"Characterize" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... distance of only a few fathoms. Besides the captain, there were several well-dressed personages on board, who appeared to take an interest in the cargo, and lived in the cabin. But harmony did not characterize their intercourse with each other. At times violent altercations occurred, which, being carried on in the Spanish language, were to us ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... written in somewhat of the spirit which will characterize a History, by an Indian, yet it does not deserve to be called Indian partiality, but only justice and the spirit of humanity; or, if I may be allowed to say it, the spirit with which any christian should be able to consider the character and deeds of his foe. I would not detract from the virtues ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... leaves and sharp branches of the olive carry out the defined outlines which are everywhere observable through the broader beauties of mountain and valley and sea-shore. Serenity and intelligence characterize this southern landscape, in which a race of splendid men and women lived beneath the pure light of Phoebus, their ancestral god. Pallas protected them, and golden Aphrodite favored them with beauty. Olives are not, however, by any means the only trees which play ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... laurels, for here is one who is destined successfully to enter an honorable contest for the possession of the very highest honors. Unity of design, and warmth as well as vividness of light, positive atmosphere, characterize the works of this artist, and render each one a satisfactorily completed poem. No. 226, 'South Mountain, Catskills,' presents a view doubtless well known to many of our readers. The far-away horizon, the winding Hudson with its tiny ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in the kind of vibration. There are three things which characterize sounds; namely, pitch, intensity and character. Pitch depends on the rapidity of the vibrations; intensity on the extent or the amplitude of the vibrations; and character on the substance or instrument producing them. To illustrate: When you sing a very high note ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... took the letter up, a sensation so faint, so ethereal that it is hard to describe or characterize it, but which most of us have felt at least once, came over him, or rather came about him, as if something from ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... coming of the great human Beethoven rather than the ethereal, divinely beautiful Mozart. Suavity, smoothness, piquancy, perfect balance between section and section, and each movement and the other movements—these characterize all the later quartets. They were intended for chamber use only—to play them in a large hall is criminal—and it almost goes without saying that, after the hot stuff of Beethoven and even Schubert, more than a couple of them in an ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... of your conversation, and I can only characterize it as—petty. Can't you and your friends see anything without springing at shilling-shocker conclusions? Don't you know that people sometimes enjoy themselves without any further design? So much ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... for one familiar with the South America of to-day to realize the New Granada of the Spanish colonial period. From Guiana westward along the northern coast was an extensive and, for the most part, unexploited stretch of territory, devoid of such arbitrary boundaries as characterize it to-day, and limited only on the north and west by the sea, and on the south by the Portuguese colony of Brazil and the great Spanish territory of Peru. Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador, and the sharply defined limits these names represent, are, of course, ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... dignity, should be subject to a frequent recurrence of duty—not in itself particularly irksome-than that an important post—the nucleus of the future prosperity of the State—should be perilled by the absence of that vigilance which ought to characterize the soldier. If he allowed to be retrenched, or indeed left unemployed, any of that military exhibition, which tends to impress upon the many the moral superiority of the few, where, he argued, would be their safety in the hour of need; and if those duties ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... knows Frederica Bremer intimately. He added an element of gentleness and softness to the material furnished by our cast-iron "man of facts" and our acrid poet, that was very agreeable. In speaking of Arnold, I was ineffably amused at hearing Mrs. Grote characterize him as a "very weak man," which struck me as very funny. The Esprit Forte, however, I take it, merely referred to his belief in the immortality of the soul, the existence of a God, and a few other similar "superstitions." They seemed ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... country, that we were approaching the regions of rain, herbage and shrubs increasing on every side. The country also assumed a more even, though an undulating surface; and I lost sight of those low, dull, dreary, and monotonous ridges which characterize the desolations, of the African Wilderness. However, I expected to see the eastern terminations of the Tripoline Atlas. Continuing our six days' route, now west, now north-west, now north, and now north-east ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... discomfort to herself, and a little inclined to exact the heroism she was ready to show. She had a child's severe morality, and she had hardly learned to understand that there is much evil in the world that does not characterize the perpetrators: she held herself as strictly to account for every word and deed as she held others, and she had an almost passionate desire to meet the consequence of her errors; till that was felt, an intolerable doom hung over her. She tried not to be impulsive; that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... vacant stare, as if their eyes were fixed upon objects beyond the limit of vision. The expression referred to, which is not at all times equally pronounced, never altogether leaves the eyes which it seems to characterize." ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... it unworthy of notice; but it is received and uttered again as genuine at this day by grave and learned Protestant theologians of Germany, and notwithstanding the solidity and good sense which characterize his "Notes" generally, is formally reproduced in its boldest ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... yet in general they are the most prevalent type we have. They are punishable by death—even those that you would characterize as comparatively slight offenses. It is significant too, that, in judging these crimes, but little evidence is required. A slight chain of proven circumstances and the word of the woman is all ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... general of the class of early cabbages, that most of them have elongated heads between ovoid and conical in form. They appear to lack in this country the sweetness and tenderness that characterize some varieties of our drumhead, and, consequently, in the North when the drumhead enters the market there is but ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... editor, and closed with the offer: this gave him an annual salary of L300, besides the separate payments for any articles that he wrote. The Song of the Shirt, which it would be futile to praise or even to characterize, came out, anonymously of course, in the Christmas number of Punch for 1843: it ran like wildfire, and rang like a tocsin, through the land. Immediately afterwards, in January 1844, Hood's connection with the New Monthly closed, and he started a publication ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... a synonym of habit and of usage, of convention and tradition, but also of fashion, propriety, practise, and the like. Those words which characterize the habitual are usually regarded as having essentially unequivocal meanings. The truth is that language, careless of the more fundamental distinctions, confuses widely different connotations. For example, I find that custom—to return to this most ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... English House of Commons, whether the aggression was on the part of this country or of France? or whether the manifest aggression on the part of France was the result of anything but the principles which characterize the French revolution? ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... style of doing things in that accomplished city. Supposing you have a business, we naturally admire you as a business man, in proportion to your ingenuity in developing that business, and your energy in prosecuting it. Now this genius for business seems to characterize all grades of society in St. Louis,—even so far down as to the "City Dog-Killer." This talented functionary so developed his art, that he is able to kill the same dog a great many times—at an average profit of twenty-five ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... found an untranslatable word to characterize the prayers of Jesus, it compares the conflict which preceded the voluntary immolation of Christ to the death-struggle: Factus in agonia.[6] We might say of his life that it had been a long temptation, a struggle, ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... in their loftier, but in their lesser manifestations. They are the side scenes and the background of a story that has yet to be written. That story will have the interest not only of the collision of private passions and efforts, but of the great ideas and principles which characterize and animate a nation. It will discriminate between what is accidental and what is permanent, between what is realistic and what is real, between what is sentimental and what is sentiment. It will show us not only what we are, but what we are to be; not only what ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... and the convex aspect of the bent pasterns and fetlocks will look toward that flank in which lie the head and shoulders. On examination still higher the smooth, even outline of the knee and its bend, looking toward the hind parts, characterize the fore limb, while the sharp prominence of the point of the hock and the bend on the opposite side of the joint, looking toward the head, indicate the hind limb. (Pl. XVII, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... of future enjoyment; dress, ornament, and society waved their fascinating wings over her path. Unacquainted with their shadowy pleasures, her preparations for her nuptials were a dream of joy, too soon to be blasted with the realities of suffering that characterize the union not blessed by Heaven. Amid the music and flowers, amid the congratulations of a thousand admiring friends, with heart and step as light as childhood, Madeleine, like victims, dressed in ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... in the sweet little town of Drumsna. It was by the beautiful waters of this noble river that they first felt that impassioned glow that colors all the after life of man or woman, and which is as different from the feelings that characterize early boy or girlhood, as the noon-day solar blaze is from the cold and placid beams of the pale new moon. There is one point at which the true passion of love, in all great hearts, leaps into fierce and instantaneous existence. There may be many imperceptible approaches ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... features that characterize the plays of Plautus include both his consciously employed means of producing his comic effects, and the peculiarities and abnormalities that evidence his attitude of mind in writing them. We should make bold ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... constant menace to the peace of a community which looked with peculiar jealousy upon the colored man in his new estate. This might have been endured with no evil results had their prosperity been attended with that humility which should characterize a race so lately lifted from servitude to liberty. It was the "impudent" assertion of their "rights" that so aggravated and enraged the people among whom they dwelt. It was not so much the fact of their having valuable ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... most startling to the sectarian world—a world in which according to popular belief no new revelation of truth was possible. It is a surprising fact that while growth, progress, advancement, development of known truths and the acquisition of new ones, characterize every living science, the sectarian world has declared that nothing new must be expected as direct revelation ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... avoiding criticism. I have endeavored to follow, so far as was in my power, the example of the illustrious Reporter of the Constitutional Convention of 1787; and while my notes lack the beauty and felicity which characterize his, I trust they are not less full and accurate. I submit them to the country as the best contribution which I can make to its history, at a most important and interesting period of our ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... that the Savior had such practises in mind, when, warning the disciples of the false claims to sanctity that would characterize the times then soon to follow, He said: "Wherefore if they shall say unto you. Behold he [Christ] is in the desert, go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... with that felicitous simplicity and elegance of diction which characterize all Mr. Woodworth's efforts for the ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... this conception, such as here referred to, looked forward to an earthly kingdom, identified with that of the past when this was vigorous in the national mythology. Material success and the utmost physical comfort were to characterize it. It was usually to be a national apotheosis, and was not generally supposed to include the human race, though traces of this wider view might easily be quoted from Avestan, Roman, and Israelitic sources. Those ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... added to the "Historic Documents" the letters exchanged on this occasion between M. de Chateaubriand, M. Decazes, and the Chancellor Dambray, which characterize strongly the event and the ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... peculiarly cultivated by himself, and is an indirect apology for his own choice of them. For 1. vitae monstrata via est, is the character of his Sermones. And 2. all the rest of his Odes"—"I must add, the very terms of the Apology so expressly define and characterize Lyrick Poetry, that it is something strange, it should have escaped vulgar notice." There is much ingenuity in this interpretation, and it is supported, with much learning and ability; yet I cannot think that Horace meant to conclude this fine encomium, on the dignity ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... winter's day was unbroken. From the west high above the reach of the heaviest gun, and almost beyond the carry of the rifle, came the long-expected vanguard of the migrating hosts of heaven. Flock upon flock, each in the wedge-shaped phalanx of two converging lines, which ever characterize the flight of these birds, each headed by a wary, powerful leader, whose clarion call came shrill and clear down through the still ether, came in one common line of flight, hundreds and thousands ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... is real; it is, at least, an experience; but when he contrasts real and apparent he means something more than this. Experiences are not relegated to this class or to that merely at random, but the final decision is the outcome of a long experience of the differences which characterize different individual experiences and is an expression of the relations which are observed to hold between them. Certain experiences are accepted as signs, and certain others come to take the more dignified position of ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... the sense indicated by your tone. But your silly dreams and hopes, as you characterize them, have taken a stronger hold upon you than you realize. You are disappointed as well as angry. You have entertained the thought that he might do something, or become more in harmony with the last words he spoke ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... subjects, where physical qualities are comparatively indifferent and of no account, were forced upon the artist by Christianity.[71] Humility and charity may be found alike in blooming youth or in ascetic age; nor is it possible to characterize saints and martyrs by those corporeal characteristics which distinguish a runner from a boxer, or a chaste huntress from a voluptuous queen of love. Italian sculpture abandoned the presentation of the naked human body as useless. The emotions written on the face became of more importance than ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... characterize the penetrative imagination, 'which analyzes and realizes truths discoverable by no other faculty.' Of this faculty Shakspeare is also master. Ruskin, from whom we continue to quote, says: It never stops at crusts or ashes, or outward images ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... mercury; and so far as the observations may be considered valuable for elucidating the connexion of atmospheric waves with rotatory storms (other motives being balanced), it might be desirable to keep the ship near the margin—provided she is not carried beyond the influence of the winds which characterize the latter half of the storm—until the barometer has nearly attained its usual elevation. By this means some notion might be formed of the general direction of the line of barometric pressure preceding or succeeding ...
— The Hurricane Guide - Being An Attempt To Connect The Rotary Gale Or Revolving - Storm With Atmospheric Waves. • William Radcliff Birt
... those myriad external circumstances on which Lamarck so strongly insisted; but the work of these factors is, in his eyes, only accessory and wholly secondary in the economy of nature; and in any case it is far from explaining the definite direction and the transcendent harmony which characterize evolution, both in its totality and in ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... reader, were my humble parents, under whose untaught, but natural genius, setting all other advantages aside, it is not to be wondered at that my heart should have been so completely moulded into that spirit and, those feelings which characterize my ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... and a few emeralds one may acquire an eye for the differences of color that characterize the two stones, but it is still necessary to beware of the fine glass imitation and to use the file and also to look with a high-power glass for any rounding bubbles. The emerald will never have the latter. The glass imitation frequently does have them. The sharp jagged flaws and cracks that so often ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... comprehensiveness of our thought, whether we are asleep or awake, no doubt depends largely upon our idiosyncrasies, constitution, habits, and mental capacity. But whatever may be the nature of our dreams, the mental processes that characterize them are analogous to those which go on when the mind is not held to attention by ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... for the future? Here is his answer, in a psalm which has been with considerable appropriateness regarded as a kind of manifesto of the principles which he intended should characterize his reign (Psa. ci.): "I will walk within my house with a perfect heart. I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes." For himself, he begins his reign with noble self-restraint, not meaning to ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... which characterized the age of Elizabeth. There was no open break with social traditions; no open revolt against the social subordination of class to class. But within these forms of the older world beat for the first time the spirit which was to characterize the new. The meanest peasant felt himself ennobled as a child of God. The proudest noble recognized a spiritual equality in the poorest "saint." The great social revolution of the Civil Wars and the Protectorate was already felt in the demeanour of English gentlemen. ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... no doubt whatever that some of the gentry who swear at large about the evils of missionaries would have been loud in their disgust at the entire absence of drink and debauchery, and the prevalence of what they would doubtless characterize as adjective hypocrisy on the part of the natives; but no decent man could help rejoicing at the peace, the security, and friendliness manifested on every hand, nor help awarding unstinted praise to whoever had been the means ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... "interfering with the best interests of the party"—not only has he "displayed such a want of judgment, candour, and decision;" but he has also shown, in addition to these and many other shortcomings, "such an entire absence of any and every quality which should characterize him as its leader, as has led to the conviction in my own mind that under his leadership the expedition will be attended by the ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... preliminary way, notice how radically the public speaker's use of narrative differs from that of the story-writer in the more limited scope, absence of extended dialogue and character drawing, and freedom from elaboration of detail, which characterize platform narrative. On the other hand, there are several similarities of method: the frequent combination of narration with exposition, description, argumentation, and pleading; the care exercised in the arrangement ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... office of the Prefect, but it is far more elaborate, and the machinery much more complex, in Prussia. Thirdly the comparative independence of the executive from the deliberative authority, and the predominance of the officials, which characterize the central government of Prussia, repeat themselves throughout the whole of local government. And, finally, in all except the (p. 268) largest of the Prussian areas of local self-government, the executive agents of the locality, elected by ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... the soil in the river bottom near Fort Hall, which will be of assistance in enabling you to form some correct idea of its general character in the neighboring country. I characterize it as good land, but the analysis will ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... the people who know. The more we understand the vast interior of China and the conservatism and peculiarities of character of the people of that interior, the less disposed shall we be to jest, the less disposed to ridicule, what I would characterize as the strongest and most deadly of the hidden menaces of the ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... Nina's winter or of her Italian experiences. He returned to his hotel at about five o'clock, and was striding directly toward the smoking-room without glancing to right or left among the attractive groups that characterize the tea hour at the Excelsior, when he was arrested by some one's calling, "Why, ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... cheek, the sad lips, the small eyes—these are accessory to the whole impression, the melancholy ornaments of the tragic scene. Her fine instinct avoids the romantic and melodramatic touches which, however seductive to an actor who aims at effect, would destroy at once that breadth and unity which characterize her best impersonations. Wherever the idea of fate inspires the tragedy, or can properly be introduced as the motive, there Rachel is unsurpassed and unapproachable. Her stillness, her solemnity, her intensity; the want of mouthing, of ranting, of all extravagance; the slight ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... could distinguish the shores of France, which differ entirely from those of England, rising gradually from the water's edge, with the single exception of Scales Cliff, which seems to correspond with some of those bulwarks which characterize our coast from Dover to Portland, where, I think, chalk cliffs are succeeded by masses of rock and ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... which to some extent still hold good, or did so till lately, we see that the main features of the midsummer fire-festival resemble those which we have found to characterize the vernal festivals of fire. The similarity of the two sets of ceremonies will plainly appear from the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... his acquaintance doubtless would set him down as a very domineering youth; some might even call him a bully, but they would change their minds eventually if the acquaintance continued. Perhaps the best way one could judge Cub, without being Cub himself, would be to characterize him as being fond of playing the bully just for fun. Indeed, it is quite probable that Cub carried a perpetual ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... If we may characterize scriptural mysticism, it seems very much akin to mental abilities which we meet frequently in our ordinary intercourse. Take, for example, the prescience of a skilled business man. Nothing is more inadequate than the rules for success laid down by many a man who has himself ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... human qualities which characterize our thoroughly domesticated dogs, we must not fail to take account of their sense of property. In this the creature differs from all other of our domesticated animals. It is a common characteristic of mammals, both in their wild and tame state, that they feel a motive of ownership ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... the period may piece together, from no other sources than Mr. Howells's writings, an unrivaled picture of our book-making during more than sixty years. All that the present historian can attempt is to sketch with bungling fingers a few men and a few tendencies which seem to characterize the age. ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... stranger. Only gross differences of size or color are perceived by an outsider in a flock of sheep, each of which is perfectly individualized to the shepherd. A diffusive blur and an indiscriminately shifting suction characterize what we do not understand. The problem of the acquisition of meaning by things, or (stated in another way) of forming habits of simple apprehension, is thus the problem of introducing (1) definiteness and distinction and (2) consistency or stability ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... been fully revised, I shall feel myself entitled to ask for a more determinate adjudication on their claims as works of art. At present, I feel authorized to make haughtier pretensions in right of their conception than I shall venture to do, under the peril of being supposed to characterize their execution. Two remarks only I shall address to the equity of my reader. First, I desire to remind him of the perilous difficulty besieging all attempts to clothe in words the visionary scenes derived from the world of dreams, where a single false note, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... bibliographic value except in so far as it touches the condition of New Mexico at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The documents in the New Mexican and Mexican archives up to the date of the American occupancy present features similar to those that characterize the Spanish documents of the eighteenth century. It would be too tedious to refer to them in detail, and I therefore dismiss them for the present with this brief mention. If I do not mention here the literature ...
— Documentary History of the Rio Grande Pueblos of New Mexico; I. Bibliographic Introduction • Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier
... esthetics;—such the ideas of God, the soul, and immortality, which rule in the domains of religion, and determine man a religious being. These constitute the identity of human nature under all circumstances; these characterize humanity in all conditions. Like permanent germs in vegetable life, always producing the same species of plants; or like fundamental types in the animal kingdom, securing the same homologous structures in all classes and orders; so these fundamental ideas in human nature constitute ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... actually passed, except as to a few general points which the historian has followed out into deductions and illustrations, thus dramatizing the given situation in a powerful and characteristic manner." Those very words might characterize Shakespeare's account of the assassination of Julius Caesar, and his reproduction of the speeches of Brutus and Mark Antony. Compare the relation in Plutarch with the third act of the tragedy, and see how, in his amplification of the story, Shakespeare has remained ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... liturgy of Geneva, composed with rapidity under the pressure of the times, but with the skill and fine literary finish that are wont to characterize even the most hurried of Calvin's productions, has maintained its position undisputed to the present time, being the oldest of existing forms of worship in the reformed churches. The gradual change in the French language since the date of its composition has rendered ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... powers, he looked no higher than the profession of his father—could be taught to read, write, and figure. If, however, there awakened within him during the process, the stirrings of those impulses which characterize the superior mind, he could remove to his proper place—the central school—mayhap, in country districts, some two or three miles away; but when the intellectual impulses are genuine, two or three miles in such cases are ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... houses that had been built by their handful of isolated inhabitants seemed likely rather to decay from neglect and desertion than to increase, and ultimately to be swept away by fire, to make room for the extravagant and gigantic buildings that to-day characterize American civilization and commercial prosperity. Nearly 1,000 miles from the Atlantic, a greater distance from the Gulf of Mexico, and 2,000 miles from the Pacific, no wilder dream could have been imagined fifty ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... on the speculative constructions are enormous and have constituted the chief source of the phenomenal fortunes piled up by our railroad millionaires within the last twenty years. It is no exaggeration to characterize these transactions as direct frauds upon the public. They may not be such in a sense recognized by the law, for legislation has strangely neglected to provide against their perpetration; but morally they are nothing less, for they are essentially ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... interest illustrative of this. We are afraid to state some of the estimates which have been given of the number of women in this country who suffer from these maladies; nor do we intend to give in detail the long train of symptoms which characterize them. Such a sad rehearsal would avail little or nothing to the non-medical reader. It is enough to say, that the woman who finds herself afflicted by manifold aches and pains, without obvious cause; who suffers with her head and her stomach and her nerves; who discovers that, in spite ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... themselves,—and so look at you with a wretched mixture of self-consciousness, awkwardness, and attempts to carry off both, which are betrayed by the cowardly behaviour of the eye and the tell-tale weakness of the lips that characterize these unfortunate beings. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... tympanic bullae of the specimens from Padre Island were commented upon by Nelson (op. cit.:149) who found smallness of bullae to characterize many of the specimens from the eastern part of the geographic range of L. c. merriami. In the northeastern part of the geographic range of L. c. merriami, as Nelson pointed out, the small size of the ...
— Mammals Obtained by Dr. Curt von Wedel from the Barrier Beach of Tamaulipas, Mexico • E. Raymond Hall
... excesses into which the highest and most honoured in that communion have been betrayed. On the present Pope's encyclical letter [A.D. 1840] we have already observed; and in this place I propose to examine only one more of those many excesses meeting us on every side, which characterize the public worship of the Virgin. The instance to which I refer seems to take a sort of middle station between the authorized enjoined services of the Church of Rome, and the devotions of individuals and family worship. ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... Beethoven expressed his thanks to the officiating priest with heartiness. After he had left the room Beethoven said to his friends: "Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est," the phrase with which antique dramas were concluded. From this fact the statement has been made that Beethoven wished to characterize the sacrament of extreme unction as a comedy. This is contradicted, however, by his conduct during its administration. It is more probable that he wished to designate his life as a drama; in this sense, at any rate, the words were accepted ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... main proof of his excellence that he can be so inadequately sampled by detached passages, by single lines taken away from the connection in which they contribute to the general effect. He has that continuity of thought, that evenly prolonged power, and that delightful equanimity, which characterize the higher orders of mind. There is something in him of the disinterestedness that made the Greeks masters in art. His phrase is never importunate. His simplicity is that of elegance, not of poverty. The ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... seem quite so much at home in Latin poetry as on the playground. He pronounced the Latin words in flagrant violation of all the rules of quantity, and when he came to give the English meaning, his translation was a ludicrous farrago of nonsense. Yet, poor Mr. Crabb did not dare, apparently, to characterize it ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... from a consultation with those whom the journals characterize as 'princes of science.' For a quarter of an hour I have had to listen to the most contradictory opinions. On one point, however, all agreed: that my patient was a dead man. Finally they compromised and decided that the poor wretch's torture should be needlessly prolonged ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... of this essay has attempted to make, as he himself phrases it, "a modest contribution to the natural history of Weltschmerz." What goes by that name is no doubt somewhat elusive; one can not easily delimit and characterize it with scientific accuracy. Nevertheless the word corresponds to a fairly definite range of psychical reactions which are of great interest in modern poetry, especially German poetry. The phenomenon is worth studying ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... different meaning to the same word; and in few instances has this been more striking than in disputes concerning the present subject. If a man chooses to call every composition a poem which is rhyme, or measure, or both, I must leave his opinion uncontroverted. The distinction is at least competent to characterize the writer's intention. If it were subjoined that the whole is likewise entertaining or affecting, as a tale, or as a series of interesting reflections, I of course admit this as another fit ingredient of a poem, and an additional merit. But if the definition sought for be that of a legitimate ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... I have had no difficulty in selecting material of real interest. Most of these tales were collected by Breton folk-lorists in the eighties of the last century, and the native shrewdness and common sense which characterize much of the editors' comments upon the stories so carefully gathered from peasants and fishermen ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... Small Corvus discribed at Fort Clatsop is a different Species, tho untill now I had taken it to be the Same, this is much larger and has a loud squaling note something like the newing of a Cat. the beak of this bird is 11/2 inches long, is proportionably large, black and of the form which characterize this genus. the upper exeeds the under Chap a little. the head and neck are also propotionably large, the eyes full and reather prominant, the iris dark brown and purple black. it is about the Size and Some what the form of the jay bird, tho reather rounder and more full in the body. the ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... if it continues as at present, will add still further variety to the somewhat different observances of the day which now characterize the territory ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... the numerous differences in form and function which characterize sex among the higher animals, all the so-called 'secondary sexual characters,' affecting even the highest mental qualities of mankind, are nothing but adaptations to bring about the union of the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... justified the preference. Minnetaunka—let us keep the old name which the child seemed to love so well—about twenty-five miles long, is full of islands kept in perfect order. Their natural beauties are developed with the taste and skill that characterize the American nation, by the inhabitants of the beautiful villas scattered along its shores. Tiny yachts and skiffs lay at anchor, or, with all sails set, skimmed the glistening water, bearing, no doubt, pleasure-parties from the pretty villa hotels, ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... ultimate success or failure, occupied detachments of the opposing Indian forces with considerable frequency.[776] Two, devised by Cooper, those of the fourteenth[777] and twentieth[778] of May may be said to characterize the entire ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... held a Roman Catholic Service called the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified followed by the ceremony of Creeping to the Cross was true. When Majendie departed, the Lima Street Missioner jumped a long way forward in one leap. There were many other practices which he (the Bishop) could only characterize as highly objectionable and quite contrary to the spirit of the Church of England, and would Mr. Lidderdale pay him a visit at Fulham Palace as soon as possible. Lidderdale went, and he argued with the Bishop until the Chaplain ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... being fully revealed, the function of the Inductive Principle as a guide to fundamental bases, will be at an end, and the Deductive Method once more assume the leadership, opening to us all departments of investigation, with the rapidity, precision, and certainty which characterize Mathematical ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... easy to characterize Sitting Bull, of all Sioux chiefs most generally known to the American people. There are few to whom his name is not familiar, and still fewer who have learned to connect it with anything more than the conventional notion of a bloodthirsty ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... General," says Tempelhof, "would such a notion of besieging Dresden have occurred; or if it had suggested itself, the hideous difficulties would at once have banished it again, or left it only as a pious wish. But it is strokes of this kind that characterize the great man. Often enough they have succeeded, been decisive of great campaigns and wars, and become splendid in the eyes of all mankind; sometimes, as in this case, they have only deserved to succeed, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... arbitrators act in fact as advocates. As a consequence the neutral arbitrators are decidedly hampered in giving full and free expression to their views, and there is not that frank exchange of opinion which should characterize the conference of judges. It has generally resulted in a compromise, in which the nation in the wrong gains a measure of benefit and the nation in the right is deprived of a part of the remedy to which it is entitled. In fact an arbitration award is more of a political ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... for their special qualifications in connection with the texts to be issued under their individual supervision, but familiarity with the practical needs of the classroom, no less than sound scholarship, will characterize the editing of every book ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... my letter to Aunt Carola, and sought for some fitting expression that should characterize for her with sufficient severity the new type of deliberately worthless negro; and as I sought, my eyes wandered to the garden next door, the garden of the Cornerlys. On a bench near a shady arrangement ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... younger branches of the family had followed the same evil profession, and taken foreign pay—chiefly from poverty and prejudice combined, but not a little in some cases from the inborn love of fighting that seems to characterize the Celt. The last soldier of them had served the East India Company both by sea and land: tradition more than hinted that he had chiefly served himself. Since then the heads of the house had been ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... settled upon an entirely new idea of God's revelation to the world. Old faiths have been worked over and over; colonies have been built upon those tenets, but never before have any results comparable to those which characterize that of the Mormon faith been attained, in founding a community, based as it is ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... other, not in this volume, are all the spoil I brought out from the centre of Africa, where, really, I had no sort of business. More ambitious in its scope and longer in the telling, Heart of Darkness is quite as authentic in fundamentals as Youth. It is, obviously, written in another mood. I won't characterize the mood precisely, but anybody can see that it is anything but the mood of wistful regret, of ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... just law. The Queen's government had shown itself fit to cope with the situation, and for them to usurp its powers was to step backward into the night out of which they had come. Further, no lighter word than "criminal" could characterize such conduct. And yet further, he promised them, in set, sober terms, if anything serious were the outcome, to take an active part in the prosecution of every one of them. At the conclusion of his speech he made a motion to hold the prisoner for the ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... of the rabbit and the frog; especially in regard to the attachment of the jaw apparatus to the cranium, and other points which distinctly characterize the higher as ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... arrest Nick Ellhorn was released on bail. He came out thoroughly sobered, and when he learned what had been the result of his drunken trick his vocabulary of abusive epithets ran dry in his effort to characterize ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... capped the climax with what I must cold-bloodedly characterize as the baldest attempt at a dirty fraud I ever encountered. And they had the gall to try and make me a party to it. To make this clear you must understand that I, on behalf of the company and acting as the company's agent, grubstaked Whitey Lewis and four others to go in and stake those claims. ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... remote past, and have for a hundred generations followed modes of life becoming ever more unlike, there exist still greater emotional contrasts; may we not infer that the more or less distinct emotions which characterize civilized races, are the organized results of certain daily-repeated combinations of mental states which social life involves? Must we not say that habits not only modify emotions in the individual, and not only beget tendencies to like habits and ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... Elegant Furnishings of an Athenian Home.—These houses, even owned by the lordly rich, are surprisingly simple in their furnishings. The accumulation of heavy furniture, wall decorations, and bric-a-brac which will characterize the dwellings of a later age, would be utterly offensive to an Athenian—contradicting all his ideas of harmony and "moderation." The Athenian house lacks of course bookcases and framed pictures. It probably ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... is one. Though we arbitrarily divide Nature's objects for study, they are indissolubly bound together and every part carries in some part of its constitution some well defined marks which characterize the other parts with which it has no immediate connection. To illustrate: the absolutely pure sapphire, pure aluminic oxide, crystallized, is commonly colorless, but we know that Nature's most beautiful sapphires ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... the whole, we think it a piece of justice to the two gentlemen to declare that, after they met, their conduct was strongly marked with all the politeness, generosity, coolness, and firmness, that ought to characterize a transaction of ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... but the plausible arguments and ingenious sophistries by which it has been defended shrink with shame from the facts without exaggeration, the principles without compromise, the exposures without indelicacy, and the irrepressible glow of hearty feeling—O, how true to nature!—which characterize Mrs. Stowe's immortal book. Yet I feel assured that the effect produced by Uncle Tom's Cabin is not mainly or chiefly to be traced to the interest of the narrative, however captivating, nor to the exposures ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... circumstance, however, that interfered slightly with their enjoyment of that perfect freedom from care which ought to characterize a honeymoon. The people who owned the house and occupied the lower floor had rented the upper part to Mrs. Braboy in person, it never occurring to them that her husband could be other than a white man. When it became known that he was colored, the landlord, Mr. Dennis O'Flaherty, felt that he had ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... nothing—you must know what you are portraying. Velasquez had become acquainted with humanity, and gotten on intimate terms with life. He had haunted the waysides and markets to good purpose; he had laid the foundation of those qualities which characterize his best work: mastery of expression, penetration into character, the ability to look upon a face and read the thoughts that lurk behind, the crouching passions, and all the aspirations too great for speech. To picture great men you must be ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... put on, we shall presently see. Even now it is safe to assume that no more such granite prisons as the 'Revere' or the 'Astor' will be built for hotels. Lightness, variety, and vivacity will more probably characterize this style. ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... structure, and the style of the great masters in language must lead to a discriminating taste for literature; and the effect upon the pupil's own habits of thought and expression will necessarily be to lift him above the insipid, commonplace matter and language that characterize much of ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... the middle ages, especially in France and Spain, and of which we have a doughty exemplar in the Morte D'Arthur, which dates nearly a century before Shakspere's day. Loose construction and no attempt to deal with the close eye of observation, characterize these earlier romances, which were in the main conglomerates of story using the double appeal of love ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... and was published in 1735, with London on the title page, though, according to Boswell, it was printed at Birmingham. In the preface and dedication, the elegant structure of the sentences, and the harmony of their cadence, are such as characterize his maturer works. Here we may adopt the words of Mr. Murphy, and affirm that "we see the infant Hercules." In the merely translated parts, no vestige of the translator's own style appears. For Burke's opinion on the work, see Boswell's Life of Johnson, i.; and for Johnson's own, see ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... attitudes of the head are modifications of these. These nine attitudes characterize states, that is, sentiments, but sentiments which are fugitive. Either of these attitudes may be affected until it becomes habitual. But there are movements which cannot be habitually affected, which can only modify types and attitudes of the inflections of the head. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... stage is remarkably shown in the course of the arteries which become greatly altered, as foetus advances in life and assumes the widely different course and number which characterize full-grown fish and mammals. How wonderful that in egg, in water or air, or in womb of mother, artery{159} should run ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... and called her Mona. It brought back to me not only every expression of Mona's marvelous voice, but also every feature and every grace which had formerly so bewitched me. If I had loved her passionately when we were together in the body, it would be difficult to characterize my feelings now that she was present only in memory. These sensations swept over me rapidly, but before I could utter a ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... Delicacy and brilliancy characterize nearly all the California flowers, and nearly all are so strange, so different from the other members of their families, that they would be an ornament to any greenhouse. The alfileria, for instance, is the richest and strongest fodder in the world. ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... papers. Charles Hamilton was a large, dark man, remarkably good-looking in a boyish, clean-shaven, typically American, businesslike fashion. Still short of the thirties, he had nevertheless formed those habits of urgent industry that characterize the successful in the metropolis. Already, he had become enslaved by the business man's worst habit—that most dangerous to domestic happiness—the taking of mutual love between him and his wife as something conceded once for all, not requiring exhibition or culture or protection ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... Polehampton's opinion of you is justifiable. You will excuse my mentioning to you, as it is all for your own good, Miss Colwyn, that Miss Polehampton found in you some little weakness of temper, some want of the submissiveness and good sense which ought to characterize an under-teacher's demeanor. I have great confidence ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... represent a body absolutely perfect. As little do two lines constitute a figure demonstratively perfect. But three lines form, by their junction, the TRIANGLE, or the first figure regularly perfect; and this is why it has served and still serves to characterize The Eternal; Who, infinitely perfect in His nature, is, as Universal Creator, the first Being, and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... overtures of another man? Do you consider what unnecessary pain you have given him by your thoughtless behaviour? I call it "thoughtless," but it is the mildest epithet I can apply to it. I beg that such a thing may not occur again, or I shall be obliged to characterize it ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... perverse love of sophistry, that the word sensibility has been used in these instances instead of irritability, which seems better to characterize the temper of a Dionysius, or a Tiberius; but, in fact, irritability, in common language, merely denotes an excessive or ill governed degree of sensibility. The point of excess must be marked: sympathy must be regulated by education, and consequently the methods of directing sensibility to ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... possibilities are horse and automobile stealing, burglary, hold-ups, train and street-car robbery, embezzlement, fraud, kidnapping, safe-cracking, shop and bank robbery. It is well for the reporter who has to cover a story of this class to acquaint himself with the distinctions that characterize the various kinds of robbery and the various names applied to the people who commit this sort of crime: e.g., robber, thief, bandit, burglar, hold-up man, ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... axillary clusters on slender peduncles, each unspotted, yellow corolla half an inch across or over; the petal edges as if gnawed by the finest of teeth; the pointed calyx segments showing between them. Sterile stamens in addition to the fertile ones characterize this clan. In moist soil it blooms from June to August. It is a strange fact that female bees of the genus Macropis have never been taken on plants outside the loosestrife connection. Here there appears to be the closest interdependence ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... what exists in itself and what owes its existence to art, to the human will. It seems that nature interests their minds and their curiosity more than moral feeling. They do not attach themselves to it with that depth of feeling, with that gentle melancholy, that characterize the moderns. Nay, more, by personifying nature in its particular phenomena, by deifying it, by representing its effects as the acts of free being, they take from it that character of calm necessity ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... forecast of punishments. It promised that it would stop this evil practice, drive out corruption here, and prosecute this-and-that offense. All that belongs to a moribund tradition. Abuse and disuse characterize the older view of the state: guardian and censor it has been, provider but grudgingly. The proclamations of so-called progressives that they will jail financiers, or "wage relentless warfare" upon social evils, are simply the reiterations of ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... adoration of God that she hardly cares for anything except to meditate upon Him. Thirdly, as the result of this worshipful approach to religious reality, we have the profound peace and harmony, the summum bonum of existence, coupled with strong moral purpose which characterize her life. Here, then, is evidently the unification of consciousness in happy awe and the control of destiny through meditation upon infinite matters, that is, through reverent contemplation of God. Is it not one of those ironies of history wherewith fate ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... good deal of amusement, and some profit, in the perusal of those little items which characterize the manners and circumstances of the country. New England was then in a state incomparably more picturesque than at present, or than it has been within the memory of man; there being, as yet, only a narrow strip of civilization along the edge ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... called her. She went down again to meet the tempest of his rage, which now broke upon her in gathered fury. He called her a treacherous, unnatural child, with every name he thought bad enough to characterize her conduct. Had she been to him as Began or Goneril, he could hardly have found worse names for her. She stood pale, but looked him in the face. Her mother came trembling as near as she dared, withered by her terror to almost twice her age. Mr. Palmer ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald |
