"Characterization" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seene his demeanor no lesse civill, than he exelent in the qualitie[1] he professes: Besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that aprooves his Art." This characterization so well fits in with the tone of later contemporary allusions to Shakespeare that it is regrettable that Chettle did not make its reference ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... denied that Shakspere's plays had any excellence, any wealth in profound sentences or truth to nature, any originality, force or beauty of diction; and placed him far below the ancients in all essential points,—in composition, invention, characterization. ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... to a sentimental characterization of precious stones is to be found in "A Lover's Complaint", lines 204-217. Although we have already noted most of them separately, it may be well to give ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... interest which justifies its existence. Coppee possesses preeminently the gift of presenting concrete fact rather than abstraction. A sketch, for instance, is the first tale written by him, 'Une Idylle pendant le Seige' (1875). In a novel we require strong characterization, great grasp of character, and the novelist should show us the human heart and intellect in full play and activity. In 1875 appeared also 'Olivier', followed by 'L'Exilee (1876); Recits et Elegies (1878); Vingt Contes Nouveaux ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... spirited staccato style. It is no doubt a shock to our feelings to find that Wollust's aria became the Virgin's cradle-song, while Hercules's reply became the alto aria in which Zion is bidden to "prepare for the Bridegroom." But it does not warrant the inference that Bach's music lacks definite characterization: on the contrary, these two arias are the best demonstration of his profound insight into the possibilities of musical expression within his range. It is no part of his conception of art that Wollust should be represented by a Wagnerian Venusberg-music; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... Nicholson, who has heard Henry talk at a dinner, in a recent number of Scribner's magazine, said of him: "He's the best talker I've ever heard. It was delightful to listen to discourse so free, so graphic in its characterization, so coloured and flavoured with the very soil," and that night at the English dinner, all of Henry's cylinders were hitting and he took every grade without changing gears. But my ears were eager for the man on Henry's ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... of Thackeray, essay is so much mixed up with narrative, and comment with characterization, that they can hardly be thoroughly appreciated in poor editions. The temptation to skip is almost irresistible, when wisdom can be purchased only at the expense of eyesight. We are therefore glad to welcome the commencement of a new edition of his writings, over whose pages ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... case, Clayte would inevitably be one of the wonderful men of the world," she repeated her characterization with the placid, soft obstinacy of falling, snow. "Didn't you stop a minute—one little minute, Mr. Boyne—to think it wonderful that a man so devoid of personality as that—" she slanted a slim ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... of young French authors; but after the failure of 'Guillery' at the Theatre Francaise and 'Gaetena' at the Odeon, renounced the theatre. Indeed, his power is in odd conceptions, in the covert laugh and humorous suggestion of the phrasing, rather than in plot or characterization. He will always be best known for the tales and novels in that thoroughly French style—clear, concise, and witty—which in 1878 elected him president of the Societe des Gens de Lettres, and in 1884 won him ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... mere coincidence that such divergent writers as Pietro Gori and William Marion Reedy find similar traits in their characterization of Emma Goldman. In a contribution to LA QUESTIONE SOCIALE, Pietro Gori calls her a "moral power, a woman who, with the vision of a sibyl, prophesies the coming of a new kingdom for the oppressed; a ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... Nordica's American Dbut German Opera Introduced at the Metropolitan Opera House Parlous State of Italian Opera in London and on the Continent Dr. Leopold Damrosch and His Enterprise The German Singers Amalia Materna Marianne Brandt Marie Schroeder-Hanfstngl Anton Schott, the Military Tenor Von Blow's Characterization: "A Tenor is ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... of the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Gallatin did not hold to all the dogmas of Calvin, but he could not speak of the creatures—like Dyer, for example—who employ their pennyworth of wit to prejudice the vulgar against him, without some signs of scorn. We can never forget his merciless characterization of a malicious feeble-mind, who in a book entitled A Monograph of Moral Sense, declared that Calvin never had enough humanity in his nature to select even one verse by the Evangelists for pulpit illustration,—though ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... evidence brought forward by veterinary surgeons showing that unsatisfied sexual desire in animals may produce nervous symptoms very similar to hysteria.[263] The present writer, when in 1894 briefly discussing hysteria as an element in secondary sexual characterization, ventured to reflect the view, confirmed by his own observation, that there was a tendency to unduly minimize the sexual factor in hysteria, and further pointed out that the old error of a special connection between hysteria and the female sexual organs, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... "Idler" was first printed in a weekly journal started by the publisher about the same time. For the "British Magazine" Newbery engaged Smollett as editor. In this periodical appeared Goldsmith's "History of Miss Stanton." When later this was published as "The Vicar of Wakefield," it contained a characterization of the bookseller as a good-natured man with red, pimpled face, "who was no sooner alighted than he was in haste to be gone, for he was ever on business of the utmost importance, and he was at that time actually compiling ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... Spiritualistic Philosophy, and the opposition it met with in Materialism, Pantheism, and Skepticism. He will conclude by exposing the fundamental error of these systems as the avowed and active enemies of Christianity. In the fourth series there will be a characterization of the future destiny of the Christian religion, and an indication of the course by which it is called upon to conquer completely the earth and then to sway it morally. M. Guizot, having spent his life ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... glowing love passages, and its variety of characters, captivating or engaging humorous or saturnine, villains, rascals, and men of good will. A tale strong and interesting in plot, faithful and vivid as a picture of wild mountain life, and in its characterization full of ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... to me, you see, with that characterization. It was as if I'd managed to go out and take a walk and sat down in the park outside and heard the President talking to himself about the chances of war with Russia and realized he'd sat down on a bench with its back to ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... was seen near the place of ambush, looking, as he said, for evidence. But this did not halt Hale's suspicions, for he recalled that the night he had spent with the Red Fox, long ago, the old man had burst out against old Dave and had quickly covered up his indiscretion with a pious characterization of himself as a man that kept peace with both factions. And then why had he been so suspicious and fearful when Hale told him that night that he had seen him talking with a Falin in town the Court day before, and had he disclosed the whereabouts ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... SUCH a characterization? Hey? Well, but after all I'm going to continue. You are men who make no distinction between your own and strangers. You are free people. Now, here two parties stand before you; one complains, 'He robbed me and did me up completely'; and the other answers, 'I have a right to rob and to ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... commonplace manners and emotions. They do romantic things without a sense of romance in them, but weave their commonplace doings into a story of great human interest that the reader will find far from commonplace. The vein of humorous satire, keen, subtle and refined, permeating the story and the characterization, sets this work of Miss Wyatt's ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... Phoenicians have been called "the English of antiquity." Can you give any reason for this characterization? ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... and its characterization is fine and strong. Meanwhile it evinces careful study of the period in which the scene is laid, and will help those who read it with reasonable attention to realize the nature and conditions of Hebrew life in Jerusalem and Roman ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... talks upon paper, of the trifling affairs of every-day life, adding here and there a sparkling anecdote, a bit of gossip, a delicate characterization, a trenchant criticism, a dash of wit, a touch of feeling, or a profound thought. All this is lighted up by her passionate love of her daughter, and in this light we read the many-sided life of her time for twenty-five years. Mme. de La Fayette ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... Motley's 'History of the Dutch Republic' is in my judgment a work of the highest merit. Unwearying research for years in the libraries of Europe, patience and judgment in arranging and digesting his materials, a fine historical tact, much skill in characterization, the perspective of narration, as it may be called, and a vigorous style unite to make it a very capital work, and place the name of Motley by the side of those of our great ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... come across such honest work as Highways and High Seas. The author breathes a vein of genuine humour, his Captain Chink being a real achievement in characterization, and as some of his incidents are veritably ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... Supper. Yet in Raphael it comes attended with divine grace; in Correggio with faun-like radiancy of gladness; in Buonarroti with Sinaitic sublimity; in Da Vinci with penetrative force of psychological characterization. The Caracci and their followers, with a few exceptions—Guido at his best being the notablest—brought nothing of these saving ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... [2] Doellinger's characterization of Cromwell is remarkable—"Aber er (i.e., Cromwell) hat, zuerst unter den Maechtigen, ein religioeses Princip aufgestellt und, soweit sein Arm reichte, zur Geltung gebracht, welches, im Gegensatz gegen die ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... enabled Carlyle, who was as frugal as his parents, to relieve his father of the expense of his support, and to save a few pounds. Meanwhile he read widely, and wrote of his reading at great length, and with considerable power of satiric characterization, to some of his college friends. But he found himself "abundantly lonesome, uncomfortable, and out of place" in Annan, and from the first disliked teaching; while his "sentiments on the clerical profession" were ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... includes a brief characterization of the system with details on the domestic and international components. The following terms and abbreviations are used throughout ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... that led him to turn the story into verse, for it revealed a capacity which otherwise we could hardly have guessed him to possess. The vigor and rapidity of the action, the vivid sketching of the background, the pregnant characterization, the drollery of the humor give this piece a high place among stories in verse, and lead us to conjecture that, had he followed this vein instead of devoting his later years to the service of Johnson ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... inns of the period had an unenviable reputation, and were widely different from the Queen's and Rossin of the present day. Some of my readers will doubtless remember John Gait's savage fling at them several years later. To parody Dr. Johnson's characterization of the famous leg of mutton, they were ill-looking, ill-smelling, ill-provided and ill-kept. In a word, they were unendurable places of sojourn for a man of fastidious tastes and sensitive nerves. Perhaps the Captain's tastes were fastidious, though I can hardly believes ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... to say now how much of all this is observation of previous facts, and how much speculation based upon subsequent occurrences. At the best I can only let it stand for characterization. In the same interest I will add a fact in relation to Mrs. Alderling which ought to have its weight against any undue appeal I have been making in her behalf. Without in the least blaming her, I will say that I think that Mrs. Alderling ate too much. She must ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... magazine space necessitated the omission—in its serial form—of so large a portion of THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE OF COOMBE as to eliminate much of the charm of characterization and the creation of atmosphere and background which add so greatly to the power and ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... but he belongs to their realistic order of imagination, and he is easily the first of living European novelists outside of Spain, with the advantage of superior youth, freshness of invention and force of characterization. The Russians have ceased to be actively the masters, and there is no Frenchman, Englishman, or Scandinavian who counts with Ibanez, and of course no Italian, American, ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... which influenced the Jewish writers and determined their point of view as Kalamistic, Neo-Platonic or Aristotelian. There still remains as the concluding part of the introductory chapter, and before we take up the detailed exposition of the individual philosophers, to give a brief and compendious characterization of the content of medival Jewish philosophy. We shall start with the ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... the teacher's face, but the incident had jarred the old wound; Miss Leary's description of the teacher, together with Plato's characterization, had stirred lightly sleeping memories. He was more or less abstracted during the remainder of the drive, and did not recur to the conversation that had been interrupted by coming ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... poets with whom Dryden was at loggerheads. As a rule, such works are for a day, having no enduring interest because they have no human kindness, but occasionally Dryden portrays a man of his own time so well that his picture applies to the vulgar politician of all ages, as in this characterization of Burnet: ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... in the stately pages which once charmed readers of English as the model of historic eloquence, and now excite the admiration of scholars as a monument of erudition and elaborate but artificial writing. There was a new attraction in the pleasing style of Robertson and the characterization of Hume; the winsome language of the one and the transparent diction of the other made historical reading not so much a task to cumber the memory as a pastime to entertain the mind; in the one chronicle we followed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... and technique. And he does not criticize him, as does La Bruyere,[6] for paying too much attention to a man's external actions, and not enough to his "Thoughts, Sentiments, and Inclinations." Nevertheless his mind is receptive to the kind of individuated characterization soon to distinguish the mid-eighteenth century novel. The type is still his measuring-stick, but he calibrates it far less rigidly than a Rymer analyzing Iago or Evadne. A man can be A Flatterer or A Blunt Man and still retain a private ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... David and Bethsabe, was also, in many respects, a fine play, though its beauties were poetic rather than dramatic, consisting not in the characterization—which is feeble—but in the eastern luxuriance of the imagery. There is one ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... other pictures this year. A frieze, Music, was shown, and at the Grosvenor Gallery A Study of a fair-haired girl, in green velvet dress. 1886 was chiefly notable for the statue in bronze of The Sluggard, in which Leighton again furnished us with a plastic characterization of Sleep, which he designed by way of contrast to his statue of the struggling Athlete. It was suggested, Mr. Spielmann says, by accidental circumstances. The model who had been sitting to him fell a-yawning in his ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... poet-heroes, Aeschylus, Michael Angelo, Tasso, Dante, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, Chatterton, Keats, Byron, are all characterized as proud. The last-named has been especially kept in the foreground by following verse-writers, as a precedent for their arrogance. Shelley's characterization of ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... that the percentage of lyric passages is 54, or the highest of all the seven plays. The chief doubt is in regard to Prometheus, which is variously placed by good authorities; but the very low percentage of lyrics (only 27, or roughly a quarter of the whole), and still more the strong characterization, a marked advance on anything in the first three plays, point to its being later than any except the trilogy, and suggest a date somewhere about 460, or perhaps a little earlier. A few comments on the extant plays will help to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a whole is most interesting, and ends with a characterization, a strikingly beautiful passage in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. Hard were it to match ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... assisting the "free trade" when a press-gang might come along at any moment and steal a man or two without so much as by your leave, and, generally speaking, things moved. Mr. HARRISON has a delightful style, a perfect sympathy with the times of which he writes, and no small gift of characterization. Frankly, I don't believe he attaches any more importance to his plot than I do, for he is quite content to leave it to itself for several chapters ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... DURING A JOURNEY IN SWEDEN. Written in the summer of 1866, Bjrnson's speeches then made a sensation by reason of the warmth of his feeling for Sweden. Ellen Key has written with approval of his characterization of the Swedes here, which agrees with that of Schck in his History of Swedish ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... letters and catalogues his library. That library shows Mr. BENSON'S genius; without it I should hardly have been able to believe in the subsequent happenings, but, given this "secret garden," all the tragedy is explained. I have left myself no space in which to do justice to some admirable characterization. Keeling's wife is worthy of a place in the author's long gallery of woolly-witted matrons; while in Silverdale he has given a study of clerical futility and egotism almost savage in its detestability, a portrait at which one laughs and shudders together. Of course the book will have, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various
... back to the Oberland and up the St. Gothard; then back again to Lucerne and round by the Stelvio to Venice and Verona, and finally through the Tyrol and Germany homewards. The ascent of the St. Bernard was told in a dramatic sketch of great humour and power of characterization, and a letter to Richard Fall records the night on the Rigi, when he saw the splendid sequence of storm, sunset, moonlight, and daybreak, which forms the subject of one of the most ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... story, his purpose in writing it will have failed. The novelist, who has so many means of telling truth, has also many means of telling lies. He may be untruthful in his very theme, if he is lacking in sanity of outlook upon the things that are. He may be untruthful in his characterization, if he interferes with his people after they are once created and attempts to coerce them to his purposes instead of allowing them to work out their own destinies. He may be untruthful in his plotting, if he devises situations arbitrarily for ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... shop. The agent is making Herculean efforts to bamboozle an unsuspecting parvenu into buying an example of some very "advanced" painting. The canvas is fine persiflage in its clever psychological characterization of the sleek dealer and the stupid helplessness of the bloated customer and his wife, who seem hypnotized by the wicked eye in the picture. As a piece of modern genre in a much neglected field, it is one of the finest things of recent years. On the extreme left of this ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... not been a diplomat, he might have made his mark as a radical writer. His letters very often show almost anarchistic dissent. At vulgar characterization, no man ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... reconcile all of the decisions of the court in this class of cases,"[439] and, as Justice Frankfurter quite justifiably stated in a dissent, "the subject is not free from casuistry."[440] Justice Douglas' characterization of Land v. Dollar, "this is the type of case where the question of jurisdiction is dependent on decision of ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... discourse about Coleridge and Charles Lamb, and Swinburne's carnivorous lines, which take a barbarous vengeance on him for his offence, are on the level of political rhetoric rather than of scholarly criticism or characterization. Emerson never forgot that he was dealing with human beings. He could not have long endured the asperities of Carlyle, and that "loud shout of laughter," which Mr. Ireland speaks of as one of his customary explosions, would have been discordant to Emerson's ears, which ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Midrashic literature, with their two methods of interpreting the Scriptures. As a knowledge of these two methods is indispensable to an understanding of Rashi's exegesis, I will give some pages from the work of a recent French exegete, L. Wogue, who presents an excellent characterization of them in his Histoire de la Bible et de ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... substantives, refused to yield to the influence of the Greek verb, and, in the end, Hebrew truth, in the guise of the teachings of Jesus, undermined the proud structure of the heathen." This is a most excellent characterization of that literary period, which lasted about three centuries, ending between 100 and 150 C. E. Its influence upon Jewish literature can scarcely be said to have been enduring. To it belong all the apocryphal writings which, originally ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... statement, force of argument, and felicity of illustration. The style, although less direct and simple than that of his unofficial writings, is still excellent. A large part of the interest attaching to these early papers lies in their acute characterization of the diplomatists with whom he had to deal. His analysis of their motives reveals from the outset that thorough insight into human nature which was to count for so much in his subsequent diplomatic triumphs. Of his later notes and dispatches, such as have seen the light may ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Osborne, Dobbin and Amelia, the author has succeeded admirably. They are wonderfully true to nature, and indicate even a finer power of characterization than is exhibited in the more strongly ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... expectations. When we study it merely as a literary performance, we shall notice the effect of the handicap under which Mrs. Stowe labored at the time of composition, as well as her imperfect conception of the art technique of the modern novel. There are faults of plot, style, and characterization. Modern fiction would call for more differentiation in the dialogue of the different characters and for more unity of structure, and yet there are stories with all these technical excellencies which do not live a year. We may say with W. P. Trent, a Virginian ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... of themselves the most permanent value, inasmuch as the countries described have for most educated men an abiding interest. The lifelike representation and graphic characterization which Warner was apt to display in his traveling sketches were here seen at their best, because nowhere else did he find the task of description more congenial. Alike the gorgeousness and the squalor of the Orient appealed to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... At this sweeping characterization, they all laughed and walked along together, Tylo galloping ahead or falling behind as his ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... the Egyptians. Moses gives no account of the judgment of souls after death; he tells nothing of the long journey and multiform experiences of the next life according to the Egyptians, nothing of a future resurrection and return to the body. His severe monotheism was very different from the minute characterization of gods in the Egyptian Pantheon. The personal character of Jehovah, with its awful authority, its stern retribution and impartial justice, was quite another thing from the symbolic ideal type of the gods of Egypt. Nothing of the popular ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... little story of a stickful or less, which merely announces the result of some distant or unimportant game. Taken in its shortest form it gives only the names of the teams, the score, the time and place of the game, and perhaps a word or two of general characterization. As it is allowed to expand in length it takes up as briefly as possible the following facts in the order in which they are given: the scoring, the comparison of play, the star players or plays. It is a mere announcement of the ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... the page, Oscar, who sings it. In fact, as regards Style, Musical accent is particularly valuable in song for the purpose of setting forth the true character of the music. Hence, it may be regarded as a means of characterization. ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... commander in chief was in frequent consultation with his captains, securing their hearty support, and familiarizing them with his plans for action in whatever circumstances a meeting might occur. An interesting reference to this practice of Nelson's appears in a later characterization of him written by the French Admiral Decres to Napoleon. "His boastfulness," so the comment runs, "is only equalled by his ineptitude, but he has the saving quality of making no pretense to any other virtues than boldness and good nature, so that ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... in comparison with its dynamical value. It was a great step to hang the chestnuts of discourse upon a string of incident. The story is feeble, the plot puerile, but it was something to have a story and a plot which dealt with contemporary life. And lastly, though characterization is not even attempted, yet now and again these euphuistic puppets, distinguishable only by their labels, are inspired with something that is almost life by a phrase ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... brains respected him, and those whose ideas of a man related to his muscles were devoted to him. It was while he was performing the work of the store that he acquired the sobriquet of "Honest Abe"—a characterization he never dishonored, and an abbreviation that he ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... was characterization, and no English writer, save Shakespeare, has drawn so many and so varied characters. It would be as absurd to interpret all of these as caricatures as to deny Dickens his great and varied powers ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... the Congress on the morning of the second day's session. His audience was large. In a biographical sketch of Audubon the Man, interspersed with anecdote, he said so many interesting things that we regret we omitted to make any notes that would enable us to indicate at least something of his characterization. No doubt just what he said will appear in an appropriate place. Audubon's portfolio, in which his precious manuscripts and drawings were so long religiously kept, which he had carried with him to London to exhibit to possible publishers, a book so large ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... which speaks in every line of this opening monologue marks the man who, in spite of the obscurity of his origin, feels his right to be first, and who, in this victory, celebrates the attainment of his birthright. Equally luminous by way of characterization is his exclamation to St. Olaf when he hears that he is King Magnus ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... appear as quiet nooks, made for a temporary halt or a permanent rest. Here some part of the passing human flow is caught as in a vessel and held till it crystallizes into a nation. These are the conspicuous areas of race characterization. The development of the various ethnic and political offspring of the Roman Empire in the naturally defined areas of Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and France illustrates the process of national differentiation which goes ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... though, as I have said, only thirteen years of age, had already attained a degree of mental development sufficient for characterization. Disease had favoured the almost unhealthy predominance of the mental over the bodily powers of the child; so that, although the constitution which at one time was supposed to have entirely given way, had for the last few years been gradually gaining ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... play on words in the following epigrammatic characterization of a loud and violent speaker: ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... the foot-lights, artists and their models, literary men of Bohemian tendencies, these are the people whom Billy Burgundy has selected for characterization. True, they speak their lines in slang, but it is the slang of the educated, and is always artistic while ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... better exhibited than in "Tartuffe." Compared with such characterization as Shakespeare's, Moliere's method of portraying life may seem to be lacking in complexity; but it is precisely the simplicity with which creations like Tartuffe embody the weakness or vice they represent that has given them their place as ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... one be to the seductions of Indian ethnology, except so far only as it may simplify the classification of the present Indian population to refer tribes and bands to recognized groups or families, for the better or briefer characterization of their ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... that notorious book Buckle's "History of Civilization," but even a large collection of the writings of George Sand and Balzac—these latter in the original tongue; for who, indeed, would ever venture to publish an English translation? As for the reading-room, was it not characterization enough to state that two Sunday newspapers, reeking fresh from Fleet Street, regularly appeared on the tables? What possibility of perusing the Standard or the Spectator in such an atmosphere? It was clear that the supporters of law and decency must ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... limned in her mind, she looked at him again, quickly, this time with a curious expression, as of a person trying to remember, not quite certain whether she should bow. She did n't. Instead, she turned to her mother, who was advancing toward the porter, voicing her disapproval of her daughter's characterization of ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... Van Buren. He was a son of President Van Buren and a man of genius. Although he was very erratic, his ability was so great that when serious he captured not only the attention but the judgment of people. He was an eloquent speaker and had a faculty of entrancing the crowd with his wit and of characterization of his opponent which was fatal. I have seen crowds, when he was elaborately explaining details necessary for the vindication of his position, or that of his party which did not interest them, to remain with close attention, hoping for what was certain to come, namely, one of those sallies ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... interview to the press, as well as with an editorial in his own personal organ. This latter occupied an entire page and reviewed completely the position of the Greek monarch since the dissolution of the last Chamber of Deputies. Referring to the king's alleged characterization of himself as a "dreamer," ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... she wanted productiveness. She wrote with difficulty. Without external pressure, perhaps, she would never have written at all. She was dogmatic, and not creative. Her strength was in characterization and in criticism. Her critique on Goethe, in the second volume of the Dial, is, in my estimation, one of the best things she has written. And, as far as it goes, it is one of the best criticisms ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... OLDY," said Gospeler SIMPSON to his mother, as he sat watching her fabrication of an immense stocking for the poor, "that Hopeless Inebriate and Midnight Assassin are a rather too severe characterization of my pupil, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... glance at Even. His dignified singsong seemed to confirm my interlocutor's characterization ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... but hardly less expressive, is Emerson's characterization of Lincoln as one who had been "permitted to do more for America than ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... government as I have always believed or could desire them to be." The news-sheets which followed his progress from day to day coined the phrase, "era of good feeling," which has passed current ever since as a characterization of his administration. ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... dozen lines well contain a fuller description or more apt characterization of a bird than ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... has given in his America and the New Epoch a most correct engineering picture of the political situation in the world, with a fine characterization of the psychological peculiarities of the different races. Although this book was written in 1916, that is, before the end of the World War, it will be of permanent value; because of its deep psychological analysis of the peoples and their institutions which ultimately ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... Pond & Co., and was published under the title of "A Piratical Ballad"[4]. Note that these initial verses are described as "ragged" and in this I am also quoting Allison himself who in our various chats on his reminiscence of "Treasure Island" has often given them this characterization. Be that as it may these three verses were the foundation for the perfect six that were to emerge after several years more of intermittent but patient ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... thread of that attention which is the material of memory, till no one has patience to spin from it a continuous thread of thought." We have the defects of our qualities. Nevertheless, I am struck with the likeness between a common attribute of the Greeks and Matthew Arnold's characterization of the Americans. Greek thought, it is said, goes straight to the mark, and penetrates like an arrow. The Americans, Arnold wrote, "think straight and see clear." Greek life was adapted to meditation. American quickness and habit of taking the short cut to the goal make us averse to the ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... information and the other of being the correspondent on home and clerical affairs. I don't know how many of them—if any—are women, but I seem to trace a female hand in some of the domestic details. But the book contains strong matter, too—both of narrative and characterization; as in the dying of Armand de la Roche-Guyon, and the picture of his lover, Madame de Vigerie. And there is something of the inspiration of the Holy Grail in that "Vision Splendid" which heartens Tristram Hungerford to make sacrifice of his passion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... The art of characterization exhibited by the author fascinates us; we gaze and examine as if we were face to face with real personages, whose passions are laid bare, whose life is traced, whose countenance is portrayed with miraculousness, ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... the cyanhydrins R.CH(OH).CN. They react with hydroxylamine and phenylhydrazine, with the formation of aldoximes and hydrazones. (For the isomerism of the aldoximes see OXIMES.) The hydrazones are crystalline substances which are of value in the characterization of the aldehydes. Both oximes and hydrazones, on boiling with dilute acid, regenerate the parent aldehyde. The hydrazones are best prepared by mixing the aldehyde with phenylhydrazine in dilute acetic acid solution, in the absence of any free mineral acid. Semioxamazid, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... also come over to us; among others, the characterization of the three German Emperors: the first William as "Der greise Kaiser," the Emperor Frederick as "Der weise Kaiser," and the second William as "Der Reise Kaiser"; and there were unpleasant murmurs regarding sundry trials for petty treason. But at the same time ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... the rest of the music: for example, neither the Valhalla nor the spear themes could, without the most ludicrous incongruity, be used for the forest bird or the unstable, delusive Loki; but for all that the musical characterization must be regarded as independent of the specific themes, since the entire elimination of the thematic system from the score would leave the characters as well distinguished musically ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... spoken favorably of the trainmaster, recommending him to mercy in the event of a general beheading in the Angels head-quarters. "A lame duck, like most of the desert exiles, and the homeliest man west of the Missouri River," was Ford's characterization. "He is as stubborn as a mule, but he is honest and outspoken. If you can win him over to your side, you will have at least one lieutenant whom you can trust—and who will, I think, be duly grateful for small favors. Mac couldn't ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... when Phil paused for lack of breath. "But, Phil, your eloquent characterization does not explain what the he-ghost has to do with the sale of the ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... inflated pretensions of the established reviews, and, though the animus of rivalry might be suspected of playing its part, the blows usually struck home. There is an air of absolute finality about Lockhart's "Remarks on the Periodical Criticism of England," and his characterization of Jeffrey in this article is a bold anticipation of the judgment of posterity.[42] The editor of the London Magazine[43] writes with equal assurance, "We must protest against considering the present taste as the standard of excellence, or the criticisms on poetry ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... province of Posen and shows the effect of strife between German and Slavic elements, in the fate of Rhenish immigrants whose efforts to found a new home for themselves are brought to naught. A second novel of the eastern frontier, Absolvo Te (1907), is inferior to the first, not in power of characterization, but in range of subject. Still a third work treats the problem of a difference between blood and rearing, A Mother's Son (1906). The novel traces the development of the son of a peasant woman of the Eifel who has been adopted by a Berlin family and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... the Epid. to an ideal of comic excellence (Introd. Ps. p. 27). He even goes so far as to contend that Plautus lives up to the following characterization:[25] "Nicht blos durch naturgetreue and lebhafte Charakterschilderungen und durch eine komisch gehaltene, aber die Grenzen des Wahrscheinlichen und des GraziAsen nicht A1/4berschreitende Zeichnung des tAglichen Lebens ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... Miss Conant's characterization of Mr. Durant, in his own words describing James Otis, is particularly illuminating in its revelation of his temperament. In February, 1860, he said of James Otis, in an address delivered in the ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... and down the land for many years. Now and again, when the part did not need any special characterization, he obtained London engagements. He was one of the ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Dorothea had, but these seem to me, on the whole, the most nobly imagined and the most nobly intentioned women in modern fiction; and I think Isabel is the more subtly divined of the two. If we speak of mere characterization, we must not fail to acknowledge the perfection of Gilbert Osmond. It was a profound stroke to make him an American by birth. No European could realize so fully in his own life the ideal of a European dilettante in all the meaning ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... graces, also, and the structural subtilties of a more developed literary period, we must not, of course, look in 'Beowulf.' The narrative is often more dramatic than clear, and there is no thought of any minuteness of characterization. A few typical characters stand out clearly, and they were all that the poet's turbulent and not very attentive audience could understand. But the barbaric vividness and power of the poem give it much more than a merely historical interest; and the careful reader ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... conclusion still one more fragment of self characterization: "A chief trait in my character was the need for love, not that everyday love which limits itself to a personal pleasure and delight, but that unbounded, overflowing love which feels itself completely one with the beloved.... ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger |
