"Literality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... less than the greater work, while the temptations to "improvement" and modification of the original must have been even more constant. Yet there is a very notable difference between Mr. Longfellow's literality and Mr. Norton's, which strikes at first glance, and which goes to prove that within his proper limits the literal translator can always find room for the play of individual feeling. Mr. Longfellow seems ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... first place, the argument: supposes a condition of things that has now ceased. When creeds were accepted in their literality by the bodies professing them, when the state of general opinion contained nothing hostile, and suggested no difficulties,—for any one member of a body to turn traitor may have well seemed mere perversity, temper, love of singularity, or anything but a wish to get at truth. The offence ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... of ghostly terrors. There are a certain sober literality and materialism in old age which abate the illusions of the supernatural as effectually as those of love; and Tamar, though not without awe, for darkness and solitude, even were there no associations of a fearful kind in the locality, are suggestive and ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... He had a musical ear, and practiced singing. He paid attention to style, and was not wholly insensible to poetry. Yet in all his dealings with the art-products of mankind he manifests the same curious dryness and mechanical literality of judgment—a dryness increased by pride in his non-conformity. He would, for example, rather give a large sum than read to the end of Homer's Iliad,—the ceaseless repetition of battles, speeches, and epithets like well-greaved Greeks, horse-breaking ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... Diary the above notes, as they explain, written as they are on the spot, the vicissitudes of my "Life at Unyanyembe." To me they appear to explain far better than any amount of descriptive writing, even of the most graphic, the nature of the life I led. There they are, unexaggerated, in their literality, precisely as I conceived them at the time they happened. They speak of fevers without number to myself and men, they relate our dangers, and little joys, our annoyances and ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley |
