"Allegory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that many heroes of adventure, before him and after him, have made in fairy lands forlorn. The scenery and incidents of that strange ride are also among the common possessions of fairy romance. One dimly discerns in them the glimmer of an ancient allegory, of an old cosmogony, that may possibly be derived from the very infancy of the world, when human thought began to brood over the mysteries of life and time. There are the Broad Path of Wickedness and the Narrow ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... retorting, as he assisted me to doff my doublet. "Do I jest? Diable! you Gascons are a slow-witted folk! I have a taste for allegory, my friend, but that never yet was accounted so low ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... particularities of limited place and individual name. We must distinguish between the abstractly typical and the universal. The representative artist does not conceive an abstraction and then seek to find a symbol for it. That is the method of allegory, where spring, for example, is figured as a young woman scattering flowers. Allegory is decorative rather than representative in intention. The artist receives his inspiration and stimulus from some actual concrete ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... allegory—an allegory of English and American life. I am quite aware that with you the sexes have reversed positions, that the man has sunk into a money-making machine, who slaves so that his wife may spend, while the woman devotes her whole ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... tapestries that screened the door of the room in which the music was being given with his impetuous, vigilant, desperate gaze, appeared, with a soldierly impassibility or a supernatural faith—an allegory of alarums, incarnation of alertness, commemoration of a riot—to be looking out, angel or sentinel, from the tower of dungeon or cathedral, for the approach of the enemy or for the hour of Judgment. Swann had now only to ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... of allegory this story was set out it is hard to say—Tennyson himself could not in later years be induced to define his purpose—but it seems certain that many of the characters are intended to symbolize higher and lower ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... it the Plague was at her gates; yet the King, undeterred, came to spend Christmas at Westminster; but Martin was not in his train. Men's mirth waxed hot by reason of the terror they would not recognise. Banquet and revel, allegory and miracle play; pageant of beautiful women and brave men; junketing, ay, and rioting—thus they flung a defiance at the enemy; and then fled: for across the clash of the feast bells sounded the mournful note of funeral dirge ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... noticed that the robins fly the air in twos, and that the fish swim the water in twos, and that the lions walk the fields in twos, and in the warm redolence of that Saturday afternoon he falls off into slumber; and as if by allegory to teach all ages that the greatest of earthly blessings is sound sleep, this paradisaical somnolence ends with the discovery on the part ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... classes is an idea that gives us pause. It is one of those suggestions, like Lord Brougham's of the "unknown public," which, in a single phrase, and a sentence or two of explanation, tell a whole history. This is the class John Bunyan wrote for before the bishops had his Allegory in presentable calf and gold-leaf,—before England knew that her poor tinker had shaped a pictured urn for her full of such visions as no dreamer had seen since Dante. This is the class that believes in John ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... allegory and wild talk, let us look at facts and see what art is. For is not art inasmuch as untroubled by the practical difficulties of existence, inasmuch as the free, unconscious attempt of all nations and generations to satisfy, outside ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... little sister of the angels never lived, except in the imagination of the poet. It seems a pure allegory, or, rather, an exercise in arithmetic or a theme of astrology. Dante, who was a good doctor of Bologna and had many moons in his head, under his pointed cap—Dante believed in the virtue of numbers. That inflamed mathematician dreamed of figures, and his Beatrice is the ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... quay to the Morgue; the beautiful water of St. Michel fell sibilantly cold from the fountain, and Apollyon above, at the feet of the avenging angel, seemed a sermon and an allegory of his own prostration. How all the folks upon the bridge were stony faced! It had never before occurred to him that men were cold-blooded creatures. He wondered if the Seine, dashing against the quays and piers beneath, were not their proper ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... not, how, in the name of biological theology, could his dead soul have been roused by any information whatever? Yet these sentences of his have a real and valuable meaning. It is evident that Mr. Huxley does understand the uses of allegory and fable for purposes of illustration; that he can employ characters and situations which are not historical, but purely imaginary, to illustrate the realities which he is trying to present,—speaking of them all ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... paints the sea well; she infuses interest into her figures; she has a love of allegory; her studies in Holland and Norway are interesting. Her 'Whitby,' lighted by sunset, with figures massed in the streets in dark relief against it, is beautiful. Her 'Friends,' showing two women watching the twilight ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... in these carnal errors, Jesus Christ came at the time foretold, but not with the expected glory; and thus men did not think it was He. After His death, Saint Paul[248] came to teach men that all these things had happened in allegory; that the kingdom of God did not consist in the flesh, but in the spirit; that the enemies of men were not the Babylonians, but the passions; that God delighted not in temples made with hands, but in a pure and contrite heart; that the circumcision of the body was unprofitable, but ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... instruments in the orchestra are dramatized in turn. The dialogue of the latter far more intimately suggests their quality than does the speech of the flutes in Tieck, where their spirit is cerulean blue. Wasa, unfortunately, runs off into dull allegory, and this work is not to be compared with August von Schlegel's Gate of Honor as a satire on ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... introduction has given a fantastic account of the Pre-Adamitical world, and explained with elaborate unconvincingness how the manuscript of the book came into existence, the tale commences like a moral allegory, but soon lapses into mere extravagant adventure. Capable at all times of using a deus ex machina as the readiest way of solving a situation, Mrs. Haywood here makes immoderate use of ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... amongst the improvers of poetry in England. In tragedy he gave the first regular model; in personification he advanced far beyond all his predecessors, and furnished a prototype to that master of allegory, Spenser. A greater than Spenser has also been indebted to him; as will be evident, I think, to all who compare the description of the figures on the shield of war in his Induction, and especially those of them which relate to the siege ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... agent's, careened like crippled battleships, had at length begun to find a market. Within the past two weeks three landscapes and an allegorical painting had sold for good prices; and under the influence of success he expanded like an opening floweret. When Epstein, the agent, wrote to say that the allegory had been purchased by a Glasgow plutocrat of the name of Bates for one hundred and sixty guineas, Sellers' views on Philistines and their crass materialism and lack of taste underwent a marked modification. He spoke with some ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... and cut up than Josiah Allen wuz. If he hadn't boasted so over its bein' gin to him on account of his bein' so smart and popular and etcetery, he wouldn't have felt so cut up. But as it was, it bowed down his bald head into the dust (allegory). ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... eternal. I understood them to mean that the exterior world, physical and historical, was but the outward manifestation of realities greater than itself. Nature was a parable:[1] Scripture was an allegory: pagan literature, philosophy, and mythology, properly understood, were but a preparation for the Gospel. The Greek poets and sages were in a certain sense prophets; for "thoughts beyond their thought ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... was bereft of her by the same powers that you call good and wise, and who have also robbed me of my eyesight, my friend, and all else that was dear. I thank you for your kind intention, and you, too, Daphne, for recalling the beautiful allegory. How often we have argued over its meaning! If we continued the discussion, perhaps it might pleasantly shorten the next few hours, which I dread as I do my whole future existence, but I should be obliged ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... death (while her true knight Amadas fights with a ghostly foe above) makes a fitting pendant. If her near namesake with an L prefixed, the Lidoine of Meraugis de Portlesguez, interests me less, it is because its author, Raoul de Houdenc, was one of the first to mix love and moral allegory—a "wanity" which is not my favourite "wanity." To the Alexandrine of Guillaume de Palerne reference has already been made. Blanchefleur—known all over Europe with her lover Floire (Floris, etc.)—the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Persephone, the Athena, of modern sentiment? Are these figures really the goddesses of the Iliad and of Sophocles?' The truth is, I think, that they are neither the one nor the other. They are the goddesses of ancient reflection and allegory; the goddesses, that is, of the best and most characteristic worship that these idealized creations awakened. What we have treated hitherto as the mortal weakness of the Olympians, the fact that they ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... curiosity. As the comparison in a metaphor is implied rather than expressed, the points of likeness may not immediately be evident to the reader and thus the figurative statement piques his curiosity. A comparison in the form of a simile, or in that of a parable or allegory, may serve ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... and nature never painted in a woman's face more devotion than appeared in my lady's at that moment. To both the situation seemed like a beautiful allegory, not to be examined too closely, lest its defects of correspondence with real ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... from his ravages, the Athenians were bound to deliver to him, every single year, fifty virgins; you will perhaps escape the error of good M. Chompre, who saw in the labyrinth nothing but an English garden; and you will recognize in this ingenious fable a refined allegory, or we may better say a faithful and fearful image of the dangers of marriage. The paintings recently discovered at Herculaneum have served to confirm this opinion. And, as a matter of fact, learned men have for a long time believed, in accordance with the writings of certain authors, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... eyes are out: Flowers along the reeling floor Drip henbane and hellebore: Beauty, of her tresses shorn, Shrieks as nature's maniac: Hideousness on hoof and horn Tumbles, yapping in her track: Haggard Wisdom, stately once, Leers fantastical and trips: Allegory drums the sconce, Impiousness nibblenips. Imp that dances, imp that flits, Imp o' the demon-growing girl, Maddest! whirl with imp o' the pits Round you, and with them you whirl Fast where pours the fountain-rout ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which he has published during the past year are notable artistic achievements in widely different moods. If tragedy prevails, it is purified by a fine spiritual idealism, which takes symbols and makes of them something more human than a mere allegory. If an American publisher were courageous enough to start publishing a series of volumes of short stories by contemporary American writers, he could not do better than to begin with a selection of Mr. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "he was a Frenchman; but," adds Sir R.K.P. "this statue, for genius and exquisite execution, would have done honour to the best sculptors of any nation. A most sublime conception is displayed in the design. The allegory is finely imagined; and had he not sacrificed the result of the whole to the prominence of his group, the grand and united effect of the statue and its pedestal striking at once upon the eye, would have been unequalled in the works of man. A mass of granite, of a size at present ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... It was the fashion of early Italian painters to represent in mediaeval costume the soldiers who watched over the tomb of Christ, and this, which was the result of the frank anachronism of all true art, may serve to us as an allegory. For it was in vain that the Middle Ages strove to guard the buried spirit of progress. When the dawn of the Greek spirit arose, the sepulchre was empty, the grave-clothes laid aside. Humanity had risen ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... this strange weird tale that is almost like a romance of Oppenheim and is yet like an old-world allegory? Is he laughing at anarchists that they are but policemen in disguise? Is he saying that policemen are really only anarchists? Or does he mean that the Devil masquerades as the spirit of the Holy Day of the week 'Sunday,' or is ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... his grounds. Even assured Christians, we know, may occasionally trespass on these grounds of doubt; but the weapons of modern warfare are not of the seventeenth century. The Interpreter's House in the old allegory dealt only with things found in the Bible, the only channel of revelation to John Bunyan. To the modern pilgrim God reveals Himself in Nature, in art, in literature, and in history. The Interpreter's Hand ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... indeed. But he could not for the moment revise his impressions; he only perceived that he had come unexpectedly upon a calm and radiating centre of energy, and it seemed in his mind that the pool which he had seen that morning was an allegory of what he had now heard. The living water, breaking up so clearly from underground in the grassy valley, and passing downwards to gladden the earth! It would be used, be tainted, be troubled, but he saw that no soil or stain, no scattering or disruption, ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... first attempt to build a card-castle or a rabbit-hutch. All is part of the training. God looks at the ideal man to which all tends. The popular idea of the fall is to me a very absurd one. There was never an ideal state in the past, but there will be in the future. The Genesis allegory simply typifies the first awakening of consciousness of good and evil—of two wills in a ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... like "The Pilgrim's Progress," is an allegory, the ape symbolizing the human heart. Yet despite its allegorical character, a number of mythological and fairy-tale motives are incorporated in it. The ape himself suggests Hanumant, the companion of Rama. Yo Huang is the Lord of the Heavens. ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... (London, 1730), p. 31. Two months after Harte's Essay appeared Hill's Advice to the Poets, which complements the earlier allegory by urging Pope to shun "vulgar Genii" and emulate "Thy ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... Memoirs of Marie Mushenough VII. Hannah of the Highlands: or, The Laird of Loch Aucherlocherty VIII. Soaked in Seaweed: or, Upset in the Ocean IX. Caroline's Christmas: or, The Inexplicable Infant X. The Man in Asbestos: an Allegory of the Future ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... and Eve story is incomprehensible to me!" I observed with considerable heat one day in my early struggles with the allegory. "Why did God punish not only the guilty pair, but also the ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... interpret the play as allegory. Youth in this country has reason to regard allegory as a clumsy man's way of introducing Sunday on a weekday. It is so seldom successful that it may be called the literary method of creative minds below the first rank. Shakespeare's ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... with the tender grape give a good smell, and the time of the singing of birds has come.' There is no poetry like that old Hebrew love-song. If only it had not been hackneyed by being turned into a theological allegory! Ha, doggy, doggy! There comes a friend of ours!" suddenly laughing and hugging him as she caught sight of a large man coming up the road with a swinging gait and loose white overcoat. She broke off ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... "the eyes whence Love once took his weapons," and such-like expressions were intended primarily as references to a neglected study of theology or a previous devotion to a contemplative life. The omission, therefore, of the commentators who interested themselves mainly in the allegory to tell us about the real Beatrice cannot be used as evidence against ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... tradition than the Jacobite. There is the lesson of "Cinderella," which is the same as that of the Magnificat— EXALTAVIT HUMILES. There is the great lesson of "Beauty and the Beast"; that a thing must be loved BEFORE it is loveable. There is the terrible allegory of the "Sleeping Beauty," which tells how the human creature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep. But I am not concerned with any of the separate statutes of elfland, but ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... of Trimmers, to be represented; actuated by whose versatile, and time-serving politics, Charles gave way to each wave, but remained buoyant amid the tempest. The Rye-house plot is then presented in allegory,—an unfit subject for exultation, since the dark intrigues of the interior conspirators were made the instruments of the fall of Sidney and Russell. The return of the Duke of York, with his beautiful princess, and the rejoicings which were supposed to take place, in heaven and earth, upon ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... somewhat more respectable, attributes such things to Allegory. It was a play of poetic minds, say these theorists; a shadowing-forth, in allegorical fable, in personification and visual form, of what such poetic minds had known and felt of this Universe. Which agrees, add they, with a primary law of human nature, still everywhere observably at work, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... years after the death of Copernicus, published a work on the "Infinity of the Universe and of Worlds;" he was also the author of "Evening Conversations on Ash-Wednesday," an apology for the Copernican system, and of "The One Sole Cause of Things." To these may be added an allegory published in 1584, "The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast." He had also collected, for the use of future astronomers, all the observations he could find respecting the new star that suddenly appeared in Cassiopeia, A.D. 1572, and increased in brilliancy, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... consideration of what will certainly follow youth, and advise remembrance of the Creator before that future comes. So much is clear, but the question of the precise meaning of these verses is much too large for discussion here. The older explanation takes them for an allegory representing the decay of bodily and mental powers in old age, whilst others think that in them the advance of death is presented under the image of an approaching storm. Wright, in his valuable commentary, regards the description of the gradual waning away of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... during the night. This is likewise the foundation of stomach complaints, flatulencies, and all other symptoms of indigestion; which more frequently proceed from intemperance in eating and drinking than any other cause. The benefits arising from temperance are set in a striking light in the following allegory, which may ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... alchemists, philosophers, and mostly hard drinkers as well. Their poetry, however, is scarcely memorable. Only one great name stands between them and the poets of the T'ang dynasty — the name of T'ao Ch'ien (A.D. 365-427), whose exquisite allegory "The Peach Blossom Fountain" is quoted by Professor Giles in his 'Chinese Literature'. The philosophy of this ancient poet appears to have been that of ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... enough to be recognized, and she gave a little moan of pity. She seemed not to understand the young man's allegory, but yet to feel that it pointed to some great purpose, which must be an evil one, from being expressed in such a lawless fashion, and to perceive that Rowland was in some way accountable for it. She looked at him with a sharp, frank ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... four main sections. a) After the prelude, which Pausanias failed to find in the ancient copy engraved on lead seen by him on Mt. Helicon, comes a general exhortation to industry. It begins with the allegory of the two Strifes, who stand for wholesome Emulation and Quarrelsomeness respectively. Then by means of the Myth of Pandora the poet shows how evil and the need for work first arose, and goes on to describe the Five Ages of the World, tracing the ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... quite in keeping with all this that our knowledge of this girl of eighteen is very vague and uncertain. Some of Dante's commentators believe her to have been a figment of his brain, a woman who never lived, or an allegory of wisdom, virtue, the Church, theology, etc. But at the death of her father Beatrice again behaves like any other earthly maiden. There is a grain of truth in every one of these theories, for Dante was a great ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... few days after, anxious to learn the true meaning of this allegory, * * * I requested him to explain to me the meaning of his ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... direct and final question. And now, to avoid the traditional twenty-four hours' delay which an Indian invariably believes is due his own dignity before replying to a vitally important demand, I boldly cast precedent and custom to the four winds, and once more seized on allegory to aid me in this hour ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... natural shape of the god Sakkria, took the hare in his arms and immediately drew its figure in the moon, in order that every living thing of every part of the world might see it." [77] All will acknowledge that this is a very beautiful allegory. How many in England, as well as in Ceylon, are described by the monkey, the coot, and the fox—willing to bring their God any oblation which costs them nothing; but how few are like the hare—ready to present themselves as a living sacrifice, to be consumed ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... best works, overflowing with romantic spirit, and contrasting in this respect strangely with 'La Mouche' (1853), one of the last flickerings of his imagination. 'Maggot' (1838) bears marks of the influence of George Sand; 'Le Merle Blanc' (1842) is a sort of allegory dealing with their quarrel. 'Pierre et Camille' is a pretty but slight tale of a deaf-mute's love. His greatest work, 'Confession d'un Enfant du Siecle', crowned with acclaim by the French Academy, and classic for all time, was written in 1836, when the poet, somewhat recovered from the shock, ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... survival. Of course, of course, you have read "L'Histoire Comique des etats et des Empires de la Lune"?' I admitted, by gesture and facial expression, that I had not. Whereupon he reeled out curious extracts from that allegory—'almost as good as "Gulliver"'—with a memorable instance of the way in which the traveller to the moon was shocked by the conversation of the natives, and the natives' sense of propriety was outraged by ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... me to the pregnant meaning of the whole. The ancient mythology is in general symbolical, although not allegorical; for the two are certainly distinct. Allegory is the personification of an idea, a poetic story invented solely with such a view; but that is symbolical which, created by the imagination for other purposes, or possessing an independent reality of its own, is at the same ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... animals in Uncle SAM'S plantation, yet, from one and another cause, vast quantities of this exhilarating food have been amassed in and around the banks of Wall street—those banks where the woodbine vainly twineth, and by whoso side our allegory unhappily lies. With plenty of greenbacks, therefore, to make every one gay and festive, with the pumps hard at work to keep the stocks well watered, and with all sorts of devices to lead the Street family (and a very low but ambitious and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... intoxication. She had never been more beautiful. Her deep mourning embellished yet more her languishing and regal grace; it made her pale complexion yet more fair, and it heightened the brilliancy of her look. She had the air of a young tragic queen, or of an allegory of Night. In the evening an hour arrived when the reserve which for some time had marked their relations was forgotten. M. de Camors found himself, as in olden time, at the feet of the young Marquise—his eyes gazing into hers, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... common wits should escape; and accordingly we find, that besides the universal and acknowledged practice of copying the ancients, there has prevailed in every age a particular species of fiction. At one time all truth was conveyed in allegory; at another, nothing was seen but in a vision; at one period all the poets followed sheep, and every event produced a pastoral; at another they busied themselves wholly in giving directions ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Palestine had discarded them. And there were mutterings heard even against the Song, that beautiful remnant of the Anacreontic muse of Judaea. It was then that Akiba stepped into the breach and by bold allegory saved that precious piece of what may be called the secular literature of the ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... Eros in Eruption; and so he has given us a real epic, whose very title, Ad Astra, is symbolic of the high altitudes in which he so triumphantly and so securely navigates. Outwardly it is a story of the War, but there is little difficulty in probing the allegory; and those who follow the hero's vicissitudes as a private in the Gasoliers, right through to his victorious advancement to the rank of Acting Lance-Corporal, unpaid (and there is a symbolism even in the "unpaid"), will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... in a smiling way, give utterance to truths which seem hard and stern when spoken in grim earnest. Let us see whether we cannot find some allegory ...
— A Lecture on Physical Development, and its Relations to Mental and Spiritual Development, delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at their Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting, in Norwich, Conn • S.R. Calthrop
... poem of the Hartz mountains, containing no common allegory. Every man is more or less a Treasure-seeker—a hater of labour—until he has received the important truth, that labour alone can bring content and happiness. There is an affinity, strange as it may appear, between those whose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... ordinary discourse is interspersed with figurative expressions; and their maxims of theology and philosophy, and above all, of morals and political science, are invariably couched under the guise of allegory or parable. I need not stay to enlarge upon the universal veneration paid throughout the East to the fables of Bidpai or Pilpay, and to Lokman, who is (as may easily be shown) the Esop of the Greeks:—and it is well known that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... a fine allegory upon the implied power of society that the poet Marvell used when he said he "would not drink wine with any one to whom he could ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... she repeated, "and I have come into Noah's Ark, like the dove, with the olive-branch. I read that allegory in the Genie du Christianisme," she added, turning to Madame Guillaume; "the allusion ought to please you, cousin. Do you know," she went on, smiling at Augustine, "that Monsieur de Sommervieux is a charming ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... the emotional temperament. Chiron is impressive on the vanity of fruition (Dialogues of the Dead, 26). And the figuring of Truth as 'the shadowy creature with the indefinite complexion' (The Fisher, 16) is only one example of Lucian's felicity in allegory. ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... are allegorical, or susceptible of allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... these are stale enough: yet Ivan, in his soreness, concocted many an unlovely allegory, during those first days of his lonely exile. He had been at this useless occupation for some time on a certain afternoon in June, when all his soul seemed crying to him for a breath of country air. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... for the shallowness of his answer to Tindal, and boldly and frankly admitted that the Freethinker was right in asserting that the Jews borrowed some of their ceremonies and customs from Egypt; that allegory was, in some cases, employed in the Scriptures, where common readers took the relation for fact; and, that the Scriptures are not of "absolute and universal inspiration." The following sentence, which will be found in this "Letter" of Dr. Conyers ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... the story. But allegories are out of place in popular editions; they require linen paper, large margins, uncut edges; even these would be insufficient; only illuminated vellum can justify that which is never read. So perhaps it will be better if I abandon the allegory and tell what happened: how one day after writing the history of "Evelyn Innes" for two years I found myself short of paper, and sought vainly for a sheet in every drawer of the writing-table; every ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... much given to symbolism and allegory, as shown in apocalyptic commentaries and similar works. A very remarkable "Apocalypse" is that in the library of the Marquis d'Astorga. The latter is remarkably rich in pictures, which have been described ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... So runs the allegory. How shall it be with you? There are many Thomsons among our scholars. There may be some such among you. When you pass from the world of thought you will find yourself in the world of action. The conditions are not changed, ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... but sat awhile, appearing to follow with his eyes one of the figures, which was repeated many times over in the groups upon the walls and ceiling. It formed the principal link of an allegory, by which (as is often the case in such pictorial designs) the whole series of frescos were bound together, but which it would be impossible, or, at least, very wearisome, to unravel. The sculptor's eyes took a similar direction, and soon began to trace through the vicissitudes,—once ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the figments of fairy lore. (The metrical form employed in these poems gave its name to the Alexandrine line later so predominant in French poetry.) The volume of this quasi-epical verse, existing in its three groups, or cycles, is immense. So is that of the satire and the allegory in metre that followed. From this latter store of stock and example, Chaucer drew to supply his muse with material. The fabliaux, so called,—fables, that is, or stories,—were still another form of early ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... play was launched on November 6, 1905, at the Empire Theater in New York, that little Peter really came into his own. The human birds, the droll humor, the daring allegory, above all the appealing, almost tragic, spectacle of Peter playing his pipe up in the tree-tops of the Never-Never Land, all contributed to an event that was memorable in ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... The Pilgrim's Progress in the matter of defiance of literary canons can hardly be conceived. The allegory halts continually; it professes to be spiritual, but nothing can be more carnal than the golden splendour of the eternal city; the view of life and the world generally is flat blasphemy against the order of things ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... at a distance only; and one would have expected the poet to have given poetical consistency to his work by fully carrying out this idea of a ship's crew, and sailing to the 'Land of Fools.' It is, however, at intervals only that Brandt reminds us of the allegory; the fools who are carefully divided into classes and introduced to us in succession, instead of being ridiculed or derided, are reproved in a liberal spirit, with noble earnestness, true moral ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... animal race, presents itself to the traveller, with its slavering jaws and flashing eyes, uttering a growl, which is the usual sign of cowardice blended with impudence. "The coyote," says a recent writer, "is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always poor, out ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... in the court! Witness, you will confine yourself to a plain statement of the facts in this case, and refrain from the embellishments of metaphor and allegory as far ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... may do their worst; we can be indifferent to, or even thankful for, what slaughter they may make. In the legends of the Theogonia, in that of Zeus and Cronus, for instance, there is evidently a metaphysical allegory; in the legends of Persephone, or of the Dioscuri, a physical one; in that of Athene, a profoundly philosophical one; and fused as the entire system was in the intensely poetical conception of the early thinkers, it would be impossible, even if it were desirable, at this time of day, to disentangle ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... America. In the right hand of the statue was to be a torch; in the left hand, a scroll representing the law. What a fine conception of true liberty! It was my hope then that fifty years after the statue had been placed on its pedestal the foreign ships passing Bedloe's Island, by that allegory, should ever understand that in this country it is liberty according to law. Life, as we should live it, is strong, according to ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... allegory or not, as he pleases. It is a very good allegory; but allegory, by the due process of enchantment, becomes matter of fact; and it is pleasant to ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... nearing manhood, two women appeared to him, both offering beautiful gifts. One of the women was Duty, the other Pleasure. Hercules chose to accept the gifts of Duty and to follow her. The opportunity to make this choice did not come till he was old enough to understand. In Holmes' beautiful allegory the cubes and spheres are presented long before that time, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... approve my orthodoxy, and I had as little respect for its heterodoxy, and the upshot of it was that I quit—cold." He laughed grimly as he finished the recital. "But," he went on gravely, "I now see that it was due simply to my desire to progress beyond the acceptance of tradition and allegory as truth, and to find some better foundation upon which to build than the undemonstrable articles of faith embraced in the Westminster Confession. To me, that confession of faith had become a confession of ignorance." He turned his shrewd eyes upon Jose. "I was in somewhat the same ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... change of colour, but also with an outward pride to which she seemed suddenly to have grown. But her heart was sick and miserable. How could it be otherwise, reading, as she did, the tale just told her in a kind, of allegory, in all its warning, nakedness, and vengeance? But she detected, too, an occasional painful movement of Mrs. Falchion's lips, a kind of trouble in the face. She noticed it at first vaguely as she listened to the music in the other room; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... together in the remembrance of the line from 'King Lear,' which forms the heading of the poem." The possible allegorical signification of the poem has been the subject of much, and often of singularly futile discussion. Dr. Furnivall said he had asked Browning if it was an allegory, and in answer had on three separate occasions received an emphatic statement that it was simply a dramatic creation called forth by a line of Shakspere's. (Porter-Clarke, Study Programmes, p. 406.) Yet allegorical ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... war of independence came liberty, reform, and art. The artistic and religious traditions fell together. The nude, the nymphs, the madonnas, the saints, allegory, mythology, the ideal,—the whole ancient edifice was in ruins. The new life which animated Holland was revealed and developed in a new way. The little country, which had suddenly become so glorious and formidable, felt that it must tell its greatness. Its faculties, which had been strengthened ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... inconsiderable portion of my friend's congregation was composed of sailors and fishermen. His text was appropriate,—"He bringeth them into their desired haven;" and as his sea-craft and his theology were alike excellent, there were no incongruities in his allegory, and no defects in his mode of applying it, and the seamen were hugely delighted. John Stewart, though less a master of English than of many other things, told me he was able to follow the minister from beginning to end,—a thing he had never done ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... arranged by the parents of the respective families. The nubile age of females is from about 11 years. The parents of the young man visit those of the maiden, to approach the subject delicately in an oratorical style of allegory. The response is in like manner shrouded with mystery, and the veil is only thrown off the negotiations when it becomes evident that both parties agree. Among the poorer classes, if the young man has no goods to offer, it is frequently stipulated that ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... speculations in which he sought to banish the remembrance of his misfortunes. His life, like his poem, is an epic. We sympathize with his resentments, "which exile and poverty made perpetually fresh." "The sincerity of his early passion for Beatrice," says Hallam, "pierces through the veil of allegory which surrounds her, while the memory of his injuries pursues him into the immensity of eternal light; and even in the company of saints and angels his unforgiving spirit darkens at the name of Florence.... ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... aspiring juvenile artists or uneducated men. I allude to art favourable to the Commune, and not that coeval with it, or the vast mass of pictorial unpleasantly born of gallic rage during the Franco-Prussian war, including such designs as the horrible allegory of Bayard, "Sedan, 1870," a large work depicting Napoleon III. drawn in a caleche and four, over legions of his dying soldiers, in the presence of a victorious enemy and the shades of his forefathers', and the well-known subject, so popular in photography, of "The ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... body; and to each He passed a cup of wine, as a symbol of His poured-out blood. In this act, as in the washing of the disciples' feet on the same occasion, He made His ministrations to the needs of men's bodies an allegory of His greater ministration to the needs ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... passion of poetic love. Finally, 'Maitre Cornelius' is a study of avarice, in which is set a remarkable portrait of Louis XI.; 'Les Proscrits' is a masterly sketch of the exile of Dante at Paris; and 'Jesus-Christ en Flandre' is an exquisite allegory, the most delicate flower, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Paper, but to the Person bringing or carrying the News? Mercury also is, if I understand it, by a Transmutation of Meaning, from a God turned into a Book—From hence our Club thinks they have not fair Play, in being deny'd the Privilege of making an Allegory as well as ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... pleasure to pain is natural, so the remission of pain, particularly if it is great, becomes a source of pleasure. There is much truth, therefore, in the beautiful allegory of Socrates, who tells us, that Pleasure and Pain were sisters, who, however, met with a very different reception by mankind on their visit to the earth; the former being universally courted, while the latter was carefully avoided: on this account, Pain petitioned ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... the central theme of his song. The literary genius of Greece showed little aptitude for landscape, and seldom treated inanimate nature except as a background for human action and emotion, or it may be in the guise of mythological allegory. Nevertheless, it is hard to believe that Theocritus, so tenderly concerned with the homely aspects of human life, was not likewise sensitive to the beauties of nature. At least it is impossible to doubt ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... police. The book contains vivid pictures of the markets, bursting with the food of a great city, and of the vast population which lives by handling and distributing it. "But it also embraces a powerful allegory," writes Mr. E. A. Vizetelly in his preface to the English translation (The Fat and the Thin. London: Chatto & Windus), "the prose song of the eternal battle between the lean of this world and the fat—a battle in which, as the author shows, the latter always ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... our little Mistress Merciless and Master Sweetheart became fast friends, and the Queen of Sheba was handmaiden to them both; for the simple, loyal creature had not a mind above the artless prattle of childhood, and the strange allegory of the lame boy's speech filled her with awe, even as the innocent lisping of our little Mistress Merciless delighted her heart and came within the comprehension of her limited understanding. So each day, when it was fair, these ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... Ireland and England, being played as frequently by amateurs as by professionals in this country, but the prose play "Cathleen ni Houlihan," because of its national theme, has had more playings in Ireland. Its effect upon the stage is very different from its effect in the study. Read, it seems allegory too obvious to impress. The old woman, Cathleen ni Houlihan, with "too many strangers in the house" and with her "four beautiful green fields" taken from her, is so patently Ireland possessed by England, all four provinces, that one fails to feel the deep humanity of the sacrifices of ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... between him and his antagonists, he is believed to be utterly defeated, and is compared to an army which, having lost the battle, steals away from the pursuit of the victor only under cover of night.' (Matching allegory with allegory, I will say that the defender is not vanquished so long as he remains protected by his entrenchments; and if he risks some sortie beyond his need, it is permitted to him to withdraw within his fort, without being open to ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... appetite: and even in that, the preliminary discourse of the analyzer himself, and his conclusion, are worth more in my eye than the body of the work. For the object of that seems to be to smother all history under the mantle of allegory. If histories so unlike as those of Hercules and Jesus, can, by a fertile imagination and allegorical interpretations, be brought to the same tally, no line of distinction remains between fact and fancy. As this pithy morsel will not overburthen ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... old allegory of the gold and silver shield, about which the two knights quarrelled, each is right according to the point from which he looks: so about marriage; the question whether it is foolish or good, wise or otherwise, depends ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Down with croolty to animals," I say,' and so on. It is evident that this mode of speech is not only literary, but literary in a very ornate and almost artificial sense. Keats never put into a sonnet so many remote metaphors as a coster puts into a curse; his speech is one long allegory, ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... was: I, writing of the way And race of saints, in this our gospel day, Fell suddenly into an allegory About their journey, and the way to glory, In more than twenty things which I set down. This done, I twenty more had in my crown; And they again began to multiply, Like sparks that from the coals ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... the picture of the character and rule of the King over men to that fair vision of Paradise regained, which celebrates the universal restoration of peace between man and the animals. The picture is not to be taken as a mere allegory, as if 'lions' and 'wolves' and 'snakes' meant bad men; but it falls into line with other hints in Scripture, which trace the hostility between man and the lower creatures to sin, and shadow a future when 'the beasts of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... had recourse to insipid Allegory[18], thinking to please by a new Taste; but their Works dy'd in their Birth, and were so little read ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... which he gave the constant assent of his practice. He sought not his own. His heart yearned with pity and brotherly affection for all the poor and suffering in the universe. Of him, the angel of Leigh Hunt's beautiful allegory might have written, in the golden book of remembrance, as he did of the good Abou Ben Adhem, "He ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... parables from myths and fables; but this is laboriously to erect a fence between two flocks that in their nature manifest no tendency to intermingle; whereas, from some other forms of analogy, such as the allegory, the parable cannot be separated by a definition expressed in general terms, which shall be at once universally ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... followers of Giotto look almost as if they were his predecessors, for the simple reason that, being unable to advance, they were forced to retrograde. The limited amount of artistic realization required to present to the mind of the spectator a situation or an allegory had been obtained by Giotto himself, and bequeathed by him to his followers, who, finding it more than sufficient for their purposes, and having no incentive to further acquisition in the love of ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... cause and effect. He speaks somewhere of Byron's virtues and vices as being so closely interwoven that he could not have had one without the other, and if the objectionable passages in his poetry were expurgated, the life and genius of it would go with them. His story of "The Birth-mark" is an allegory of the same description. He did not agree with Shakspeare, that the best men are moulded out of faults, but believed that as we are in the beginning, so we remain essentially till ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... truth. Some of the most glorious works in literature were composed in prison. The prison-house at Rome has given us some of those Epistles of S. Paul which have gone far to convert the world; and the finest allegory in the English language was written in Bedford gaol. "If we suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are we." If we are the prisoners of the Lord, let us welcome the chain of trial, of sorrow, of self-denial, of persecution. ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... seed; and afterwards its successive advances to its more perfect state, or maturity; philosophers of all ages seem to have imagined, that the great world itself had likewise its infancy and its gradual progress to maturity; this seems to have given origin to the very antient and sublime allegory of Eros, or Divine Love, producing the world from the egg of Night, as it floated in Chaos. See l. 419. of ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... extraordinary abuse of analogy and comparison in their various forms (allegory, parable, etc.)—a natural consequence of a mode of thinking that proceeds by means of symbols, not concepts. It has been said, and rightly, that "the only force that makes the vast field of mysticism fruitful is analogy."[100] Bossuet, a great opponent of mystics, had already ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... and stimulating forces that were the principles of all material forms, and on the deliverance of the divine soul that was submerged in the corruption of this earthly world. In his hazy oration on the Mother of the Gods, Julian lost all notion of reality on account of his excessive use of allegory and was swept ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... young man, you have much to learn in your profession. Laws are made for lawyers, and are the tools of our trade. If the world does not see fit to use those tools, it is our business to make them, and as for justice, that is an allegory, useful in addressing a jury, but considered a fable by the judge. Laws are useful to oppose other laws with, and various decisions are only good in so far as they help your ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... a monumental aquatic composition expressing in exuberant allegory the triumph of Energy, the Lord of the Isthmian Way. It is the central sculptural feature of the South Garden, occupying the great quatrefoil pool in front of the tower. The theme is Energy, the Conqueror - the Over Lord - the Master; Energy, ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... as men are wont to suppose, but to hear celestial sounds. The eyes were not made for such grovelling uses as they are now put to and worn out by, but to behold beauty now invisible. May we not see God? Are we to be put off and amused in this life, as it were with a mere allegory? Is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is commonly taken to be the symbol merely? When the common man looks into the sky, which he has not so much profaned, he thinks it less gross than the earth, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... the new sacrifice. But we find also the idea, which is probably the earlier of the two, that the prophets and teachers, as the commissioned preachers of the word, are the priests. The hesitancy in applying this important allegory must have been brought to an end by the disappearance of the latter view. But it must have been still more important that the bishops, or bishop, in taking over the functions of the old [Greek: lalountes ton logon], who were not ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... translation may be found in "Egypt's Place in Universal History," by Bunsen (second edition), and specimens in almost every museum of Europe. There are other theological remains, such as the Metamorphoses of the gods and the Lament of Isis, but their meaning is disguised in allegory. The hymns and addresses to the sun abound in ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... cannot "make an allegory go on all fours," it must to a certain degree be obscure and shadowy, like the images which the traveller in the desert sees mirrored on the heavens, wherein he can trace but a dreamy resemblance ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... merely in that grave department of learning in which it comes to us professionally as philosophy, but in that not less important department of learning in which it comes to us in the disguise of amusement,—in the form of fable and allegory and parable,—the proposition is, that this Elizabethan philosophy is, in these two forms of it,—not two philosophies,—not two Elizabethan philosophies, not two new and wondrous philosophies of nature and practice, not two new Inductive philosophies, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... begins to knit his brows; Shakib shakes his head, biting his nether lip; and here and there in the audience is heard a murmur about retrogression and reaction. Khalid proceeds with his allegory of the Muleteer ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... verses, composed by himself or Lurya, and set to sad, haunting melodies yearning with mystic passion. And in these songs the womanhood he had rejected came back in amorous strains that recalled the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's, and seemed to his disciples to veil as deep an allegory:— ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Church legends of saints and martyrs versified, fit certainly to make any other form of martyrdom seem amiable to those who heard them, and to suggest palliative thoughts about Diocletian. Finally, there were the romances of Arthur and his knights, which later, by means of allegory, contrived to be both entertaining and edifying; every one who listened to them paying the minstrel his money, and having his choice whether he would take them as song or sermon. In the heroes of some of these certain Christian virtues were typified, and around a few of ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell |
