"Trait" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... regard to the unities than a pack of shuffled playing-cards. I can do nothing better than let him picture himself, for it is impossible not to recognize the portrait. It is of little consequence whether every trait is an exact copy from his own features, but it is so obvious that many of the lines are direct transcripts from nature that we may believe the same thing of many others. Let us compare his fictitious hero's story with what we have read of his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a hereditary trait? the son of a celebrity? then his essays in design were unworthy of his name. Abashed, inclined to despair, having a glimpse of a tumultuous rabble shouting: "At last he is here!" before the ruddy guillotine ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... the type, he's a very nice man, and he loves sister very dearly. Yet there is something so inherently bad about his calling that, judge as you will, he's still not very far removed from a peasant. That trait of character, if you boil a man for seven years in a kettle, you cannot boil out. Yet I must give him credit for taking good care of his house. He doesn't give himself any rest day or night; he toils hard all the time. As for ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... successor it was a mere handful; and in fact the accumulations even of Harley, the second Earl of Oxford, vast and precious as they may have been, were not equal in magnitude or in value to those of Heber, of whom the most surprising and most interesting trait is his conversance with the interiors of so many of his treasures; nor should we ever forget his generosity in lending them to literary workers. The Rev. Alexander Dyce, who so ably edited our elder dramatists ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... Jethro around her finger; that she had made him abandon his fight with Isaac D. Worthington because Mr. Worthington had a son—but there is no use writing such scandal. Stripped of his power—even though he stripped himself—Jethro began to lose their respect, a trait tending to prove that the human race may have had wolves for ancestors as well as apes. People had small opportunity, however, of showing a lack of respect to his person, for in these days he noticed no one and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... evolution of the subsequent Arcadia was concerned, Longus might as well never have written of the pastures of Lesbos. Indeed, were we here concerned in assigning to its historical source each particular trait in individual works, rather than in tracing the general development of an idea, it would be casier to distinguish a faint and slightly cynical reminiscence of Daphnis and Chloe in the Aminta and Pastor fido than in the Ameto ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... restrictions. Absolute confidence in each other's good opinion begat perfect ease, while the finishing stroke of manner, amounting to a truly princely serenity, was lent to the majority by the absence of any expression or trait denoting that they wished to get on in the world, enlarge their minds, or do any eclipsing thing whatever—which nowadays so generally nips the bloom and bonhomie of all except the two extremes of the ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... This peculiar trait of the Asiatic character is further illustrated during the afternoon in the case of a caravan leader whom I meet on an unridable stretch of road. "Bin! bin!" says this person, as soon as his mental faculties grasp the idea that the bicycle is something to ride on. "Mimlcin, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... sees the proper use and advantage of a country-life; and that knowledge gets to seem a high point of attainment doubtless by the side of the Wordsworth she speaks of—for mine he shall not be as long as I am able! Was ever such a 'great' poet before? Put one trait with the other—the theory of rural innocence—alternation of 'vulgar trifles' with dissertating with style of 'the utmost grandeur that even you can conceive' (speak for yourself, Miss M.!)—and that amiable transition from two o'clock's grief at the death of one's brother to three o'clock's ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... chrysoprase in fine, gray eyes and a coppery, metallic luster in hair that otherwise would have passed as chestnut brown. It was a beauty that came as much from repose in inaction as from grace in movement, but of which a noticeable trait was that it required no more to produce it in the way of effort than in that of artifice. Through the transparent whiteness of the skin the blue of each clearly articulated vein and the rose of each hurrying ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... and for animals. An aristocrat by birth, he hated '93 by instinct; but of a philosophical temperament and liberal by education, he loathed tyranny with an inoffensive and declamatory hatred. The strongest, and at the same time the weakest, trait in his character was his generosity; a generosity which had not enough arms to caress, to give, to embrace; the generosity of a creator which was utterly devoid of system, and to which he gave way with no attempt to resist his impulses, as though part of his will were paralyzed; it was a want ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... any longer with that old bush," as he went back to Peter's rose. "It is not a trait of yours to be persistent about trifles. Or stay: give me a bud for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... trait in the blood of His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department had risen above the surface of suave, polished courtesy which ordinarily passed for the character of the Right Hon. ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... appear, I imagine, to these coming men as an absolutely loathsome proceeding. They will stifle no spread of knowledge that will diminish the swarming misery of childhood in the slums, they will regard the disinclination of the witless "Society" woman to become a mother as a most amiable trait in her folly. In our bashfulness about these things we talk an abominable lot of nonsense; all this uproar one hears about the Rapid Multiplication of the Unfit and the future of the lower races takes ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... trait of Gus's character, as of so many others in our luxurious age of self-pleasing, was weakness; and yet one must be insane with vanity to be at ease if he can do nothing resolutely and dare nothing great. He is a cripple, and, if not ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... pantaloons, ruffled shirts, with collars endangering their ears, hair crisped with an extra nicety, stand aside at her bidding. The height of her ambition is to direct the affairs of the mansion: sometimes she extends it to the overseer. The trait is amiably exercised: she is the best nigger on the plantation, and Marston allows her to indulge her feelings, while his guests laugh at her native pomposity, so generously carried out in all her commands. She is preparing an elegant breakfast, which ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... the weather. They rejoice in the coming of each morning; they are sorrowful with the advent of each evening. They echo the distress of their kind in a readier way than any other forms. He is indeed a poor naturalist who overlooks this trait; for however deeply he may have delved, he has not won the jewel unless he appreciates this element of an unending joy which the bird-life continually offers him. From that life we may well believe that man is hereafter to derive some great ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... national poets; and had he resumed this species of composition, he could scarcely have failed of maintaining, in the fullest manner, his poetic fame. He possessed all the qualities reckoned essential to poetical excellence. We have already spoken of his astonishing memory, a trait regarded of such importance to the poet by the ancients as to have led them to call the Muses the daughters of this mental faculty. His powers of abstraction and imagination were no less remarkable,—while for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... This letter to Mr. Moore contains a trait of Livingstone, very trifling in the occasion out of which it arose, but showing vividly the nature of the man. He had promised to send Mr. Moore's little son some curiosities, but had forgotten when his family went to England. Being reminded of his ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... in a rough community, and saw his way to rising in the world, even to prosperity. In a very short time, said a later letter, he would save enough to pay Maisie's passage out, and then she could join him. The only redeeming trait the story shows of this man is his strange confidence that this girl, whom he had cruelly betrayed, would face all the terrors of a three-months' sea-voyage and travel, alone in a strange land, to become the slave and helpless dependent of ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... there in clay; Yet how be carved, with you about the room? 15 Where must I place you? When I think that once This roomfull of rough block-work seemed my heaven Without you! Shall I ever work again, Get fairly into my old ways again, Bid each conception stand while, trait by trait, 20 My hand transfers its lineaments to stone? Will my mere fancies live near you, their truth— The live truth, passing and repassing me, Sitting beside me? Now speak! Only first, See, all ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... express his gratitude that the child was not destroyed. I never saw such a man. That was the kind of person he was; just so HE was gratified, he never cared anything about anybody else. I had noticed that trait in him, over and over again. Often, of course, it was mere heedlessness, mere want of reflection. Doubtless this may have been the case in most instances, but it was not the less hard to bar on that account—and after all, its bottom, its groundwork, was selfishness. There ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a joke on the running slave: Sed spatium hoc occidit: brevest curriculo: quam me paenitet? That violent haste was considered a slavish trait is evidenced ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... glory of such conduct, one must have attained to spiritual consciousness. This was especially a new doctrine to the people to whom he was preaching, because it was considered cowardice to fail to resent a blow. Pride of family and birth was the strongest trait in the Arab nature. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... of twenty shillings, on the principle on which it was demanded, would have made him a slave. Sir, if acting on these high motives—if animated by that ardent love of liberty which has always been the most prominent trait in the Southern character, we would be hurried beyond the bounds of a cold and calculating prudence; who is there, with one noble and generous sentiment in his bosom, who would not be disposed, in the language of Burke, to exclaim, "You must pardon something ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... most of his playmates however, young Andrew Jackson learned these things, because his life was harder than theirs, and he saw more of the actual fighting. By nature he was a fighter, and circumstances strengthened that trait in him. ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... of our vision? Is it all a bridge?—or is there no bridge because there is no gulf? Suppose that a composer writes a piece of music conscious that he is inspired, say, by witnessing an act of great self-sacrifice—another piece by the contemplation of a certain trait of nobility he perceives in a friend's character—and another by the sight of a mountain lake under moonlight. The first two, from an inspirational standpoint would naturally seem to come under the subjective and the last under the objective, yet the chances are, there is something of ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... interested when the fisherman drew up a two-pound trout, wondering a little at her own subtle changes of mood. Her surrounding played upon her like a virtuoso on his violin. And this was something that she did not recall as a trait in her own character. She had never inclined to the volatile—perhaps because until the motor accident snuffed out her father's life she had never dealt ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... It was this trait in Buddie's character, however, ability to make the best of things, to see the smooth and not the seamy side of Death's mantle, that made him the most intelligent, cool, and resourceful of all fighting men. His buoyancy of disposition and resiliency ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... minister who was his father's predecessor. The first name soon dropped out of use, and from childhood he went by his middle name, a practice of which the Clevelands supply so many instances that it seems to be quite a family trait. ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... fortunately just two hours before the departure of a courier whom Count Stackelberg, the Russian ambassador, was dispatching to Wilna, where the emperor Alexander then was. M. de Stackelberg, who behaved to me with that noble delicacy which is so prominent a trait in his character, wrote by this courier for my passport, and assured me that within three weeks I might reckon on having an answer. It then became a question where I was to pass these three weeks; my Austrian friends, who had given ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... trait of the Balungu up here is, they retire when they see food brought to anyone, neither Babisa nor Makoa had this sense of delicacy: the Babemba are ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... Blood's blood. You don't mean to say a man wouldn't know his own sister's child? Living in the house with him? Wouldn't there be some likeness, some family trait, some characteristic? Are folks any different from horses? No, no, it might happen in stories, ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... of the book is genial, sunny, and cheerful, as was the temperament of the historian himself. For it is a remarkable fact that Mr. Prescott's bodily infirmities never had any effect in making his mind or his character morbid. His spiritual nature was eminently healthy. His leading intellectual trait was sound good sense and the power of seeing men and things as they were. He had no whims, no paradoxes, no prejudices. His histories reflect the aggregate judgment of mankind upon the personages he describes and the events he narrates, without extravagance or overstatement in any direction. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Chevrial agreed, "but neither has she a sense of humour, and that is worse! The very worst trait in a conqueror, M. Webster, believe me, is an absence of the sense of humour! And Germany has the strongest prisons in the world. Her system of espial is even more minute and irritating than that of Russia. As in Poland, the people of Alsace and Lorraine may not speak their native ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... the paper from the floor where I had thrown it in the morning. My wife is one of those rare women who always leave things where you put them. It is this trait that endears her to me. I ran my trained ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... Dreamer had at least one mental trait in common—a tendency toward spiritualism—a more than half belief in the communion of the spirits of the dead with those of the living and of those of ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... God being the parent of all nature, it is not to be denied that, in this sense, everything which composes it is brotherly. And who can censure a man who is wholly religious, for expressing himself in a manner which is grounded on the first principles of religion? This trait shows both the elevation of his mind, and the piety of his heart; ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... in the story is such as life and reality would afford no example of. No set of people, asked to a great banquet, would behave as these people in the parable do. Then, is the introduction of such an unnatural trait as this a fault in the construction of narrative? No! Rather it is a beauty, for the very point of the story is the utter unnaturalness of the conduct described, and the contrast that is presented between ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... noble trait was Janet Wren,—a woman who had done a world of good to those in sickness, sorrow, or other adversity, a woman of boundless faith in herself and her opinions, but not too much hope or charity for others. The blood of the Scotch Covenanters ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... considerable size to hold the crew of so large a ship. It was already lying alongside, and landsmen would not suspect what lay under the apparently brave attempt to add to the vessel's security, but Paul did so. His practical sagacity was as conspicuous a trait as his lofty enthusiasm. Common sense need not be divorced from high aims or from the intensest religious self-devotion. The idealist beat the practical centurion in penetrating the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... or the chivalrous Princes of Northern Germany and Burgundy, who expended their force upon such unprofitable and impossible undertakings as the subjugation, for instance, of Switzerland! Not a single trait in his character reminds us of the Middle Ages, unless it be that he was said to care for reliques with a superstitious passion worthy of Louis XI. Sismondi sums up the description of this extraordinary despot in the following sentences, which may be quoted for their graphic brevity: 'False and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... concluded, to wait for Mrs. Hazleton's rising on the following morning; and, bidding Mr. Marlow good night with a warm grasp of the hand, Sir Philip Hastings retired to his room and passed nearly an hour in thought, pondering the character of his new acquaintance, recalling every trait he had remarked, and every word he had heard. It was a very satisfactory contemplation. He never remembered to have met with one who seemed so entirely a being after his own heart. There might be little flaws, little weaknesses ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... tenderness of feeling and beauty of expression that is often irresistible. They are essentially the love songs of a romantic, but refined and gifted poet. As a whole they are singularly free from sexual sensuousness, which is so often a trait in songs of their type. There is an idealism, wonderfully fresh and pure, about them, that is antagonistic to the composer's own assertion that verse often becomes doggerel when harnessed ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... A characteristic trait in Miss Mitchell was her aversion to receiving unsolicited advice in regard to her private affairs. "A suggestion is an impertinence," she would often say. The following anecdote shows how she ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... for money could not tempt that man to forego his ease, leisure, or independence, whose requisites of accommodation were compressed within such limits!' Before this, the princess Daschkaw made an apt comment upon this trait of his character; when, after vainly using every persuasion to induce him to accept a carte blanche from the empress of Russia as a recompense for directing the vast projects in that kingdom—she observed 'Sir, you are a great man, and I honour you! you may ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... at ease in Flemish, but he was wise enough to use that tongue. One trait of the Ghenters was respect for the person of their overlord. When that overlord showed any disposition to meet them half-way the response was usually immediate. So it was now. The crowd which had been attending to ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... American people are celebrated for their strongly individualistic character. This trait is closely related to the initiative and self-reliance which have helped toward our industrial success; on the other hand, individualism may be carried to the point of selfishness. It is desirable, of course, that both men and women maintain high standards of living, and that they cultivate ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... some time been a small lion at evening parties; he now began to be lionised at serious dinners. He was thought much of in Carlton Gardens, and his name figured at official banquets in Downing Street. The Duchess of Dovedale considered it a nice trait in his character that, although he was so much in request, and worked so hard in the House, he never missed one of her Thursday evenings. Even when there was an important debate on he would tear up Birdcage Walk in a hansom, and spend an hour in the Duchess's amber drawing-rooms, ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... picturesque account of the case is given by an ancestor of the present Lord Lonsdale's, whose memoirs (still in MS.) are alluded to in one of his Ecclesiastic Sonnets by Mr Wordsworth, our present illustrious laureate. One trait is of a nature so fine, and so inevitable under similar circumstances of interest, that, but for the intervention of the sea, we should certainly have witnessed its repetition on the termination of the Dublin ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... and Frank's countenance assumed an expression which it would be difficult to describe. There was, joined to his extreme paleness, a restless, apprehensive, and determined look; each trait apparently struggling for the ascendancy in his character, and attempting' to stamp his countenance ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... the victim of yesterday's mob, raised to the state of an Intercessor in Heaven, is besought with prayer and tears, and placatory penances, to mediate with God for the pardon of human sin. This is a mean and vile trait of human nature, the proof of ignorance, selfishness, brutal cowardice, and a superstitious materialism. It shows the base instinct to put down and destroy whatever or whoever makes men feel their own imperfections; with the alternative ...
— The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons • H.S. Olcott
... will excuse me for saying that I agree with you in your reproach of yourself. That trait of which you speak is a weakness which should be cured. I am but a poor country girl. But I have seen enough to know that sensitive and sympathizing natures like your own are always at the mercy of all around them. The honest and the generous take no advantage of such; ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... temperaments constitute a law of God, a command of God, and that whatsoever is done in obedience to that law is blameless. Man, in his evolution, inherited the whole sum of these numerous traits, and with each trait its share of the law of God. He widely differs from them in this: that he possesses not a single characteristic that is equally prominent in each member of his race. You can say the housefly is limitlessly brave, and in saying it you describe the whole ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... things in the world for us to be willing to do. The Scripture says, "Every fool will be meddling," and it is so hard for some folks not to act like fools, anyway in this particular respect, even though they are ever so wise. The affairs of others are so interesting to them! This is a very human trait, but it sometimes leads ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... [Footnote 1: The following trait proves the complete stagnation of chivalric feeling in the army. Szekuli, colonel of the Prussian hussars, condemned several patriotic ladies, belonging to the highest Polish families at Znawrazlaw, to ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... silent for a moment and I mused idly on the boyhood of little Fyne. I could not imagine what it might have been like. His dominant trait was clearly the remnant of still earlier days, because I've never seen such staring solemnity as Fyne's except in a very young baby. But where was he all that time? Didn't he suffer contamination from the indolence of Captain ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... think now that, grievous as these tidings were, there was nothing of either boastfulness or insolence in the tone in which they were communicated to me. Every praise was accorded to Bompard for skill and bravery, and the defense was spoken of in terms of generous eulogy. The only trait of acrimony that showed itself in the recital was, a regret that a number of Irish rebels should have escaped in the Biche, one of the smaller frigates; and several emissaries of the people, who had ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... and mental, and the basis of his moral, qualities depend entirely on the types of ancestral plasm combined in marriage. Man may control his environment; his heritage is immutable. To suppress an undesirable trait the germ-cell must unite with one that has never shown it—one from a sound stock. An unsuitable mating in a later generation, however, may bring it out again (for factors are indestructible), and the individual showing it will have ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... works, O God!" I exclaimed, as we retraced our steps. And I could not but reflect upon the singular trait exhibited by Jesus of frequenting a high mountain to pray. Surely, altitude elevates one into the spiritual state, and no doubt Christ felt nearer to the spirit world when elevated far above Jerusalem, on the mountain-top, ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... glance at this motley crew would have convinced us, had we not been quite sure of it already, that we had no favour to expect. There was not a countenance among them that exhibited the slightest trait of grace or mercy. No such expression could be seen around us, and we felt satisfied that our ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... mate, with an almost visible effect of collaboration on the part of his round eyes and frightful whiskers, was trying to evolve a theory of the anchored ship. His dominant trait was to take all things into earnest consideration. He was of a painstaking turn of mind. As he used to say, he "liked to account to himself" for practically everything that came in his way, down to a miserable scorpion he had ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... and his insistence was the one trait in his character which his mother had found hardest to deal with from his babyhood; from it, however, if it should develop happily into perseverance, she hoped the most. This trait he inherited from ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... reception was held in one of the rooms adjoining the banquet hall, and there a scene was enacted which brought into relief a trait of character which was extremely useful to the Colonel in the difficult task of managing his wilful and capricious prima donna. Mme. Patti received her hosts seated upon a divan. She looked radiant, and was wholly at ease after having taken a peep into the hall to see ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... thee, by whose side Nature, to recompense the fatal pride Of such stern beauty, placed those healing springs,[3] Which not more help, than that destruction, brings. Thy heart no ruder than the rugged stone, I might, like Orpheus, with my num'rous moan Melt to compassion; now, my trait'rous song With thee conspires to do the singer wrong; While thus I suffer not myself to lose 29 The memory of what augments my woes; But with my own breath still foment the fire, Which flames as high as fancy ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... not last long. The young king was resolved to make war on France, but was diverted from his aim by troubles in Scotland, growing out of his own rapacity—a trait which ever peculiarly distinguished him. These troubles resulted in a war with the Scots, who were defeated at the memorable battle of Flodden Field, which Sir Walter Scott, in his Marmion, has immortalized. The Scotch commanders, Lenox and Argyle, both perished, as well as the valiant ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... so we are told, loves a joke at another's expense, a trait in his character essentially barbaric. Raemaekers reproduces the twinkle in the Imperial eye as William of Potsdam offers to a quondam ally the foot which belongs to his senile and helpless brother of Hapsburg. ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... organizing to being organized, leading to being led. Early in his military training he had evinced an inclination to take things into his own hands and act without authority. It was somewhat ironic that the very trait that had deprived him of a couple of bars on his shoulder should have put the ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... Balaam had this gift. The deceiver who brought back the man of God who was sent from Judah to reprove Jeroboam, had it. By divine order he told the Jew what would happen to him, because he disobeyed the word of the Lord, and returned to eat bread in that place. Neither is there a trait of sanctity visible on the prophet Jonah, though he was compelled to bear God's messages to Ninevah, and used to make ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... fossil footprint, on the plastic face, As the swift record of a raindrop stands, Fixed on the tablet of the hardening sands. On every face as on the written page Each year renews the autograph of age; One trait alone may wasting years defy,— The fire still lingering in the poet's eye, While Hope, the siren, sings her sweetest strain,— Non omnis moriar ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... meditating on this unpleasant trait of character in the hippopotamus, the specimen which they had just seen, or some other member of his family, having compassion, no doubt, on the seaman's ignorance, proceeded to illustrate its method of attack then and there by rising suddenly under the canoe with such ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... the happiest of men. He had taken a daring step, but fortune smiled upon him, Monica was all he had imagined in his love-fever; knowledge of her had as yet brought to light no single untruth, not trait of character that he could condemn. That she returned his love he would not and could not doubt. And something she said to him one day, early in their honeymoon, filled up the ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... breathe. Their religion teaches the fundamental tenets of true politeness, in that it inculcates the reverence to parents as one of the highest virtues. The family circle fosters the germs of the great national trait of ceremonious politeness. Deference to age is universal with the young. The respect paid to parents does not cease when the children are mature men and women. It is considered a privilege as well as an evidence of filial duty to study the wants and wishes ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... his wife where he had been. This silence was significant. As a rule, if he but visited the tailor or had his hair cut, he told everybody all about it. He had really no idea that some things were uninteresting. I do not mean to say that this trait constitutes exactly ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... one of the most generous-hearted of children. Selfishness is not at all a trait of hers, and she knows the value of making sunshine, not alone in her own heart, but for her neighborhood and ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... be so, for mere book-education biases the mind always, either for or against, and therefore, it is not strange that in the far West, we should often meet with men who unhesitatingly declare that the red man, if capable, is unwilling to entertain in his character even one redeeming trait; but, on investigating their individual case, we find that they are but superficial observers who are prone to find fault with everything that does not exactly suit their tastes. It is necessary to spend ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... make your first offering. By this act, you will ask him to grant to you what he has granted to few men. I know you wish to be a great warrior and hunter. I am not prepared to see my Hakadah show any cowardice, for the love of possessions is a woman's trait and not ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... about Ian, even though he is sometimes passionate and stubborn, and will probably have lots of trouble with himself by and by, there isn't a drop of sneaky cur blood in him, which is the only trait that ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... living being, every physical structure and every mental trait, may be placed in one of two categories. Either they are inborn or they are acquired. An inborn or innate character is one which, in common parlance, arises in the individual 'by nature.' Thus arms, legs, eyes, ears, head, etc., ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... honoured the King." Sebastian Dolores was grateful for the post offered him, though he would rather have gone to St. Saviour's with his daughter, for he had lost the gift of work, and he desired peace after war. In other words, he had that fatal trait of those who strive to make the world better by talk and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... common family-trait; genius belongs rather to individuals;—just as you find one giant or one dwarf in a family, but rarely a whole brood of either. Talent is often to be envied, and genius very commonly to be pitied. It stands twice the chance of the other of dying in hospital, in jail, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... relation towards foreign powers to strengthen the influence of the throne. The duke was fully aware of this, and, moreover, knew he could without much difficulty have his marriage annulled; but that he did not adopt this course was an honourable trait in his character; and, indeed, his conduct and that of the king was most creditable throughout the transactions which followed; an account of which is set forth with great minuteness in the "Continuation of ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... distinguishing trait of Leibnitz's genius, and the one predominant fact in his history, was what Feuerbach calls his [Greek: polupraguoshinae], which, being interpreted, means having a finger in every pie. We are used to consider him as a man of letters; but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the high-road of Leon, an event common enough in Spain, but in France almost impossible; 2d, the escort of the coach, a common precaution of the Spanish ladies against violence—the fact that the coach is drawn by mules, not horses, of which national trait six other instances may be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... the immortal part of me to another, and all the time I was smiling at the baby and the baby smiling back. I remember his long blond hair, parted in the middle and falling over his shoulders; but even that remarkable trait for an infant a few hours old did not puzzle me, for my sanity was surely being undermined by the persistent gaze of the boy. I vaguely recall passing my hand across my breast as if to stop the crevice through ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... to the modern Egyptians to say that gratitude is still a distinguishing trait of their character; and this is one of the many qualities inherited by them, for which their predecessors were remarkable; confirming what we have before stated, that the general peculiarities of a people are retained, though a country ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... has portrayed, with here and there a happy trait of grace or humour beyond the wording of the text, the very scene and people. Each of the illustrations has a charm and ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... Mafiosi and the banditti of this neighborhood for many years. We learned things after you left; we were many times upon the verge of important discoveries; but invariably we were thwarted at the last moment by that Sicilian trait of secrecy and by some very potent terror. We tried our best to get to the bottom of this fear I mention, but we could not. It was more than the customary distrust and dislike of the law; It was a lively personal dread of some man or body of men, The fact that we have ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... became frequent. I granted him all the favors he asked; yet I earnestly entreated him to marry me. This he consented to do, and we were accordingly united in the bonds of wedlock. My husband immediately hired these furnished apartments, which I at present occupy; and then he developed a trait in his character, which proved him a villain of the deepest dye. How he made a livelihood, had always to me been a profound mystery; and as he avoided the subject, I never questioned him. But how he intended to live, after our marriage, I soon became painfully aware. He resolved that I should ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... Lucinda. I often wondered how her mother ever endured the loneliness of a Texas ranch, with her disposition. She seemed to find room in her heart for all the world. But it is not a bad trait," Mrs. Clyde added. "It is a part of the ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... enjoyed the personal consideration of the President. His reception of me had been in the highest degree ceremonious and distant; but upon my mentioning the names of father and brother, his manner grew warm: I had touched that trait of affectionate faithfulness with which he has always held on to every tie of kin and friendship. That your father should have fought against him and your brother under him made no difference in his memory. He had many ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... spirit of antagonism rose up in him, that spirit of antagonism of the human against the animal, that eternal ambition of the one to master the other. And besides, I'm not sure that James didn't want to show off before the girl— another very human trait in mankind. For my part, I wouldn't give yesterday's rose for a man who wouldn't show off once in a while, when his best girl is ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... advanced age, she showed exquisite perception of pleasure in every work of genius; in conversation, no stroke of wit or humour escaped her quick intelligence, no shade of sentiment or politeness was lost upon her; and on hearing of any trait of generosity or greatness of soul, her whole countenance beamed with delight; yet with all this quickness of feeling she was quite free from fastidiousness, and from that irritability about trifles, into which those who indulge the delicacy ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... frequently blind our eyes to the most obvious facts which impinge against our own vanities. His was a high and noble mind, chained and thralled by manifold circumstances and accidents to the dull pursuits of worldly ambitions. One trait, however, may display his character: he had practised in regard to the boy a piece of that high delicacy of feeling of which none but great men are capable. He had learned and divined, from the short conversation which had taken place between himself and Lennard Sherbrooke, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... him—he's brave." The men whom he did not seem to like in the army and who disliked him accordingly, were compelled to admit, to themselves at least, that their reasons were comprised in the above-recorded, regretable, but unmistakable fact—he didn't like them. Another trait, unpopular, was that he knew when and how to say no. He smoked too much, perhaps, and talked too little for those who would use his words as witnesses against him. He never gambled, he rarely drank, he never lent nor borrowed. ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... uses fewer Biblical and semi-Slavonic expressions—I mean expressions which belong to the antiquated language of the Church Service rather than to modern parlance—and his armoury of terse popular proverbs which constitute such a characteristic trait of the peasantry, is less frequently drawn on. When I ask him about the present condition of the peasantry, his account does not differ substantially from that of his elder colleague, but he does not condemn their sins ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... acutely conscious of the false position. He was by nature anything but a curmudgeon. On the contrary, he was, if I interpret him at all aright, a high-minded, open-hearted, generous type of man. Like a majority, perhaps, of the really open-handed he shared one trait with the closefisted and even with the very mean rich. He would rather give away a crown than be cheated of a farthing. Smollett himself had little of the traditional Scottish thriftiness about him, but ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... the expense of his fellows. If he sees some one on a street corner gazing open-mouthed at the sky, he will do likewise, and stand there for half hour with his apple of Adam expectantly vibrating. But is that a shameful trait? May not a Boob expect to see angels in the shimmering blue of heaven? Is he more disreputable than the knave who frisks his watch meanwhile? And suppose he does see an angel, or even only a blue acre of sky—is that not worth as much as the dial in ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... thing we cannot overcome; Say not thy evil instinct is inherited, Or that some trait inborn makes thy whole life forlorn; And calls down punishment that ...
— Thoughts I Met on the Highway • Ralph Waldo Trine
... humours, in a word, conceived of stage personages on the basis of a ruling trait or passion (a notable simplification of actual life be it observed in passing); and, placing these typified traits in juxtaposition in their conflict and contrast, struck the spark of comedy. Downright, as his name ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... Ormont's household assisted to shelter him for some hours of the day from the lady who was like a blast of sirocco under his roof. He had his breakfast alone, as Lady Charlotte had it at Olmer; a dislike of a common table in the morning was a family trait with both. At ten o'clock the secretary arrived, and they were shut up together. At the luncheon table Aminta usually presided. If my lord dined at home, he had by that time established an equanimity rendering, his constant civility to Mrs. Pagnell less arduous. The presence of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... distinctly human trait as a lever to raise crude humanity into the higher region of the virtues, it is certainly worth while to consider pots and pans from the point of view of ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... in advance. Begin then!" she added, with a little nod of command. "What is the most striking trait of my character on ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... me to be Maupassant, the novelist, a story-teller, a writer, and a philosopher by turns. I will add one more trait; he was devoid of all spirit of criticism. When he essays to demolish a theory, one is amazed to find in this great, clear writer such lack of precision of thought, and such weak argument. He wrote the least eloquent and ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... pitiful calculation of the sordid gain to be derived from their Government's maintenance. It undermines the self-reliance of our people and substitutes in its place dependence upon governmental favoritism. It stifles the spirit of true Americanism and stupefies every ennobling trait of ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... than to interrupt thus a prolonged tone of solemnity by any descent into the ludicrous or burlesque.[43] In the former case, the transition may have the effect of softening or elevating, while, in the latter, it almost invariably shocks;—for the same reason, perhaps, that a trait of pathos or high feeling, in comedy, has a peculiar charm; while the intrusion of comic scenes into tragedy, however sanctioned among us by habit and authority, rarely fails to offend. The noble poet was, himself, convinced of the failure ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... an agreeable trait in the character of the Pathans, the immunity, dictated by a rude spirit of chivalry, which in their ceaseless brawling, their women enjoy. Many forts are built at some distance from any pool or spring. When these are besieged, the women are allowed by the assailants to carry water to the foot ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... have done it, and grumbled; Franklin did not do it, and preserved his good temper. In conclusion it may be said that, if Franklin was indolent, as in some ways he probably was, he had at least much excuse for indolence, and the trait showed itself only on what may be called the physical side of his duties; upon the intellectual side, it cannot be denied that during the period thus far traversed he did more thinking and to better purpose than any other American of ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... of the Scandinavian peninsula have certain peculiarities in their melody which impart to their work a trait of local color. This one finds in the writings of Grieg, Svendsen, and to some extent in those of Gade. A similar coloring was hit upon much earlier by Mendelssohn in the beginning ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... Indian half he had his love of tramping which made him choose the wandering trade of trunk pedler; his French half made him a good trader and talker; while his Yankee half endowed him with a universal Yankee trait, a "handiness," which showed in scores of gifts and accomplishments and knacks that made him as warmly greeted everywhere as were ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... event is described, the feelings it excited come back almost as fresh and poignant as at the time. How hard it was to realize that his time, too, had come—that so much life had been quenched. Every trait of the man we almost worshiped, recollections of incidents which showed his superb nature, crowd now, as they ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... staking his head and indifferent whether he wins the game provided it amuses him—in a word, capable of everything, of ruse and recklessness, calculation and folly, villainy and generosity; and the morose Carr, of whom history describes but one trait, albeit a most characteristic and suggestive one; and those other fanatics, of all ranks and varieties: Harrison, the thieving fanatic; Barebones the shopkeeping fanatic; Syndercomb, the bravo; ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... in the world, and in that 80 percent were all the songs that had ever touched us, all the earworms that had been lodged in our hindbrains, all the stuff that made us smile when we heard it. Those songs are different for all of us, but they share the trait of making the difference between a compelling service and, well, top-40 Clearchannel radio programming. It was the minority of tracks that appealed to the majority of us. By the same token, the malleability of electronic text means that ...
— Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books • Cory Doctorow
... Dearest Miss, Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss, And those forms of old admiring, Call her Cockatrice and Siren, Basilisk, and all that's evil, Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil, Ethiop, Wench, and Blackamoor, Monkey, Ape, and twenty more; Friendly Trait'ress, Loving Foe,— Not that she is truly so, But no other way they know A contentment to express, Borders so upon excess, That they do not rightly wot Whether it be pain ...
— English Satires • Various
... too; however, each day disclosed some fresh trait in our captain's character, which surprised us all the more from his being such ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... you refer literature to the standards of life, common-sense will at once decide which quality should count heaviest in your esteem. You will be in no danger of weighing a mere maladroitness of manner against a fine trait of character, or of letting a graceful deportment blind you to a fundamental vacuity. When in doubt, ignore style, and think of the matter as you would think ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... school garden, where an unlucky blow on the bridge of the nose had half blinded him and made him an easy victim to the enemy, who administered a severe drubbing and procured for his adversary a birching for fighting—it was before caning days—and a long series of impositions for obstinacy, a trait the doctor said that he absolutely abhorred—Dominic's obstinacy consisting in a stubborn refusal to confess who had beaten him. This his schoolfellows called honourable; but Green had other opinions, and set it down to the fear of getting another thrashing ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... there as well, with his wife Emma the daughter of the Duke. It seems in fact to have already become the fashion for princes of the royal house of Britain to complete their education by a little tour in France. A curious trait of the manners of the time is recorded by Wace, who describes one of the many banquets that must have been given so often during all these royal visits. He speaks of the long sleeves and white shirts of the barons, and relates the first instance of aristocratic kleptomania at a dinner-table, when ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... realities in his understanding of men. Why should the influence of this sanguine, loud-talking demagogue, she asked herself the next minute, be greater than the influence of John Benham, who possessed every admirable trait except the ability to make people follow him? What was this fundamental difference in material or structure which divided them so completely? When she had traced it to its source would she discover the secret of Vetch's ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... I shouted as I ran to him. He drew me to his knees with a smile. "And have you not got a prize?" he asked. "No," said I, "not I, it's Satya." My genuine pleasure at Satya's success seemed to touch my cousin particularly. He turned to his friends and remarked on it as a very creditable trait. I well remember how mystified I felt at this, for I had not thought of my feeling in that light. This prize that I got for not getting a prize did not do me good. There is no harm in making gifts to children, but they should not be rewards. It is not ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... ready to sacrifice to the uttermost on the altar of friendship. It was this trait of character which made him throw himself with enthusiasm into Freemasonry, whose affiliations he sought to widen by drafting the constitution of a community which he called "The Grotto." He probably hated only one man in the world,—the ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for, they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, it is fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind,—although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... openly resented, betrayed that he was one who affected to free himself from the polished restraints of social intercourse. He had once been too scrupulous in not wounding vanity; he was now too indifferent to it. But if sometimes this unamiable trait of character, as displayed to others, chilled or startled Evelyn, the contrast of his manner towards herself was a flattery too delicious not to efface all other recollections. To her ear his voice always softened its tone; to ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... buried with ideals and ambitions, her intellect was clear and strong and her character more finely balanced. She flew into no more rages, boxed her attendants' ears at rarer intervals, and the deliberation which had seemed an anomaly in her character before, became a dominant trait, and rarely was conquered by impulse. When it worked alone her mother laid down her weapons, edged as they still were, and when impulse flew to its back, Mary Fawcett took refuge in oblivion. But she ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Winnie admitted that Rosemary seemed to have absolved herself from any responsibility toward her sisters. "Left them to shift for themselves," was the way Winnie put it. She was puzzled and also disappointed in her favorite, for indifference of any kind had never been a Rosemary trait. ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... be noticed," said the Honourable Tim. "It is easy to spoil them." And he watched the best of boys rather closely, for a habit of interrupting reading lessons, wantonly and without reason, was a trait in the young of ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... toute confidentielle et sans aucun caractre d'autenticit, le Municipe ne pouvant pas, (ds que tout est rentr dans l'ordre,) se mler d'aucune chose qui directement ou indirectement puisse avoir trait la politique. ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... are learning to trust impressions rather than experiences, to feel otherwise than you have. It was natural. I only wonder that you did not go at once. Your remaining has shown me your worth, and a trait of character which I admire. Now that the ordeal is passed, I shall feel that you are my friend, even though slander, vile and dark, may be hurled against me, as it is possible, for I have a battle to fight for ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... trait was of a piece with Mr. Foreman's energy and promptness in all the circumstances of life. In a very few minutes from the aforesaid speech he was sound asleep, for he was determined to waste no time in accomplishing ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... twilight. Ann said she must study, and left us by the parlor fire. Adelaide lighted a candle, and took a novel, which she read reclining on a sofa. Reclining on sofas, I discovered, was a family trait, though they were all in a state of the most robust health, with the exception of Mr. Somers. I walked up and down the rooms. "They were fine once," said Ben, who appeared from a dark corner, "but faded now. ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... irrigated, its people so open-faced and respectful, that the town has an immediate charm. We are impressed everywhere in these mountains with the geniality of the people. Human nature, considering its discouragements, is wonderfully good at bottom. Kindliness seems a universal trait in the Pyrenees. It shines out in every nature. One has only to meet it half way. Innkeeper, guide, shopkeeper or peasant, all are unaffectedly good-tempered and well-disposed. A discourteous return would puzzle them; a harsh complaint would wound deeply. The sunshine comes from a nearer ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... being, instead of eeing in it rather the zodiacal light of truth, the concomitant of the uprising, and of the setting of the truth, and a partaker in its essence. Again, Shakspere has in this very play devoted a considerable space to the purpose of suggesting the self-same trait of character now under discussion, and this he appears to have done with the express intent of guarding against a mistake, the probability of the occurrence of which he foresaw, but which, for reasons ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... season of his youth. It was a pleasure to persons of colder temperament to sun themselves in the warmth of his bright looks and generous humour. His laughter cheered one like wine. I do not know that he was very witty; but he was pleasant. He was prone to blush; the history of a generous trait moistened his eyes instantly. He was instinctively fond of children and of the other sex from one year old to eighty. Coming from the Derby once and being stopped on the road in a lock of carriages during which the people in a carriage ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... trait in the old Paganism that it loved to trace in every operation of nature the agency of deity. The imagination of the Greeks peopled all the regions of earth and sea with divinities, to whose agency it attributed ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Livingstone possesses an excellent heart, a good fortune, and an uncommon stock of modesty. His intellects are, however, far from brilliant; indeed, but for one trait in his character he would pass for an idiot,—he has had the good sense never as yet to fall in love! In fact, the farce is founded upon that identical incident of his life which occasioned him to suppose that he had taken the tender ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... rupees' worth of satisfaction out of his royal highness, and then go up to court and pay my fine." It will be seen that Mr. Hornaday is a true-born American, and not disposed to stand any nonsense that conflicts with the great law of human equality. But though this trait makes him appear somewhat uncharitable toward prejudices that have survived the Declaration of Independence, it shows itself in its most amiable light in his own free and sociable disposition, his readiness to be on terms of good-fellowship with men of all sorts and conditions, and his heartiness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... golden booklet on "Characters," in which "the most eminent botanist of antiquity observes the doings of men with the keen and unerring vision of a natural historian" (Gomperz). In the Hippocratic writings, there are mentioned 236 plants; in the botany of Theophrastus, 455. To one trait of master and pupil I must refer—the human feeling, not alone of man for man, but a sympathy that even claims kinship with the animal world. "The spirit with which he (Theophrastus) regarded the animal world found no second expression till the present age" (Gomperz). ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... was a Chinese, on the back of a pony not more than eleven hands high, sitting as usual with his paraphernalia lashed to the back of the animal. He laughed at me because I was not riding, whilst I tried to solve the problem of that indefinable trait of Chinese nature which leads able-bodied men with sound feet to sit on these little brutes up those terrible mountain sides. Some parts of this spur were much steeper than the roof of a house—as perpendicular as can be imagined—but still this man held on all the way. And the Chinese ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... however, he acted like a fanatic, and manifested the first symptoms of that weak trait in his character which nearly wrecked his career. As he pondered one day on the state of affairs at Herrnhut, it suddenly flashed upon his mind that the Brethren would do far better without their ancient constitution. He first consulted the Elders and Helpers {Jan. 7th, 1731.}; ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... State capitol in the Union. By the luck of a catching phrase applied to him by Robert G. Ingersoll, he stood before the imagination of the country "as the plumed knight," although on looking back we search in vain for any trait of knightliness or chivalry in him. For a score of years he filled the National Congress, House and Senate, with the bustle of his egotism. His knightly valor consisted in shaking his fist at the "Rebel Brigadiers " and in waving ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... Welcome, thrice welcome! Bid me not rise, nor bless me with pure hands. Ask not to see my face. Here let me lie, Kissing the dust—a cast-away, a trait'ress, A murderess, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... take a great deal to eradicate Mary's love of pretty clothes. That trait of hers had always amused him. He recalled more than one Sunday at Ware's Wigwam when she insisted on putting on her "rosebud sash" to wear walking on the desert, when there was nothing but the owls and the jack-rabbits to take notice. ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the palace or capital, would be as misleading as to gather our ideas of the status of popular education from knowing only of the scholars at court. Among the common people the real basis of the god-way was ancestor-worship. From the very first this trait and habit of the Japanese can be discerned. Their tenacity in holding to it made the Confucian ethics more welcome when they came. Furthermore, this reverence for the dead profoundly influenced and modified Buddhism, so that today the altars of both religions exist in ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... have seen my little Violet to understand what a constant disappointment Florence is. She was myself in miniature, and moreover the most witching, prankish, peppery elf that was ever made. The best trait in Florence's character was her love for her baby-sister. She gave up everything to her while she was alive, and they told me that she would not eat, and scarcely slept, for days after her death. Her father will have it that she is singularly sensitive, and has marvellous depths ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... heavy rumble in the throat of Antipater—a tiger-like, Herodian trait—and then a volley of oaths came out of it. He trembled with rage and flung his sword far across the dim atrium with a shout of anger. Like the great cats in his rage, he was like them also in his methods of attack—sly and terrible, but with a deep ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... never say or do anything worth notice. I could hold a tolerable conversation by the post, as they say the Spaniards play at chess, and when I read that anecdote of a duke of Savoy, who turned himself round, while on a journey, to cry out "a votre gorge, marchand de Paris!" I said, "Here is a trait ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... of Jewish cast (the last trait often true also of the men); fair complexions, sometimes rosy, though usually a pale sallow; hair braided and plaited behind in two long tresses terminating in silken tassels. They are rigidly secluded, but intrigue ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... were the sighs and tears their approaching change of owners produced among them. Her sons-in-law were educated men, of good birth and moderate fortune; but negroes are the best judges of character in the world, and there was not a trait or feeling concealed under the quiet, nonchalant exterior of Mons. Volmont Cherbuliez which they did not thoroughly understand. About his brother Alphege, who was a physician, there was more diversity of opinion. That he also was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... though he had not heard her. That was the most exasperating trait of this lazy man—so his wife thought; he was too ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... by the by, is rarely seen now; but in former times it was a character as common as now it is rare. The commanding position of the clergy the freedom they felt to say and do what they pleased brought that trait out in high relief. The great democratic pressure has passed like a roller over society: everybody is afraid of everybody; everybody wants something, office, appointment, business, position, and he is to receive it, not ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... lies entirely within the boundary of his own art. He has selected a personage for his drama with whom a certain fate is so indissolubly associated, that it is impossible to think of her without recalling it to mind; and this ineffaceable trait in her history he has attempted, for the time, to obliterate from our memory. By this procedure, the imagination of the reader is divided and distracted. The picture presented by the poet is and is not a portrait ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... purpose and principle of action so to rule. It is not meant that his censures were undeserved, or even excessive; but there entered into them no ingredient of pity. His despatches are full of complaints, both general and specific. When he spared, it was from a sense of expediency,—or of justice, a trait in which he was by no means deficient; but for human weakness he had no bowels. Hawke complains of but this one captain, Fox, and towards him he seems not to have evinced the strong feeling that animated his juniors. Each man has his special gift, and to succeed must needs act in accordance ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... interrupted I wandered off to a secluded nook of the garden down the drive away from the house and gave myself up to the story. From the first it went with a rare swing, incident following incident, every trait of character presented objectively in fine scorn of analysis. There were little pen pictures of grim scenes faultless in their definition and restraint. There was a girl in it, a wild, clean-limbed, woodland thing who especially moved my admiration. The more I read the more fascinated did ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... escape you." I thought of the remark as I sat on a stump in the opening of the woods one spring day. I saw a small hawk approaching; he flew to a tall tulip-tree and alighted on a large limb near the top. He eyed me and I eyed him. Then the bird disclosed a trait that was new to me; he hopped along the limb to a small cavity near the trunk, when he thrust in his head and pulled out some small object and fell to eating it. After he had partaken of it some minutes he put the remainder back in his larder and flew away. I had ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Mr. Welland is still alive: he probably, better than anyone, could give some sketch of his intellectual growth, and of that beautiful trait in his character, the devotion and abnegation he showed o poor Bruce[3] in his ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... habit in animals—which is common to many other sorts along with the bears—such as the great ant-eater of South America, the opossum, and most kinds of monkeys. Both agreed that it was a pretty trait in the character of the lower animals, and proved even the most savage of them ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... summer—learnt her own power, for one thing, when she found that she could twist the whole lot of them round her little finger if she chose. The thing about them that interested her most, however, was their point of view. She found one trait common to all of them when they talked to her, and that was a certain assumption of superiority which impressed her very much at first, so that she was prepared to accept their opinions as confidently as they ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... if he wanted to get his seven-league dress-shoes on, and go round the world to see that everybody was in a satisfactory state. Bishop had no idea that there was anything significant in the occasion. That was the most remarkable trait in his demeanour. He was crisp, fresh, cheerful, affable, bland; ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... 349-362. Mr. Manly says (p. 360): "It seems clear, upon reviewing the whole problem, that if Chaucer used Marco Polo's narrative, he either carelessly or intentionally confused all the features of the setting that could possibly be confused, and retained not a single really characteristic trait of any person, place or event. It is only by twisting everything that any part of Chaucer's story can be brought into relation with any part of Polo's. To do this might be allowable, if any rational explanation could be given for Chaucer's supposed treatment of his 'author,' ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... next example I want you first to recognise that, apart from its physical qualities, every material body has certain, what may be called, traits of character, which belong to it alone; there is generally one special trait or "partial," namely, the characteristic which it is easiest for the particular body to manifest, but I shall show you that by sympathetic action others can be developed. I have several pieces of ordinary ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... since landing on the island, what had evidently been a strong religious trait previously dormant in her character, if quoting Scripture texts were ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... would have had her declaration of faith a little less positive in form. It was too irrational to say she "knew." In fact (he put it to himself bluntly) it was quite unlike her. If to be unreasonable when reason led to the unpleasant was a specially feminine trait, and if Mrs. Manderson had it, she was accustomed to wrap it up better than ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... the way along, daintily picking and choosing the herbage and shrubs which they like best. My chief occupation in riding is watching them browse, and observing the epicurean fancies of these reflective, sober-thinking brutes of The Desert. I observe also as a happy trait in the Arab, that nothing delights him more than watching his own faithful camel graze. The ordinary drivers sometimes allow them to graze, and wait till they have cropped their favourite herbage and shrubs, and at other times push them forward ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... particularly, and to a less extent that of Assyria, advances to noticeable conceptions of the qualities associated with the gods and goddesses and of the duties imposed on man. Shamash the sun-god was invested with justice as his chief trait, Marduk is portrayed as full of mercy and kindness, Ea is the protector of mankind who is grieved when, through a deception practised upon Adapa, humanity is deprived of immortality. The gods, to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... have here a pleasing trait of the superior sagacity of Defoe, in as far as it was a prevalent notion down to his time, and even later (nor is it, perhaps, altogether extinguished yet), that the prosperity of a country was marked by its excess of exports over imports. Defoe justly ranks ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe |
