"Contemporary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would have qualified two or three of the more highly-coloured hyperboles, at which the Golden Friars of those days sniffed and tittered. They don't signify now; there is no contemporary left to laugh or whisper. And if there be not much that is true in the letter of that inscription, it at least perpetuates something that is true—that wonderful glorificaion of partisanship, the affection of ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... twenty years judge of the High Court of Admiralty, and at this time also secretary of state, was one of the most learned admiralty lawyers England ever produced. Morgan's view of his own competence as admiralty judge in his colony is given with engaging frankness in a contemporary letter: "The office of Judge Admiral was not given me for my understanding of the business better than others, nor for the profitableness thereof, for I left the schools too young to be a great proficient either in that or other laws, and have been much more used to the pike than to the book; and ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... And contemporary with Cosmas are two of the chief among the earlier or primitive pilgrims, Theodosius and Antoninus the Martyr. The first-named indulges in a few excursions—in fancy—beyond his known ground of Palestine, going as far east as Susa and Babylon, "where no one can live for the serpents and hippo-centaurs," ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... who enabled Paracelsus to work his marvellous cures, and his no less renowned Sword, were for Browning contemptible futilities. Yet a different way of treating legend lay nearer to the spirit of contemporary poetry. Goethe had not long before evolved his Mephistopheles from the "attendant spirit" attached by that same sixteenth century to the Paracelsus of Protestantism, Faust; Tennyson was already meditating a scene ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... authors, and also to add a sentiment of profound respect for his virtues and his fortitude. The truth is that Lamb's intellect was one of the largest and strongest, as well as one of the finest, among the great contemporary authors of his time, and it was altogether owing to circumstances, and those of a peculiarly calamitous character, that this ample mind left but inadequate testimonials of its power and fertility. He is, and probably will be, chiefly known as an original and somewhat ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... representative of Renaissance culture in its highest and most intellectual phase, Beatrice is the type of that new-found joy in life, that intoxicating rapture in the actual sense of existence, that was the heritage of her generation, and found expression in the words of a contemporary novelist, Matteo Bandello—himself of Lombard birth—when with his last breath he bade his companions live joyously, "Vivete lieti!" We see this bride of sixteen summers flinging herself with passionate delight into every amusement, singing ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... (1594-1646) was born at Brussels, and was known in Rome as Il Fiammingo. The Archduke Albert sent him to Rome to study, and he was a contemporary of Bernini. When his patron died Duquesnoy was left without means, and was forced to carve small figures in ivory for his support. His figures of children, which were full of life and child-like expression, became quite famous. An important work of his in this way is the fountain of ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... for clouding the memory of the living with it. Commines, an honester writer, though I fear, by the masters whom he pleased, not a much less servile courtier, says that the virtues of Louis XI. preponderated over his vices. Even Voltaire has in a manner purified the dross of adulation which contemporary authors had squandered on Louis XIV. by adopting and refining it after the tyrant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... surely far more touching. With her whitening hairs she might have worthily worn the triple dignity of her widowhood, her maternity and her misfortune. She has chosen instead, with a weakness unworthy of the part that she has played on the wide stage of contemporary history, to clutch vainly after the fleeting shadow of her vanished charms. A head loaded with false yellow hair, a face covered with paint and powder, a mincing gait and the airs and graces of an antiquated coquette,—such to-day is she who was once the world's wonder for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... Fifty years later its plight would seem to have been worse. Only two houses, Abingdon and Glastonbury, could be really called monastic. "In the middle of the tenth century the Rule of St. Benedict, the standard of monasticism in Western Christendom, was, according to virtually contemporary authority, completely unknown in England. This will not appear strange if we consider that it was never very generally or strictly carried out here, that the Danish invasions had broken the continuity of monastic life, and that not many years earlier ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... soul; they stand for that which is potential as well as for that which is actual in human experience. Few men achieve or experience on a great scale; but these few are typical, and are, therefore, transcendent in interest. The average commonplace man fills great space in contemporary history, as in the history of all times, and his character and career are well worth the closest study and the finest art of the writer; but the average man, who never achieves greatly, and to whom ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... in the court of Francis the First, contemporary with Henry the Eighth of England, has recorded the oaths of four succeeding monarchs immediately preceding his time. He tells us that Louis the Eleventh swore by "God's Easter;" Charles the Eighth, by "God's light;" Louis the Twelfth used ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... is the king's own account of Europe in his time, and the only authentic record of the Germanic nations, written by a contemporary, so early as the ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... obvious conclusion from the arguments given. It should be briefly noted, that it was known and widely distributed in tropical America at the time of the discovery of that continent [89] by Columbus, according to accounts of Oviedo and other contemporary Spanish writers. ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... produce; Leaves fam'd historians' boasted art behind; They keep the soul alone, and that's confin'd, Sought out with pains, and but by proxy speaks The hero's presence deep impression makes; The scenes his soul and body reunite, Furnish a voice, produce him to the sight; Make our contemporary him that stood High in renown, perhaps before the flood; Make Nestor to this age advice afford, And Hector for our service draw his sword. More glory to an author what can bring, Whence nobler service to his country spring, Than from those labours, which, in man's despight, Possess him with ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... lion. A great personage is no less great because of his unpopularity among his fellow men, just as the great Pang[FN27] is no less great because of his unpopularity among the winged creatures. Bodhidharma was not popular to the degree that he was envied by his contemporary Buddhists, who, as we are told by his biographers, attempted to poison him ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... he relates and describes with much of the same distinctness as in his novels; and his remarks on the manners and institutions of the different countries, often sagacious, and always peculiarly his own, derive, from their frequent reference to contemporary ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... welcome at the studio, to advise her about her illustrations, and correct her drawing when it needed it. He himself was an old-fashioned artist, quite content to be "mid" or even "early" Victorian. He still cultivated the art of historical painting, and was still as anxious as any contemporary of Frith to tell a story. And as his manner was no less behind the age than his material, his pictures remained on his hands, while the "vicious horrors," as they seemed to him, of the younger school held ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... By Charles Dickens. With the 43 Illustrations by Seymour and Phiz, the two Buss Plates, and the 32 Contemporary ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... charming face into soft shadow. Her heavy, dove-coloured, silk skirts stood out stiffly from her waist, declaring its slenderness. The few jewels she wore were of notable value. Her appearance, in fact, spoke the last word of contemporary fashion in its most refined application. She was a great lady, who knew the world and the worth of it. And she was absolute mistress both of that knowledge, and of herself—notwithstanding those outstretched hands, and outcry of childlike pleasure,—there, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... for the most part, almost as deistical as the deists. A hatred for enthusiasm was as strongly impressed upon the whole character of contemporary thought as a hatred of skepticism. . . A good common-sense religion should be taken for granted and no questions asked. . . With Shakspere, or Sir Thomas Browne, or Jeremy Taylor, or Milton, man is contemplated in his relations to the universe; ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... child. Her mother had long been dead, and when about this time her father died she was left without near kin. With no ties of contemporary interest to hold her to the present she fell more and more under the influence of the habit ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... volume. Let me acknowledge my obligations. His researches and impartiality are most creditable, and worthy of respect and attention. I have also drawn as liberally as time and space would permit from chronicles contemporary with the events of those early days, as well as from a curious collection of items relating to the subject, cut from the London newspapers a hundred years ago, and kindly furnished me by Geo. P. ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... encountered no obstacle in the disorder of the night, consumed many private and public buildings; and the ruins of the palace of Sallust remained, in the age of Justinian, a stately monument of the Gothic conflagration. Yet a contemporary historian has observed that fire could scarcely consume the enormous beams of solid brass, and that the strength of man was insufficient to subvert the foundations of ancient structures. Some truth may possibly ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... book, known as The Red Book of Ossory, and preserved in the archives of that see, is contained a collection of Latin religious poetry, written in a good bold hand of the 14th century; prefixed to several of the hymns, in a contemporary and identical hand, are sometimes one sometimes more lines of a song in old English or Norman French, which as they occur I ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... new fields, has called in the inventor once more to adapt steam to its new work. The "high-speed engine" is the latest form of the universal helper. And such has been the readiness and the intelligence of the contemporary inventor that we now have engines capable of turning their shafts three hundred rotations a minute and without a perceptible variation of velocity, whatever the change of load or the suddenness with which it is varied. In the days of Watt a fluctuation of five ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... officer in the service of Ali Pasha of Yanina alluded to three weeks since in the Impartial, who not only surrendered the castle of Yanina, but sold his benefactor to the Turks, styled himself truly at that time Fernand, as our esteemed contemporary states; but he has since added to his Christian name a title of nobility and a family name. He now calls himself the Count of Morcerf, and ranks among ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... attractive power there was for youth in the pursuit of pleasure. He knew also something of the race Epicureanism had run in the old competitions of philosophy—that it had been embraced by more of the cultivated Pagan world than the other contemporary systems together. It had been amongst the last, if not in fact the very last, of the conquests of Christianity. But here it was again; nor that merely— here it was once more a subject of organized effort. Who was responsible for the resurrection? ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... Rather the metallic tips of lacings or straps. Agugeta is a leather lacing or strap. The contemporary Latin translator ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... Miss Lucinda's face was unsaintly,—I mean unlike ancient saints as depicted by contemporary artists: modern and private saints are after another fashion. I met one yesterday, whose green eyes, great nose, thick lips, and sallow wrinkles, under a bonnet of fifteen years' standing, further clothed upon by a scant merino cloak ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... nonviolence; the foundation rock of Gandhi's creed. He was born into a family of strict Jains, who revere AHIMSA as the root-virtue. Jainism, a sect of Hinduism, was founded in the 6th century B.C. by Mahavira, a contemporary of Buddha. Mahavira means "great hero"; may he look down the centuries on his ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... need be no fear of speaking with extravagance; he had made himself, especially in his later work, through long practice and his inborn instinct for the significant and the fresh aspect, quite the best of all contemporary correspondents and reporters; and his rivals in the past ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various
... of antiquity included the use of a variety of dyes and pigmentary colors, typical of those employed in the ancient art of dyeing, in which the Egyptians excelled and still thought by many to be one of the lost arts. The Bible and alleged contemporary and later literature make frequent mention of black and ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... read to his charmed hearers the description of Heaven and Hell by Immanuel, the friend and contemporary of Dante, sometimes a jargon version of Robinson Crusoe. To-night he chose Eldad's account of the tribe of Moses dwelling beyond the wonderful river, Sambatyon, which never flows ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... It is interesting to note that the Chinese hodometer was contemporary with that of Hero and Vitruvius and very similar in design. There is no evidence whatsoever upon which to decide whether there may have been a specific transmission of this invention or even a ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... by my mother in a quaint old-fashioned narrow faith in certain religious formulae, certain rules of conduct, certain conceptions of social and political order, that had no more relevance to the realities and needs of everyday contemporary life than if they were clean linen that had been put away with lavender in a drawer. Indeed, her religion did actually smell of lavender; on Sundays she put away all the things of reality, the garments and even the furnishings of everyday, hid her hands, that were gnarled and sometimes ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... most rapid in Italy, where democracy had first asserted itself. In its train came intellectual ability, and by the middle of the fourteenth century Italy was in the full swing of the intellectual renaissance.[8] In 1341 Petrarch, recognized by all his contemporary countrymen as their leading scholar and poet, was crowned with a laurel wreath on the steps of the Capitol in Rome. This was the formal assertion by the age of its admiration for intellectual worth. To Petrarch is ascribed the earliest recognition ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... becoming somewhat corpulent in his old age," and in his leisure time "much given to reading." He was a prominent member of the Beaver Club, the members of which were all fur-traders who had amassed considerable wealth in their calling. A contemporary had a memory of him in jovial mood at one of the festal meetings of this Club, "singing a voyageur's folk-song with sonorous voice, and imitating, paddle in hand, in time with the music, the action of the bowman of a canoe ascending ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... column which was to set a new fashion in journalism and reveal a fresh and original gift, Lousteau indited an article of the kind described as moeurs—a sketch of contemporary ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... unique. Some of the blunders that are recorded are sufficiently grotesque: e.g., Ile starte thence poore for Ile starve their poore,—he formaketh what for the fire maketh hot. It must, indeed, be confessed that the conjectural emendator, if he dispenses with the quasi-authority of contemporary precedents, has an all but unlimited range for the exercise of his ingenuity, the unsettled spellings of our ancestors rendering almost any emendation, however extravagant, a typographical possibility. A large number of their misprints ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... associations around me—monuments, cloisters, palaces, the homes and graves of great men whom I revered, the aisles where every canvas bore a spell name—could not wean me from that old, reportorial habit of asking questions, peeping into private nooks, and making notes upon contemporary things, just as I had done for three years, in cities, on routes, on battle-fields. And as the old world seemed to me only a great art museum, I longed to look behind the tapestry at the Ghobelin weavers, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... of the greatest modern sculpture. There has been no evolution of the human form to a greater beauty than the ancient Greeks saw and the forms they carved are not strange to us, and if this is true of the outward form it is true of the indwelling spirit. What is essentially noble is contemporary with all that is splendid to-day, and, until the mass of men are equal in spirit, the great figures of the past will affect us less as memories than as prophecies of the Golden Age to which youth is ever hurrying ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... consider now the religious teachings of the Bhagavad-gita and the Narayaniya, and then turn to the inscriptions and contemporary literature to see whether we can find any sidelights in them. We begin with the Bhagavad-gita, or The ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... Theodosius; and from remains recently brought to knowledge it is plain that their style of building at that time was very like that of the churches built at Hexham and York in England, and those of the Ravenna, also nearly contemporary. They may not have been actually called Free-masons as early as Leader Scott insists they were,[65] but they were free in fact, traveling far and near where there was work to do, following the missionaries of the Church as far as England. ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... good many footnotes, which we have done our best to make available but not intrusive. There is a great deal of conversation in Elizabethan English, but this will not bother you if you are used to reading the plays of Shakespeare. Finally, there are a few short extracts from contemporary letters, in which the spelling would not pass muster these days, but there were no real standards of spelling in those times. In a very few cases in these letters we have adjusted the spelling to give you, the reader, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... on the Democratic side, and was universally regarded as one of the closest, most competent and most conscientious observer of men and things. His acknowledged literary skill and his passion for accuracy rendered it almost certain that his history would be both fascinating and truthful. Contemporary history is at the present moment in high favor. All intelligent people realize that the records of the last fifty years are of more vital importance to living Americans than are the annals of all previous eras. Hence, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... seem to imply a serious accusation against Shakespeare. But it must be remembered that if we could see a contemporary representation of Hamlet, our doubts would probably disappear. The actor, instructed by the author, would make it clear to us by looks, tones, gestures, and by-play how far Hamlet's feigned harshness to Ophelia was mingled with real bitterness, and again how far his ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... congratulations. You have gone to the head of the list of "best sellers" among medical works, and the cheque I draw you for the past six months' royalties will be considerably larger than that which goes to your most esteemed contemporary on ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... separated from that just described by a massive wall of contemporary date, has a roof of arched brickwork dating, probably, from the period of the Great Fire. It is doubtful whether it ever formed an open chamber, and it is now, with the exception of its central passage, entirely devoted to cellarage. In one of its deeply-recessed windows were discovered, ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... style, its natural characters, and its general tone of earnestness assure its author a high rank among contemporary novelists.—Chicago Tribune. ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... exuberance she seemed to cast off the shadow of the years and become a girl again. I regarded her as my contemporary; but Paragot with his lined time-beaten face looked prematurely old. Only now and then, when he got into fierce argument with Cazalet and swung his arms about and mingled his asseverations with the quaint oaths of the Latin Quarter, did he ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... during the debate on the address. It is described in a contemporary account as "a terrible onslaught on the government." An idea of violence conveyed in this and other comments would appear to have been derived from the extreme energy of Brown's gestures. The printed report of the speech does not give that impression. Though severe, it was in ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... mastered contemporary science it is time to turn to past science; nothing fortifies the judgment more than this comparative study; impartiality of mind is developed thereby, the uncertainties of any system become manifest. The authority of facts is there confirmed, and we discover in the whole picture ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... eye along the passage the Lady pointed out, blushed, laughed, and slapped the book down as though she would have liked to box the ears of Mr. John Milton, if he had been a contemporary and fellow-contributor to the "Weekly Bucket."—I won't touch the thing,—she said.—-He was a horrid man to talk so: and he had as ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... composition of the Rig-Veda and that of the Ramayana: a conclusion which has long been proved by the evidence of language, and is generally accepted by Sanskrit scholars. But three of the sages, said to have been contemporary with Rama, namely, Visvamitra, Atri and Agastya, are frequently mentioned in the hymns of the Rig-Veda; whilst Valmiki, the sage dwelling at Chitra-kuta, is said to have been himself the composer of the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... hundred and fifty years have been chosen for discussion, since the beginning of the romantic movement marked the rise of a peculiarly self-conscious attitude in the poet, and brought his personality into new prominence. Contemporary verse seems to fall within the scope of these studies, inasmuch as the "renaissance of poetry" (as enthusiasts like to term the new stirring of interest in verse) is revealing young poets of the present day even more ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... campaign against the Boers, this one stands out, not merely on account of the author's literary merits, keen power of observation, and attractive phraseology, but in its unprejudiced sentiments and clever handling of battle impressions hitherto unattempted by contemporary writers. It is the work ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... "A contemporary writer has exerted to the utmost the very little talent he possesses to represent the peagreen's uniform resistance to all the temptations of cards and dice, as a proof of his possessing a strength of mind and decision of character rarely found in young men of his fortune ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of human history. Therefore God must have come into being some time between the issue of the creative fiat and the appearance of man on the planet. This is a pretty wide margin, but it is something to go upon. He may have been contemporary with the amoeba, or with the ichthyosaurus, or haply with the earliest quadrumana. At the very latest (if "always" is accurate) he must have made his appearance exactly at the same time as man; and if I were to give my opinion, I should say that was extremely probable. ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... some little time I puzzled in vain to recollect where it was that I had seen him before. All of a sudden I remembered he was King Francis I. of France. I had hitherto thought the face of this king impossible, but when I saw it in play I understood it. His great contemporary Henry VIII. keeps a restaurant in Oxford Street. Falstaff drove one of the St. Gothard diligences for many years, and only retired when the railway was opened. Titian once made me a pair of boots at Vicenza, and not ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... by shelled buildings and sandbag barricades yet resting on housetops and in window sills, we encountered in the first stage of our journey no considerable evidences of havoc until late in the afternoon, when we reached Dinant. I do not understand why the contemporary chronicles of events did not give more space to Dinant at the time of its destruction, and why they have not given it ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... explored, by the bold Phocaeans from Asia Minor. But about the middle of the second century the progress of Hellenic colonization was suddenly arrested; and there is no doubt that the cause of this arrest was the contemporary rapid rise of Carthage, the most powerful of the Phoenician cities in Libya—a rise manifestly due to the danger with which Hellenic aggression threatened the whole Phoenician race. If the nation which had opened up maritime ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... living form and written annals of Etruria perished thousands of years ago, and although but slight references to her affairs have come down to us in the documents of contemporary nations, yet, through a comparatively recent acquisition of facts, we have quite a distinct and satisfactory knowledge of her condition and experience when her power was palmiest. We follow the ancient Etruscans from the cradle to the tomb, perceiving ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the Pretorian guard became more and more important in Rome as Rome became more and more luxurious and feeble. The military man gains the civil power in proportion as the civilian loses the military virtues. And as it was in ancient Rome so it is in contemporary Europe. There never was a time when nations were more militarist. There never was a time when men were less brave. All ages and all epics have sung of arms and the man; but we have effected simultaneously ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... My informant said that he was instructed as to Byamee in his first Boorah, or initiation. If he was early grey, say at thirty, in 1846, that takes his initiation back to 1830, when, as a matter of fact, we have contemporary evidence to the belief in Byamee, who is not of missionary importation, though after 1856 Christian ideas may, through Mr. Ridley's book, have been attached to his name by educated Kamilaroi. But he was a worshipful being, revealed in the mysteries, ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... Thomas Hearne was a contemporary with Rooker. It was a custom at this period for topographical artists to travel abroad with British Embassies to foreign countries and with Governors to Colonial possessions. Photography had not yet been ...
— Masters of Water-Colour Painting • H. M. Cundall
... les plus memorables qui se sent passees en la ville et Compte de Valenciennes depuis le commencement des troubles des Pays-Bas sons le regne de Phil. II., jusqu' a l'annee 1621."— MS. (Collect. Gerard).—This is a contemporary manuscript belonging to the Gerard collection in the Royal Library at the Hague. Its author was a citizen of Valenciennes, and a personal witness of most of the events which he describes. He appears to have attained ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... virtuous women never forget their sex in company, for they are for ever trying to make themselves AGREEABLE. A female beauty and a male wit, appear to be equally anxious to draw the attention of the company to themselves; and the animosity of contemporary wits ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... pointed, charming; Saint-Magloire, a fine nave of the fourteenth century, which Napoleon turned into a hayloft; Notre-Dame des Champs, where there were Byzantine mosaics; lastly, after having left behind, full in the country, the Monastery des Chartreux, a rich edifice contemporary with the Palais de Justice, with its little garden divided into compartments, and the haunted ruins of Vauvert, the eye fell, to the west, upon the three Roman spires of Saint-Germain des Pres. The Bourg Saint-Germain, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... a celebrated historical personage, and the words of a contemporary: "Radetzky is a great hunter before the Lord; he drives the people before him like the hunter game," describe him sufficiently. If Radetzky was a tyrant, his officers were a torture to Italy, and it often happened that the Bohemian and Croatian ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... A contemporary, by the way, propounds the question: Why does the "nut" always wear his headgear on the back of his head? This custom is certainly queer, for, if he really cared about his personal appearance, he would wear ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... be admitted that to France belongs the credit of having kept primitives when the other nations knew them no longer. The Exhibition of French Primitives at the Pavilion Marsan in 1904 contained several little panels contemporary with the later Valois kings and ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... tales, two are drawn from Bandello apparently by way of Painter, and the last two (Philos and Licia, Amos and Laura), though greatly indebted to Hero and Leander overall, seem not to have drawn their characters or actions directly from either a classical or more contemporary source. These last two poems, then, from a Renaissance point of view, are comparatively free inventions. But both, and especially Philos and Licia, are a tissue of ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... attempted to reconstruct for himself a portion of the past from materials of this kind,—from original documents, and party writings which, prompted by hate or personal friendship, are intended for defence or attack, and yet are withal exceedingly incomplete,—he will have felt the need of other contemporary notices, going into detail but free from such party views. A rich harvest of such independent reports has been supplied to me for this, as well as for my other works, by the archives of the ancient Republic of Venice. The 'Relations,' which the ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... overcome, much order and beauty and scope for living has been evolved since man was a hairy savage holding scarcely more than a brute's intercourse with his fellows; but even in the comparatively short perspective of history, one can scarcely deny a steady process of overcoming evil. One may sneer at contemporary things; it is a fashion with that unhappily trained type of mind which cannot appreciate without invidious comparison, so poor in praise that it cannot admit worth without venting a compensatory envy; but of one permanent result of progress ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... shall learn with fresh astonishment that it is the male, and not the female, cuckoo that sings. I may have to learn again not to call the campion a wild geranium, and to rediscover whether the ash comes early or late in the etiquette of the trees. A contemporary English novelist was once asked by a foreigner what was the most important crop in England. He answered without a moment's hesitation: "Rye." Ignorance so complete as this seems to me to be touched with magnificence; ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... experience of meeting a contemporary king upon this journey. He was the first king I had ever met. The Potsdam figure—with perhaps some local exceptions behind the Gold Coast—is, with its collection of uniforms and its pomps and splendours, the purest survival of the old tradition of divine monarchy now that ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... on painting only one contemporary is mentioned by name—Sandro Botticelli. This pre-eminence may be due to chance only, but to some will rather appear a result of deliberate judgment; for people have begun to find out the charm of Botticelli's work, and his name, ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... that some new species have been independently and supernaturally created within the period which other species have survived. Some may even believe that man was created in the days of the mammoth, became extinct, and was recreated at a later date. But why not say the same of the aurochs, contemporary both of the old man and of the new? Still it is more natural, if not inevitable, to infer that, if the aurochs of that olden time were the ancestors of the aurochs of the Lithuanian forests, so likewise were the men of that age the ancestors of the present human races. Then, whoever ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... that any woman I have ever met has struck my imagination as Mlle. d'Esgrignon did," said Emile Blondet, to whom contemporary literature is indebted for this history among other things. "Truth to tell, I was a boy, a mere child at the time, and perhaps my memory-pictures of her owe something of their vivid color to a boy's natural turn ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... Contemporary with this group there is a legacy of a dozen and more fine tunes composed by Tallis and Orlando Gibbons, the neglect or treatment of which is equally ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... Bergson and Nietzsche or even of Hegel; but for the constant reader his detachment or attachment to Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas is not nearly so important as his personal impressions of both the little things and the big things of our contemporary life. Whether you are pragmatic or not, you must, if you are at all in love with life, become a Jamesonian after you have read the "Letters"! And his son, Mr. Henry James, who, we may hope, may ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... general?" asked Helen, ignoring the allusion to Dr. Buxton. "The line that the general drew was visible to the naked eye. But Mr. Goolsby drew no line. He is friendly and familiar on principle. I was reminded of the 'Brookline Reporter,' which alluded the other day to the London 'Times' as its esteemed contemporary. The affable general ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... son.] Guido, the son of Cavalcante Cavalcanti; "he whom I call the first of my friends," says Dante in his Vita Nuova, where the commencement of their friendship is related. >From the character given of him by contemporary writers his temper was well formed to assimilate with that of our poet. "He was," according to G. Villani, l. viii. c. 41. "of a philosophical and elegant mind, if he had not been too delicate and fastidious." ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... attempted any independent action, was instantly deposed. His influence gradually extended over the neighboring provinces; thrice he encountered and defeated Madrid; while at home he gambled, levied contributions, bastinadoed, and added largely to his army. He excelled his contemporary, Francia, in the art of inspiring terror; he only fell short of Rosas in the results. A wry look might at any time call down upon a luckless child a hundred lashes. He once split the skull of his own illegitimate son for some trifling act of disobedience. A lady, who once said to him, while he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... mission to those untaught and neglected people, and into their darkness he brought the light of the Father of Lights, and the people flocked to the warmth and wonder of the new hope, and heard him gladly. The story is told by a contemporary, whom ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin
... account of a man who "was driving an old ox when he became angry and kicked him, hitting his jawbone with such force as to break his leg." "We have been fairly wild ever since we read the paper," writes a contemporary, "to know who or which got angry at whom or what, and if the ox kicked the man's jaw with such force as to break the ox's leg, or how it is. Or did the man kick the ox in the jawbone with such force as to break the ox's leg, ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... In his "A Jacobite's Exile, 1746," Mr. Swinburne has summed up in lines of the most poignant and passionate pathos all the feeling of a gentleman of the North Country dwelling in exile for his king's sake. The emotion which finds such living voice in the contemporary poetry, in the ballads that men wrote and men sang, while the House of Stuart was still a reality, while there were still picturesque or semi-picturesque personages living in foreign courts and claiming the crown of England, finds no less living voice in ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... I have been doing but a minute ago, as it was when I read it, the Council and Kirk-session only know how long ago!" And this farcical scene was considered so "grotesquely and absurdly extravagant" by Sir WALTER's contemporary critics (peace be to their hashes! Who were they? What were their names? Who cares?) that the great novelist actually explains how the incident was founded on one in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... may well have given up the hope of children; he was surrounded by Norman influences; and, for the only time in the last twenty-four years of their joint lives, he and William met face to face. The only difficulty is one to which no contemporary writer makes any reference. If Edward wished to dispose of his crown in favour of one of his French-speaking kinsmen, he had a nearer kinsman of whom he might more naturally have thought. His own nephew Ralph was living ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... Contemporary with its extension to the provinces, newspaper enterprise was penetrating into the colonies, and America took the lead. Small were the beginnings in the land where the freedom of the press was destined to attain its fullest development. America's first journal—the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... with excess of happiness. But while the grateful voice of her husband was beginning to breathe its uttered thanks, he found the carriage stop again, in a street not far distant from the one they had just quitted. It drew up at the door of a handsome house, of an apparently contemporary structure with the church. It was the rectory of St. Paul's, Covent Garden and at its portal stood the reverend incumbent, evidently awaiting ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... and gigantic Broadwood occupied nearly half the room; and in a cheap frame thereon, inviting all sorts of comparisons and contrasts, stood a full-length portrait of Camilla Belsize resplendent in contemporary court kit. ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... inn-parlor, or the jovial tap-room, with Mr. Pickwick and his faithful Sancho Weller. I am sure that a man who, a hundred years hence should sit down to write the history of our time, would do wrong to put that great contemporary history of "Pickwick" aside as a frivolous work. It contains true character under false names; and, like "Roderick Random," an inferior work, and "Tom Jones" (one that is immeasurably superior), gives us a better idea of the state and ways of the people ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... contemporary with Shakespeare, and containing passages of interest in regard to him, or to the dramatic affairs of his time, have been pronounced spurious by the highest palaeographic authorities in England, and in one of them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... residence. When he was near the post-office five young men, armed with sharp swords, suddenly broke through his guard, killed one of the soldiers and attacked the Minister. "He received seven sword slashes, all great ones, two all but taking his head off," wrote a contemporary chronicler. He staggered back into the banqueting hall, blood pouring from him. There was at once great confusion. The Ministers not in the plot, fearing that some ill was intended against them, threw away their hats of state, turned their coats, and ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... than humanitarian considerations. The same author terms monogamy a "worm-eaten and rotten-rooted tree." The worm that is devastating the fairest tree of Eden and draining its richest juices is what our contemporary thinks, may be "plausibly termed, a necessary evil." It is claimed that monogamy begets narrow sympathies and leads to selfish idolatry. The fallacy of this argument lies in the misapprehension of the term selfishness. Self-preservation is literally selfishness, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... Krishna, emphasizing first one and then another aspect of his character and in the process assembling more and more details. These texts are still revered by Indians and although they are the product of widely separated eras, all of them have still an air of contemporary authority. By considering them in historical sequence, we can understand not only the subject-matter of romantic Indian painting but realize why Krishna, the adored lover, should still enchant ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... the fact the better for her and for—for everybody. She is the descendant of a line of rulers chiefly remarkable for their inability to rule, and her chance of ascending the throne of her fathers is absolutely nil, fortunately for Europe. You are not a student of contemporary history, Desmond, or you would know something about Wallaria ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... for it commands the entire schedule and inventory of things for its illustration. But what marks its elevation and has even a comic look to us, is the innocent serenity with which these babe-like Jupiters sit in their clouds, and from age to age prattle to each other and to no contemporary. Well assured that their speech is intelligible and the most natural thing in the world, they add thesis to thesis, without a moment's heed of the universal astonishment of the human race below, who do not comprehend ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... contradiction in the character of the nation, manifested respectively in their prose and their poetry. But on farther examination all becomes clear as a spring day. Their prose was, as their whole literature might and should have been, contemporary with their civilization through its various phases. Metaphysics is the last refinement, or rather, corruption, which national literature undergoes. Their prose had naturally arrived at this stage when the true poetic feeling woke for the first time. And in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... aware that it will be urged by some of the most sincere representatives of religion in India that Sri Ramakrishna does not typify the Indian attitude. Perhaps not, if we take contemporary India. But then contemporary India has been profoundly influenced by Western thought; modern Indians like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Keshub Chunder Sen, Rabindranath Tagore, could hardly have thought and felt as they did, and do, were it not for ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... giving away brides—how he envied them, assuming them to feel as they appeared to feel, with their commerce and their politics, their glasses and their pipes. They had got past the distracting currents of passionateness, and were in the calm waters of middle-aged philosophy. But he, their contemporary, was tossed like a cork hither and thither upon the crest of every fancy, precisely as he had been tossed when he was half his present age, with the burden now of double pain to himself in his growing vision ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... plan devised by President Jefferson came near putting an end to the old organization. This plan provided for the construction of great numbers of small gunboats, which should be stationed along the coast, to be called out only in case of attack by an armed enemy. A contemporary writer, describing the beauties of this system, wrote, "Whenever danger shall menace any harbor, or any foreign ship shall insult us, somebody is to inform the governor, and the governor is to desire the marshal to call upon the captains of militia ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the Earls of Ross, this historical myth must follow the rest. Even the Laird of Applecross, in his MS. history of the clan, written in 1669, although he adopts the Fitzgerald theory from his friend and contemporary the Earl of Cromartie, has his doubts. After quoting the statement, that "the other half of Kintail at this time belonged to O'Beolan, whose chief, called Farquhar, was created Earl of Ross, and that his lands in Kintail were given by the King to Colin Fitzgerald," ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... to impress his characters on the sluggish mind of the world; and as mental impressions are governed by the same laws of gravitation as atoms, our realisation of Falstaff must of necessity be more vivid than any character in contemporary literature, although it were equally great. And so far as epigram and aphorism are concerned, and here I speak with absolute sincerity and conviction, the work of the novelist seems to me richer than that of the ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... especially curious in the reforms effected by the missionaries was the total change in the behaviour of the women. From being, according to the statements of Cook, Bougainville, and contemporary explorers, compliant to an unheard of degree, they had become most modest, reserved, and decently conducted; so that the whole island wore the air of a convent, a revolution as amusing ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... to the title. Remembering that "Harry Collingwood" was in real life a naval architect, you can take good note of the way he handles nautical terminology. Other contemporary authors were good, but in this respect Collingwood is ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... six come from the old town pageants, reflecting in their variety the range of subject and the contemporary effect of the cycles from which they are taken. They are all typical, and show us how the scenes and characters of the east were mingled with the real life of the English craftsmen and townsfolk who acted them, and for ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... chiefly to the censorship, the theatre is not respected. It is indulged and despised as a department of what is politely called gaiety. It is therefore not surprising that the majority of the Committee began by taking its work uppishly and carelessly. When it discovered that the contemporary drama, licensed by the Lord Chamberlain, included plays which could be described only behind closed doors, and in the discomfort which attends discussions of very nasty subjects between men of widely different ages, it calmly put its own convenience ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... contemporary writer, so I am told, regards originality as much rarer than is commonly supposed. But, on the contrary, is it not far more frequent than is commonly supposed? For one should not identify originality with mere ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... has ever yet happened to me to comment in print upon any production of Charles Dickens. What a pleasure to have the opportunity of praising a work so sound, a work so rich in merit, as David Copperfield!... Of the contemporary rubbish which is shot so plentifully all round us, we can, indeed, hardly read too little. But to contemporary work so good as David Copperfield we are in danger of perhaps not paying respect enough, of reading it (for who could help ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... She married first the Earl of Waldegrave, and became the mother of the three lovely sisters whom Sir Joshua Reynolds's brush immortalised. The widowed countess caught the fancy of the royal Duke, just as it was said, in contemporary letters, that another fair young widow turned the head of another brother of the King's. George III. refused at first to acknowledge the Duke of Gloucester's marriage, but finally withdrew his opposition. If, as was reported, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... above all, in the reliefs which adorn the western portals, very delicately carved in a fine, firm stone from Tonnerre, of which time has only browned the surface, and which, for early mastery in art, may be compared with the contemporary work of Italy. They come nearer than the art of that age was used to do to the expression of life; with a feeling for reality, in no ignoble form, caught, it might seem, from the ardent and full-veined existence then current in these actual streets and houses. Just then Auxerre had its turn ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... aware of the transitions and fluctuation, which our language experienced in the intermediate space comprised between Chaucer and Sir Thomas More; and still greater between Robert of Gloucester, 1278, and John Trevisa, or his contemporary Wickliffe, who died 1384, know, to a certainty, that the writers enumerated by Chatterton, without surmounting a physical impossibility, could not have written in the same ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle |
