"Characteristic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be adduced. Almost all the inhabitants of the territory of the Union are the descendants of a common stock; they speak the same language, they worship God in the same manner, they are affected by the same physical causes, and they obey the same laws. Whence, then, do their characteristic differences arise? Why, in the eastern states of the Union, does the republican government display vigor and regularity, and proceed with mature deliberation? Whence does it derive the wisdom and durability which mark its acts, while in the western ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... if I told you that aeroplanes are all the time flying over our camp. With characteristic British frankness they always have two huge Union Jacks painted on the undersides of the wings. We have become so used to them that we scarcely trouble to look up unless they are ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... "Very characteristic, that piece of impudence," he reflected; "very like Doctor Chaleck that device of shutting the register he had just stained with blood in order to give himself time to make off!" On reaching the Boulevard Magenta he ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... characteristic of him that, having made that choice, he should have thrown himself into the work with enthusiasm. It was ever his way to do whatever he did with all the resources of his mind and energies of his ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... "The usual hasty conclusion characteristic of Young America!" said the General, sharply. "Do you know, young man, that General Bushing is not only one of our ablest soldiers, but one of the most finished diplomats in the service?" Lewis had never ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... Ideas, and brought it into connection with his characteristic theory of Will as the ultimate Ground. The Ideas, for him, represent definite forms of existence, manifested in individual things and beings. There are thus, he said, Ideas of the simple elementary forces of nature, such as gravity and impenetrability; there are Ideas of the different ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... advice. The baron did not even think of attempting to do so. He had known Madame d'Argeles for years; he had seen so many proofs of her invincible energy and determination. She possessed the distinguishing characteristic of her family in a remarkable degree—that proverbial Chalusse obstinacy which Madame Vantrasson had alluded to in ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... quite unusual sprightliness Mr Yule entered the house. He could talk of but one subject, and Mrs Milvain had to listen to a laboured account of the blunder just committed by The Study. It was Alfred's Yule's characteristic that he could do nothing lighthandedly. He seemed always to converse with effort; he took a seat with stiff ungainliness; he walked with a ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... higher in the ninth and tenth sections, a fourth higher in the eleventh and thirteenth, and a whole octave higher in the twelfth. This transposition of the range of the melody is more developed here than in most sequence melodies, but some such transposition is a prominent characteristic of many of them. There is nothing at all like it ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt
... too characteristic of Mr. Ray for anything?" exclaimed Mrs. Turner. "I wonder if any other officer would be in such a hurry to risk his scalp in chasing the regiment? You wouldn't, would you, Mr. Gleason?" she added, with the deliberate and mischievous impertinence she knew would sting, and ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... right," Tip said. Then, with a sudden burst of energy which was characteristic of mockers, he began to jiggle up and down and chant in time with his movements, "All right all ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... very touching, and characteristic of the two persons. Mrs. Woodward was sad enough, but her sadness was accompanied by a strength of affection that carried before it every obstacle. Norman was also sad; but he was at first stern and cold, and would have remained so to the last, had not his ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... be seen that the characteristic peculiarities of the constitution are: 1. The mode of its formation. 2. The division of the supreme powers of government between the States in their united capacity and the ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... to mitigate the evil; but it was a wonderful piece of administration, though perhaps not one that appealed specially to him; and when some one, knowing what had been achieved, congratulated him on his success and the boon it was to the women in Egypt, his characteristic reply was: "I am told I have saved the lives of ten thousand babies. I suppose that is something to have done." At that time, only a fortnight before the prospect of war seemed possible, he was talking with the keenest ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... aboard, run up a bit, and see what sort of weather you were making, Tom," says he, touching clumsily his small-brimmed, plait hat, as he recognizes the young man, whom he salutes in that style so frank and characteristic of the craft. "He's a bit better, sir-isn't he?" inquires Spunyarn, his broad, honest face, well browned and whiskered, warming with a ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... seems to me to be worth notice. He is tall and thin, and looks quite the fifty years that his gray hairs proclaim him to be. His characteristic expression is one of haughtiness, or rather disdain, composed in equal parts of love of all things English and contempt for all things that are not. This type is occasionally so insupportable, even to his compatriots, that Dickens, ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... travelling companion from San Francisco, having proved to be talkative and uninteresting, Elsie Marley was more than content to find herself alone after the change had been made and her train pulled out of Chicago. It was characteristic of the girl that she did not even look out of the window to see the last of Mrs. Bennet, who, having waited on the platform until the train started and waved her handkerchief in vain, betook herself indignantly to her ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... affluent. Some were new and had the price-mark still on them, while others were old, foundered albums, with a droop in the back and little flecks of egg and gravy on the title-page. All came with a request for Galileo "to write a little, witty, characteristic sentiment in them." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... paddocks, and a good many great elms stand up above the house-roofs. There is one quaint old farm, with a moat and a dove-cote and a fine, old mellow brick wall surrounded by little pollarded elms, very quiet and characteristic; and then there is a big, ancient church, by whom built one cannot divine, because there is no squire in the village, and the farmers and labourers could no more build such a church now than they could build ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... first broad characteristic of the building, and the root nearly of every other important peculiarity in it, is its confessed incrustation. It is the purest example in Italy of the great school of architecture in which the ruling principle is the incrustation of brick with more precious materials; ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... top of his head; and, although he had not supposed himself so well known in this neighborhood, he was aware that he did, here and there, possess acquaintances of whom some such uncomplimentary action might be expected as natural and characteristic. His immediate procedure was to prostrate himself flat upon the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... smartness characteristic of our navy the men were formed up in a line with their backs to the mission wall. The officer in command gave one look at them, and then almost ran up the ladder which ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... sometimes causes the father or mother to treat the vices of the child as virtues, to be encouraged? And may we not expect from the superintendent, to whom, practically, the discipline of the school is confided, one characteristic of good government, not always, it is feared, found in punitive and reformatory institutions? I speak of the attributes of equality, uniformity, and certainty, in the administration of the law. To be ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... It was characteristic of the man that he never turned to look at her, and the girl gave a little nod of the head as he disappeared. She had apparently expected him not to look back, and yet wanted him to do it, and at the same time would rather he did not do it. Felipe ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... of Turner steeped and transfigured even the fairest natural landscape, is a dream-like vision of the little woodland lake of Nemi— "Diana's Mirror," as it was called by the ancients. No one who has seen that calm water, lapped in a green hollow of the Alban hills, can ever forget it. The two characteristic Italian villages which slumber on its banks, and the equally Italian palace whose terraced gardens descend steeply to the lake, hardly break the stillness and even the solitariness of the scene. Diana herself might still linger by this lonely shore, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... with the world. The tall slim figure, always of a kind of quaker neatness; the innocent anxious face, anxious bright hazel eyes; the timid, yet gracefully cordial ways, the natural intelligence, instinctive sense and worth, were very characteristic. Her voice too; with its something of soft querulousness, easily adapting itself to a light thin-flowing style of mirth on occasion, was characteristic: she had retained her Ulster intonations, and was withal somewhat copious in speech. A fine tremulously sensitive nature, strong chiefly on the side ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... Sewell, 'is a virtue; doubt is a sin.' Iago is nothing if not critical; and the sceptical spirit—der Geist der stets verneint—which is satisfied with nothing, which sees in everything good the seed of evil, and the weak spot in every great cause or nature, has been made the special characteristic—we all feel with ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... names of these two neighbours are admirably characteristic, not confined to any age or place, but always accompany the young convert to godliness, as the shadow does the substance. Christian is firm, decided, bold, and sanguine. Obstinate is profane, scornful, self-sufficient, and contemns God's Word. Pliable is yielding, and easily ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... France from bankruptcy. Offering to venture their lives a second time for the extension of the French domain, they were told they might do so if they would share half the profits with an avaricious governor. Their answer was characteristic. Discoverers were greater than governors; still, if the Indians of the Upper Country invited his Excellency, Radisson and Groseillers would be glad to have the honor of his company; as for ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... responded Marcelle, slowly, with a certain dignified shyness that was characteristic of her. "My mother has told me all about it. She liked the library when she was here. She told me where her room was up-stairs, too, but I did not want to go up while the ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... was exceptional at Egdon, this made little difference. He had determined upon the bold stroke of asking for an interview with Miss Vye—to attack her position as Thomasin's rival either by art or by storm, showing therein, somewhat too conspicuously, the want of gallantry characteristic of a certain astute sort of men, from clowns to kings. The great Frederick making war on the beautiful Archduchess, Napoleon refusing terms to the beautiful Queen of Prussia, were not more dead to difference of sex than the reddleman was, ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Shakespeare and musical glasses kind of speech. Then Mrs. Jasher, who had no idea that her good dinner should be wasted in charming nothings, introduced the subject of the mummy by a reference to Professor Braddock. It was characteristic of her cleverness that she did not address Don Pedro, but pointed ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... a number of things that night that were very characteristic of him; for God gave him back his gift of merriment, now that he had the Gift of Faith as well: and he shewed a great tenderness too from time to time and a very Christian appreciation of ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... story "Malva," Gorky offers us two characteristic types of peasants who become tramps by insensible degrees; almost without suspecting it, through the force of circumstances. One of them is Vassili. When he left the village, he fully intended to return. He went away to earn a little ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... are well marked as separate from the foregoing. Lastly, those of the New Babylonian Empire are a group by themselves. A few scattered examples survive which form intermediate groups, usually too small to be very characteristic, and certainly insufficient to justify or support any theory of the intermediate stages ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... creatures, and enabling man to do what no other animal has done, to fill the world with his handiworks, and alter the very face of nature with his ax, and spade, and steam engine. His tongue and organs of articulate speech alone, were there no other characteristic, proclaim him different from all other animals; none of those resembling him in outward form making the slightest attempts toward articulate language or being able ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... friendliness of the County Surveyor Calhoun, who was a Democrat, while Lincoln called himself a Whig. Calhoun offered him the post of assistant. In accepting, Lincoln again displayed the honesty that was beginning to be known as his characteristic. He stipulated that he should be perfectly free to express his opinions, that the office should not be in any respect, a bribe. This being conceded, he went to work furiously on a treatise upon surveying, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... took a very characteristic line. She sat up with instant decision; her pale face flushed, and her large pathetic grey eyes shone ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... The characteristic plants of these deserts are sage, mesquite, greasewood, and a great variety of cacti. Of the cactus family, the most conspicuous is the saguaro, or giant cactus, which frequently attains the height of fifty feet. All the cacti are leafless and abundantly supplied with ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... "Such is the characteristic and ingenuous account given by Clarkson of his introduction to that work to which the energies of his life were devoted, and in reference to which, and to the account whence the foregoing extract has been ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... capable of negotiating a treaty of peace. It is not for us to question a belief by the President that enemy aliens who were justifiably deemed fit subjects for internment during active hostilities do not lose their potency for mischief during the period of confusion and conflict which is characteristic of a state of war even when the guns are silent but the peace of Peace has not come. These are matters of political judgment for which judges have neither technical ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... came this morning just before I left the house." Fumbling in her bag, Grace drew forth a bulky looking letter, bearing a foreign postmark, and tearing open the end, drew out several closely folded sheets of thin paper covered with Eleanor's characteristic handwriting. ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... there is a characteristic letter to General Crawford, concerning the dismissal of an officer, whom Cromwell would have restored. "Ay, but the man is an Anabaptist. Are you sure of that? Admit he be, shall that render him incapable ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... questions?" asked Priscilla, for a moment supposing it to be a characteristic of the young ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... to read them all. How far this was a popular superstition, and to what length his learning went, it is impossible to say. But nobody ever came quite to the end of it. He was a silent, modest man, who never spoke much of what he knew, or of himself in any wise. His strongest outward characteristic was quietness, both of manner, speech, motions, springing, it appeared, out of a corresponding quietness of soul. Whether it had been born with him, or through what storms of human passion and suffering he had attained to this permanent central calm, who could say? ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... genius, could do anything in these days without much study of ancient art, and even he would be much hindered if he lacked it. If you think that this contradicts what I said about the death of that ancient art, and the necessity I implied for an art that should be characteristic of the present day, I can only say that, in these times of plenteous knowledge and meagre performance, if we do not study the ancient work directly and learn to understand it, we shall find ourselves influenced by the feeble work all round us, and shall be copying the better work through the ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... gaze wander down the second column of the front page whence issue daily those anguishing appeals, mysterious messages, heart-rending entreaties and barefaced begging advertisements which give this column its characteristic name. ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... distinct species. The same remarks may be extended to the two chief races of the pig. We must, therefore, either give up the belief of the universal sterility of species when crossed; or we must look at this sterility in animals, not as an indelible characteristic, but as one capable of being ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... prone to melancholy. It has been said of our countrymen that they take even their pleasures sadly. But this, if it be true at all, will, I hope, prove a transitory characteristic. "Merry England" was the old saying, let us hope it may become true again. We must look to the East for real melancholy. What can be sadder than the lines with which Omar Khayyam opens his ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... characteristic to me," said the Sam Johnson. "It's quite the sort of thing one expects to ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... archway. The other end of this street comes out on the open space or Parvis before the west door of the Cathedral. If you will go still further eastward by way of the Rue St. Romain, past the Portail des Libraires, the most characteristic thoroughfare is from the Place des Ponts de Robec, not far south of St. Ouen, along the street called Eau de Robec to the boulevards. These are the main ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... so little the victim of his moods. What could have come over him now to change him in that swift instant? Was she to blame? Had she unknowingly been at fault? Or was there something in her story that had chilled him? It was characteristic of her that it was herself she doubted and not him; that it never occurred to her that her hero had feet of clay ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... interesting than dull, dry, and correct. It can interest by reminding us of pleasant things, such as familiar flowers, shady woods, or green lawns; birds, beasts, and so forth can be depicted in their characteristic attitudes, or a story can be told; in fact, work can be made attractive in a hundred different ways. It must not show signs of having wearied the worker in the doing; variety and evidence of thought lavishly expended upon it will prevent this, and enthusiasm will ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... Republic were founded for the manufacture of a good quality of soul. In the presence of the greatest men of history we can point with pride to Lincoln, saying, "This is the kind of man the institutions of the Republic can produce." For Lincoln's most striking characteristic was his Americanism. At best, Washington was a patrician, the fine product of aristocratic institutions, so that England claimed him. Washington was the richest man of his era, his home an old manor house, his estate wide inherited acres, his relative ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... influenced him towards being the direct cause of happiness and comfort to others. Taking away any supernatural motive that might lead him to such generous action, yet leaves the deed a worthy one, and the heart a Christian one, for, to gratify others was to gratify himself, and this alone is characteristic of a great soul. As the orphan child of a friend of his youth, I doubt not that Henry Rayne would protect her at his life's peril. We all know what a firm knot it is that binds the sympathetic souls ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... shall take our leave of Dr. Donne. It is called a fragment; but it seems to me complete. It will serve as a specimen of his best and at the same time of his most characteristic mode of presenting fine thoughts ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... Dawson pulled down his tunic, settled himself comfortably into his Sam Browne belt, and rested his left hand upon the hilt of his sword.—It was a pretty artistic touch, the wearing of that sword, and exactly characteristic of Dawson's methods. I laughed when he told me of it.—There were two doors to the room—one upon Dawson's left hand, the other at the far end behind the workmen. He raised his right hand, and the chairman, who was ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... purpose. So do small events influence great! Suspend those fellows' wages, get down strike-breakers, save the hay! And if there were a row—well, let there be a row! The constabulary would have to act. It was characteristic of his really Norman spirit that the notion of agreeing to the demand, or even considering whether it were just, never once came into his mind. He was one of those, comprising nowadays nearly all his class, together with their press, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in art, as "a normal state of completeness in the relation of things to each other." This "state of completeness" in a harmonious scheme is such that we have no desire to change or modify any detail or characteristic. ...
— Applied Design for Printers - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #43 • Harry Lawrence Gage
... Characteristic it was of Bud Merkel not to answer at once the sharp and excited question of his cousin. Living all his life in the West, as he had done, and most of it having been spent on his father's ranches, Bud had unconsciously acquired the valuable ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... Skagen lie other curious phenomena created by this "Storm King." The "Raabjerg Miler" are vast and characteristic dunes of powdery sand in long ridges, like huge waves petrified in the very act of turning over! In the neighbouring quicksands trees have been ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... chair by the bedside, and, shading the candle from the patient's face—and her own, too—produced from a bag that hung from her waist a half-finished stocking and began to knit silently and with the skill characteristic of the German housewife. I looked at her attentively (though she was so much in the shadow that I could see her but indistinctly) and somehow her appearance prepossessed me as little as did that of the other members of the household. ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... from the devout Billy—Billy Preston. That pious man liked to have the talk mainly to himself, and he thought that anything not obscene was tame. By the way, these abrupt and insolent remarks are characteristic of public-house wit. A favourite joke is to ask a friend a serious question. When he fails to answer, then the joker shouts some totally irrelevant and indecent word, and the questioned man is regarded as "sold." I cannot repeat the interlude with which Billy Preston favoured ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... of the native dances, desiring the restrictions to be removed, or rather to be made dependent on the character of the dance. Clarke, who had feared censure and all kinds of trouble, is, of course, rejoicing greatly. A characteristic feature: the argument of the pastors was handed in in the form of a fictitious narrative of the voyage of one Mr. Pye, an English traveller, and his conversation with a chief; there are touches of ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and very thin, with regular, well-cut features indicating little to the physiognomist unless it be the great gift of self-possession. His hair was cut short, and he wore no beard beyond an absolutely black moustache. His teeth were perfect in form and whiteness,—a characteristic which, though it may be a valued item in a general catalogue of personal attraction, does not generally recommend a man to the unconscious judgment of his acquaintance. But about the mouth and chin of this ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... the last characteristic expression which escaped from the dying man. He knew Fletcher's superstitious tendency, and it cannot be questioned that the threat was the last feeble flash of his prankfulness. The faithful valet replied in consternation that he ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... interesting to compare the bride's description of the Bridegroom with the descriptions of "the Ancient of Days" in Dan. vii. 9, 10, and of our risen LORD in Rev. i. 13-16. The differences are very characteristic. ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor
... week before Christmas that Pollyanna sent her story (now neatly typewritten) in for the contest. The prize-winners would not be announced until April, the magazine notice said, so Pollyanna settled herself for the long wait with characteristic, ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... allocation (1% of GDP) have helped Japan advance with extraordinary rapidity to the rank of second most technologically powerful economy in the world after the US and third largest economy in the world after the US and China. One notable characteristic of the economy is the working together of manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors in closely knit groups called keiretsu. A second basic feature has been the guarantee of lifetime employment for a substantial portion of the urban labor force. Both features ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the good-nature, we might even call it playfulness, characteristic of the enlightened higher official. He was astonished, however, when he heard that the cousins he had invited had remained at home in the country. 'Your father was always a queer fellow,' he remarked, playing with the tassels of his magnificent velvet ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... shrill, querulous, drawling voice, so characteristic of the Southern "poor-white" ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... He is in possession of many substitutes, composed of a few of those set phrases and accommodating sentences which fit into any subject; and these, mixed up with appropriate nods, significant gestures, and above all, with the characteristic shrugging of the shoulders, are ever ready at hand when the tide of his ideas ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... back, nearly to the tail. So powerful a band requires correspondingly large attachments; and accordingly we find that the vertebrae of the shoulders send out enormously long perpendicular processes, which give to the shoulder that height which is so eminent a characteristic of the animal. To these processes the ligament of the neck is fastened by accessory bands, which add both to ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... time, indeed, those works caused considerable scandal. Clergymen denounced them in pamphlets. St. Cuthbert was described by his biographer as having 'carried the jealousy of women, characteristic of all the saints, to an extraordinary pitch'. An example was given, whenever he held a spiritual conversation with St Ebba, he was careful to spend the ensuing ours of darkness 'in prayer, up to ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... jointed tail-feelers or cercopods; the baby grasshopper by its strong, elongate hind-legs, adapted, like those of the adult, for vigorous leaping. During the growth of the insect to the adult state there may be four or five moults, each preceded and succeeded by a characteristic instar[4]. The first instar differs, however, from the adult in one conspicuous and noteworthy feature, it possesses no trace of wings. But after the first or the second moult, definite wing-rudiments are visible in the form of outgrowths on the corners ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... characteristic of the adjective, appears to consist in its both naming a quality, and attributing that ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... eating nor talking, which was far from pleasant to behold. He was very much esteemed by Mr. Carter, nevertheless; not so much because he was clever, as because he looked so eminently stupid. This last characteristic had won for him the sobriquet of Sawney Tom, and he was considered worth his weight in sovereigns on certain occasions, when a simple country lad or a verdant-looking linen-draper's apprentice was required to enact some little part ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... throbbing in his veins, and himself participant of the thoughts and emotions of his brethren. Then he is to be 'like unto' Moses,—not in all points, but in his receiving direct communications from God, and in his authority as God's messenger. The crowning characteristic, 'I will put My words into his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him,' invests his words with divine authority, calls for obedience to them as the words of God Himself, widens out his sphere far beyond that of merely foretelling, brings in the moral and religious element ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... at the court. His bullet-shaped head was unusually large, and his face, with its narrow brow and small, lustreless eyes, showed that he was not prone to thinking. Yet he fulfilled every order precisely according to directions, and possessed his full share of the cunning which is often a characteristic ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... This record, in which are embedded a variety of documents characteristic of privateering procedure, is from pp. 163-183 of a volume of records of the vice-admiralty court held in Philadelphia, 1735-1746, now preserved in the office of the clerk of the U.S. district court in that city. The only other records of that vice-admiralty court known to be still preserved ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... "Australia has produced in Mr. A. B. Paterson a national poet whose bush ballads are as distinctly characteristic of the country as Burns's poetry is ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... education, then, has been very great. Williams remarks that "he inspired Rousseau with nearly every valuable thought which appears in the brilliant pages of his 'Emile.' He seems himself to have derived some of his most characteristic ideas from Montaigne, and possibly also from Rabelais."[110] Although Locke differed from other educational reformers in many respects, though he was somewhat narrow in his conception of education, owing ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... from an unwillingness to affront them, they were uneasy and dissatisfied till I had given them something in return, though their hands were full of the presents which I had just made them. Selfishness is, in fact, almost without exception, their universal characteristic, and the mainspring of all their actions, and that, too, of a kind the most direct and unamiable that can ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... eminently characteristic fact—the RIGHT OF INCREASE—we shall pursue the old serpent through his coils; we shall count the murderous entwinings of this frightful taenia, whose head, with its thousand suckers, is always hidden from the sword of its most violent enemies, though abandoning to ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... courteous, affable, and remarkable for a natural dignity which added greatly to his influence with the people. He was the model from which was grown that chivalry and nobility of soul and high bearing so characteristic of the people of Southern Georgia. In truth, the essence of his character seemed subtilly to pervade the entire circle in which he moved, inspiring a purity of character, a loftiness of honor, which rebuked with ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Cosmic Club discussing the question: "What's the matter with Jones?" Waldemar, the oldest of the conferees, was the owner, and at times the operator, of an important and decent newspaper. His heavy face wore the expression of good-humored power, characteristic of the experienced and successful journalist. Beside him sat Robert Bertram, the club idler, slender and languidly elegant. The third member of the ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in the Sacred Language before mentioned, this could at once have been recognized by a difference in the intonation of the voice. This may have been a survival to some extent of the chanting which was the distinguishing characteristic of the speech of the Second Race. (Secret Doctrine, vol. II, p. 198) In the written language it is not easily possible to discover this without much thought, unless endeavour has previously been made to re-awaken the faculty of ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... King wrote in my, album which is very characteristic of him: "If you do anything, do it without delay and with ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... and characteristic of you," said Manuel, "but I suppose you will be wanting me to make a speech, and I ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... sub-characteristic with an organism. A language is not an organism, but one of the characteristics of man. After the lapse of countless ages there are grey horses and black, bay and chestnut, presumably because greyness and blackness and the rest are incidental ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... was to be a general commers, or meeting of the societies among the students, and I determined not to omit witnessing one of the most interesting and characteristic features of student-life. So borrowing a cap and coat, I looked the student well enough to pass for one of them, though the former article was somewhat of the Philister form. Baader, a young poet of some note, ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... he laid down his arms at the close of the War between the States to the beginning of his last lingering illness, these "Observations" were for him but an inadequate outlet for the expression of the courageous and hopeful philosophy which was always his distinguishing characteristic. To cover his pain with a jest,—to preach without cant the gospel of love,—to do the best that he could do according to the lights before him—these generous motives and high purposes are to be read between the lines by those who knew him as ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... stove, with his brown cloak hanging from his shoulders, sat a short stout personage, a man about thirty years of age, with fair flaxen hair, a florid complexion, a very fair skin, and massive German features. The expression of his face, so far as such a countenance could be said to have any characteristic expression, was that of ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... possible to view these characteristics as patentable in combinations of all or in any combinations less than all, and also as separate characteristics, 16 divisions additional to the 256 for each independent characteristic would have to be provided, as well as other divisions for combinations of less than the whole, in order to make the classification absolutely indicative of every feature, and the number of divisions would be enormous. ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... Canon Selwyn gave notice of proposing a petition on the subject to the Upper House. The proposal in a somewhat different form a year afterwards was disposed of by a characteristic amendment ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... me explain. This picture was not like the others hanging about. It was a veiled one. From some motive of precaution or characteristic desire for concealment on the part of the judge, it had been closely wrapped about in heavy brown paper before being hung, and in the encounter which ensued between the falling picture and the spear of an image standing on a table underneath, ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... out of the chaos of the past, and the past became the present, and he stood before her as though in the flesh. Nay, she heard his voice, his laugh, she even recognized again the smouldering flames in his eyes as he glanced into hers, and his characteristic manners and gestures. Honora wondered. In vain, during those long months of exile had she tried to reconstruct him thus the vision in its entirety would not come: rare, fleeting, partial, and tantalizing glimpses she had been vouchsafed, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... evening he talked a great deal to me, Lady Georgina putting in from time to time a characteristic growl about the table-d'hote chicken—'a special breed, my dear, with eight drumsticks apiece'—or about the inadequate lighting of the heavy German salon. She was worse than ever: pungent as a rule, that evening she was grumpy. When ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... brief dialogue between master and pupil, which gives us an amusing glimpse of the worthy d'Eterville, whom the boys called 'poor old Detterville.' In the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters of Lavengro he is pleasantly described by his pupil, who adds, with characteristic 'bluff,' that d'Eterville said 'on our arrival at the conclusion of Dante's Hell, "vous serez un jour ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... attended in Carthage was Tudie Litton, as pretty a creature as he could imagine or desire. For manifest reasons he affected an interest in her brother Arthur. And Arthur, with a characteristic brotherly feeling, tried to keep his sister in her place. He not only told her that she was "not such a much," but ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... The most marked characteristic of this restricted friendship was a disposition to respect the privacy of each other's lives and thoughts. In all their intercourse through the year in which they had been thus associated they had never obtruded their personal affairs upon each ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... be!" exclaimed Minnie, starting up, and running to the rescue, while the others followed with various appropriate and characteristic remarks of ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... no help for it; I can't very well become more open-handed in a moment! In the second place, much goes out at home, and little comes in; and the hundred and one, large and small, things, which turn up, are still managed with that munificence so characteristic of our old ancestors. But the funds, that come in throughout the year, fall short of the immense sums of past days. And if I try again to effect any savings people will laugh at me, our venerable senior and Madame Wang suffer wrongs, and the servants abhor me for my stinginess. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... expression. Superfluous—that's just it. To other people that term is not applicable.... People are bad, or good, clever, stupid, pleasant, and disagreeable; but superfluous ... no. Understand me, though: the universe could get on without those people too... no doubt; but uselessness is not their prime characteristic, their most distinctive attribute, and when you speak of them, the word 'superfluous' is not the first to rise to your lips. But I ... there's nothing else one can say about me; I'm superfluous and nothing more. A supernumerary, ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... endurance in the breed by introducing into it the blood of "Old Snip." So celebrated did the qualities of this horse become that the "Snip breed" was not only spoken of with regard to the horses, but of the owners as well, and Hazards who did not possess the distinguishing race-characteristic of self-will were said not to be "true Snips." Old Snip was said to have been imported from Tripoli; others assert (and it is generally believed) that he was a wild horse running at large in ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Montreal, so great was the vigilance and valour of the Canadians, retired with his "Grand Army of the North" into safe winter quarters, behind the entrenchments of Plattsburg. A few ineffectual border raids and skirmishes, at different points of the extended frontier, were characteristic episodes of the war during the winter, and, indeed, throughout the entire duration ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... communities, and naturally produced an oligarchical form of government. A peculiarity of theirs, of which Sparta is the only modern example, was the dual system of two kings reigning in one city. As a result probably of their sea-going taste, the study of the stars became a characteristic pursuit, and this race made great advances both in astronomy ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... cheek, shaded away as it was, until it melted into the light that sparkled from her complexion—the snowy forehead, the flashing eye, in which sat the very soul of love—the lips, blushing of sweets—her whole person breathing the warmth of youth, and feeling, and so characteristic in the easiness of its motions of that gracile flexibility that has never been known to exist separate from the power of receiving varied and profound emotions—all this told the spectator, too truly, that the lovely being before him ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... public. The day which had started bright grew dark; for a long time there were threatenings of a thunder-storm; but none looked on this as an evil omen. All were inclined to cheery views. The courtiers displayed their zeal with all the ardor, the passion, the furia francese, which is a national characteristic, and appears on the battle-field as well as in the ante- chamber. The French fight and ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... church music had been lacking in that dignity which should be its main characteristic, and this fault was largely due to the Flemish composers, who thought most of displaying their technical skill. They frequently selected some well-known secular tune around which to weave their counterpoint, many masses, for instance, having been ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... these forces is a characteristic of our age that makes it an age of adventure and discovery. The heart of equatorial Africa has been explored, and soon the poles ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... time to devote to objects in no way connected with their business. It cannot be regarded as accidental that this characteristic of mind is found so commonly among successful men during the years of their most fruitful labor. According to the American ideal, the man who is sure to succeed is the one who is continuously 'keyed up to concert pitch'—who ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... advance with extraordinary rapidity to the rank of second most technologically powerful economy in the world after the US and the third-largest economy in the world after the US and China, measured on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis. One notable characteristic of the economy is how manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors work together in closely-knit groups called keiretsu. A second basic feature has been the guarantee of lifetime employment for a substantial portion of the urban labor force. Both features ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... his habitually and instinctively allowed for him, as for a child or some other lawless thing, exacting no strict obedience to conventional rules, and hardly noticing his eccentricities enough to pardon them. There was an indefinable characteristic about Donatello that set him ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... refinements had been after all little more than a theatrical make-believe—an age of wild people, of insane impulse, of homicidal mania. The sweet-souled songster had no more than others attained real calm in it. Even in youth nervous distress had been the chief facial characteristic. Triumphant, nevertheless, in his battle for Greek beauty—for the naturalisation of Greek beauty in the brown cloud-lands of the North- -he might have been thinking, contemptuously, of barking little Saint-Gelais, or of Monsieur Marot's pack-thread poems. He, for his part, had always held that ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... that one of the most characteristic and beautiful laws of life should be announced in the opening chapter of the Holy Bible. It was clothed in the form of an ordinance, as became it: "Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, and every thing that creepeth ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... Rich, the manager of the theatre, was, like many of his kind, more given to considering the weight of his purse than the scant supply of sentiment with which nature might originally have endowed him, and so he tried to do two characteristic things. The salaries of his faithful employes should be reduced and the older members of the company retired into the background as much as possible. Younger faces must occupy the centre of the stage; even Betterton, the greatest actor of his time, should be supplanted in some of his parts by the ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... we could breathe the characteristic pervading odor of sandalwood. Rich Oriental hangings were on the walls, interspersed with cabalistic signs, while at one end was ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... been into the country, and was taking Helstonleigh on his way back to town; had stayed in it a day or two for the purpose of seeing Martin Pope, who was an old friend, and of being introduced to Hamish Channing. That shy feeling of reticence, which is the characteristic of most persons whose genius is worth anything, had induced Hamish to ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Fountainhall to his son, probably his eldest son and successor, John, is a characteristic specimen of his later style. It holds up to the young man as an example the character and career of his maternal grandfather, Sir Andrew ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... new novel is a fresh and delightful study of artist life in the city and the country. The theme is worked out with the author's characteristic originality and force, and with much natural humor. In subject the book is altogether different from any of its predecessors, and the author's marked success proves his breadth and the versatility ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... entered the navy, I should probably never have been allowed to rise in my profession, the influence and patronage which I lacked causing other and more fortunate ones to be promoted over my head. His reply was characteristic. ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... a fabric of expressive form and texture. Equipped with a knowledge of the terms of any art, the layman has yet to understand something of the ways in which the terms may be combined. Every artist has his idiom or characteristic style. Rembrandt on the flat surface of his canvas secures the illusion of form in the round by a system of light and shade; modeling is indicated by painting the parts in greater relief in light and the ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... small squadron, stormed the fort of St. Fernando de Omoa, on the south side of the Bay of Honduras, and captured some register ships which were lying under its guns. Two hundred and fifty quintals of quicksilver and three millions of piastres were the reward of this enterprise; and it is characteristic of Nelson that the chance by which he missed a share in such a prize is never mentioned in any of his letters; nor is it likely that it ever excited even ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... not need to follow this style of combination into the more refined kinds of work and into loom products, but may add that through all, until perverted by ulterior influences, the characteristic geometricity ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... magmatic solutions, as suggested by the close association of the ores with the igneous rock, the presence of minerals containing chlorine, fluorine, and boron, and the development in the limestone of dense silicates and mineral associations characteristic of hot-water alteration. The manganese ores are mined principally in the oxidized zone. Rich silver ores are found below the water table, but mainly in veins independent ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... not escape undetected, passed away unnoticed. Not so, however, with the peculiarity already mentioned as an exception. This touch of deportment, (or management, perhaps, is the better word,) being characteristic of the man, it deserves to be mentioned a ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... temperance movement, because they knew right well that sobriety in the people was there greatest enemy; the lame, the blind, the maimed, the deaf, and the dumb, were there in strong muster, and with their characteristic ingenuity did everything in their power, under the pretence of zeal and religious enthusiasm, to throw discredit upon the whole proceedings. It was this vile crew, who, by having recourse to the aid of mock miracles, fancied they could turn the matter ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... Upholstery Purposes.—Full technical description of the method of producing a new and characteristic ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... fatigue and a little chill of disappointment and doubt. How would it be possible to become intimate with a man who sat at the opposite end of the table, shut himself in his own room, and was apparently oblivious of his surroundings? With characteristic recklessness Margot had put on her very prettiest blouse, hoping to make a good impression on this first evening, but for all the attention it had received it might as well have been black delaine! She sighed and yawned again, ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... MARY PICKFORD has been compared with that of MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, and not without some show of reason, for the appeal which her acting, makes is always to the sense of chivalry which, in however sentimental a form, is characteristic of our race. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... I meant it, of course, and it took a long time to convince her. But when at last she began to believe—at least to the extent of believing that I had sent the telegram—her next remark was characteristic. ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to this question may be given at once by pointing to a rule in Scriptural teaching, according to which the symbol and the thing symbolized are expressed in identical terms. {34} The Bible must have been read to little purpose by those who have not discovered that this characteristic pervades all parts both of the Old and the New Testament. On this principle, when speaking to the Jews, our Lord made no distinction between his own body and the visible temple at Jerusalem, just because his body was the proper habitation of the Holy Spirit antecedently to, and comprehensively ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... possibilities of the work were discovered as early as 1809, by Thomas Rowlandson, who illustrated the edition published in that year. The edition of 1859 owed embellishments to Crowquill, while Cruikshank supplied some characteristic woodcuts to that of 1869. Coloured designs for the travels were executed by a French artist Richard in 1878, and illustrations were undertaken independently for the German editions by Riepenhausen and Hosemann respectively. The German artist Adolph Schroedter has also painted a celebrated ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... and do some practical good. At present he had no organisation and no plans. He did not believe in organisation and plans preceding a clear conception of what was to be accomplished. Such, as nearly as I can now recollect, is an outline of his discourse. It was thoroughly characteristic of him. He always talked in this fashion. He was for ever insisting on the aimlessness of modern life, on the powerlessness of its vague activities to mould men into anything good, to restrain them from evil or moderate ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... commenced in 1828, is most characteristic, and in the very beginning shows that inclination to the consideration and discussion of serious questions which in after years ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... human nature—faith, if we may say so, in his own instincts—in his ideas of men and things—in himself; and the result was, that unhesitating bearing up and steering right onward—"never bating one jot of heart or hope" so characteristic of him. He had "the substance of things hoped for." He had "the evidence of ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... into the lodge, and coming out with a large stone mallet, killed the unfortunate dog at one blow. This speech is worthy of notice as illustrating a curious characteristic of the Indians: the ascribing intelligence and a power of understanding speech to the inferior animals, to whom, indeed, according to many of their traditions, they are linked in close affinity, and they even claim the honor of a lineal ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... disapprobation, the work at Herrnhut prospered, and the more it increased the fiercer their resentment grew. That they, who had gained their name from their advocacy of the need for personal piety, should have been foremost in opposing a man whose piety was his strongest characteristic, and a people who for three hundred years, in prosperity and adversity, in danger, torture and exile, had held "Christ and Him Crucified" as their Confession of Faith, and pure and simple living for His sake as their object in life, ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... general idea was a defensive occupation of the Colenso position, although Botha, with characteristic spirit, proposed to send a commando across the river to face the British on the open. The initiative, always a disadvantage when attacking an enemy strongly posted and entrenched, was thus imposed upon Buller. It was ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... Its peculiar characteristic is its extraordinary fragility—arising from the muscles being articulated quite through the vertebras. If struck with a switch, the body is easily broken in two or more parts. Sometimes, indeed, the creature breaks off its own ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... the name of the artist who first imagined her has long been lost. Perhaps she was Daisy Miller's grandmother. In reality, in spite of that lack of reverence which is undoubtedly a national American characteristic, the average American woman has an almost passionate love for those glories of antiquity which her own country necessarily lacks, such as few Englishwomen are ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... cheery greeting was strangely at variance with his manner, which was as diffident as that of a village dog on the Fourth of July. As he advanced toward the showroom he exhaled the odour of mothballs, characteristic of an old stock of cloaks and suits, so that before he looked up Morris was able to identify ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... young peer looked amazed; and some of them, I thought, notwithstanding gravity and earnestness are rather characteristic of the monikin physiognomy, betrayed a slight disposition to laugh. Not so with my ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Walter, meekly; and we think he was right, for a petticoat has never in our day been the only garment worn by females, nor even the most characteristic: fishermen wear ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... dying in captivity, dull-witted but haughty turkeys, mild old tabby cats, who forgave us when we trod on their tails for fun and caused them agonising pain? I even fancy, sometimes, that the patience, the fidelity, the readiness to forgive, and the sincerity which are characteristic of our domestic animals have a far stronger and more definite effect on the mind of a child than the long exhortations of some dry, pale Karl Karlovitch, or the misty expositions of a governess, trying to prove to children that water is made ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... apparently never found in dramatic writing a medium suitable to her genius, and even less was she attracted by a stage career. The reasons for her abandoning the theatre to develop her powers as a writer of fiction are stated in a characteristic letter still filed among ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... Wheelswarf Chronicle, and in 1836 appeared the first number of The Shevvild Chap's Annual in which the writer throws aside his nom-de-plume and signs himself Abel Bywater. This annual, which lived for about twenty years, is the first of the many "Annuals" or "Almanacs" which are the most characteristic product of the West Riding dialect movement. Their history is a subject to itself, and inasmuch as the contributions to them are largely in prose, they can only be referred to very lightly here. Their popularity and ever-increasing ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... an auction, and sell off all my goods dirt cheap," said Jack, showing his repentance in the most characteristic way. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... With that characteristic directness which I have always thought accounted in large measure for his success, he wasted scarcely a word in coming straight to the object of his visit. "Professor Kennedy," he began, chewing his cigar and ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... unless I deceive myself, a highly psychic man. I was a nervous, sensitive boy, a dreamer, a somnambulist, full of impressions and intuitions. My black hair, my dark eyes, my thin, olive face, my tapering fingers, are all characteristic of my real temperament, and cause experts like Wilson to claim me as their own. But my brain is soaked with exact knowledge. I have trained myself to deal only with fact and with proof. Surmise and fancy have no place in my scheme of thought. ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... characteristic of a bad habit; it seldom leaves its votaries the liberty of abandonment. All which the address can effect, is an admonition to youth, over whom tobacco has not yet acquired its bad supremacy. As parents, then, anxious to see our children uncontaminated by disgustful practices; as citizens, ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... they are also quite determined to defend Albania from aggression.... When he asserts that various ties existed between Italy and the Albanians—the Albanian language, the feudal architecture, much that is characteristic in Albanian art and so forth—I would refer him to M. Justin Godart, with whom I am glad for once to be in agreement. "There is no traditional or actual link," says he, "between the two countries; if, on account of this geographical position, they propose to ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... these selections as shall help the reader to perceive and appreciate their true poetic qualities and enter into full sympathy with the thoughts and feelings which their writers intended to express. The first object to be sought in the study of these poems is the perception of those characteristic excellences which have made them universally admired and placed them among the classics of our language. To accomplish this object rationally and successfully, it is best to begin with those productions which are nearest to us in point of ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... VIOLA AUREA. Golden Violet. Biflora usually; but its brilliant yellow is a much more definite characteristic; and needs insisting on, because there is a 'Viola lutea' which is not yellow at all; named so by the garden florists. My Viola aurea is the Rock-violet of the Alps; one of the bravest, brightest, and dearest of little flowers. The following notes upon it, with its summer companions, a little ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... prevented such a sacrifice he would have robbed Alcestis of an honor which every nobly ambitious woman in Hellas would have coveted. This is so much taken for granted by the poet that all that he lays stress on in the drama is the virtue rewarded by the return of Alcestis to life, the virtue characteristic of Admetus, the virtue of hospitality, to this duty in all the agony of his sorrow Admetus had been nobly true, and as a reward for what he had thus earned, the wife who had been equally true to woman's obligations was restored all-glorified ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... a man capable of the uttermost sacrifices upon either of two shrines; that of Mammon, or that of Eros. His was a temperament (truly characteristic of his race) which can build up a structure painfully, year by year, suffering unutterable privations in the cause of its growth, only to shatter it at a blow for a woman's smile. He was a true member of that brotherhood, represented throughout the bazaars of the East, of those singular ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... poetry, which the narrowness of men's minds constantly tends to oppose to each other, have a great stimulus for the intellect, and are almost always worth understanding. It is so with this theory of a Renaissance within the middle age, which seeks to establish a continuity between the most characteristic work of the middle age, the sculpture of Chartres and the windows of Le Mans, and the work of the later Renaissance, the work of Jean Cousin and Germain Pilon, and thus heals that rupture between the middle age and the Renaissance which has so often been ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... every utterance which came from His holy lips. What discoveries of His Grace and moral Glory we make, if under the guidance of His Spirit we meditate on His life here below. Humility and submission under God, patient waiting on Him, utter absence of all haste, perfect calmness of soul and every other characteristic of perfect patience, we can trace constantly in that wonderful life. What patience is revealed in the forty days in the wilderness, when He hungered and was with the wild beasts (Mark i:13). When Satan tempted Him and asked for stones to be made bread, ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... gone to Manchester, and there had been barely time for a brief but characteristic interview between him and Tembarom, when he rushed back to London. Tembarom felt rather excited when he remembered it, recalling what he had felt in confronting the struggles against emotion in the blunt-featured, red face, the breaks in the rough voice, the charging ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... were yellow with the first primroses, and patches of golden daffodils could be seen in the woods, though spring seemed to be far enough away that chilly day. It was characteristic of one's experience in France that, as we sat down to dinner that evening in an Abbeville hotel I had beside me an officer in the British army who had been in Canada for a number of years and who had, during that time, been a frequent caller at my home in Toronto. The spontaneous ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... I published a new edition of this work, greatly enlarged, and in two volumes. I took this opportunity of inserting the manuscript Notes of Lord Byron, with the exception of one, which, however characteristic of the amiable feelings of the noble poet, and however gratifying to my own, I had no wish to obtrude on the notice of ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... was a measure of Napoleon's already referred to, but little known. In some respects it was more successful than any other; it certainly is most characteristic of the man. The evil aimed at was cured at the time, and the permanent question is less acute in modern France than in any other European country. For years past there had been chronic distress among the agricultural classes in some of the most fertile districts ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... not a few of the great leaders of opinion under whose influence the father of New England became a great political power in the mother country. It is not to the Pilgrim Fathers alone who landed at Plymouth on December 22, 1620, that New England owes its characteristic principles and its splendid renown, but it is also to the leaders of the great Puritan party in England, who reinforced that immigration by the subsequent higher and nobler life of the planters of Massachusetts Bay, conspicuous among whom was the distinguished ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... spot was as complete a solitude as the backwoods of North America, and so thick was the foliage on the noble trees, that no glimpse of the surrounding city could be obtained in any direction. Everything that greeted eye and ear was characteristic of "the woods," even to the swans, geese, ducks, and other water-fowl which sported on the clear surface of the pond; while the noise of traffic in the mighty metropolis was so subdued by distance as to resemble the deep-toned roar of a great cataract. A stranger, rambling there for the ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... out a piece of paper; smiling as he did so. It was covered with writing in Luther Barr's cramped hand and was a characteristic document. Stripped of its legal phraseology it was an agreement to the effect that if the boys would make no salvage charges for saving the yacht, they could have her free of cost to sail back to ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... he—when he's thirsty anyhow? And artists are so often thirsty. Charles is often thirsty. He says it is a characteristic feature of the artistic temperament. Ah! ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... process of cementation which steadfastly links Alexandria to the District of Columbia by bands that are basically nonpolitical (maybe stronger for that same reason). Paradoxically, Alexandria is a free city—part of Virginia, though not characteristic of the State; allied to the District, but ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... military reservation, where probably 50,000 persons were camped, affairs were conducted with military precision. Water was plentiful and rations were dealt out all day long. The refugees stood patiently in line and there was not a murmur. This characteristic was observable all over the city. The people were brave and patient, and the wonderful order preserved by them proved of great assistance. In Golden Gate Park a huge supply station had been established and ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various |
