass the rest not only in their historical interest, but in their literary excellence. Arranging facts and dates so that he might superbly figure in the drama designed for future generations, he falsifies the literal truth of things; but he lays bare the inner truth of politics, of life, of character, with incomparable mastery. He exposes the disorder of his conduct in early years with little scruple. The origins of the Fronde are expounded in pages of profound ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... artists, statesmen, and religious reformers of the world, have done their best work by middle life. All theories upon all subjects can be proved from history; and the great Sidonia is not to be pinned down by too literal an interpretation. But at least he is expressing Disraeli's admiration for intellect which has the fervour, rapidity, and reckless audacity of youth, which trusts its intuitions instead of its calculations, and takes its crudest guesses for flashes of inspiration. The exuberant ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... and Wu dynasties (25-280 A. D.), we are told, were too diffuse, and those of the later periods, the T'ang and Sung dynasties, too literal. The best is said to be that by Ko-so-gai, a priest of Tibetan descent, which was made during the early Wei dynasty, about 252 A. D. This may be the same which was read in ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... demands serious treatment. Let us, therefore, begin with definitions. What is a poet? and what is a publisher? Popularly speaking, a poet is a fool, and a publisher is a knave. At least, I am hardly wrong in saying that such is the literal assumption of the Incorporated Society of Authors, a body well acquainted with both. Indeed, that may be said to be its working hypothesis, the very ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... LE GO RY is a word of Greek origin. It is made up of two parts; ALL, other; and EGORY, discourse; the literal meaning of the compound being, discourse about other things; that is, things other than those expressed by the words, literally interpreted. Allegory is, therefore, the general name for that class of compositions, as Fables, Apologues, ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... his local and national quality between the lines of his writing and in the indirect testimony of his tone, his accent, his temper, of his very omissions and suppressions. The House of the Seven Gables has, however, more literal actuality than the others, and if it were not too fanciful an account of it, I should say that it renders, to an initiated reader, the impression of a summer afternoon in an elm-shadowed New England town. It leaves ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... we now read of the necessity of the wise governing the weak and ignorant are almost literal reproductions of the arguments advanced by the slaveholders of the South in defence of slavery just preceding the outbreak of the Civil War. That divergence from our original ideal produced the pregnant sayings of Mr. Lincoln, "A house divided against itself can not stand," ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... father, because of his Quaker tendencies, did not lock—and of crossing the wide and black expanse of the living room in order to reach his door. I would invariably cling to the newel post while I contemplated the perils of the situation, complicated by the fact that the literal first step meant putting my bare foot upon a piece of oilcloth in front of the door, only a few inches wide, but lying straight in my path. I would finally reach my father's bedside perfectly breathless and having panted out the history of my sin, invariable received the same assurance that if ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... illustration, had had some judicious and wide-minded friend, to correct and supplement the mainly admirable principles which had been instilled into him by my mother, he would have been saved years of spiritual wandering; but, as it was, he fell in with one after another, each in his own way as literal and unspiritual as the other—each impressed with one aspect of religious truth, and with one only. In the end he became perhaps the widest-minded and most original thinker whom I have ever met; but no one from his early manhood could have augured this result; on the contrary, he showed every ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... is varied and interesting, but the whole drawing lacks that individual something which we call Style. In the Lalanne drawings we see foliage convincingly represented by means of the mere outlines and a few subtle strokes of the pen. There is no attempt at the literal rendering of natural objects in detail, all is accomplished by suggestion: and while I do not wish to be understood as insisting upon such a severely simple style, much less upon the purist theory that the function of the pen is concerned with form alone, I would impress ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... know what it is you're afraid of," he said in a carefully literal but carefully inaudible tone. He did that sort of ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... print reproduce it in black and white keeps ever fresh and fascinating to me, gratifying an instinct for composition in one whose fingers are too clumsy to attempt to draw or paint. In those early days of my adventures in photography an editor came very near the literal truth when he sarcastically observed: "Young man, life to you seems to be just ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... whose first draught of air had been tinctured with Doctor Haggage's brandy, was handed down among the generations of collegians, like the tradition of their common parent. In the earlier stages of her existence, she was handed down in a literal and prosaic sense; it being almost a part of the entrance footing of every new collegian to nurse the child who had ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... faith. His holy desires trembled within him like earthquake throbs. In his eyes there was but one object worth living for—the performance of religious duty; and but one way to accomplish that object—a strict and literal compliance with Franciscan rules. He could never understand that there was anything beyond the narrow field of his vision. He could apply religious enthusiasm to practical affairs. Because he was a grand missionary, he was none the less a money-maker ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... puts it; but more of a leveler was this old coach, for there was of necessity the forceful putting of people of the most heterogeneous character together in the most homogeneous manner as the omnibus (most literal word here), made up its hashy load at the hand and command of the driver, whose word was unappealable law as complete as that of another captain on the high seas. Prodigal, profligate, and pure, maiden or Magdalene, millionaire ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... In the sense of illumination of mind. It has been necessary to give a literal translation of this phrase to enable the reader to realise the point of subsequent witticisms in which Clemence and Gavard ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... eye against his gun, which he was carrying before him; and after a minute's rueful look he joined heartily in the shouts of laughter of his father and brother at his expense, "Ah, Charley, brag is a good dog, but holdfast is a better. I never saw a more literal proof of the saying. There, jump up again, and I need not ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... represent school or college leisure. Good times that interfere with good work have no place in ideally free hours. But, indeed, the odours from the chafing-dishes do suggest that some of the girls are trying to put into literal execution the wish of a great German professor in Oxford. The professor, eager to try a dish he saw on the hotel bill of fare, but with his English and German verbs not quite disentangled, said to the waiter, "Hereafter I vish to become a Velsh Rabbit." Perhaps ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... represented in normal prose. Poetical prose is appropriate for the expression of deeds and sentiments of high and mystical import only, but not for the expression of the more commonplace or definitely and complexly articulated phases of life. For the latter, the broader and freer and more literal method of strict prose is the only appropriate medium of expression. The unmusical character of prose style is not determined by weakness, but by ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... time, when man first emerged amongst the beasts, our Lord the Sun has always been his chiefest God, and legend says that He raised this circle of stones Himself to be a place where votaries should offer Him worship. It is the fashion amongst us moderns not to take these old tales in a too literal sense, but for myself, this one satisfies me. By our wits we can lift blocks weighing six hundred men, and set them as the capstones of our pyramids. But to uprear the stones of that great circle would be beyond all our ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... an extraordinary case!' gasped Mrs. Bloss, as if she understood the communication in its literal sense, and was astonished at a gentleman without a stomach finding it necessary ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... but the letter of the law, Yet it shews well to preach it to the vulgar; Wine is against our law; that's literal too, But not denied to kings and to their guides; Wine is a ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... threw away the kernel. Faust becomes insignificant in this play to which he gives his name. In Goethe he was a thinker, even more than a poet. Here he speaks bad verse full of emptiness. Even where Goethe's words are followed, in a literal translation, the meaning seems to have gone out of them; they are displaced, they no longer count for anything. The Walpurgis Night is stripped of all its poetry, and Faust's study is emptied of all its wisdom. The Witches' Kitchen brews ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... in the kitchen, and then go and fetch Melissa." The woman was, perhaps, wise to defer the evil moment as long as possible. Matters might soon change for the better, and good or evil could come only from without. So Dido clung to the literal sense of her master's question, and something note-worthy had actually happened in the kitchen. She drew a deep breath, and told him that a subordinate of the night-watch had come in and asked whether Alexander were in the house, and where his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lateral rocks in the manner they are now seen to lie. The greater energy and more extended range of igneous action in those very remote periods when Africa was formed, embracing all the flanks, imparted to it its present very simple literal outline. This was the length ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... free translation, so far as lessons were concerned, and the girls realised as much, being accustomed to Pixie and her ways, but they allowed that part of the story to pass without comment, and referred only to what was obviously a literal repetition. ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... our Richmond dreams had come true,' she wrote once—'as though our favourite castle in the air were built. "Not really, mother? you don't think this beautiful house and garden belong to us really?" asks Mollie, in her stupid way. You know what a literal little soul she is. "Oh, go away, Mollie!" I exclaim quite crossly. "How can I help it if you have no imagination?" For all I know, the place is ours: no one interferes with us; we come and go as we like; ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... of the Old Testament, and urged in the New, being sometimes not to be found in the Old, nor urged in the New, according to the literal and obvious sense, which they appear to bear in their supposed places in the Old, and, therefore, not proofs according to the rules of interpretation established by reason, and acted upon in interpreting every other ancient book— almost all Christian commentators ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... a literal copy of the original grant, now (Sept. 25, 1880) on file at the United States Surveyor-General's office at Santa Fe, made to the inhabitants of the Indian pueblo of Pecos in New Mexico. The language of the document is not altogether clear, but ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... meaning of the word in English; but, whatever his motives for so doing, certain it is that he called it the death or the loss of the Sieur Jumonville. So we received and so we understood it, until, to our great surprise and mortification, we found it otherwise in a literal translation." Sparks, Writings of ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... comprehend the nature of the illustration, understood him in a literal sense, and, in a whimpering tone, exclaimed, "Sha't then, I tell thee, cursed tuoad!" Tom, however, was so transported with his subject, that he took no notice of poor Dolly's mistake, but proceeded in his harangue upon ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... strange transformation; she was naturally gentle. In one instant she had gone mad. Mad? Not in the literal interpretation; but figuratively. She sprang back, snapping; her teeth bared, her hair bristled. Her nostrils drawn. With one bound she leaped ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... poet, in a sense not entirely literal, for reasons which are not necessary to be explained, this man of wondrous wisdom saw that he had been made a dupe. Cunning as a fox were his would-be friends; but having got him to the bush, there they let him gambol as he would, ensnaring him to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... Greek and Latin studies; in one direction, however, and that the one in which it would least have been expected, did my excellent teacher find much to do; namely, in religion. He closely adhered to the literal meaning of the Bible; with this I was acquainted, because from my first entrance in the school I had clearly understood what was said and taught by it. I received gladly, both with feeling and understanding, the doctrine, ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... even families, of extraordinary stature and strength existed in the earliest ages cannot be denied, except by those who regard the narrative of Scripture as equally fabulous with the fictions of the poets; although the statements are literal and exact, occur in a variety of incidental notices, and are confirmed by discoveries related by authors ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... or drove to the graveyard down in the "hollow" carried rifles and pistols than he was by the strange solemnity of the occasion, for, while he realized in a vague, mistrustful way that his mother was to be put under the ground, his trust clung resolutely to God's promise, accepted in its most literal sense, that the dead shall rise again and that "ye shall be born again." That was what the preacher said,—and he had cried a little when the streaming-eyed clergyman took him on his knee and whispered that all was well with his dear mother ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... conviction that the Epifanovs were foemen of ours who would at any time stab or strangle both Papa and his sons if they should ever come across them, as well as that they were "black people", in the literal sense of the term. Consequently, when, in the year that Mamma died, I chanced to catch sight of Avdotia ("La Belle Flamande") on the occasion of a visit which she paid to my mother, I found it hard to believe that she did not come of a ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... as on many other occasions, the cynicism of Bonaparte's language does, not admit of a literal translation.]— ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... "purpose"), and, when so "acquired," then began to serve the "purpose" assigned, the argument would not have involved the fallacy which we are now considering. But, as it stands, the argument reverts to the teleology of pre-Darwinian days—or the hypothesis of a "purpose" in the literal sense which sees the end from the beginning, instead of a "purpose" in the metaphorical sense of an adaptation that is evolved by the very modifications ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... years, if the war had happened to last so long, he would have fastened upon me the imputation of meaning, or wishing, at least, to do what he called "pettifogulizing"—that is, to plead some distinction, or verbal demur, in bar of my orders, under some colorable pretence that, according to their literal construction, they really did not admit of being fulfilled, or perhaps that they admitted it too much as being capable of fulfilment in two senses, either of them a practicable sense. True it was that my ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... coins showed the Hellenic influence. The Hindu astronomical terminology reveals the same relationship to western thought, for Var[a]ha-Mihira (6th century A.D.), a contemporary of [A]ryabha[t.]a, entitled a work of his the B[r.]hat-Sa[m.]hit[a], a literal translation of [Greek: megale suntaxis] of Ptolemy;[306] and in various ways is this interchange of ideas apparent.[307] It could not have been at all unusual for the ancient Greeks to go to India, for ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... mean for an instant to propose that every one should read poetry. The man whose imagination has never taken fire from literature of any kind, whose brain is literal and dislikes any embroidery upon the surface of plain fact, who is deaf to music, unresponsive to ideas, and limited in his emotions—such a man in my opinion is unfortunate, although he is often an excellent citizen, lives happily, makes a good husband, and may ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... never attempted any such defence. He pleaded, with literal justice, that the phrase "a criticism of life" was only part of his formula, which adds, "under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty." But this does ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... of a pleasant letter we have received from a distinguished Washington lady; we do not print the accentuations, because the Chicago patwor admits of none. A literal rendering of the letter into English is as follows: "From after your article in 'The New York Tribune,' copied from 'The Chicago News,' I to myself have figured that the inhabitants of Chicago having great want of a system of pronunciation French, I take the liberty to you to send by the ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... man, when this expression was used to him, was known occasionally to interpret the words in their literal sense, and in more than one instance he had the credit of having adroitly made his court to a lady in that manner. He would watch for an opportunity, or give a turn to the conversation, which would afford him ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... "that Laura is gone. She is very literal-minded. She might not understand that we could be hastily married and even lease a house, this way, and still ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... possibly supply such a lost MS. in a child's roundhand. At school, chiefly as a young Carthusian, I frequently broke out into verse, where prose translation was more properly required: seeing that it pleased my indolence to be poetical where I was not sure of literal accuracy, and (I may add) it rejoiced me to induce a certain undermaster to suspect and sometimes to accuse this small poetaster of having "cribbed" his metrical version from some unknown collection of poems: however, he had always to be satisfied with ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... one hand, daily events and common circumstances became a part of his spiritual experience in a far more intimate sense than is the case with other men, while, on the other, his fancies and his visions assumed the absoluteness and the literal existence of positive external facts. The remotest flights of his imagination never carry him where his sight becomes dim. His journey through the spiritual world was no less real to him than his journeys between Florence and Rome, or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... the sepulchral. I need not specially recommend you to write in "Wardour-street English," the sham archaic, a lingo never spoken by mortal man, and composed of patches borrowed from authors between Piers Plowman and Gabriel Harvey. A few literal translations of Icelandic phrases may be thrown in; the result, as furniture-dealers say, is a ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... power of the others; and so the Socialist movement was a world movement, an organization of all mankind to establish liberty and fraternity. It was the new religion of humanity—or you might say it was the fulfillment of the old religion, since it implied but the literal application of all the ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... crutches besides his two legs. The machinery is simple enough: a strong spiral spring, three or four cog-wheels and pinions, a fly to regulate the motion as in a musical box, and the cams before mentioned. As a toy, it or she is very taking to grown people as well as children. It is a literal fact, that the police requested one of our dealers to remove Miss Autoperipatetikos from his window, because the crowd she drew obstructed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... over to where Ben Sansome was still standing by the door. Sansome did not like Mrs. Sherwood. He considered that she had no social tact at all. This was mainly—though he did not analyze it—because she was quite apt to speak the direct and literal truth to him; because she had a disquieting self-confidence and competence in place of appropriate, graceful, feminine dependence; but especially because she had never and would never ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... mind. Finally he shot down like an arrow, making my head fairly whirl, and landed lightly on the ground, where he skipped about and resumed his roundelay as if he had not performed an extraordinary feat. This was certainly skylarking in a most literal sense. With the exception of a similar exhibition by Townsend's solitaire—to be described in the closing chapter—up in the neighborhood of Gray's Peak, it was the most wonderful avian aeronautic exploit, accompanied with song, of which I have ever been witness. It is odd, too, ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... gubernatorial commissions—gubernatorial in the literal sense of the word, because entirely dominated by the governors—were holding their sessions, the satraps-in-chief of the Pale of Settlement, the governors-general, were busy sending their expressions of opinion to St. Petersburg. The governor-general of ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... might yet have weathered the rocks—for his tact was only equalled by his good temper—if the Countess had not precipitated matters. There came a day, and an hour of a day, when she spoke to him. She had spoken before; her ambitions had always been verbal—but now they were literal, all the "t's" were crossed. That was a moment for Angioletto to take with ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... have returned to the French that which they had borrowed of them. Formerly, people did not go to walk on the boulevard, but on the boule-verd, from which the english have made bowling-green, a literal translation. From this word, the ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet
... work-righteousness were alleged to co-operate in the pardon of sin with the "one obedience" by which "many are made righteous." The sacraments were asserted to produce their effect ex opere operato,—not by the working of the Spirit in them that by faith receive them. Belief in the literal transubstantiation of the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper was rigidly enforced and substituted for that spiritual presence and spiritual manducation which the earlier church had maintained. The doctrine of a purgatory after this life ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... of virgins, of crucifixions,—he could remember sixteen,—of these solar myths. He caught tripping in a thousand cases the translations of our holy books. The Ox and Ass legend at the Nativity he realized was the Pseudo-Matthew's description to Habakkuk of the literal presence: "In the midst of two animals thou shalt be known;" which is a mistranslated Hebrew text in the Prayer ascribed to Habakkuk. It got into the Greek Septuagint version of the Prophet made by Egyptian Jews ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... heaven. Let him go to work, he will have opportunities enough to earn a comfortable support, and even the means of procuring some land; which ought to be the utmost wish of every person who has health and hands to work. I knew a man who came to this country, in the literal sense of the expression, stark naked; I think he was a Frenchman, and a sailor on board an English man-of- war. Being discontented, he had stripped himself and swam ashore; where, finding clothes and friends, he settled afterwards at Maraneck, in the county of Chester, ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... seemed to radiate a light of their own. This last statement (about the eyes) must not be taken for a conventional exaggeration, such as writers of fiction employ in describing heroines who never existed. On the contrary, it expresses a literal fact; and moreover, as the reader will see further on, this peculiarity of the eyes was shared, in varying degrees, by all these people of Venus, and was connected with the most amazing of all our discoveries on that planet. I should say here that, while the eyes of the inhabitants of the day ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... sounded to our most spiritual sin. And it is this discovery that has given to fasting the place it has held in all the original, resolute, and aggressive ages of the Church. With little or nothing in their Lord's literal teaching to make His people fast, they have been so bent on their own spiritual deliverance, and they have heard and read so much about the deliverances both of body and of soul that have been attained by fasting and its accompaniments, that they have ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... two Greek words, a literal translation of which would signify the "arrangement of skins," appears to have been practised in a limited degree ages ago, for may we not say without doubt that the first taxidermists were the ancient Egyptians, who, despite the fact that they seldom or never appear ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... death with his preaching. I know he thinks her fairy stories are lies. He told Mrs. Curtis that Tania never spoke the truth." Madge lowered her voice. "I am sure we have never caught her in a lie. I suppose this Philip will think my exaggerations are as bad as Tania's fairy stories. I hate too literal people." ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... to this habit of preaching was a fond love for the water, and it may be said in a literal sense that I was as fond of it as a duck. I am told that when an infant under the care of any person other than my mother, nothing in the world would quiet me except a bowl of water and a sponge to play with. Naturally this liking developed, ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... interview with Hedouville before interruption came from the side of the town. As he entered the gardens, he looked, to the wondering eyes he met there, as if he had just risen from rest, to enjoy a morning walk in the shrubberies. They were almost ready to understand, in its literal sense, the expression of his worshippers, that he rode at ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... bull by the horns in a literal as well as figurative sense, the lad began gradually to develop into that terrible embodiment of unrest—a boy. He exhibited no very marked peculiarities up to this time to distinguish him from other youths; but just grew into the conglomerate mass of good, bad and indifferent ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... said No—which was the literal truth—but then it would not have been the whole truth, for they knew quite well that Dolly had been milked, and also who had done it. And their mother had always taught them that to make a person believe a lie ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... accepted among the most educated clergy. Very few of them would now deny the antiquity of the world, the antiquity of man, or the antiquity of death, or would maintain that the Mosaic cosmogony was a true and literal account of the origin of the globe and of man, or would very strenuously argue either for the Mosaic authorship or ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... idea of the dinner and procession really had a good deal in it. I had been in New York, and knew the length of Broadway; and at the recollection, felt flattered by the thought of being conveyed in an open chariot drawn by four or even eight horses, with nodding plumes, (literal ones for the horses,—only metaphorical ones for me,) past those stately buildings fluttering with handkerchiefs, and through streets black with people thronging to see the man who had solved the riddle of Africa. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... course of delirious dreams she finds herself in the "Tell-Tale Forest" (which threatens to recall The Palace of Truth), and here all the picturesque phrases which she has been in the childish habit of misinterpreting in their literal sense—"a bee in the bonnet," to "ride hobbies," "to play ducks and drakes," "to pay the piper," and so forth—are realised in human or animal form. With these are mixed the familiar figures of her waking life, all of them exposed in their true characters so that you can distinguish ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... literal meaning of the story—a matter of little difficulty—it remains to get its deeper significance. It is hardly probable that many pupils will be disposed to regard the story as literally true, yet few will be likely, upon a first reading, to see the principle ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... few extracts from hymns addressed to some of the gods we have spoken of. The versions are those of the late Dr. John Muir. A metrical version can scarcely represent the hymns with the accuracy the scholar would desire, but, on the other hand, a literal translation, such as that of Professor Max Mueller in vol. xxxii. of the Sacred Books of the East, gives a less true idea of the spirit of the pieces, and is less fitted at least ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... abounded. There was always something for the really needy, and I remember that one of her most painful experiences came from having refused food to a begging woman, to whose deathbed she was called the next day, a deathbed of literal starvation. She recognized the woman, who had come to our house with a story of a family of starving children, but as my mother's experienced eye assured her she had never been a mother, she refused her as a deceiver what the poor always got. "Why did you tell me you had children," ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... expected too much. Nothing so terrorizes a blushing girl as a blushing man. And then—though they did sometimes digress—Clotilde and her partner met to talk "business" in a purely literal sense. ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... much in his class-room tone. He was all brown like a leaf with Valley dust and sun and rain. The old cadet cap was older yet, the ancient boots as grotesquely large, the curious lift of his hand to Heaven no less curious than it had always been. He was as awkward, as hypochondriac, as literal, as strict as ever. Moreover, there should have hung about him the cloud of disfavour and hostility raised by that icy march to Romney less than three months ago. And yet—and yet! What had happened since then? Not much, indeed. The return of the Stonewall Brigade to Winchester, Loring's representations, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... her from intercourse with other children when she, a child, needed such companionship, and required her to bend almost unceasingly over her books. This impression has, certainly in part, arisen from an autobiographical sketch, never written for publication nor intended for a literal or complete statement of her father's educational method, or the relation which existed between them, which was most loving and true on both sides. While the narrative is true, it is not the all she would have said, and, therefore, taken alone, conveys ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... hour of our lives. It may, therefore, sound a rather startling paradox to say that matter—matter in the sense of the Materialist—is something which nobody has ever seen, touched, or handled. Yet that is the literal and undeniable fact. Nobody has ever seen or touched or otherwise come in contact with a piece of matter. For in the experience which the plain man calls seeing or touching there is always present another thing. Even if we suppose that he is Justified ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... diabolical capacity for heckling Ministers on every conceivable topic under the sun. Our hostility to the Boer War also brought us into perennial conflict with the Government. The Irish members in a very literal sense once more occupied "the floor of the House," and there were some fierce passages-at-arms, resulting on one occasion in the forcible ejection of a large body of Nationalists by the police—an incident which had no relish for those who were jealous of the prestige and fair fame ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... good bluff if he wished to save his kinky scalp upon his return to Leslie Manor, so he set about planning to "hand out dat fool 'oman a corker." Moreover, Petty was inclined to take the situation seriously. Petty was sweetly romantic, but stupidly literal. At times a hopeless combination. The riding party had cantered along in the fleeing Beverly's wake for a little more than a mile when Petty spied the hat upon the bush. Nothing further was needed to ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... the man in charge of the twinters, two-year-old colts. This may be so, but there is a German confectioner in Hampstead called Zwanziger, and there are Parisians named Vingtain. Lover is confirmed by the French surnames Amant and Lamoureux, and Wellbeloved by Bienaime. Allways may be the literal equivalent of the French name Partout. On the other hand, the name Praisegod Barebones has been wrongly fixed on an individual whose real name ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... own experience, of her own environment, and of her own observations. It is nothing more or less than the living over in rhythmic form of the daily routine of her morning dressing. Her story remarks are either literal quotations or adaptations of her actual every day responses. The little verse refrains are the type of thing almost anyone can improvise. I have found that any simple statement about a familiar object ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... rushing madly cross stage at top-speed (if we take the literal word of the text for it), with girded loins, in search of somebody right under his nose, the while unburdening himself of exhaustive periods that, however great the breadth of the Roman stage, would carry him several times across ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke |
