"Portrayal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was 'The Trail of '98'. For power and blunt realism there was nothing like it, but the character of the hero was torn in the shreds of debate. There was general agreement on two points: that the portrayal of the desolate Alaskan wild had a touch of "home," and that the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... The portrayal of these writers of this phase of Reconstruction history contains a general truth, but in some cases the picture is overdrawn. The student of history must bear in mind that practically all of our histories of that period ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... period of Shakespeare's work carries him from the youthful efforts at dramatic construction to such mastery of dramatic technique and of original portrayal of life as raise him, when aided by his supreme poetic art, above all other living dramatists. It was chiefly a period in which the young poet, full of ambition, curious of his own talents, and eager for success, was feeling his way among the different types of drama ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... A vivid portrayal of the experience of an Eastern author, among the cowboys of the West, in search of "local color" for a new novel. "Bud" Thurston learns many a lesson while following "the lure of the dim trails" but the hardest, and ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... such radical changes in our institutions and fraught with so great consequences to this country and to humanity has made such progress as the movement for woman suffrage. Denunciation will not much longer answer for arguments by the opponents of this measure. The portrayal of the evils to flow from woman suffrage such as we have heard pictured to-day by the Senator from Georgia, the loss of harmony between husband and wife and the consequent instability of the marriage relation, the neglect of husbands and children by wives and mothers for the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... interesting and sorrowful of all observations is the character disintegration of those who take up the work of acting as a career. Yet fiction writing is but a subtler form of acting in words. The value of our books is in part the concision of character portrayal—the facility with which we are able to lose ourselves and be some one else. Often in earlier years, I have known delight when some one said, "You must be that person when you are writing about him." I would answer: "He comes clearer and clearer through ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... stately architectural backgrounds. It is by these that he is chiefly known to-day. So it is the more interesting that, when Raphael's sweet simplicity first touched him, he turned aside, for the time, from these elaborate plans and gave himself to the portrayal of the Madonna in that simplest possible way, the half-length portrait picture. Several of these he painted upon the walls of his own convent, glorifying that dim place of prayer and fasting with visions of radiant and ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... who although fully Christian is ostracized as being a Jewess, and struggles unsuccessfully to find her place in life; and Peter Khlopov, a full Christian who finds Jewish culture agreeable. Steinberg's portrayal of Samuel makes it clear, even in the first few pages, that Samuel, although Jewish, thinks very much like a Russian peasant; in a very real way he straddles that fringe zone between the ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... akin to Coleridge, too, for there is a direct visional analogy between "The Flying Dutchman" and the excessively pictorial stanzas of "The Ancient Mariner." Ryder has typified himself in this excellent portrayal of sea disaster, this profound spectacle of the soul's despair in conflict with wind and wave. Could any picture contain more of that remoteness of the world of our real heart as well as our real eye, the ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... been definitely settled, it is probable that he was born and lived a Catholic; and it is strange how Elizabeth, who, tradition tells us, was present at some of his plays, could endure his faithful portrayal of friars and nuns, while she was persecuting their originals so barbarously at the time; strangest of all, how she could bear to look upon the true and noble image of Katherine of Aragon, whom Henry in his good moment ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Biblical Geography and History. New York, $1.50. A clear portrayal of the physical characteristics of Palestine and of the potent influences which that land has exerted throughout ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... young man's heart he said it was a vain hope, a happy delusion that might serve to make the harsh bondage endurable till time dispelled it. The simple words of the girl were eloquent portrayal of Israel's plight, and Kenkenes subsided into a sorry state of helpless sympathy. She was not ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... habits of weakness or of wickedness to transform himself by a single and sudden effort of will. And, on the other hand, it may tempt certain students of life, subtler than their fellow-craftsmen and more inquisitive, to dwell unduly on the mere machinery of human motive and to aim not at a rich portrayal of the actions of men and women, but at an arid analysis of the mechanism of their impulses. More than one novelist of the twentieth century has already yielded to this tendency. No doubt, this is only the negative defect accompanying a positive quality,—yet it indicates an imperfect ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... these has a unity, and a definiteness of contour unusual with Shelley, and is, with the exception of some of Robert Browning's, the best English tragedy since Otway. Prometheus represented to Shelley's mind the human spirit fighting against divine oppression, and in his portrayal of this figure, he kept in mind not only the Prometheus of Aeschylus, but the Satan of Paradise Lost. Indeed, in this poem, Shelley came nearer to the sublime than any English poet since Milton. Yet it is in lyrical, rather than in dramatic, quality that Prometheus ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... the portrayal of sensuous emotion into the realms of poetry. The wild spirit of the Gypsy, captivating, fresh and invigorating and compelling as the winds of the mighty Sierras and plains of the land she inhabited, enveloped and animated ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... life of to-day. It is not nice; neither is the social life of to-day nice. One lays the book down sick at heart—sick for life with all its "lyings and its lusts." But it is a healthy book. So fearful is its portrayal of social disease, so ruthless its stripping of the painted charms from vice, that its tendency cannot but be strongly for good. It is a goad, to prick sleeping human consciences awake and drive them into the battle ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... a portrayal of the noblest of Indians—Hiawatha. It follows established facts, and bares to the reader the heart of his race. It ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... both of body and spirit, was poignant and heart-breaking, I know. His interest in and love for his characters were intense as his nature, and is shown nowhere more strongly than in his sufferings during his portrayal of the short life of "Little Nell," like a father he mourned for his little girl—the child of his brain—and he writes: "I am, for the time, nearly dead with work and grief for the loss of my child." Again he writes of her: "You can't imagine (gravely ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... of Maggie to Cedar Crest in the bottom of his trunk, and kept it locked in his chiffonier. During these days, more frequently than before, he would take out the portrait and in the security of his locked room would gaze long at that keen-visioned portrayal of her many characters. No doubt of it: there was a possible splendid woman there! And no doubt of it: he loved that ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... and if he failed her, she was sure that she would never go again, and she sobbed out incoherently that she "couldn't live at all without it." Apparently the blankness and grayness of life itself had been broken for her only by the portrayal of a different world. ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... idea, which are always mutually illustrative to a degree not often attained in any species of modern art. . . . His language, though extraordinarily accurate, is always light and free. . . . We know of nothing equal to it, in its way [the portrayal of Dimmesdale], in the whole circle of English literature;' and much more in ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... these narratives he is portrayed as the dominant figure, moulding the history as God's representative. Abraham and Moses are here conceived of as prophets, and the Ephraimite history of their age is largely devoted to a portrayal of their prophetic activity. ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... like so many others, by the French genius, and well, if rather impudently, copied by Colonna; Boccaccio's vivid Italian Cressida; Chaucer's inimitable Pandarus, the first pleasing example of the English talent for humorous portrayal in fiction; the wonderful passage, culminating in a more wonderful single line,[69] of that Dunfermline schoolmaster whom some inconceivable person has declared to be only a poet to "Scotch patriotism"; the great gnomic verses of Shakespeare's Ulysses, and the various, unequal, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... picture here reproduced is (even without the quotation from the "Vicar of Wakefield" which accompanies it in the catalogue of the South Kensington Museum) a simple story simply told. It is free from the mannerisms which mar much of Mulready's work, especially in the portrayal of children, and in the original is more agreeable in color than ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... word or two further with reference to the poem, its character, and its place in German literature. Its theme is the ancient Teutonic ideal of "Treue" (faithfulness or fidelity), which has found here its most magnificent portrayal; faithfulness unto death, the loyalty of the vassal for his lord, as depicted in Hagen, the fidelity of the wife for her husband, as shown by Kriemhild, carried out with unhesitating consistency to the bitter ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... considering the usual subject-matter of poetry, is perhaps only saying that the poet must be sincere. The mathematician is most sincere when he uses his intellect exclusively, but a reasoned portrayal of passion is bound to falsify, for it leads one insensibly either to understate, or to burlesque, or to indulge in a psychopathic analysis of emotion. [Footnote: Of the latter type of poetry a good example is Edgar Lee Masters' Monsieur ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... skepticism. This he thought would give weight and distinction to the book. So the Prince's philosophic demoralization is described at tedious length and the story drops out of sight for a long time. Then it is taken up again and the Prince falls in love with a beautiful Greek religieuse. The portrayal of this woman aroused another flicker of interest on Schiller's part, though she too was finally to be unmasked as one of the conspirators. Then he seems to have tired of 'The Ghostseer' altogether; at any rate he choked it off suddenly with a 'Farewell', in which nothing is concluded ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... detect the germ of the pulpits of San Lorenzo, where the rough sketch in clay could transmit all its fire and energy to the finished bronze. In this case Donatello not only felt the limitations of the marble, but he was not yet inclined to take the portrayal of tragedy beyond a certain point. The moderation of this relief entitles it to higher praise than we can give to some of his later work. The other panel in stiacciato made about this time belonged to the Salviati family.[132] Technically the carving is inferior to that in St. Peter's, and ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... portrayal of characters in an old New England town. Dr. Lavendar's fine, kindly wisdom is brought to bear upon the lives of all, permeating the whole volume like the pungent odor of pine, healthful and life giving. "Old Chester Tales" will surely be ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... yet, though Charles Burke and James A. Herne are recalled, by those who remember back so far, for the very Dutch lifelikeness of the genial old drunkard, Joseph Jefferson overtops all memories by his classic portrayal. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... portrait-painters are more exact in the lines and features of the face, in which the character is seen, than in the other parts of the body, so I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks and indications of the souls of men, in my portrayal ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... gentility extending from his varnished boot-tips to his glossy hat, looked like the "flattered" portrait of a common man—just such an idealized presentment as his own brush might have produced. As a rule, however, he devoted himself to the portrayal of the other sex, painting ladies in syrup, as Arran said, with marsh-mallow children leaning against their knees. He was as quick as a dressmaker at catching new ideas, and the style of his pictures changed as rapidly ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... stage. Dr. MacLeod then read the Bernard Shaw preface to the play, and asked that there be no applause during the performance, a suggestion which was rigidly followed, thus adding greatly to the effectiveness and the seriousness of the dramatic portrayal. ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... Moral Philosophy, who lived to be ninety years old. There was, therefore, a combination of Lux et Veritas in the blood of young Louis Stevenson, which in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde took the form of a luminous portrayal of ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... forced, representative of nearly all the important Germanic, Romance, and Oriental verse and strophe forms, reminiscent of his reading[24] in many instances, and romantic as a whole, especially in their constant portrayal of longing. Loeben was the poet of Sehnsucht. He tried always das Nahe zu entfernen und das Ferne sich nahe zu bringen. With a few conspicuous exceptions, his lyrics resemble those of Geibel somewhat in form and treatment. Poetry and individual poets receive grateful consideration, ...
— Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei • Allen Wilson Porterfield
... sitting one day while in this state at an angle of the garden trying to devote his entire mind to the portrayal of a tree-fern, and vainly endeavouring to prevent Hester Sommers from coming between him and the paper, when he was summoned to attend upon Ben-Ahmed. As this was an event of by no means uncommon occurrence, he listlessly gathered up ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... humor of Du Maurier, the quiet incisiveness of his satire, and his inimitable skill at the portrayal of social types are delightfully manifested in this series of one hundred plates, ending up with the melodramatic death-bed scene of ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... it, the Greeks looked on Nature with their minds more than with their hearts, nor ever clung to her with outspoken admiration and affection. And Humboldt, asserting (as I would do) that the portrayal of nature, for her own sake and in all her manifold diversity, was foreign to the Greek idea, declares that the landscape is always the mere background of their picture, while their foreground ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... where the castle was taken, and a tottering wall fell unexpectedly in the midst of the furious struggle. Let it stand, he had determined, accident and all. It appeared to be almost perfect "copy," and would show up as a faithful portrayal of the stupendous perils attending the efforts of his company in enacting just one phase of a romantic drama of the ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... brought out by a simple incident in her life,—the expected return of her husband. Some of these songs also have been written by poetesses, such as Lady Nairn's exquisite "Land of the Leal;" and really there is such delicacy, such minute accuracy in the portrayal of a woman's feelings in "Are ye sure the news is true?" that one cannot help thinking it must have been written by Jean Adams, or some woman, rather ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Laius. The tetralogy to which it belonged consisted of the 'Laius,' 'Oedipus,' 'Seven Against Thebes,' and 'Sphinx.' The themes of Greek tragedy were drawn from the national mythology, but the myths were treated with a free hand. In his portrayal of the fortunes of this doomed race, Aeschylus departed in important particulars, with gain in dramatic effect, from the story as it is ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... followed were to carry Browning, not without crises of perplexity and hesitation, far on his way towards it. Paracelsus was no sooner completed than he entered upon his kindred but more esoteric portrayal of the soul-history of Sordello,—a study in which, with the dramatic form, almost all the dramatic excellences of its predecessors are put aside. But the poet was outgrowing the method; the work hung fire; and we find him, before he had gone far with the perplexed record of that ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... beside her, and her hands open. And with raised face, motionless as in an ecstasy of suffering, she did not take her eyes from that adorable and tragic pair. Never had human face displayed such beauty, such a dazzling splendour of suffering and love; never had there been such a portrayal of ancient Grief, not however cold like marble but quivering with life. What was she thinking of, what were her sufferings, as she thus fixedly gazed at her Prince now and for ever locked in her rival's arms? Was it some jealousy which could ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... in the poem: nature description, plot construction, character, description, or the portrayal ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... on a mid-sea island, where Mark, pagan, pirate, pearl-hunter, is found, are absorbing. Hidden treasure, mutinies, tropic love, all these are here. The book thrills with its incident and arouses admiration for its splendid character portrayal. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... Cooper did for the North, Simms accomplished for the South. He lacked Cooper's skill and variety of invention, and he created no character to compare with Cooper's Leatherstocking; but he excelled Cooper in the more realistic portrayal of Indian character. ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... Crusoe, Defoe brought the realistic adventure story to a very high stage of its development; but his works hardly deserve, to be classed as true novels, which must subordinate incident to the faithful portrayal of human ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... light-hearted, witty populace, and she wrote of them with rare insight and exquisite tenderness. Tasked with having idealized them, she replied:—"Many years of unremitting study, pursued con amore, justify me in assuring those who find fault with my portrayal of popular life that they are less acquainted with them than I am." And in another place she says:—"It is amongst the people that we find the poetry of Spain and of her chronicles. Their faith, their character, their sentiment, all bear the seal of originality and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... evocations of facts poignantly vital to her personally, were devastatingly more troubling to her facial calm than any most sickening picture in d'Annunzio's portrayal of small-town humanity in which she was trying to take the proper, shocked interest. Despite all her effort to remain tranquil she would guess by the stir of her pulses that probably she had lost control of herself again, and going to the mirror would catch her face all strained ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... kindly feeling you gain their confidence and friendship. Make them understand that you will not interfere with or harm them, and they will go about their own affairs unafraid in your presence. Then you may silently watch their manner of living, their often amusing habits, and their frank portrayal of character. As a guest in the wild, conducting yourself as a courteous guest should, you will be well treated by your wild hosts, some of whom, in time, may even permit you to feed and stroke them. They do not dislike but fear you; they ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... glowing words of Renan, with their fine spiritual interpretations and descriptive eloquence, the judgments of an eminent contemporary Jewish scholar, and Newman's learned yet simple portrayal of the Church as it took form in its early environment, and as it was seen through the media of contemporary governments, customs, and criticisms, it is believed that readers will derive satisfaction, and will be aided in their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... such an extent that he was unable to partake of his meals, which were meager enough, especially during his student life in Zurich; yet he had felt ashamed of partaking of such a luxury as a cup of coffee even. I had to admit that I could not share his hopes of the influence of an artistic portrayal of the sufferings of the weavers upon the people of wealth. Self-satisfied virtue is hard to move. Rather did I believe that a great work of art, treating of the life of the masses, was bound to rouse their consciousness to ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... course somewhere amongst good people.' These latter years had, indeed, been very full ones, both of work and anxieties, and the inroads of disease had been steadily undermining his strength. Yet the picture which is given to us of the composer when within a few months of his death is a vivid portrayal of the triumph of mind-force over physical weakness. He was staying in the country, at the house of his brother Johann, and the picture of his daily life there is drawn by the hand of his serving-man. 'At half-past five he was up and at his table, beating time with hands and feet, singing, humming, ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... light, and the writer must search in his memory, his imagination, and his heart, for the fitting accent; for the flexibility of language and the wealth of words which are needful if he would fully succeed in the portrayal of living creatures; if he would tender the living truth, reproduce in all its light and shade the spectacle of the world, arouse the imagination, and faithfully interpret the mysterious spirit which impregnates matter and is reflected ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... their rights, privileges, and duties, early concerned the philosophers of Greece; but more potent than all the philosophies that have been uttered, than all of the theories concerning man's social relation, is the vivid portrayal of the actual struggle of men to live together in community life, pictured in ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... this adventure I should write its history, I resolved immediately to note down some details of the state of affairs in Paris at the end of this day, the second of the coup d'etat. I wrote this page, which I reproduce here, because it is a life-like portrayal—a ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... new torment from their inability to get at the Filboid Studge which elegant young fiends held in transparent bowls just beyond their reach. The scene was rendered even more gruesome by a subtle suggestion of the features of leading men and women of the day in the portrayal of the Lost Souls; prominent individuals of both political parties, Society hostesses, well-known dramatic authors and novelists, and distinguished aeroplanists were dimly recognizable in that doomed throng; noted lights of the musical-comedy stage flickered wanly in the shades of the Inferno, ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... the production itself the conclusions I drew from it were as follows: the real faults in the work, which I have already mentioned incidentally, lay in the sketchy and clumsy portrayal of the part of Venus, and consequently of the whole of the introductory scene of the first act. In consequence of this defect the drama never even rose to the level of genuine warmth, still less did it attain to the heights of passion which, according to the poetic ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... attained by the utmost clearness, and thus only by a gradually increasing speed. It is therefore most desirable to practise it piano also by way of variety, for otherwise the strength of tone might easily degenerate into hardness, and in the poetic striving after a realistic portrayal of a storm on the piano the instrument, as well as the piece, would ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... railroad battalion there was an eccentric negro who was a very king of jesters. From the Sirdar and the Khalifa downwards—for he was an ex-dervish and had played pranks in Omdurman—none escaped a parodying portrayal of their mannerisms. He imitated the tones of their voice and twisted and contorted his face and body to resemble the originals. Nothing was sacred from that mimic any more than from a sapper. He showed us Osman Digna's little ways, and gave ghastly imitations of trials, ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... She ate. Calhoun gave a very good portrayal of a man who will respond politely when spoken to, but who was busy with activities ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... similarities the essential elements are strongly differentiated. Take, for instance, three poems in which the situations are not unlike. In "My Last Duchess," "The Flight of the Duchess," and The Ring and the Book, we have a portrayal of three men of high lineage, but cold, egotistic, cruel, who have married very young and lovely women over whom the custom of the times gives them absolute power. But there the likeness ends. We cannot for a moment class together the polished, aesthetic, well-bred aristocrat ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... point the old epic becomes a remarkable portrayal of daily life. In its picturesque lines we see the galley set sail, foam flying from her prow; we catch the first sight of the southern headlands, approach land, hear the challenge of the "warder of the cliffs" and Beowulf's courteous answer. We follow the march to Heorot ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Punch with a good deal more than ordinary loyal sentiment and esprit de corps. It is interesting to observe the different views the artists have severally taken of it, for most of them in turn have attempted his portrayal. Brine regarded him as a mere buffoon, devoid of either dignity or breeding; Crowquill, as a grinning, drum-beating Showman; Doyle, Thackeray, and others adhered to the idea of the Merry, but certainly not uproarious, Hunchback; Sir John Tenniel showed him as a vivified ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... works of Moliere was "Les Precieuses Ridicules," produced in 1659. In this brilliant piece Moliere lifted French comedy to a new level and gave it a new purpose—the satirizing of contemporary manners and affectations by frank portrayal and criticism. In the great plays that followed, "The School for Husbands" and "The School for Wives," "The Misanthrope" and "The Hypocrite" (Tartuffe), "The Miser" and "The Hypochondriac," "The Learned Ladies," ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
... deformity were the rewards which the American public learned the fighting man gained in the trenches. They heard very little of the capacity for heroism, the eagerness for sacrifice, the gallant self-effacement which having honor for a companion taught. And yet, despite this frantic portrayal of terror, America decided for war. Her National Guard and Volunteers rolled up in millions, clamouring to cross the three thousand miles of water that they might place their lives in jeopardy. They were no more urged by motives of self-interest than were the men who ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... are equally remarkable for their powerful coloring, and they leave us with an idea of Rome which is positively astounding in its unbridled luxury. 'We will rest content with offering to our readers the following portrayal, quoted from Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xiv, chap. 6, and lib. xxviii, chap. 4. will not presume to attempt any translation after having read Gibbon's version of the ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... restrictions. Facts and ideas are all within the province of fiction. The intellect of an incisive moralist, like La Bruyere, the power of treating character as Moliere could treat it, the grand machinery of a Shakespeare, together with the portrayal of the most subtle shades of passion (the one treasury left untouched by our predecessors)—for all this the modern novel affords free scope. How far superior is all this to the cut-and-dried logic-chopping, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... Sussex, the attempt made by highwaymen to rob her, and her adventures at the paved ford and in the house made silent by smallpox, where she took refuge. This section of the story is almost as breathless as Smollett.... In the general firmness of touch, and sureness of historic portrayal, the book deserves ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... the pictures illustrating his career after he has left the cowherds. There is no attempt to stress his romantic qualities or to present him as a lover. He appears rather as the great fighter, the slayer of demons. Such a portrayal is what we might perhaps expect from a Mughal edition. None the less the paintings are remarkable interpretations, investing Krishna with an air of effortless composure, and exalting his princely grace. The style is notable for its use of smoothly flowing outlines and gentle shading, and although ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... A relentless portrayal of the career of a man who comes under the influence of a beautiful but evil woman; how she lures him on and on, how he struggles, falls and rises, only to fall again into her net, make a story ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... greatest of the Portuguese poets and wrote the larger part of his master-epic, "The Lusiad," while exiled in India. For seventeen years he led an adventurous life in the East; and it is easy to recognize many harbors and stretches of coast line from his inimitable portrayal. ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... composition, and chiefly for autobiography, and his head was full of that curious performance, Der Weisse Konig, which occupied many of the leisure moments of his life, being dictated to his former writing-master, Marcus Sauerwein. He had already designed the portrayal of his father as the old white king, and himself as the young white king, in a series of woodcuts illustrating the narrative which culminated in the one romance of his life, his brief happy marriage with Mary of Burgundy; and he continued eagerly to talk to Master Gottfried ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... like the world of the materialist, moves onward from a predetermined beginning to a helpless and tragic close. And yet few books have been written of deeper and more permanent fascination than these. Their grim veracity; the creative sympathy and steady dispassionateness of their portrayal of mankind; their constancy of motive, and their sombre earnestness, have been surpassed by none. This earnestness is worth dwelling upon for a moment. It bears no likeness to the dogmatism of the bigot ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... life-size in spite of their lift from level to level above the spectator. But what is the use, what is the use? Am I to abandon the young and younger wisdom with which I have refrained in so many books from attempting the portrayal of any Italian, any English church, and fall into the folly, now that I am old, of trying to say again in words what one of the greatest of Spanish churches says in form, in color? Let me rather turn from that ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... typical of Masefield. Their very rudeness is lifted to a plane of religious intensity. (See Preface.) Pictorially, Masefield is even more forceful. The finest moment in The Widow in the Bye Street is the portrayal of the mother alone in her cottage; the public-house scene and the passage describing the birds following the plough are the most intense touches in The Everlasting Mercy. Nothing more vigorous and thrilling than the description of the storm at sea in Dauber ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... is not a mere mechanical photographic reproduction of the people it describes, but a glowing, vivid portrayal of them, with all the pulsating sympathy of one who understands them, their thoughts and feelings, with all the picturesque fidelity of the artist who appreciates the spiritual significance of that which he seeks to ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... through constant repetition not only upon the oratorio stage, but in the concert-room and choir-loft. In the presentation of the personalities concerned in the progress of the work, in descriptive power, in the portrayal of emotion and passion, and in genuine lyrical force, "Elijah" has many of the attributes of opera, and some critics have not hesitated to call it a sacred opera. Indeed, there can be no question that with costume, scenery, and the aids of general stage-setting, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... feeling"; and ten Brink, with more enthusiasm, calls it (p. 96) "one of the pearls of Old English poetry, full, as it is, of dramatic life, and fidelity of an eye-witness. Its deep feeling throbs in the clear and powerful portrayal." He recognizes, however, "the tokens of metrical decline, of the dissolution ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... light of life, are a beclouding hindrance. The little band of missionaries we have sent are hopelessly inadequate to the task and plead for reinforcements with a pathos that almost breaks our hearts. Oh, do not some of us, as we have followed the portrayal of the needs of South America, like Isaiah of old, hear the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send and who will go for us?" God grant that some of us may respond as he did, "Lord, here am I. ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... Rebisso, who made the statue of General McPherson which stands in one of the circular parks in Washington, and the equestrian statue of General Grant for the city of Chicago. Its cost, which, exclusive of the pedestal, is twenty-seven thousand dollars, is paid by the city. Mr. Rebisso has given a portrayal of Harrison unlike any of the more familiar pictures. These usually present a decrepit old man, from whose eye have vanished that fire of youth and flash of soul which made Harrison a leader of men. The Rebisso statue, as will ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... too, and he did it as well as Claude, but no better. He never got beyond the stage of microscopic portrayal; if he painted a dewdrop he painted it, and his blades of grass, swaying lily-stems, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... perhaps significant that a German critic has of late reminded us that the one test which the most authoritative and dramatic portrayal of the Day of Judgment offers, is the social test. The stern questions are not in regard to personal and family relations, but did ye visit the poor, the criminal, the sick, and did ye feed ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... became thin and feeble on the canvas. Details no longer fascinated him, but were annoying and depressing. In fact, he ignored them and began to paint in a broad, slap-dash style. Thus, instead of a clear, powerful portrayal of life, the picture became ever more plain of a tawdry, slovenly female. There was nothing original or charming about such a dull stereotyped piece of work, so he thought; a veritable imitation of a Moukh drawing, banal ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... sand castles and fortresses is infinitely too engrossing an occupation. A smile will greet the anticipation; it is lost in the stupendous joy of the fact. But as smiles are evidently considered de rigueur by the designers of posters, and as the mere anticipation will not allow of the portrayal of the Rickett's blue sea, destined to hit the eye of the beholder, smiles and sea have—rightly or wrongly—to ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... And what teacher will have the presumption to deny that just this has been, and still is, the central dogma in the faith of ecclesiastical Christendom? The legitimate result of this view, unflinchingly carried out, and applied to the precise point we now have in hand, is seen in that horrible portrayal of the Last Judgment wherewith Michael Angelo has covered the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, in Rome. The great anatomical artist consistently depicts Christ as an almighty athlete, towering with vindictive wrath, flinging thunderbolts on the writhing ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... adequate portrayal of the services rendered by the women of this country during the Civil War, but none will deny that, according to their opportunities, they were as faithful and self-sacrificing as were the men. A comparison ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... penetrating and sympathetic. Strafford's devotion to his King had in it not only the element of loyalty to the liege, but an element of personal love which would make an especial appeal to Browning. He, in consequence, seizes upon this trait as the key-note of his portrayal ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... of the "Liberty Party of Pennsylvania, to the people of the State," issued in 1844, may stand as a sample. It is a vivid portrayal of the slave power's insidious encroachments, and of its monopolized guidance of the Government. It gathers up the national statistics into groups, shows how new meaning is reflected from them thus related, that all unite to illustrate the single fact of the South's steady increase ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... ALFRED'S COURT. By LUCY FOSTER MADISON. Illustrated by IDA WAUGH. This is a strong and well told tale of the 9th century. It is a faithful portrayal of the times, and is replete with historical information. The trying experiences through which the little heroine passes, until she finally becomes one of the great Alfred's family, are most entertainingly set forth. Nothing short of a careful study of the ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... expected. Love as is well known having nothing to do with reason, being insensible to forebodings and even blind to evidence, the surrender of those two beings to a precarious bliss has nothing very astonishing in itself; and its portrayal, as he attempts it, lacks dramatic interest. The sentimental interest could only have a fascination for readers themselves actually in love. The response of a reader depends on the mood of the moment, so much so that a book ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... this maiden of the sixties could have created and left to posterity such an adequate, convincing and psychologically perfect portrayal of a woman of the South in the era that closed with the surrender at Appomattox.... Not a page of the story could be spared. No one can wonder at the intense courage and bravery of the Southern soldiers after reading with what passionate faith and devotion these fiery-hearted Southern women sent ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... Christian minister who represented Cincinnati as they wanted it to be. Always sensitive to the reactions of a throng, he poured forth such utterance as made them see the Community Chest as a great moral force, not as just a financial campaign. Their consciences were quickened by his graphic portrayal of their desires for righteousness and ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... maturity of the Russian or Polish student and his eagerness for the discussion of abstract problems in sociology and metaphysics are very impressive. The amount of space given in Russian novels to philosophical introspection and debate is a truthful portrayal of the subtle Russian mind. Russians love to talk; they are strenuous in conversation, and forget their meals and their sleep. I have known some Russians who will sit up all night, engaged in the discussion of a purely abstract topic, totally oblivious to the passage of time. In "A House ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... in its portrayal of characters that are never commonplace though genuinely human, and in its development of a singular social situation, the book is one to ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... wore a smiling and happier countenance. This dreadful experience, however, permanently wrecked her health, so that she could be of but slight service to her new guardians; but they, through wise and loving treatment, through portrayal of Jesus in word as well as in deed, were doing all they could do for this little shorn lamb, doing their best to aid in helping to eliminate her awful past—a task by no means easy. Poor unfortunate, sinned-against little Rosa! Her life forever blighted through the shifting ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... his guests' entertainment was one whose strong element of human interest had early carried it into favor with the New York audience that nightly crowded the theatre in which it was being presented. The star, a young woman of exceptional talent, almost a great artist, had by her remarkable portrayal of the leading role sprung from obscurity to fame in a ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... earnest desire to abolish the more recent types of this white slavery, which has, in one form or another, threatened the masses since the days of old John Ball of early England. Perhaps the strongest portrayal, yet, of many phases of the question, especially those relating to the city, maybe found in Mr. Howells' story, "A Hazard of New Fortunes." For the country, if one really wants to see what is behind the great ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... religion. The charge indicates Scott's weakness, and perhaps also much of his strength, as a biographer and critic, for he had no prejudice against the conventional as such, and was never anxious to exhibit special "insight" of any kind. Yet I think his portrayal of Swift has seemed to most readers a clear presentation of a real ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... kind would include all portraiture, by which I mean faithful portrayal or transcript whether of animate or inanimate nature; while the second would include all imaginative conceptions, decorative designs, and ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... were on tenterhooks lest their garrulous companion should give offence. But from the moment that the curtain went up, and the mimic scene presented itself to his gaze, he sat spell-bound and silent, perfectly absorbed in the vivid portrayal of the chief ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... surpassing interest which fiction, whether in poetry or prose, possesses for most minds arises mainly from the biographic element which it contains. Homer's "Iliad "owes its marvelous popularity to the genius which its author displayed in the portrayal of heroic character. Yet he does not so much describe his personages in detail as make them develop themselves by their actions. "There are in Homer," said Dr. Johnson, "such characters of heroes and combination of qualities of heroes, that the united powers of ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... knowingly cut to suit her hard, sharp method of acting. Her interpretation was a triumph of head over heart. Grace George tried to read into Cynthia Karslake an element of romance which is suggested in the text, but which was somewhat over-sentimentalized by her soft portrayal. There is some element of relationship between "The New York Idea" and Henry Arthur Jones' "Mary Goes First;" there is the same free air of sporting life, so graphically set forth in "Lord and Lady Algy." But the American play is greater than these ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... southern writers since the war of 1861—a movement of which the chief importance lay in the determination to portray local scenes, characters and historical episodes with accuracy instead of merely imaginative romanticism, and to interest readers by fidelity and sympathy in the portrayal of things well known to the authors. Other writings by Cable have dealt with various problems of race and politics in the southern states during and after the "reconstruction period" following the Civil War; while in The Creoles of Louisiana ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... are published by Bantam Books, Inc., a National General company. Its trade-mark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a bantam, is registered in the United States Patent Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... stood in the foreground in the imperial period of Rome. Old Rome cherished the mimic clowns, but still more the tragic pantomimics. "Their very nod speaks, their hands talk and their fingers have a voice." After the fall of the Roman empire the church used the pantomime for the portrayal of sacred history, and later centuries enjoyed very unsacred histories in the pantomimes of their ballets. Even complex artistic tragedies without words have triumphed on our present-day stage. "L'Enfant Prodigue" which came from Paris, ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... This portrayal of the startling situation, if Cordelia Running Bird's wish could be fulfilled, increased the shock of ...
— Big and Little Sisters • Theodora R. Jenness
... real name of the "Sydney Baxter" of this story is Reginald Davis; and those of us who know him and have watched every step of his progress, from his first small job of the "pen and ledger" to the Secretaryship of a great Company, are astonished at the understanding and accuracy of this portrayal of a young man's inner self ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... resent the inadequacy of mine. If you have never had the good fortune to live with them, it is impossible to make you see them as they are. When you once have thoroughly known them, language will fail you to do them justice, and you will prefer to be silent rather than slander them by inadequate portrayal. They are at first sight not attractive-looking. If you stand outside and look at them from a distance their lives will appear to you very humdrum and prosaic. But remember that for almost thirty years our Lord lived just such ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... Wilbur's palm, disclosing to him that he had a deep vein of cruelty in his nature. Patricia Whipple listened impatiently to this and other sinister revelations. She had not learned palm reading, but now resolved to. Meantime, she could and did stem the flood of character portrayal by a suggestion of tennis. Patricia was still freckled, though not so obtrusively as in the days of her lawlessness. Her skirt and her hair were longer, the latter being what Wilbur Cowan later called rusty. She was still active and still determined, however. No girl in her presence ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... meaning of the text, the scene; also what the composer had in mind when he wrote. Then he learns to express these emotions in his own voice and action, through the imaginative power, which will color his tones, influence his action, render his portrayal instinct with life. Imagination in some form is generally inherent in all of us. If it lies dormant, it can be cultivated and brought to bear upon the singer's ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... portraitist paints the client himself; but he does not need to do this, and the aesthetic value of his work is independent of it; for the picture possesses its beauty even when we know nothing of its model. In the language of current philosophy, truth in the sense of the correspondence of a portrayal to an object external to the ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... went home and closed my eyes and sat alone—thinking of you," he told her. "To me all that is fine beyond words I try to translate into music. Where words—even poetry—fail, notes begin. So at the piano I tried to express something like a portrayal ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... the sun, moon, and stars within it, the beasts, birds, and plants below it, and finishes his task by taking man out of a little hillock of "the earth beneath," and woman out of man's side. Doubtless Linnaeus, as he went to his devotions, often smiled at this childlike portrayal. Yet he was never able to break away from the idea it embodied. At times, in face of the difficulties which beset the orthodox theory, he ventured to favour some slight concessions. Toward the end of his life he timidly advanced the hypothesis that all the species of one genus constituted ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... her tour was the production of "Carmen." The fiery, impetuous, emotional, and sensuous character of the Spanish heroine appealed to Miss Nethersole's vivid imagination, and she gave a realistic portrayal of the role that became popular and spectacular. In all parts of the country the "Carmen Kiss" became a byword. The play, in addition to its own merits as a striking drama, and its vogue at the opera through Madame Calve's performance of the leading ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman |
