"Trait" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the West Pointers as well as among the civilian generals. At St. Louis, in the seventies, I used to see sometimes an unobtrusive man in citizen's dress, marked by no trait which distinguished him from the ordinary, a man serious in his bearing, who one might easily think had undergone some crushing blow. This was Major-General John Pope. His son was in our university and his sister, a most kind and gracious lady, was a near friend. Pope seems destined ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... without thereby sanctioning the indiscriminate practice of amputation in a miscellaneous sort of way as a pastime, to this otherwise objectionable word may, we think, be used to bring out a certain trait of character in full force. Holding this opinion, and begging the reader to observe that we make the statement gravely and in an entirely philosophical way, we repeat ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... too, receive the order for a passage. Many times the entire family of a widowed mother, with the mother herself, has been thus transferred to our shores from the savings of the son or daughter who first ventured over. I refer to this remarkable trait in the Irish character, not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... idealized by the poet although here the departure from the original is not as wide. That delicacy of sentiment which is inseparable from Ingeborg and guides her right in the great crisis is not, he maintains, a trait merely of the woman of ancient Scandinavia but is inherent in each noble female, no matter when or where she lives. And Tegnr, who surely was no realist after the fashion of Strindberg, chooses to picture woman as she appears ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... borrow language of dislike; And, instead of Dearest Miss, Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss, And those forms of old admiring, Call her Cockatrice and Siren, Basilisk, and all that's evil, Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil, Ethiop, Wench, and Blackamoor, Monkey, Ape, and twenty more; Friendly Trait'ress, loving Foe— Not that she is truly so, But no other way they know A contentment to express, Borders so upon excess, That they do not rightly wot Whether it be from ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... read, or at least half read, some signs of another sort of life. She noticed that her father's manner wanted its ordinary careless, confident ease; there was something forced about it; his face bore tokens of loss of sleep, and had a trait of uneasiness most unwonted in Mr. Copley. Dolly sat still a little while, and then went out and joined her father in the porch. Mr. St. Leger had come in, so that she did not leave her mother alone. Dolly ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... one trait in Betty's character that bothered Calumet more than another, it was her frankness. More than once during the days that followed Neal Taggart's visit Calumet was made to feel the absence of guile in her treatment of him. The glances she gave him were as straightforward and ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... small plant it might not be profitable to treat this, still with large and suitable machinery it may be made to pay, and the trouble of separating the rich lode from the inferior stone avoided. One remarkable trait in the lode is the manner in which it splits into blocks and slabs, all the faces of the quartz pebbles being cloven ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... made a little tea for the party; a refreshment to which they looked forward with child-like eagerness. The fairness with which these good-hearted people used to divide the scanty allowance, and afterwards the leaves, which are greatly relished, was an engaging trait in their simple character: I have still vividly before me their sleek swarthy faces and twinkling Tartar eyes, as they lay stretched on the ground in the sun, or crouched in the sleet and snow beneath some sheltering rock; each with his little polished wooden cup of ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... individual does not possess it, very little can be done for him in the artistic realm. Constructive or creative imagination implies the ability to combine known elements in new ways—to use the mind forwards, as it were. The possession of this trait makes it possible to picture to oneself how things are going to look or sound or feel before any actual sense experience has taken place; to see into people's minds and often find out in advance how they are going ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... thing I must mention, as strongly illustrative of Angelina's modesty, and that shrinking from any praise of man which was such a marked trait in her character. She never voluntarily alluded to any act of hers which would be likely to draw upon her commendatory notice, even from the members of her own family, and in her charities she followed out as far as possible the Bible injunction: "When thou ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... "please mamma," "please papa," etc. I well remember one nervous little girl who would yell at the top of her voice and become black in the face the moment she wanted a door opened or anything else. A few weeks of patience and firmness on the part of the mother entirely cured her of this unbecoming trait. ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... statesman and friend always appeared in him. And the nearer you approached him, the more his habit of mind obviously appeared to be modest and lowly. His charity in judging of others, is a farther trait of his Christian character. Of his benevolence I need not speak, but his kind construction of doubtful actions, his charitable language toward those with whom he most widely differed, his thorough forgetfulness ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... knob staring at me blankly. I hated the thing. The gallant English officer—and in my time I have known and loved a many of the most gallant—does not go about in private life fondling a trophy reeking with the blood of his enemies. It is the trait of a savage. That truculent knob and that truculent bull-neck correlated themselves most horribly in my mind. And again, with a shiver, I had the haunting flash of a vision of him, out of the tail of my eye, standing rigid and gaping between the two cars, while my rugged old Marigold, ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... sin. "I find injustice or offensiveness to myself or anyone else," he once wrote, "the hardest of all things to forgive." We concurred in detesting the habit of licensing oneself to speak one's mind, and the unpleasant English trait of confusing sincerity with frank brutality. There is a sort of Englishman who thinks he has a right, if he feels cross or contemptuous, to lay bare his mood without reference to his companion's feelings; and this seemed to us both the ugliest ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a rough lot with both the virtues and the defects of the pioneer. Nevertheless among their most marked characteristics were their honesty and their kindness. Hittell gives an incident that illustrates the latter trait very well. "It was a little camp, the name of which is not given and perhaps is not important. The day was a hot one when a youth of sixteen came limping along, footsore, weary, hungry, and penniless. There were at least thirty robust miners at work in the ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... but derangements;—the hopeless patients of a mad-doctor rather,—exhibitions of folly betraying itself in spite of exciting reason and prudence. He not poetically, but painfully exaggerates every trait; that is, not by the drollery of the circumstance, but by the excess ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... have taken the pains to record, had about disarmed the hunter of the suspicions which had been lingering with him for a long time. He believed Zeke Hunt an ignorant fellow, who had been left along the Ohio river, as he had related, and who had not yet learned that trait of civilized society, carefully to conceal his thoughts and feelings when in conversation. The impression which he first felt, of having met him before, might easily arise from his resemblance to some ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... not explain because she dared not even acknowledge it—though she loved him for being like his father, she regarded the likeness with a growing dread; nay, caught herself correcting him stealthily when he developed some trivial trait which she, and she alone, recognised as part of his father's legacy. It was what in the old days she would have called "contradictions," but there it was, and she could not help it; the nearer George in her memory approached to faultlessness, the more obstinately her instinct fought against her ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he was always on his guard, fearful lest any chance word might be misconstrued or give offence. It is no wonder, then, that Lexington misjudged him. Nor were those who knew him only when he was absorbed in the cares of command before the enemy likely to see far below the surface. The dominant trait in Jackson's character was his intense earnestness, and when work was doing, every faculty of his nature was engrossed in the accomplishment of the task on hand. But precise, methodical, and matter-of-fact as he appeared, his was ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... contrivances & wit weare too weake to strive against our plotts which weare already invented to their deceipt that would deceave us. We lett them understand that the time drew neere that the french uses to trait their friends in feasting and meriment, and all should be welcome, having no greater ffriends then they weare. They, to see our fashions as well as to fill their gutts, gave consent. By that means the considerablest persons are invited, ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... country, and showed but little novelty. Implements of farming and of war, pianos, sewing-machines and locomotives attracted chief attention. The pianos were "unreservedly praised." The wines, California having come to the rescue, were pronounced an improvement on previous specimens. The only trait of our engines that was admired or borrowed appears to have been that which had least to do with the organism of the machine—the cab. In cars our ideas have fruited better, and Pullman and Westinghouse have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... come home from St. Mary's she made known a family trait—she voiced what to her seemed an inspiration but which to the father, at first, seemed madness. Still, he complied and spent many happy hours before his death in what he ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... both dispositional and physical. So true is the first that his patience has been the marvel of the world; and, indeed, many, regarding this trait manifested in such an unusual degree, doubted the Negro's courage, till the splendid record of the '60's and the equal, but more recent, record of the '90's, wrote forbearance as the real explanation of an endurance seemingly so at ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... the American Indian gives a very different account of his own tribe or race from that which is given by other people. He is much addicted to overestimating his own perfections, and to undervaluing those of his rival or his enemy; a trait which may possibly be thought corroborative of the Mosaic account of ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... look of love and trust. Grace's resentment died out. She said a formal good-bye to Miss Wharton and hurried from the room. She would go to see Miss Wilder the next day as she had requested. Perhaps Miss Wharton's rude reception of her was due merely to a brusque trait of character. Perhaps she belonged to the old school who believed that youth and responsibility could not go hand in hand. At any rate she would try hard not to judge. Although she usually found her first impressions to be correct, still there were always exceptions. Miss ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... disentangled the main characters and circumstances from their adjuncts, we perceive that he treats poignant and tremendous situations with a concentrated vigour special to his genius; that he has studied each word and trait of character, and that he has prepared by gradual approaches and degrees of horror for the culmination of his tragedies. The sentences which seem at first sight copied from a commonplace book, are found to be appropriate. Brief lightning flashes of acute perception ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... to remark a really singular trait. In spite of the predominance of practical sagacity, of the habits and spirit of public business, of vigorous actuality in Burke's character, yet at the bottom of all his thoughts about communities and governments there lay a certain mysticism. It was no irony, no literary trope, when he talked ...
— Burke • John Morley
... the famous song of Amina, the happy village-bride about to be married on the morrow to her lover—the tenor of course. The Diva sang it admirably, and acted it equally well. The purest girlish innocence was expressed in every trait of her features and manifested itself in every gesture and every movement. The perfect, trusting, happy love of a fresh and innocent heart could ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... "A very human trait, Mr. Narkom. We all are anxious that the world should set the highest possible valuation upon us. It is only when we are underrated that we object. So this dear, deluded old gentleman, having failed to secure a 'rune' in Java, brought back something equally ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... common use that give some suggestion of its character. There is the word selfish, that is, being absorbed in one's own self; in getting every stream to flow by his own door. That is commonly regarded, even in absolutely worldly circles, as a detestable trait. Its opposite, self-forgetful, being full of forgetting one's self in thinking of others, is as commonly regarded in all circles as a charming, winsome trait of character. The words self-centered, and self-willed, are ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... I told Sally I felt as if I must go and see the Peace Commission. I felt as if I must make some arrangements with 'em to not have any more wars. As I told Sally, "We might jest as well call ourselves Injuns and savages at once, if we had to keep up this most savage and brutal trait of theirn." Says I firmly, "I must, before I go back to Jonesville, tend to it." Says I, "I didn't come here for fashion, or dry-goods; though I s'pose lots of both of 'em are to be got here." Says I, "I may tend to ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... man of genius or great intellect, the trait which raises him over others and makes him worthy of respect, is at bottom the fact, that the only unsullied and innocent part of human nature, namely, the intellect, has the upper hand in him? and prevails; whereas, in the other there is nothing but sinful will, and just ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... was very marked and decisive, the youngsters were entirely unable to restrain their expressions of surprise and admiration. It was very evident, from his method of procedure, that he was guided by these expressions, quite as much as by his fingering of the bumps. He would first mention lightly some trait of character. If it attracted no particular attention, he would quietly fall on to something else. But if the announcement seemed to create a little breeze, showing that he had made a hit, he would then dwell upon the point, and intensify his expressions, until, in some instances, ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... a moment and I mused idly on the boyhood of little Fyne. I could not imagine what it might have been like. His dominant trait was clearly the remnant of still earlier days, because I've never seen such staring solemnity as Fyne's except in a very young baby. But where was he all that time? Didn't he suffer contamination from the indolence of Captain Anthony, I inquired. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... and bestial, so would our race be under a like bondage; so it is now when driven by capitalism to the lower levels of misery. The allegedly superior morality of the master race or class is not an inherent trait but merely a function of economic ease and ethical tradition." He then discusses slave breeding, which was so degrading as to force sexual relations between healthy Negroes and even that of orphan white girls with Negroes to produce desirable looking offspring for purposes of concubinage. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... Annette, as was the habit of the Metis women, had about her shoulders a blanket of Indian red and Prussian blue. [Footnote: It is customary for Metis women, even the most coquettish and pretty of them, to wear blankets; and the hideous "fashion" is the chief barbaric trait which they inherit from their wild ancestry. Annette, of course, donned the robe under a mental protest. E.C.] Captain Stephens had gone abroad upon the prairie in the morning, and with his pistol shot a pair of chickens. These he handed to Annette ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... and beauty of expression that is often irresistible. They are essentially the love songs of a romantic, but refined and gifted poet. As a whole they are singularly free from sexual sensuousness, which is so often a trait in songs of their type. There is an idealism, wonderfully fresh and pure, about them, that is antagonistic to the composer's own assertion that verse often becomes doggerel when harnessed ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... had in no way softened him, and as a natural result, when he came to the throne and became his own master, he soon made himself known and feared by his many terrible and wicked deeds; and so marked did this fierce trait of character appear, that he was ever known as Pedro the Cruel, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... furniture of the latter, while, without scruple, he appropriated and transported to Dresden the cannon of the former. He did not take up his residence in the imperial palace, but the house of Lichtenstein; too modest to use the apartments of one whom he had deprived of a kingdom. Had this trait been related of a great man and a hero, it would irresistibly excite our admiration; but the character of this prince leaves us in doubt whether this moderation ought to be ascribed to a noble self-command, or to the littleness of a weak mind, which even good fortune could not embolden, ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... trait'rous kiss her Saviour stung, Not she denied him with unholy tongue; She, while apostles shrank, could danger brave, Last at his cross and earliest ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... had watched his development with increasing warmth of sympathy, the more so as many a trait of character which he recognised in Heinz reminded him of his own nature and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... who made themselves blind while talking to him, just as Conall Cernach's mistresses squinted as he did.[472] Cuchulainn's blindness arose from his habit of sinking one eye into his head and protruding the other—a well-known solar trait! His "distortion," during which, besides this "blindness," blood shot upwards from his head and formed a magic mist, and his anger caused showers of sparks to mount above him, points to dawn or sunset,[473] though the setting sun would rather suggest a hero sinking calmly to rest than ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... savage unselfish ethics may be found in Mr. Mann's account of the Andaman Islanders, a nomad race, very low in culture. "It is a noteworthy trait, and one which deserves high commendation, that every care and consideration are paid by all classes to the very young, the weak, the aged, and the helpless, and these being made special objects of interest and attention, invariably fare better in regard to the comforts ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... gave promise of anything but the sort of career which he has dignified. He had all the impulsiveness of his famous brother, General Sherman, and something more than his turbulence. He himself, with that charming frankness which seems peculiarly a Sherman trait, tells in his autobiography what reckless things he did, even to coming to blows with his teacher; but all this heat seems later to have gone to temper a most manly and courageous character for a career of the ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... knew Dr. Gridley in the sickroom, and knew him well, ever discovered the really finest trait of his character: a keen, unshielded sensibility to and sympathy for all human suffering, that could not bear to inflict the slightest additional pain. He was really, in the main, a man of soft tones and unctuous laughter, of gentle ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... allusions, phrases that may mean anything or nothing, and then leave at the end, in obscurity, the whole matter, which could have been explained and made perfectly clear and settled on a satisfactory basis in a few short sentences. It's a petty, abominable trait in their character." ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... a peculiar trait; it is asking for something after we have taken it. The human countenance is a fine picture book. I should like to read that belonging to your cousin Josef, ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... was able to bring his winging thoughts down from the clouds to earth, it was to discover still another unsuspected trait in the woman who had become his all; for Smiles, eager and excited, was still dwelling in a world of romance, and she insisted upon recounting what had happened, almost verbatim, and in a dramatic manner quite unlike the simplicity which ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... The strongest peculiar trait of the Badger is perhaps his sociability—sociability being, of course, a very different thing from gregariousness. Usually there are two Badgers in each den. Nothing peculiar about that, but there are several cases on record of a ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... noble trait was Janet Wren,—a woman who had done a world of good to those in sickness, sorrow, or other adversity, a woman of boundless faith in herself and her opinions, but not too much hope or charity for others. The blood of the ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... PARRY, KANE, McCLINTOCK, HAYES, NARES, and others, have on the other hand only had opportunities of registering single auroras; the phenomenon in the case of their winterings has not formed any distinctive trait of the Polar winter night. It was the less to be expected that the Vega expedition would form an exception in this respect, as its voyage happened during one of the years of which we knew beforehand that it would be a minimum ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... distance and coolness can be noted in the title with which the Apostle addresses the Galatians. He does not now address them as his brethren, as he usually does. He addresses them as Galatians in order to remind them of their national trait to ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... sisters had bought drawings, and paid very dearly for them too, that were not half so finely done! They would ask her to show me her portfolio, and she would do it directly, for she was the kindest creature living. It was not the worst trait in the disposition of these boys, that, whatever might be the subject of conversation, or from whatever point we might start in our discourse, they found pleasure in making all things bear towards the honour and renown of their young mistress. The scenery was nothing without Miss ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... collars a pick-pocket in a crowd. If there's nothing to paint—no real person—he paints nothing; look at the sumptuous emptiness of his portrait of Mrs. Guy Awdrey"—("Why," the pretty woman perplexedly interjected, "that's the only nice picture he ever did!") "If there's one positive trait in a negative whole he brings it out in spite of himself; if it isn't a nice trait, so much the worse for the sitter; it isn't Lillo's fault: he's no more to blame than a mirror. Your other painters do the surface—he ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... (throwing down the pole,) 'you shall take it now;' which I accordingly did, and being a fresh man, soon made the cat tumble over the cascade. This may be laughed at as too trifling to record; but it is a small characteristick trait in the Flemish picture which I give of my friend, and in which, therefore, I mark the most minute particulars. And let it be remembered, that sop at play is one of ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... The objection lies entirely within the boundary of his own art. He has selected a personage for his drama with whom a certain fate is so indissolubly associated, that it is impossible to think of her without recalling it to mind; and this ineffaceable trait in her history he has attempted, for the time, to obliterate from our memory. By this procedure, the imagination of the reader is divided and distracted. The picture presented by the poet is and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... morning—smiled and told her she had done fine, and that he was pleased with her, Annie-Many-Ponies did not smile back with that slow, sweet, heart-twisting smile which was at once her sharpest weapon and her most endearing trait. ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... the rejoinder. "Unfortunately you are on board, and you must make the best of it, I understand from my friend—shall I say Dr. Ramblethorne—that you are both very inquisitive. Inquisitiveness is a bad trait in ones so young. You see, it has got you into trouble. The doctor has strong reasons for getting me to take care of you for some considerable time, so you will have an opportunity of seeing how we Germans make war. No half-measures, mark you. It is useless ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... reflection, in contemplating their character. The christian and the philanthropist, with the benevolent design of improving their morals and meliorating their condition, may profitably study every peculiarity and trait of character observable among them; it will facilitate their object and enable them the more readily to reclaim them from a life of heathenish barbarity, and to extend to them the high boons of ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... It is a family trait Yet, once get her turned around—show her that she has been wrong and unfair to anybody—and she can't do too much for her to prove how ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... termination to their brief married life, a vague tenderness took the place of her former apathy. The very weakness he had shown in concealing their marriage made him more a reality to her by giving her an insight into his nature—not an endearing trait, perhaps; yet sometimes the failing that one tries to counteract in the very effort it arouses awakens ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... one indues A robe, half careless, for it is the use; Although her soul and it so fair agree, We sure may, unattaint of heresy, Conceit it might the soul's begetter be. The immortal could we cease to contemplate, The mortal part suggests its every trait. God laid His fingers on the ivories Of her pure members as on smoothed keys, And there out-breathed her spirit's harmonies I'll speak a little proudly:- I disdain To count the beauty worth my wish or gaze, Which the dull daily fool can covet or obtain. I do confess the fairness of the spoil, ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... time as a distinctive type, which may possess more for the future than the votary of Anglo-Saxon civilisation and strenuous commercialism may yet suspect. Whatever critical comparison may be applied to these people, the foreigner will acknowledge the pleasing trait of courtesy they invariably show. The elegance and grace of Spanish manners, wafted across the Atlantic in the days of ocean chivalry, were budded to the gentle courtesy of the native; and the brusque Anglo-Saxon is almost ashamed of his seeming or intended brusqueness ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... escaped him. He confided absolutely in his rider in the matter of bad country, and would tackle anything I would put him at. It seemed that he trusted me not to put him at anything that would hurt him. This was an invaluable trait when an example had to be set to the reluctance of the other horses. He was a great swimmer. Probably the most winning quality of his nature was his extreme friendliness. He was always wandering into camp to be petted, ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... as if he was even then at the head of affairs in Berlin, though he was only the friend of a friend of Niebuhr's, Niebuhr himself being by no means all powerful in Prussia, even in 1815. This hopefulness was a trait in Bunsen's character that remained through life. A plan was no sooner suggested to him and approved by him than he took it for granted that all obstacles must vanish, and many a time did all obstacles vanish, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... source of attraction which is as great a natural gift as beauty, and which, when it is found with beauty, makes it perfectly irresistible; to wit, perfect unconsciousness of self. This is a wholly different trait from unselfishness: it is not a moral virtue, attained by voluntary effort, but a constitutional gift, and a very great one. Fenelon praises it as a Christian grace, under the name of simplicity; but we incline to consider it only ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... With respect to the person in whose hands it has failed, I may say to you (in our confidence) that my opinion does not very much differ from yours, if indeed it does at all. Since he has been in Ireland I have seen no one trait of that character which I thought he had displayed in former situations of great difficulty, and for which I still gave him credit, though a nearer view of his mind had certainly diminished the impressions which I once entertained on the subject. Sorry I ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... mistress of the best farm in the country, was an enormously stout but very active woman. Her husband, a man half her size and an excellent farmer, exhibited only one trait of nervousness, and that on her account. If she went to market without him he was uneasy until she came back lest something should have happened to her. In all the fifteen years of their married life they had never slept out of their own bed, and they ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... and Bayonne, from Cadiz to Toulon and Gaeta, from Tarentum to Venice, Corfu, and Constantinople.[1169]—On the psychological and moral atlas, besides a primitive gap which he will never fill up, because this is a characteristic trait, there are some estimates which are wrong, especially with regard to the Pope and to Catholic conscience. In like manner he rates the energy of national sentiment in Spain and Germany too low. He rates too high his own prestige in ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... article once called, "The Spaniard Fails to Understand." While I do not say it was good, the idea had some truth in it. It is a fact that failure to understand is not exclusively a Spanish trait, but the failing is a human one which is more accentuated among peoples of backward culture, whose vitality ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... City, in the Era of Noble-Sentiment and Pompadourism, can make a Jeanne Phlipon, and nourish her to clear perennial Womanhood, though but on Logics, Encyclopedies, and the Gospel according to Jean-Jacques! Biography will long remember that trait of asking for a pen "to write the strange thoughts that were rising in her." It is as a little light-beam, shedding softness, and a kind of sacredness, over all that preceded: so in her too there was an Unnameable; she too was a Daughter of the Infinite; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... indignity to women, he punished with death; but to the wounded, either of his own or of the enemy's forces, he was as gentle as a nursing sister and the brave and able he rewarded with instant promotion and higher pay. In no one trait was he a demagogue. One can find no effort on his part to ingratiate himself with his men. Among the officers of his staff there were no favorites. He messed alone, and at all times kept to himself. He spoke little, and then with utter lack of self-consciousness. ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... nothing to the lace I had just seen falling on the floor. When we descended it was twilight. Ann said she must study, and left us by the parlor fire. Adelaide lighted a candle, and took a novel, which she read reclining on a sofa. Reclining on sofas, I discovered, was a family trait, though they were all in a state of the most robust health, with the exception of Mr. Somers. I walked up and down the rooms. "They were fine once," said Ben, who appeared from a dark corner, "but faded now. Mother never changes anything if she can help it. She is a terrible aristocrat," ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... circles. It is true that Gracie was not acquainted with them, that her father would not allow a copy of their books to come freely into his home, and Gracie was much too honorable to read them in private. But it is also true that while professing to admire this trait in her, as charming in a young daughter, the professor had also, pityingly and gently, told this young daughter that these things were her father's concessions to the narrow age and trammelled profession to which he ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... is equivalent to a strong natural instinct is his disposition to "do murder." This may account for his love of "sport," or it may only be an hereditary trait derived from the period when he had not yet concerned himself with agriculture, but slew wild beasts and used his implements of stone to crack their bones and get the marrow out. The instinct to slay birds, beasts and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... persons of colder temperament to sun themselves in the warmth of his bright looks and generous humour. His laughter cheered one like wine. I do not know that he was very witty; but he was pleasant. He was prone to blush; the history of a generous trait moistened his eyes instantly. He was instinctively fond of children and of the other sex from one year old to eighty. Coming from the Derby once and being stopped on the road in a lock of carriages during which the people in a carriage ahead saluted us with many insulting epithets, ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... first time to wholly realise. A Banquo amongst the gay stream of people who brushed lightly against him every moment. He lost for the time that admirable gift of sympathetic interest in his fellows which had once been his chief trait. His outlook upon life was changed. To the world which had misused him so he showed an altered front. He scowled at the men, and kept his face turned from the women. What had they done, these people, that they should be well-dressed ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... of neither wife nor son could resist this beautiful and affecting trait of nature, and the undying love of one's own land, emanating, as it did, so unexpectedly, from a heart otherwise insensible to the ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... a characteristic of the French nation; a trait in some individuals elevated to a sublime self-devotion, and in others degraded to mere excitability. The vivacity, gesticulation, and grimace, which characterize most of them, are the external signs of this nature; the calm heroism of ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... has the world excelled The present in this line; Our loving Lord has not withheld From us this trait divine. ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... generous and independent. There wasn't any sneaking little brag and snobbishness in 'em. They 'd have cut a fellow dead that had come around with that sort of stuff;" and sixteen-year-old Will nodded his head with an emphatic movement that showed his approval of this trait ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... Hazlehurst. Few young men, of his age, were more promising in character and abilities. He was clever, and good-tempered; and, with all the temptations of an easy fortune within his reach, he had always shown himself firm in principles. There was one trait in his character, however, which had already more than once brought him into boyish scrapes, and which threatened, if not corrected, to be injurious to his career through life. He was naturally high-spirited; and, having been indulged by his mother, and seldom controlled by his male guardian, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... the habits of industry, economy, and exactness which made the subsequent prosperity of the man, who used to recount to his grandsons his early poverty and hardships, the kind home he found, and dwell with grateful pleasure on every trait and habit of the Colonel. "Now, boys," he said, "be sure, when you grow up and can afford it, that you go into New Hampshire and see where I used to live as a boy, and if the house of Colonel ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... the entire skirmish, and it was a remarkable exhibition of a savage trait for the pursuers to disregard the condition of one of their chiefs, by firing on him while in that condition. How many were killed or disabled they had no means of knowing, but many must have fallen, for when they lined up across the tongue of land behind them ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... told by Diderot, to Sir Samuel Romilly, when a young man:—'Je vous dirai un trait de lui, mais il vous sera un peu scandaleux peut-etre, car vous autres Anglais, vous croyez un peu en Dieu; pour nous autres, nous n'y croyons gueres. Hume dina dans une grande compagnie avec le baron D'Holbach. Il etait assis a cote du baron; on parla ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... arrogance. While they wore the plain toga, Caecina addressed them attired in a parti-coloured plaid and trousers.[256] Moreover, his wife Salonina rode on a fine horse with purple trappings, and though this did no one any harm, they grumbled and seemed hurt. It is an ineradicable human trait to turn critical eyes on new-found fortune, and to insist upon moderation most of all in those who used to be our equals. Crossing the Po, Caecina tried to undermine the loyalty of the Othonians by negotiations and promises. They retaliated with the same weapons, and when they had finished ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... by the apparently honest character of these observations. He could not resist the temptation to boast a little, that peculiar trait ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... banished sleep, I had gone over that old story of my poor mother's about my birth, which it had been one of my great delights in the old time to hear her tell, and which I knew by heart. My aunt walked into that story, and walked out of it, a dread and awful personage; but there was one little trait in her behaviour which I liked to dwell on, and which gave me some faint shadow of encouragement. I could not forget how my mother had thought that she felt her touch her pretty hair with no ungentle hand; and though it might have been altogether my mother's fancy, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... fire-glow suited her; another glow, warming her floating fancy, mingled with it, giving her every-day purpose the trait of heroism. The old spirit of the dead chivalry, of succour to the weak, life-long self-denial,—did it need the sand waste of Palestine or a tournament to call it into life? Down in that trading town, in the thick of its mills and drays, it could live, she thought. That very ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... in a contented mind," remarked Jack, who admired this positive trait in Herbert's nature, so ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... Tavish. "The word he just gied the gillies! It was as much as to say, 'I'll be coomin' along wi' ye from noo on.'" The old man's hankerings were helping his persistent hope, in spite of his respect for the Morrison trait of ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... Union, that restrained the Phalanx from retaliation, else they possessed none of the characteristics of a courageous, sensitive and high tempered people. The negro is not naturally docile; his surroundings, rather than his nature, have given him the trait; it is not naturally his, but something which his trainers have given him; and it is not a difficult task to untrain him and advance him beyond his apparent unconsciousness of self-duty and self-preservation. Let him feel that he is to be supported in any transaction uncommon to ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... said Miss Hubbard, "is just the sort of trait in a man which would appeal to me. I ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... of antiquity observes the doings of men with the keen and unerring vision of a natural historian" (Gomperz). In the Hippocratic writings, there are mentioned 236 plants; in the botany of Theophrastus, 455. To one trait of master and pupil I must refer—the human feeling, not alone of man for man, but a sympathy that even claims kinship with the animal world. "The spirit with which he (Theophrastus) regarded the animal world found no second expression till the present age" (Gomperz). ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... serpent, with or without an arrow-pointed tongue, because its course through the sky is serpentine, its stroke instantaneous and destructive; yet it is named Wi-lo-lo-a-ne, a word derived not from the name of the serpent itself, but from that of its most obvious trait, its gliding, zigzag motion. For this reason, the serpent is supposed to be more nearly related to lightning than to man; more nearly related to man than is lightning, because mortal and less mysterious. As further illustrative of the interminable relationships ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... as well as her magnetic eyes. Though the latter spoke an eager language of their own, she conversed slowly, with a conciseness and point that, added to a matchless earnestness, which was the predominant trait of her conversation as it was of her character, made her a most delightful companion. Persons were never her theme, unless public characters were under discussion, or friends were to be praised,—which kind office she frequently took upon herself. One never dreamed of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... that it pays to weed out the "boarder" cows from their herds and that if they breed from a scrub sire they will have scrub stock; but if the boarder cow was also inclined to become vicious and to corrupt the habits of the rest of the herd and the farmer knew this trait to be hereditary, he would invariably send such a cow to the butcher. I believe that as soon as farmers appreciate the biological significance of feeble-mindedness they will insist upon reasonable legislation for ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... pull carts, row boats, fish, and perform various other kinds of labor usually allotted to the stronger sex, which even a German would consider rather heavy for his "frow." The men, in addition to this ungallant trait, are much addicted to the use of tobacco and native corn-brandy—which, however, I can not but regard as a sign of civilization, since the same habits exist, to some extent, in our own country. Chewing and drinking are just ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... clear, honest eyes were fixed full upon him, waiting for his reply. Could he refuse her request? Did he not owe everything to her, and to that very high-flown spirit of generosity which was not only a fault (if it were a fault) of Sybil, but a trait common to ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... called the Lacy House, the royal grant whereof is dated 1690. The bricks and the mason work of the main edifice are English; the situation is beautiful; the furniture, conservatories, musical instruments, every trait and resource suggest luxury. After the battle of Fredericksburg, the Lacy House became a hospital: and a spectator of the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... mingling of childish simplicity with that thoughtful, wise, spiritual look into life, which met one in Dolly's serious hazel orbs; not often that sweetness and character speak so early in the lines of the lips; utterly childish in their soft, free mobility, and yet revealing continually a trait of thoughtfulness or of strength, along with the happy play of an unqualified tender disposition. "You are lovely! you are lovely!" was Mrs. Eberstein's inner cry; and she had to guard herself that the thought did not come to too open expression. There was a delicate ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... trait of people accustomed to good society is a calm, imperturbable quiet which pervades all their actions and habits, from the greatest to the least. They eat in quiet, move in quiet, live in quiet, and lose their wife, or even their money, in quiet; while low persons cannot take up either a spoon ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... of the world, and at home every where: nature has implanted in his bosom the characteristic benevolence of his ancestry, and he stands among us a being whom every one loves and admires, without any very distinguishing trait of learning, wit, or superior qualification, to command the respect he excites. If any one tells a good story or makes a laughable pun, Tom retails it for a week, and all the school have the advantage ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... have dreamed of objecting to whatever privations the task carried with it. Radway's anxiety for their comfort, however, caused them finally to imagine that perhaps they might have some just grounds for complaint after all. That is a great trait ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... Nymph too he beheld, in many a turn, Guiding the sweet rill from its fontal urn,— Say, can you blame?—No! none that saw and heard Could blame a bard, that he thus inly stirr'd; A muse beholding in each fervent trait, 30 Took Mary H—— for Polly Hymnia! Or haply as there stood beside the maid One loftier form in sable stole array'd, If with regretful thought he hail'd in thee Chisholm, his long-lost friend, Mol Pomene! 35 But most of you, soft warblings, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... an American, gage such a blank lack of character, individuality? How different was this trait from that which was exhibited by the energetic prosecution of her talents where her personality, shining forth so steadily, held his admiration almost undimmed! This was a baffling interrogation that furnished ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... long residence in the Western States had rubbed the Yankee out of him to a great extent. At all events he had few of their characteristics about him. He was neither staid, sober, nor, what is usually alleged as a trait of the true bred Yankee, "stingy." On the contrary, our doctor was full of talk and joviality—generous to a fault. A fault, indeed; for, although many years in practice in various parts of the United States, and having earned large sums of money, at the date of ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... if he took an umbrella for a walk in the rain at home, he brought back "Night Sketches." Such was his place. His own delight in this existence is noticeable, for it fitted his nature; in none of his works is the pleasure of the author in writing them so marked a trait, and in none does one come nearer to his natural self. They are complete and intimate revelations of the life of his senses, the sounds and sights and happenings of daily life. They pleased the readers ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... directly upon the Veda, Vishnu is not the sun. Nor do we learn what he is very readily from his second leading attribute in the Rig-veda, his association with Indra. Yet it is a very clearly marked trait in his character. Not only do the poets often couple the two gods in prayer and praise, but they often tell us that the one performed his characteristic deeds by the help of the other. They say that Vishnu made his three strides by the power of Indra (VIII. xii. 27), or for the sake of ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... English lord whom she should astonish with it began to form himself out of the dramatic nebulosity in his mind, and to whirl on a definite orbit in American society. But he was puzzled to decide whether Mela's willingness to take him into her confidence on short notice was typical or personal: the trait of a daughter of the natural-gas millionaire, or a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... everyday occurrence. No one would condescend to show curiosity; all were as impassive as Red Indians; and though we were the only strangers there, no one seemed at all curious about our business. This was the manner of the entire population, and it was a trait which I soon realized in everybody, from highest to lowest, that they kept the habitual garb of an incurious reticence, neither asking nor giving information. We found, as if carelessly loitering around the hotel, or playing billiards in it, several young men ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... as it may seem, my father was an honest man. One might have supposed his only son would inherit that trait, if nothing else. But it must have skipped a generation. I am not what I seem. I am a sham." He sat in silence for some minutes stroking ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... of previous centuries, or the chivalrous Princes of Northern Germany and Burgundy, who expended their force upon such unprofitable and impossible undertakings as the subjugation, for instance, of Switzerland! Not a single trait in his character reminds us of the Middle Ages, unless it be that he was said to care for reliques with a superstitious passion worthy of Louis XI. Sismondi sums up the description of this extraordinary despot in the following sentences, which may be quoted for their graphic brevity: 'False ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... right. Do you recall," turning to the Woman, "the night I made him go 'round one corner for half an hour because he refused to take the order the first time, and I was afraid of that trait in him. It did not take long, however, to show him that I could spend just as much time making him obey as he could spend defying me. There's no use in whipping a dog like that. And with all his obstinacy, he was, next to old Dubby, more capable of keeping a trail in a storm than any ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... domestic occupations, which is so admirable a trait in the character of our countrywomen, has often been a subject of gratulation; and that female ingenuity and skill may continue to be employed in embellishing the drawing-room, rather than in directing the political intrigues of the salon, must be desired by all interested in the preservation ...
— The Lady's Album of Fancy Work for 1850 • Unknown |
