"Descriptive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... respect to the verity and identity of the spirit. In fact, secret things were told, reference to private papers made, the evidence was considered most satisfying. And she says that all of the communications descriptive of the state of that Spirit, though coming from very different mediums (some high Calvinists and others low infidels) tallied exactly. She spoke very calmly about it, with no dogmatism, but with the strongest disposition ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... The descriptive Part of this Allegory is likewise very strong, and full of Sublime Ideas. The Figure of Death, [the Regal Crown upon his Head,] his Menace of Satan, his advancing to the Combat, the Outcry at his Birth, are Circumstances ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... day or two there came a letter-unusually long for Gaston— to Mrs. Gasgoyne herself. It was simple, descriptive, with a dash of epigram. It acknowledged that he had felt the curb, and wanted a touch of the unconventional. It spoke of Ian Belward in a dry phrase, and it asked for the date of the yacht's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hardly believe, my dear brother, how short of time I am: nor do I feel much moved in spirit to write poetry on the subject you mention. Do you really come to me for disquisitions on things that I can scarcely conceive even in imagination—you who have distanced everybody in that style of vivid and descriptive writing? Yet I would have done it if I could, but, as you will assuredly not fail to notice, for writing poetry there is need of a certain freshness of mind of which my occupations entirely deprive me. I withdraw myself, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... and possibly earned a few guineas by it, it is not likely that he gave much further thought to the matter. In the course of 1785 or 1786, he entered upon a task of much greater magnitude and immediate importance, namely, a descriptive catalogue of the Collection of Pastes and Impressions from Ancient and Modern Gems, formed by James Tassie, the eminent connoisseur. Tassie engaged Raspe in 1785 to take charge of his cabinets, and to commence describing their contents: he ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... Why? Can you see any similar effect from introducing their covert in the tenth sentence? What does the expression knowingly left open suggest to you? This selection from Irving illustrates the Descriptive style of writing. ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... seat of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, to whose talents and benevolence Mr. Bowles pays a merited tribute. Longleat, the residence of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, succeeds; and Marston, the abode of the Rev. Mr. Skurray, a friend of the author from his "youthful days," introduces the following beautiful descriptive snatch:— ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... He kept his hearers enthralled by his magical music, and astonished by his wonderful execution. I shall never forget hearing him play the "Walpurgis Nacht," when he appeared at the Amphitheatre in 1835 or 1836. It was painting a picture by means of sounds. His descriptive powers were wonderful. Anybody with the least touch of imagination could bring before "his mind's eye" the infernal revel that the artist was depicting. The enchantments of the witches were visible. You could hear their diabolical songs, ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... of Dora d'Istria upon German Switzerland is less descriptive than philosophical. The plan she has adopted is open perhaps to criticism: such mixture of poetry and erudition may offend severer tastes; we grow indulgent, however, when we perceive that the writer preserves her individuality while passing ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... many who have advertised their bigotry or their ignorance by publishing original compositions, for which it would be hard to find any suitable descriptive term, are two women, one of whom is well known. They are Julia A. Moore, self-styled "The Sweet Singer of Michigan," whose works are included by Dr. Crothers in The Hundred Worst Books, and a Mrs. L., a native of Rhode Island, but "by adoption ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... matters are perpetuated is illustrated by the fact that I have seen these lines quoted in some modern philosophical work as descriptive of the hell ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... offended pride, tempered by a prudent degree of apprehension, the Emperor endeavoured to receive with complacence a homage tendered in mockery. An incident shortly took place of a character highly descriptive of the nations brought together in so extraordinary a manner, and with such different feelings and sentiments. Several bands of French had passed, in a sort of procession, the throne of the Emperor, and rendered, with some appearance of gravity, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... which Rueckert continued to pursue with unabated ardor were to him a fruitful source of poetic inspiration. They furnished the material for the great mass of narrative, descriptive and didactic poems which were collected under the titles Erbauliches und Beschauliches aus dem Morgenlande, and again Morgenlaendische Sagen und Geschichten, furthermore Brahmanische Erzaehlungen, and lastly Weisheit des Brahmanen. We shall discuss these ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... accepted [I have noted, by the way, that this game is more popular with girls than with boys]; wedding ceremony hastily performed—so hastily, it were more descriptive to say 'taken for granted'—within the circle; the dancers, who join hands ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... foreign succor, that the malecontents could hope to vindicate their cause and subvert his throne. The soul of the enterprise was the great domestic John Cantacuzene; the sally from Constantinople is the first date of his actions and memorials; and if his own pen be most descriptive of his patriotism, an unfriendly historian has not refused to celebrate the zeal and ability which he displayed in the service of the young emperor. [89] That prince escaped from the capital under the pretence of hunting; erected his standard at Adrianople; and, in a few days, assembled fifty ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... French novelists. She is vigorous in conception, often great in the apprehension and the contrast of characters. She knows passion, as has been hinted, at a white heat, when all the lower particles are remoulded by its power. Her descriptive talent is very great, and her poetic feeling exquisite. She wants but little of being a poet, but that little is indispensable. Yet she keeps us always hovering on the borders of enchanted fields. She has, to a signal degree, that power of exact transcript from her own mind, in which almost ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... old associations being vividly recalled to the mind; this very frequently happens also in the delirium of fever. There is nothing miraculous in such cases, although upon them are founded a host of stories descriptive of persons in their sleep speaking unknown languages, predicting future events, and being ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... surveyors and nautical cartographers to achieve standardization in nautical charts and electronic chart displays; to provide advice on nautical cartography and hydrography; to develop the sciences in the field of hydrography and techniques used for descriptive oceanography ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... and brings the lump into the reader's throat; but it is too much, and one perceives that Balzac lived too soon to profit by Balzac. The later men, especially the Russians, have known how to forbear the excesses of analysis, to withhold the weakly recurring descriptive and caressing epithets, to let the characters suffice for themselves. All this does not mean that 'Cesar Birotteau' is not a beautiful and pathetic story, full of shrewdly considered knowledge of men, and of a good art struggling to free itself from self-consciousness. But it does ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a descriptive appellation, it is a sorry joke—but my story has nothing to do with Greenland, nothing to do with me; so I shall get through with the one and the ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... old nurse is coming?" said Mrs Grove, after they had been some time at the table. "How delightful! You look quite excited, Rose. She is a very nice person, I believe, Miss Elliott." Graeme smiled. Mrs Grove's generally descriptive term hardly indicated the manifold virtues of their friend; but, before she could say so, ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... sentimental or radical, became more subdued in tone and more conservative with his advancing years. In 1877 he was elected to membership in the Spanish Academy. Primarily a journalist and novelist, Alarcon published a volume of humorous and descriptive verses, ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... of the National Housing Association. (Write to the association office in Washington, D. C., for descriptive literature.) ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... gives a pathetic close to these pages, so full of touches of humour, keen observation and racy anecdote. It would seem as if the hand which wielded so descriptive and ready a pen had wearied of its task; as if, at last, the sunny nature was overcast and the merry heart saddened. But surely not another word is needed to make the narrative more perfect. Those who first become acquainted with it in this reprint ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... years, so much so that at the last Festival nearly the whole of the chorus of voices was composed of members of our local Musical Societies, and a fair sprinkling of the instrumentalists also. A big book would be required for a full history of the Birmingham Triennial Festivals, descriptive of their rise and progress, the hundreds of musical novelties introduced, the many scores of talented artistes who have taken parts, the lords and ladies who have attended, and the thousand odd notes appertaining to them all. In the following ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... others with the effects of excitation produced by several gases. In all these cases there seems to be a morbid degree of sensibility, with which this symptom is ready to ally itself, and which, though inaccurate as a medical definition, may be held sufficiently descriptive of one character of the various kinds of disorder with which this painful symptom ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... narratives, descriptive or reflective pieces of a lyrical quality, all suited to the taste and ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a new (not improved) edition of Long Tom. The plot is ingenious, though perhaps, constrained and far-fetched; and its dnouement makes the reader put down the third volume with increased respect for the novelist's tact. Wyandotte, or the Hutted Knoll (1843), is a quiet yet animated narrative, descriptive of a family of British settlers and their fortunes in their wild Susquehanna home. There is a pleasure, the author observes, in diving into a virgin forest, and commencing the labours of civilisation, that has no exact parallel in any other human occupation; and some refracted share ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... one out of another, each of wider circuit and purer abstraction, like Dante's own heavens, giving and receiving light.[76] Indeed, Dante himself is partly to blame for this. "The form or mode of treatment," he says, "is poetic, fictive, descriptive, digressive, transumptive, and withal definitive, divisive, probative, improbative, and positive of examples." Here are conundrums enough, to be sure! To Italians at home, for whom the great arenas of political and religious speculation were closed, the temptation ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... sixty feet high; the roof is stone-groined, springing from clustered columns running up the side of the hall. The bosses, at the intersections of the main ribs, are carved in high relief, with incidents descriptive of the life ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... Pierre's descriptive faculties were not of a high order. Still when he was once under way describing some of the skating and sledging matches he did very well, and in this there was no ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Lafayette, since the visit of that brave old Frenchman in 1825 or 1826. If they had asked his opinion, he would have told them the names of mountains couldn't be altered, and especially names like that, so appropriate, so descriptive, and so picturesque. A little hard white cloud, that looked like a hundred fleeces of wool rolled into one, was climbing rapidly along up the northwestern ridge, that ascended to the lonely top of Great Haystack. All the others were bare. Four or five of them,—as distinct ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... precious Blood its power with God for men is the lamb-like disposition of the One who shed it and of which it is the supreme expression. The title "the Lamb" so frequently given to the Lord Jesus in Scripture is first of all descriptive of His work—that of being a sacrifice for our sin. When a sinning Israelite wanted to get right with God, it was the blood of a lamb (sometimes that of goat) which had to be shed and sprinkled on the altar. Jesus is the Divine fulfilment of all those lambs ...
— The Calvary Road • Roy Hession
... intolerable, cool devils; [1] to an owl; to all snakes, with an apology for their poison; to a cat in boots or bladders. Your own fancy, if it takes a fancy to these hints, will suggest many more. A series of such poems, suppose them accompanied with plates descriptive of animal torments,—cooks roasting lobsters, fishmongers crimping skates, etc.,—would take excessively, I will willingly enter into a partnership in the plan with you; I think my heart and soul would go with it too,—at least, give it a thought. ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... containing fuses and air-gap arresters only, does not protect against abnormal currents which are continuous and small, though large enough to injure apparatus because continuous. These currents have come to be known as sneak currents, a term more descriptive than elegant. Sneak currents though small, may, when allowed to flow for a long time through the winding of an electromagnet for instance, develop enough heat to char or injure the insulation. They are the ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... justly proud of their work; often they do not hesitate to add their signatures, and in this way later ages can name the "craftsmen" who have transmitted to them these objects of abiding beauty. The designers also are accommodating enough to add descriptive legends of the scenes which they depict,—Achilles, Hercules, Theseus, and all the other heroes are carefully named, usually with the words ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... verbally or syntactically different, there are quite a number which are identical, word for word, and phrase for phrase. These verbal agreements occur most frequently, as is natural, in the reports of our Lord's discourses and sayings; but they also occur in the descriptive and narrative portions of the gospel. This is the fact which is so difficult to reconcile with the theory that the books ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... were made use of as descriptive of themselves by the sect called the Familists. See Discovery of Familism, p. 7 apud Baillie's Anabaptism, pp. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... a vast variety of form and content. Most typical is the descriptive riddle of a single object to be guessed. In its complete and normal form Petsch claims that such a riddle consists of five elements or parts. 1 Introduction; 2 denominative; 3 descriptive; 4 restraint or contrast; 5 conclusion. 1 and 5 are merely formal, ...
— A Little Book of Filipino Riddles • Various
... these five puzzles: Find for each picture a word, or words, that will correctly describe it, and then transpose the letters of the descriptive word or words so as to form another word, which will answer to the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... power!" "We may trace the mighty sun above even by the shadow of a slender flower." Yet he dealt not with the fleeting; that was only the passing form of the abiding. Passionately fond as he was of Nature, and nourished and refreshed by her always, he never wrote a line of mere descriptive poetry. Nature is only the symbol, the image, to interpret his spiritual meaning. He felt with Milton, in his noble words, that the abiding work is not raised in the heat of youth or the vapors of wine, or ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... nobly depicted in the 'Apollo.' 'I have seen them often,' added he, 'standing in that very attitude, and pursuing with an intense eye the arrow which they had just discharged from the bow,' The Italians were delighted with this descriptive explanation, and allowed that a better criticism had never been pronounced on the merits of ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... little to the narrator), and finally brings about his enemy's death while he himself becomes rich—is such as to admit of indefinite expansion, so far as the number and variety of the episodes are concerned. There have been at least four comprehensive descriptive or bibliographical studies of this cycle made,—Koehler's (on Campbell's Gaelic story, No. 39), Cosquin's (notes to Nos. 10 and 20), Clouston's (2 : 229-288), and Bolte-Polivka's (on Grimm, No. 61). Of these, ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... changes of a philosophic revolution, you will have learned from the newspapers, that the French have adopted a new aera and a new calendar, the one dating from the foundation of their republic, and other descriptive of the climate of Paris, and the productions of the French territory. I doubt, however, if these new almanack-makers will create so much confusion as might be supposed, or as they may desire, for I do not find as yet that their system has made ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... early study of the "Male Bolge" of the Splugen and St. Gothard. The Goldau, on the other hand, might have been drawn in purposeful illustration of the lines before referred to (Vol. III. Ch. XV. Sec. 13) as descriptive of a "loco Alpestro." I give now Dante's ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... intention of retaining that attitude. With all its faults Rebellion remains gloriously distinct from the rubbish-heap of fiction by virtue of its intense sincerity and its frequent flashes of fine descriptive writing. The question of sex dominates it, and those of us who still think that such problems are merely sustenance for the prurient-minded may cast it impatiently aside. But others who like to watch a clever man feeling his way towards the light, and regard a novel as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... even more closely to those that remained, and to have lost herself in work for and with them. Whatever may have been written at this time, appears to have been destroyed, nothing remaining but the poem "Contemplations," which is more truly poetry than any of its more labored predecessors, its descriptive passages holding much of the charm of the lovely landscape through which she moved to the river, flowing still through the ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... chance to revise her manuscript. But on reflection I realized that, although the matter came through Mrs. Piper, it could not have come from her, wherever it came from; and that if George Eliot were communicating tidings naturally within our comprehension, and merely descriptive of superficial experience as distinct from reflection, and were communicating, through a poor telephone, words to be recorded by an indifferent scribe, this material would not seem absolutely incongruous with its alleged source, and to a reader knowing that the ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... The following descriptive account was communicated by the British Official Eyewitness present with General Headquarters, supplementing his continuous narrative of the movements of the British force and the French armies in immediate ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the original, are exceedingly short, the whole history terminating abruptly with the nineteenth chapter, that is, with the beginning of the eighteenth century. The remaining 21 chapters are merely descriptive ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... descriptive reporters put it. Mr. Tomlin was dumbly but unanimously elected chairman of the meeting, and was vaguely aware of his responsibilities. He drew himself a ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... Anatomy, or Morphology; Comparative Development, or Embryology; Palaeontology, which comprises the facts provided by fossil relics of animals and plants of earlier geological ages; and Geographical Distribution. Each of these divisions includes a descriptive and analytical series of facts, whose characteristics are "explained" or summarized in the form of the general principles of the respective divisions. Such principles, taken singly and collectively, constitute the evidences ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... back, and all that I saw was a narrow sloping back and a broad hat resting the brim on it. My report to her spoke of an old gentleman of dark complexion, as the only traveller on the platform. She has faith in the efficiency of her descriptive powers, and so she was willing to drive off immediately. The intention was a start to London. Colonel De Craye came up and effected in five minutes what I could ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... elsewhere in the world. Some of the beginnings of art in the race are due to the mother's instinctive attempts to please the eyes and busy the hands of her tender offspring. The children of primitive peoples have their dolls and playthings as do those of higher races. In an article descriptive of the games and amusements of the Ute Indians, we read: "The boy remains under maternal care until he is old enough to learn to shoot and engage in manly sports and enjoyments. Indian children play, laugh, cry, and act like white children, and make their own play-things from which they derive ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... window there are four subjects, two side lights above and two below the transom or crossbar, while in the centre light are four figures, men and angels alternately, "Messengers," as they are called, because they hold scrolls or tablets (in Latin) descriptive of the pictures at the sides. All the side windows, except the easternmost window on the south side, are carried out in a ...
— A Short Account of King's College Chapel • Walter Poole Littlechild
... information, forwarded by a confiding correspondent of an opposition syndicate, made a careful duplicate of the matter, and brought the result to Torpenhow, who said that all was fair in love or war correspondence, and built an excellent descriptive article from his rival's riotous waste of words. It was Torpenhow who—but the tale of their adventures, together and apart, from Philae to the waste wilderness of Herawi and Muella, would fill many books. They had been penned ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... parentage in vain, and then adopted and began to train her, which accounts for her having so little of that slang and knowledge of London low life that you have so much of, you rascals! The lady gave the child the pet surname of Mild, for it was so descriptive of her character. But poor Martha was not destined to have this mother very long. After a few years she died, leaving not a sixpence or a rag behind her worth having. Thus little Mumpy was thrown a third time on the world, but God found a protector for her in a friend ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... surprise was "Werewolves of War." From the few notes about it I surmised that it was another one of those hero-dying-and-saving-his-country stories; and it was—but not the kind I expected it to be. The author's narrative and descriptive abilities were such that I forgot all about the plot running throughout the story. ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... old man.] As some say, St. John, under his character of the author of the Apocalypse. But in the poem attributed to Giacopo, the son of our Poet, which in some MSS, accompanies the original of this work, and is descriptive of its plan, this old man ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... wealth alone, pure and simple. I know how to describe a vine-embowered cottage, or even a thatch-roofed hut, with a garland of gourd blossoms around its small windows, and I can appreciate the beauties of a picturesque church or castle. But all my descriptive faculties desert me before the marble and gold luxury of a modern palace, and its gorgeous splendour has no charm for me. The interest I felt was due to the man himself, and, most of all, to the connection existing between him and my own home. How came this ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... well aware that my book is far too small for the extent of the subjects it touches upon. It is a mere sketch; but so far as it goes, I have endeavoured to make it an accurate one. Almost the whole of the narrative and descriptive portions were written on the spot, and have had little more than verbal alterations. The chapters on Natural History, as well as many passages in other parts of the work, have been written in the hope of exciting an interest in the various questions connected with ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... of CAMBRIDGE CLASS-BOOKS FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES, which is intended to embrace all branches of Education, from the most elementary to the most advanced, and to keep pace with the latest discoveries in Science. A descriptive Catalogue, stating the object aimed at in each work, with their size and prices, will be forwarded on application. Of those hitherto published, the sale of many thousands is a sufficient indication of the manner in which they have ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... one versed in the art; for with the first strains of those curious harmonies and chromatic runs, descriptive of the howling winds that herald the coming of the Phantom Ship, Hollaender's tiny head peered out, followed, after a furtive glance about, by his little body. Two gentlemen started to capture him, ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... from the Norwich Aurora, an American paper, descriptive of a newly discovered cavern. The writer, with a power of imagination almost marvellous, remarks, "The air in the cavern had a peculiar smell, resembling—NOTHING." We believe that is the identical flavour of "Leg of Nothing and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 13, 1841 • Various
... word, and a descriptive one too," thought Hugh; but, considering that there would come many a better opportunity of combating the boy's fears than now, he simply said: "Very well, Harry,"—and proceeded to leave the avenue by the other side. But ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... programme some brief memorandum of dress or ornament—"blue and roses," "pearls," or the like—which may or may not serve to recall to him each fair personality in turn. Sisters, though, are apt to upset this descriptive arrangement by their provoking habit of going about in identical costumes. Some luckless wight has taken a satisfactory note of the dress and general appearance of a Miss Unknown, and then, horror! half an hour afterward he discovers that there are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... abbreviation or reduction may be illustrated by supposing a person, under circumstances forbidding the use of the voice, seeking to call attention to a particular bird on a tree, and failing to do so by mere indication. Descriptive signs are resorted to, perhaps suggesting the bill and wings of the bird, its manner of clinging to the twig with its feet, its size by seeming to hold it between the hands, its color by pointing to objects of the same hue; perhaps by the action ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... are concerned. If the ominous title applies to an abstraction, and if the event so vividly introduced is but a dramatical representation of some phase in the mystery of iniquity, the spiritual inferences are just what they would be were the words respectively descriptive of an angel of sin, and of his utter and terrible overthrow. I shall not, therefore, tax your patience with discussions on these points, but shall assume as true that literal reading of the text which has commended itself to the ripest among ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... self-forgetfulness in individuals if there is to be unity in the society. And we might apply the thoughts with much profit to our own social relations, for they are never out of date; but I desire to turn to- day to that which is suggested by these descriptive metaphors, the value and dignity of each ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... correct but never, never suspected. O. Henry is responsible for the vogue of the latter of these two alternatives,—and the strain of living up to his inventiveness has been frightful. Finally comes a last suspiration, usually in the advertising pages. Sometimes it is a beautiful descriptive sentence charged with sentiment, sometimes a smart epigram, according to the style of story, or the "line" expected of the author. Try this, as the advertisements say, on your favorite magazine. This formula, with variations which readers can supply ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... region of the Father of Rivers," there thou canst see the cradle of a new-born humanity. So I was told by the learned expounders of descriptive geography, who believe that they know the world, because they have seen ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... merit and startling denouement. For wealth of character, pleasant descriptive matter, romantic incident, and powerful plot, there are few books that will eclipse 'Fordham's ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... after their relations; but frequently in consequence of some remarkable occurrence. Thus, my landlord at Kamalia was called Karfa, a word signifying to replace; because he was born shortly after the death of one of his brothers. Other names are descriptive of good or bad qualities; as Modi, "a good man;" Fadibba, "father of the town," &c. Indeed, the very names of their towns have something descriptive in them; as Sibidooloo, "the town of ciboa trees;" Kenneyeto, "victuals here;" Dosita, "lift your spoon." Others seem to be given by ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... depends upon the cleverness and energy with which it is discharged. It can easily be seen that no matter how good the books brought out by a firm, they would be likely to remain on stockroom shelves if readers were not properly made aware of their issue. The name "Publicity department" is the most descriptive title that can be given to the part of the staff devoting its energies to the many variations of news-spreading involved ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... very good descriptive writer, and he has but two methods of comparison; either a thing is like Spain, or it is not like Spain. The verdure was "in such condition as it is in the month of May in Andalusia; and the trees were all ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... bad schoolboy. His letters from Chicago might have been replicas of those from New York; from Montreal he began on the same old note, though, in answer to her request to teach a stay-at-home woman descriptive geography, he once launched forth into an elaborate account of his rail journey on the Canadian Pacific, from Montreal westwards. Marie was not disappointed in the letters; they were what she would have expected. But sometimes, as she read their terse and uninteresting sentences, ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... descriptive of the condition of common schools and the qualifications of teachers at the commencement of the educational reform in New York, are applicable to those states of the Union whose provisions for general education ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... Boudru—but what followed shall not be printed. It would be passing the decent bounds of descriptive writing to put it in black and white. It is sufficient to say that some minutes later the Hun prised the floor-boards up with his bayonet, and Boudru, from that moment, without warning, or leaving any trace, disappeared from the world. He returned in the fullness ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... in New York in the early nineties. It was discovered early and confined to one tenement. There were sixty-three people in the tenement when they clapped on the quarantine. Thirty-two of 'em came out feet first. The only outside case was a reporter who got in and wrote a descriptive article. He ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... OF BRITISH ARCHITECTURE chronologically arranged, neatly printed in red and black, and containing seventy-five figures, with a Descriptive Manual. By Archibald Barrington. Price, on sheet, with Manual, 2s. In cloth, with ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... awaken all our author's enthusiasm, and call forth all his descriptive powers. The first approach to it has exercised the talents of many writers in prose and verse; but none has drawn it in such graphic and brilliant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... an ornate verbal picture, florid in its descriptive phraseology, but cognate enough to convince Crane it was Mortimer who had made one of the bets. His preconceived plan of the suspected ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... gentleman, exceedingly well dressed, though he had arrived on foot and without luggage. The maid supposed that his effects would follow him, since he had chosen to walk. Beyond that, Clara could ascertain nothing, but it was clear that she did not consider the details she learned as descriptive of the person whose coming she feared. On the contrary, the prospect of a little change from the usual monotony of the evening had the effect of exhilarating her spirits, and she bestowed even more attention than usual upon the adornment of her thin person. The nature of the ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... question for a moment his own sincere opinion,—made what I think one of the most unhappy and ominous allusions ever made by a Minister of this country. He quoted certain words, easily rendered as 'Empire and Liberty'—words (he said) of a Roman statesman, words descriptive of the State of Rome—and he quoted them as words which were capable of legitimate application to the position and circumstance of England. I join issue with the Prime Minister upon that subject, and I affirm that nothing can ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... protection which possesses many features of peculiar interest. In the fourth and last division of the book several questions of a more general character are dealt with which could not conveniently be brought into either the historical or the descriptive parts. I have selected for discussion those topics which are of most permanent importance and as to which the reader is most likely to be curious. Among them are the condition of the natives, and their relations ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... in particular passages, such as the description of the guilty happiness of Isabella and Mortimer, quoted in Mr. Arthur Bullen's admirable selection. This is to say that Drayton's genius was naturally not so much epical as lyrical and descriptive. In his own proper business as a narrative poet he fails as compared with Daniel, but he enriches history with all the ornaments of poetry; and it was his especial good fortune to discover a subject in which the union of dry fact with copious poetic illustration was ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... descriptive and character studies. Animated from the very first chapter; and once beginning, one can scarcely leave ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... asks or echoes a lady, Miss Grace Toplis, writing on Jefferies. "In brief, he was an essayist and not a novelist at all," says Mr. Henry Salt. "It is therefore certain that his importance for posterity will dwindle, if it has not already dwindled, to that given by a bundle of descriptive selections. But these will occupy a foremost place on their particular shelf, the shelf at the head of which stands Gilbert White and Gray," says Mr. George Saintsbury. "He was a reporter of genius, ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... friends fancy they are giving pleasure when they write such "news" as: "My cook has been sick for the past ten days," and follow this with a page or two descriptive of her ailments; or, "I have a slight cough. I think I must have caught it yesterday when I went out in the rain without rubbers"; or, "The children have not been doing as well in their lessons this week as last. Johnny's arithmetic marks were dreadful ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... soigneusement revue et augmentee de cet important ouvrage contient la liste descriptive de Luthiers la plus complete qui ait paru jusqu' ici: elle offre de plus au lecteur une notice circonstanciee ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... or story may be put into dramatic form with very little effort and thus furnish an exercise for several pupils at the same time. The descriptive parts may be read by a pupil not in the dialogue or may be omitted. In the latter case, acting may fill the void or the narrative may be made into conversation between the characters. Some rearrangement may be necessary and a little change in phraseology ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... story, descriptive of the troubles into which a little boy, by a simple act of disobedience, brought both himself and his friends; and showing that however innocent the motive, the pursuit of wrong courses is certain to ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... clear sparkling air, or descended to the pools in the garden to bathe, with incessant cooing. Up and down the road passed the white bullocks with their laden carts, and the gaily-dressed Turkish sweet-meat sellers went by crooning out songs descriptive of their wares, pausing under the shade of the garden to look up at the English Mem-Sahib in the balcony. She leant her arms on the rail, and looked out on the gay scene with unseeing eyes. "Beast!" she muttered at intervals, and her hard-lined face ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... men and one hundred thousand horses moving in one compact, marvelous unit of organization, discipline and system? If you have not seen it you cannot imagine what it is like. If you have seen it you cannot tell what it is like. In one case the conceptive faculty fails you; in the other the descriptive. I, who have seen this sight, am not foolish enough to undertake to put it down with pencil on paper. I think I know something of the limitations of the written English language. What I do mean to try to do in this ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... on the other, there are strong analogies, as will be clearly seen in the course of our study, but there are also differences that are not less appreciable. Professor Rawlinson shows this very clearly in a page of descriptive geography which he will allow us to quote as it stands. It will not be the last of our borrowings from his excellent work, The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World, a book that has done so much to popularize the ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... if in travail, and, according to the Socratic fancy, [157] to bring them to the birth, was after all the proper function of the teacher, however unusual it might seem in so ancient a university. "Fantastic!"—from first to last, that was the descriptive epithet; and the very word, carrying us to Shakespeare, reminds one how characteristic of the age such habit was, and that it was pre- eminently due to Italy. A man of books, he had yet so vivid a hold on people and things, ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... 1874-75 and 1875-76 found him still in Baltimore, playing at the Peabody, pursuing his studies and writing the "Symphony", the "Psalm of the West", the "Cantata", and some shorter poems, with a series of prose descriptive articles for 'Lippincott's Magazine'. In the summer of 1876 he called his family to join him at West Chester, Pa. This was authorized by an engagement to write the Life of Charlotte Cushman. The work was begun, but the engagement was broken two months later, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... Congress passed over. It was the long one, and ran into May 1792. I find in the collection only three letters to Mr. Lear dated in that year. The first is from Mount Vernon, July 30, '92, soon after he had left Philadelphia, and is familiarly descriptive of his journey homewards. His horses plagued him a good deal, he says, and the sick mare, owing to a dose of physic administered the night he reached Chester, was so much weakened as to be unable to carry ...
— Washington in Domestic Life • Richard Rush
... Historical and Descriptive. By The Very Rev. A. P. Purey-Cust, D.D., Dean of York. With 35 full-page Illustrations specially prepared for the Work, reproducing many of the vanished and vanishing beauties of the Ancient City, and various ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God." Micah 6:8. The life of Enoch is descriptive of the Christian's life, and it is said that he "walked with God." Hand in hand with God, heart in heart, and life in life, is the true Christian way. In order to walk thus with God, we must be in agreement with him; for two ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... the colonists and the desires of the government, and the lack of vigor at home combined to prevent a really effective control of the colonies. "Obedezcase, pero no se cumpla" (Let it be obeyed, but not enforced) was a saying sufficiently descriptive of the attitude of the colonies ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... the philological method is a proof that the 'Disease of Language,' ex hypothesi the most fertile source of myths, is a vera causa. Do simple poetical phrases, descriptive of heavenly phenomena, remain current in the popular mouth after the meanings of appellatives (Bright One, Dark One, &c.) have been forgotten, so that these appellatives become proper names—Apollo, Daphne, &c.? Mr. Max Muller seems ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... were all too clear, all too luridly descriptive of the manner of death which awaited him. And the man of the Golden City was ashen and hopeless ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... dialogue into the 'oratio obliqua,' the passage will run thus: The priest came and prayed Apollo that the Achaeans might take Troy and have a safe return if Agamemnon would only give him back his daughter; and the other Greeks assented, but Agamemnon was wroth, and so on—The whole then becomes descriptive, and the poet is the only speaker left; or, if you omit the narrative, the whole becomes dialogue. These are the three styles—which of them is to be admitted into our State? 'Do you ask whether tragedy and comedy are to be ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Latins and Etruscans seem to have had at first only one name apiece, but the Sabines had two, and in later times the Sabine system was generally followed. A Roman boy had, therefore, a given name and a family name, which were indispensable; but he might have two others, descriptive of some peculiarity or remarkable event in his life—as "Scvola," left-handed; "Cato," or "Sapiens," wise; "Coriolanus," of Corioli. "Appius Claudius Sabinus Regillensis" means Appius of the Claudian family of Regillum, in the country of the Sabines. "Lucius Cornelius Scipio Africanus" means Lucius, ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... modern historians, Taine, has at times so imperfectly understood the events of the great French Revolution is, that it never occurred to him to study the genius of crowds. He took as his guide in the study of this complicated period the descriptive method resorted to by naturalists; but the moral forces are almost absent in the case of the phenomena which naturalists have to study. Yet it is precisely these forces that constitute the ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon |
