"True to life" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger.' How true to life that is! How often there comes to a man, at his setting out in life, a time which humbles him; a time of disappointment, when he finds that he is not so clever as he thought, as able to help himself as he ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... a well-told story in tune with human experience, holding true to life, exercising fancy but keeping it under control, arousing thought as well as feeling, and appealing to our intellect as well as to our imagination. [Footnote: This convenient division of prose fiction into romances and novels is open to challenge. Some critics use the name "novel" ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... story, simple, tender and pretty as one would care to read. The action throughout is brisk and pleasing; the characters, it is apparent at once, are as true to life as though the author had known them all personally. Simple in all its situations, the story is worked up in that touching and quaint strain which never grows wearisome, no matter how often the lights and shadows of love are introduced. It rings true, ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... I should think," she replied. "I'll bet it's true to life—the artist is too much of a fool to have created that expression," Stefan went on. "Jove, I should like to meet her, shouldn't you?" he ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... his manner of characterization and proceeding from the inside first. This variation goes to the extent of distinguishing influences of the soil as well as of social grade and temperament. His northerners speak and act otherwise than those of the south or west, and, in the main, are true to life, despite the author's perceptible ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... her young brother Dick, the crossing-sweeper, honest, because mother had made them promise to be so when she died; the good-natured, agreeable, clever young thief Jenks, the tempter and beguiler of poor Dick; and, above all, the dear dog Scamp, with his knowing ways and soft brown eyes, are all as true to life and as touchingly set forth as any heart could desire, beguiling the reader into smiles and tears, and into ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... his subjects which offer only a restricted interest, and they did not see the altogether classic quality of this technique without bitumen, without glazing, without tricks; of this vibrating colour; of this rich paint; of this passionate design so suitable for expressing movement and gestures true to life; of this simple composition where the whole picture is based upon two or three values with the straightforwardness one admires ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... he learnt to see that, lying intermingled with all the power and nobility of much of his work, there was a displeasing extravagance, a violence, a faultiness of detail, an exaggeration that often ruined his pictures. Neither he nor Claude were true to life; but there was an insolence sometimes about Turner's variation from fact, which made him shudder. How he seemed sometimes, in his pictures of places familiar to Hugh—such, for instance, as the drawing of Malham Cove—to miss, by his heady violence, all the real, the essential charm of the place. ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Josh Weathersby you have a purely imaginary character, yet one true to life. A character chuck full of sunshine and rural simplicity. Take him as you find him, and in his experiences you will observe there is ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... tell you the story of the mistake you made,' she continued, as Trent, his hands clasped between his knees, still looked at her enigmatically. 'You will have to believe it, Mr Trent; it is utterly true to life, with its confusions and hidden things and cross-purposes and perfectly natural mistakes that nobody thinks twice about taking for facts. Please understand that I don't blame you in the least, and never did, for jumping to the conclusion you did. You knew that I was estranged ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... intimately acquainted with an overwhelming number of thoroughly clean and decent people who still believe in God and cherish high ideals, and it is UPON THE LIVES OF THESE THAT I BASE WHAT I WRITE. To contend that this does not produce a picture true to life is idiocy. It does. It produces a picture true to ideal life; to the best that good men and good women ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... published did any conscripts appear in the streets. Though, in the proportion of soldiers to civilians, the cartoon may exaggerate, in its presentment of the spirit of the nation, and of the determination of the nation with regard to the war, it is true to life. ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... been a secret source of comfort and happiness, and was like a companion, a dear human friend, and now he appeared to be on the point of losing it. Could it be that all that mental picture, with the details that seemed so true to life, was purely imaginary? He could not believe it; the old house had probably been pulled down, the big trees felled, orchard and hedges grabbed up—all the old features obliterated—and the land thrown into some larger neighbouring farm. It was dreadful to think that such ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... colour, but the whole effect is rich and harmonious. The chief defects in the work are the overcrowding of the composition, and the bad values of distance, caused in a great measure by the gold background. Signorelli's treatment is too realistic, his figures are too solid and too true to life, to bear the decorative background so suitable to the flat, half-symbolic painting of the Sienese school. They need space and air behind them, and lacking that, one feels a disagreeable sensation of oppression and overcrowding. Keeping ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... of Miss Sheppard's book lies in the fact that she is so true to life that we tire of the goodness and beauty, and long for a rogue to keep us company and break the pall of a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... True to life, our author furnishes the "great man," and the "odd habits," and the miserable years of "glorious" endurance. "Dorothea looked deep into the ungauged reservoir of Mr. Casaubon's mind, seeing reflected there ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... pleasant pages in 'Fame, the Fiddler,' which reminds us of 'Trilby,' with its pictures of Bohemian life, and its happy-go-lucky group of good-hearted, generous scribblers, artists, and playwrights. Some of the characters are so true to life that it is impossible not to recognise them. Among the best incidents in the volume must be mentioned the production of Pryor's play, and the account of poor Jimmy Lambert's death, which is as moving an incident ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... rather a feeble fancy which unites two vital epochs by the incident of the truant lambkin, and that the plot of the poem does not in any way reveal a great faculty of invention. A parable, moreover, teaches only so far as it is true to life; and in a tale professing to deal with persons of our own day and country, we have a right to expect some fidelity to our contemporaries and neighbors. But we find nothing of this in "Kathrina,"—not even in the incident of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... leap from chair to chair, and end in a deafening roar in which the whole room joined. Each man was at his best. Fred, with entire gravity, and with his sternest and most High Pan-Jam expression, told, just after the fish was served, a story of a negro cook at a camp so true to life and in so perfect a dialect that the right-hand blackamoor doubled himself up like a jack-knife, much to the astonishment of those on the far side of the big round table, who up to that moment had firmly believed them to be studio properties with ebony heads screwed on bodies of iron ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... beautiful tones. He does not think of beautiful tones at all. Hatred and jealousy should be expressed in the voice as well as in action and gesture; they are far from lovely in themselves, and to be natural and true to life, they will not make lovely tones in the voice. We want singing actors to-day, men and women who can adequately portray the characters they impersonate through ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... mischievous Cupid. I know it well, for I have observed it several times upon my own countenance. The moment Harley appeared upon the scene I chose to have Marguerite hastily clasp the book in her hands, raise it to her lips, and kiss the picture—and it must have been intensely true to life, for she did it without a moment's hesitation, almost anticipating my convenience, throwing an amount of passion into the act which made my pen fairly hiss as I dipped it into the ink. Of course Harley could not fail to see it—I ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... read of such things in scores of novels, and hundreds of actual experiences had told him that they were true to life. Thousands of women, at this solemn afternoon hour, were sitting behind dainty porcelain and silver fittings, with their voices tinkling pleasantly in a cascade of solicitous little questions. Cushat-Prinkly detested ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... story; it has no real characters; its dialogue is "talking book;" it indulges in some but not much description. It is in fact a prose Vanity of Human Wishes, admirably if somewhat stiffly arranged in form, and as true to life as life itself. You will have difficulty in finding a wiser book anywhere; but although it is quite true that a novel need not be foolish, wisdom is certainly not its determining differentia. Yet for our purposes ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... sculptors have dealt fairly with all, and not one has the lineaments of utter baseness. To Cristoforo Solari's statues of Lodovico Sforza and his wife, Beatrice d'Este, the palm of excellence in art and of historical interest must be awarded. Sculpture has rarely been more dignified and true to life than here. The woman with her short clustering curls, the man with his strong face, are resting after that long fever which brought woe to Italy, to Europe a new age, and to the boasted minion of Fortune a slow death in the prison palace of Loches. Attired in ducal robes, they lie in state; and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... exhibited in a spacious room portraits of all the great seigneurs, princes, cavaliers, queens, princesses, ladies and maids of honour of the Court, and she being in this room with us we all saw there her portrait painted true to life, showing her in all her beauty and perfection, apparelled as a Frenchwoman with a cap, showing her great pearls, and a gown whose wide sleeves of silver tissue were trimmed with lynx—the whole picture, which also showed the portraits of her three daughters, was ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... pictures the artists have caught the true spirit of Lincoln's humor, and while showing the laughable side of many incidents in his career, they are true to life in the ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... saying that Valeria H. Montague's stories are silly and not true to life, so that is no argument," retorted Felicity, who knew more about cooking than about history, and evidently imagined that the Lady Jane Gray was ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... or another for the better, unless they are like their Acadian French neighbours, and intend to remain just as they are for two hundred and fifty years, then these sketches will be curious; and, as they are as true to life as a Dutch picture, it will be interestin' to see what sort of folks were here in 1854, how they lived, and how they ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... of a great air flight around the world, of adventures in Alaska, Siberia and elsewhere. A true to life picture of what may be accomplished ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... incorrect; for, inasmuch as the story or circumstance of the parable must be simple and indeed common-place, it may be real. There is no fiction in the parables we have thus far studied; the fundamental stories are true to life and the given circumstances are facts of experience. The narrative or incident upon which a parable is constructed may be an actual occurrence or fiction; but, if fictitious, the story must be consistent and probable, with no admixture of the unusual or miraculous. In this respect the parable differs ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... portrait of a witch, taken from Otway's Orphan, Act. II., is given in No. 117 of the Spectator. It is so true to life and apposite to our subject ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen |
