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Semblance   Listen
noun
Semblance  n.  
1.
Seeming; appearance; show; figure; form. "Thier semblance kind, and mild their gestures were."
2.
Likeness; resemblance, actual or apparent; similitude; as, the semblance of worth; semblance of virtue. "Only semblances or imitations of shells."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Semblance" Quotes from Famous Books



... afterward. But he did not go far; only to the mayor's. Bertha at first did not perceive anything suspicious in Tremorel's rides; it reassured her to see him go off on his horse. After some days, however, she thought she saw in him a certain feeling of satisfaction concealed under the semblance of fatigue. She began to have doubts, and these increased every time he went out; all sorts of conjectures worried her while he was away. Where did he go? Probably to see Laurence, whom she feared and detested. The suspicion soon became a certainty with her. One evening Hector appeared, carrying ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... soul-less like the rest, and I am but A tame romantic fool to worship her— I will not see her more, and thus the faults Which, from her beauty, seem'd like others' charms, Shall give her semblance of a Gorgon— No! Rather her beauty will so soften down In sweet forgetfulness of all beside, That growing frenzied at the loss I find E'en shipwreck'd hope were better than ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... remarkable for the strictness of his principles, was a shrewd and intelligent man. On shore he had the semblance of a gentleman. On shipboard he was a good sailor and a skilful navigator. If to his energy, talents, and intelligence had been added a moderate share of honesty, he would probably have been successful in his struggle for wealth, and might have attained respectability. I ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... is connected with food-manipulations in Chicago. It was down at Armour's in the stockyards that we had seen Polacks and Scandinavian girls preparing in the succulent sausage a comestible that bore strange family semblance to that which our friends are now eating before us, this linked sweetness long ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... letters I had had. Mr. Dick, as usual, was not forgotten. My aunt informed me how he incessantly occupied himself in copying everything he could lay his hands on, and kept King Charles the First at a respectful distance by that semblance of employment; how it was one of the main joys and rewards of her life that he was free and happy, instead of pining in monotonous restraint; and how (as a novel general conclusion) nobody but she could ever fully ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... had assiduously bribed Congress, legislatures, common councils and administrative officials to give them special laws and rights by which they could all the more easily and securely grasp the produce of the many, and hold it intact without even a semblance of taxation. ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... extremists, fringed, beaded and embroidered buckskin, than which the present chronicler knows no more uncomfortable garb when soaked by pelting rains or immersion in some icy mountain stream. Even the brown campaign hats, uniformly "creased," as the fifty left the ford, would soon be knocked out of all semblance to the prescribed shape, and made at once comfortable and serviceable. Add to these items the well-filled haversack and battered tin quart cup, (for on a forced march of two or three days Captain Ray would have no pack ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... were divided into three classes of the Illustrious, Respectable, and Honourable. The consuls were still annually elected, but obtained the semblance of their ancient authority, not from the suffrages of the people, but from the whim of the emperor. On the morning of January 1 they assumed the ensigns of their dignity, and in the two capitals of the empire they celebrated their promotion to office by the annual games. As soon ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... and comfortable enough, for its era and degree; but the furniture was ponderous and ugly to the point of nightmare. The chairs, tables, and sofas wore the semblance of solid mahogany, twisted and tortured in a futile struggle to achieve elegance; the carvings, or mouldings, were screwed or glued on, and the lines of structure, intended to charm the eye, accomplished ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... hundred miles away) after fruit. They usually go in September, and it takes a week to make the trip. They take wagons and camp out and of course have a good time, but, the greater part of the way, there isn't even the semblance of a road and it is merely a semblance anywhere. They came over to invite me to join them. I was of two minds—I wanted to go, but it seemed a little risky and a big chance for discomfort, since we would have to cross the Uinta Mountains, ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... parricide to commemorate his exploit among future generations? Religion and the Gospel are corrected—that's all mysticism, we are told, and ours is the only true Christianity which has been subjected to the analysis of reason and common sense. And so they set up before us a false semblance of Christ! 'What measure ye mete so it shall be meted unto you again,' cried the counsel for the defense, and instantly deduces that Christ teaches us to measure as it is measured to us—and this from the tribune of truth ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... Burns had already started across the street, and Macauley was obliged to follow. By the time darkness fell the front yard had been cropped into at least a semblance of tidiness, and Charlotte was offering her thanks to three warm gentlemen, and regretting that she had not been keeping house long enough to have any refreshment ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond

... the 18th century with usurping Mohammedans and Dutch colonists, when family influence was undermined by political intrigues. The Dutch, after many vicissitudes, became absolute rulers of Java, though native princes, as tributaries, were suffered to retain a semblance of sovereignty. The shadowy paraphernalia of vanished power is still accorded to the Sultan of Djokjacarta, in melancholy travesty of past authority, though every hereditary privilege has been wrested from his grasp. A curious relic of primitive days remains in the al fresco Throne of Judgment, ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... which links what seems not living to what certainly lives and feels and has power over all movement of its own. The circuits of the planets stretch and then recede. Their ellipses elongate and flatten again to the semblance of circles. The Poles slowly nod once every many thousand years, there is a libration to the moon; and in all this vast harmonious process of come and go the units of it twirl and spin, and, as they spin, run more gravely in ordered procession round their central star: that ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... of the cross in benediction while he chanted the Asperges, gently sprinkled the holy water on the upturned face. Instantly the whole vision crumbled to dust, the face was gone, and where once the candlelight had flickered on the perfect semblance of the girl dead so very long, it now fell only on the rough bricks which closed the window, bricks laid with frozen hearts ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... you is deserved. The least you can do now to repair matters is to swallow your pill noiselessly and give no further trouble until you are called upon to obstruct the way again in semblance of discharging responsibilities of which a cat would ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... wincing. In early scalping-days it had been slashed on one side with a scalping-knife in such a way that the left eye was totally destroyed, and a livid scar ran from the eyebrow to the neck—drawing the flesh into creases that robbed that part of the face of any semblance to humanity. The other side was whole, but the entire expression was so horrible that even familiarity did little to prevent repulsion in the ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby

... is more generally the production of a new flower-bud (median prolification) than the repetition of the carpellary series. It is necessary also to distinguish between the veritable augmentation of the pistil and the semblance of it, brought about by the substitution of carpels for some other organs, as pistillody of the stamens, and even of the segments of the perianth, is not very unfrequent, as has already been stated under the head of substitution. Again, ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters

... a young man is of all feelings the most terrible. Poverty and distress, privations of every kind may be borne much more easily: but a calamity like mine crushes the heart before it is yet grown up. I had to play the part of a rich man, to squander money, to give myself airs. When one puts on the semblance of anything for a time, it will soon become a portion of our nature. Imitate a stutterer for a while, and you will have to keep diligent watch over yourself not to stammer in earnest. I fell in love, and was on the point of changing ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... with the Thames in that of London? If the almost impenetrable smoke and filth from coal-fires were charmed away—shew me, I beseech you, any view of Paris, from this, or from any point of approach, which shall presume to bear the semblance of comparison with that of London, from the descent from Shooter's Hill! The most bewitched Frenchified-Englishman, in the perfect possession of his eye sight, will not have the temerity to institute such a comparison. But as you near the barriers, your admiration ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... road, rolled over and over to my very feet. And, looking down at it, I saw that it was a very ill-used hat, frayed and worn, dented of crown and broken of brim, yet beneath its sordid shabbiness there lurked the dim semblance of what it had once been, for, in the scratched and tarnished buckle, in the jaunty curl of the brim, it still preserved a certain pitiful air of rakishness; wherefore, I stooped, and, picking it up, began to brush the dust from it as ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... and blasphemy of the times was as a veritable atmosphere abroad, so that, affected by it, the love of the many towards God waxed colder and colder, until they flung off the last semblance of allegiance to Him, in thought, word, or deed, and wholly given up to "The Lie," they ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson

... of, did the Cid make a right good knight, of a coward, as ye shall hear. When the Cid first began to lay seige to the city of Valencia, this Martin Pelaez came unto him; he was a knight, a native of Santillana in Asturias, a hidalgo, great of body and strong of limb, a well-made man and of goodly semblance, but withal a right coward at heart, which he had shown in many places when he was among feats of arms. And the Cid was sorry when he came unto him, though he would not let him perceive this; for he knew ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... is this reality? Or mere illusion? am I blest at last, Or is it to torment me that you've rais'd This semblance of Evanthe to my eyes? It is! ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey

... intent upon the one subject where he saw a chance of having his advice acted upon, and consequently of retaining at least a semblance of authority, said: "I think a doctor should be sent for ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper

... should be a great fool to give myself against my inclination! If you fancied you would find my virtue unarmed you made a great error. Behold the poniard of the king, with which I will kill you if you make the semblance of a ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... claiming the place from the horses of the guardians of peace. Statues were set up in rooms that smelt of oats and stout shoes. But this anomaly did not last long; the intruder was driven out, as soon as the place was beginning to have a semblance of European culture, and there remained in the Exhibition Palace the true, the national, the privileged police, the sorry jades of holy authority which galloped down to the streets of Madrid when its slothful peace ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... and distresses, and semblance of humility, I now see clearly were mere imperfections, and the result of my unmortified life; for a soul left in the hands of God cares nothing about evil or good report, if it clearly comprehends, when our Lord is pleased to bestow upon it His grace, that it ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... around the city. Mules and horses were grazing in the principal square on a severe slope; the streets were paved in a fashion calculated to dislocate your feet or possibly break them if you happened to be walking out after dark. There was not the slightest semblance of drainage in any part of the town. The people flung out into the streets all that could be flung out, and also a good deal that should not be flung. The dirt was excessive all over the place when the rain did not come to the rescue and wash it ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... of the fingers. And with the disappearance of the physical semblance of a company of civilized men engaged in dining in civilized fashion, the last thin veneer over hate and fury was scraped away. Curses and growling roars made a repulsive mess of sound over that repulsive mess ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... surprise and even contempt both of Scots and English, protested against the sanguinary methods of border warfare, on behalf of the people whom he aspired to rule over. But the people themselves would have none of him. The expedition withdrew without having produced even the semblance of a Yorkist rising. After that, James no longer felt eager to plunge into a war on behalf of the pretender: but was inclined to retain him as a political asset. When, in the following year (1497), Charles VIII.—with a precisely similar object in view— offered ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... we are becoming more and more conscious of the tremendous bombardment going on in the Straits. Now and then, too, we can see a huge shell hit the top of Achi Baba and turn it into the semblance of a volcano. Everyone excited and trying to ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... comparison, of the figure of Mrs. Noah in the children's Ark, but without that slimness of waist and perfect rondeur of hip which marks the aesthetic type of the Noah family. One would hardly have recognised it as intended for a human figure at all had not the founder shaped on the forehead a rude semblance of a woman's face. This machine was coated with rust without, and covered with dust; a rope was fastened to a ring in the front of the figure, about where the waist should have been, and was drawn through ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker

... and all in one and that one so wonderful, so elusive, so utterly feminine that I, being but a man and no great student in the Sex, may, in striving to set her before you in cold words, distort this dear image out of all semblance and ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... wear a semblance of being sorry for him on this occasion; and my cold answers made him soon bend down to speak with Mrs. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... much engrossed in their affairs that they entirely failed to notice how mechanically she answered, and how apathetically she appeared for the first few minutes to listen to their story. Presently, however, she roused herself into a semblance of interest. She promised not to betray the fact of the stolen interview, all the more readily because it did not strike either of them to inquire what she herself was ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... go on so forever. Clement had placed a red curtain so as to throw a rose-bloom on his marble, and give it an aspect which his fancy turned to the semblance of life. He would sit and look at the features his own hand had so faithfully wrought, until it seemed as if the lips moved, sometimes as if they were smiling, sometimes as if they were ready to speak to him. His companions began to ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... crossed swords; but this is not in the least essential to the action; the play might have been to all intents and purposes the same had they never heard of each other until after the rise of the curtain. In Twelfth Night there is a semblance of a retrospective exposition in the scene between Viola and the Captain; but it is of the simplest nature, and conveys no information beyond what, at a later period, would have been imparted on the ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... Force, to whom he had never mentioned his accomplices, had given him such small comfort, that he was entirely hopeless after his examination, and this simple expedient had been quite overlooked by these prison-ridden minds. This semblance of a hope almost stupefied ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... semblance of faith in Judge Witberg when he went himself on the stand and started ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London

... who have been very unhappy, she loved a benumbed existence with a semblance of tranquillity, and ignorance seemed to her preferable to everything. As if life were not sad enough, good heavens! And then, after all, Sidonie had always been a good girl; why should she not be ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... by his accomplice, repaired to Sprat's palace at Bromley, introduced himself there as the confidential servant of an imaginary Doctor of Divinity, delivered to the Bishop, on bended knee, a letter ingeniously manufactured by Young, and received, with the semblance of profound reverence, the episcopal benediction. The servants made the stranger welcome. He was taken to the cellar, drank their master's health, and entreated them to let him see the house. They could not venture to show any of the private apartments. Blackhead, therefore, after begging importunately, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... have stripped of his power, but it is because, having lost his strength, he has resumed his place among the feeble, who are to be despised because they are not to be feared. The type of hero dear to crowds will always have the semblance of a Caesar. His insignia attracts them, his authority overawes them, and his sword instils them ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... quelled; another for nearly a year. In short, the experience of over half a century has shown Colombia to be utterly incapable of keeping order on the Isthmus. Only the active interference of the United States has enabled her to preserve so much as a semblance of sovereignty. Had it not been for the exercise by the United States of the police power in her interest, her connection with the Isthmus would have been sundered long ago. In 1856, in 1860, in 1873, in 1885, in 1901, and again in 1902, sailors and marines ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... greater effect than followed my words. His hand went indeed to his breast, but it was hard to say which seemed the more astounded, La Varenne or he. And the manner in which he flung back my accusation, lacked neither vigour nor the semblance of innocence. While Henry stood puzzled, and not a little put out, La Varenne was appalled. I saw this, that I had gone too far, or not far enough, and at once calling up unto my face and form all the sternness in my power I bade the traitor ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... civilization was at best but an outward veneer which he gladly peeled off with his uncomfortable European clothes whenever any reasonable pretext presented itself. It was a woman's love which kept Tarzan even to the semblance of civilization—a condition for which familiarity had bred contempt. He hated the shams and the hypocrisies of it and with the clear vision of an unspoiled mind he had penetrated to the rotten core of the heart of the ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... rolled back from her forehead; she wore a black dress with a high collar of white lawn, and long white cuffs. Little Mrs. Amberley, the Rector's wife, sitting beside her, envied her hostess her figure, and her long slender neck. She herself had long since parted with any semblance of a waist, and the boned collars of the day were a perpetual torment to one whose neck, from the dressmaker's point of view, scarcely existed. But Mrs. Amberley endured them, because they were the fashion; and to be moderately in the fashion meant simply keeping up to the mark—not falling ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... pawnbroker, who produced certain articles that had been pledged to him at different times by this humble agent. Now, Brandon, in examining the guilty go-between, became the more terribly severe in proportion as the man evinced that semblance of unconscious stolidity which the lower orders can so ingeniously assume, and which is so peculiarly adapted to enrage and to baffle the gentlemen of the bar. At length, Brandon entirely subduing and quelling the stubborn hypocrisy of the culprit, the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the miners paid little attention. But if, as was often the case, some miner, crazed with an overdose of "double-distilled damnation," fell a victim to the revolver or knife of a gambler, there was sure to be "something doing." Among these restless, adventurous men there was a semblance of law, but its administration was too often a mockery and a farce. This, however, only applies to the early days ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson

... is loveliest, Can match the whiteness of her brow and breast? When drew she breath from the Sabaean glade? Oh happy rock and river, sky and sea, Gardens, and glades Sabaean, all that be The far-off splendid semblance ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang

... imagination could picture. No wonder that the builder had abandoned the construction of this solitary dwelling; why it had ever been commenced passes my comprehension. It was just at the entrance of a mountain valley, treeless, stony, and rugged, through which there were at intervals the semblance of a track—a desolate, God-forgotten-looking place. On consulting the map I found that the "road" led to Moldavia. I resolved it should not lead me there. Here then, in this dreary spot, with its gable-end to the road, and turning away from the prospect—and no wonder—stood the ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... like one; and in a world where the few remaining authentic specimens of that class fail to fulfil either the one or the other of these conditions, it was thought meet and proper that somebody should be good enough to carry on, if only in semblance, and if only in Nepenthe, the traditions of a race rapidly approaching extinction. It was pleasant to be able to converse with a Duchess at any hour of the day, and this one was nothing if not accessible so long as you were ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... towns alone kept up some little semblance of order and self-government, and seem to have shown some slight capacity for self-defence. In 1412, Waterford distinguished itself by the spirited defence of its walls against the O'Driscolls, a ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... the rest, the lips were of iron, and the small, deep-set eyes were so bright and burning that they gave the impression that they were red like the great letter. It might have been the face of a man of sixty years, though it would have been hard to tell wherein lay the semblance of age, so smooth was the skin and so brilliant ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... frightful peals of thunder, and the shrill cries of the Mexicans rose higher and higher. The Spaniards were sick, wounded, beaten and terrified. Only Cortes and his captains and a few of his veterans preserved the slightest semblance of organization. ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... therefore, to blame him for the extremely slight grounds on which he often proceeded, in an operation which could only be tentative, though we may regret that materials barely sufficient for a first rude hypothesis should have been hastily worked up into the vain semblance of a science. If there be really a connection between the scale of mental endowments and the various degrees of complication in the cerebral system, the nature of that connection was in no other way so likely to be brought to light as by framing, in the first instance, an hypothesis similar ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... have been surmised by you who read, was more of a humorist than anything else, but the enthusiasm of his humor, its absolute spontaneity and kindliness, gave it at times a semblance to what might pass for true poetry. He was by disposition a thoroughly sweet spirit, and when I realized that he had gone before, and that the trips he and I had looked forward to with such almost boyish delight year by year were never more to be had, my eyes grew wet, and for a ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... he abode the Sunday all day. But on the Monday he was borne to his mother's car, he being then merry and full of cheer, and so they came to Kingston, and rested that night. On Tuesday, Queen Katherine brought him to Kennington, on Wednesday to London, and with glad semblance and merry cheer, on his mother's barm [lap] in the car, rode through London to Westminster, and on the morrow was so brought into Parliament." The old historian would make us believe that Henry refused to travel on Sunday, ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... world go, and take love! Love survives in me, albeit those I love be henceforth masks and shows, Not living men and women: still I mind how love repaired all ill, Cured wrong, soothed grief, made earth amends With parents, brothers, children, friends! Some semblance of a woman yet With eyes to help me to forget, Shall look on me; and I will match Departed love with love, attach Old memories to new dreams, nor scorn The poorest of the grains of corn I save from shipwreck on this isle, Trusting its barrenness may smile With happy foodful green one ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... 130 Ianthe's Soul; it stood All beautiful in naked purity, The perfect semblance of its bodily frame. Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace, Each stain of earthliness 135 Had passed away, it reassumed Its native dignity, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... Morton home was cheerful with sunshine. It brightened the conventional flowers of the old crimson Brussels carpet into a semblance of life. It caught the gold outline of the wall paper and lingered there—even the somber steel engravings reflected the light from the polished glass over them. Mrs. Morton sat in her low rocking chair by the window reading a letter from ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... her, and bowed his head silently. Then, turning his face to the door, he beckoned Tufnell to approach. The old servant advanced tremblingly into the room, vainly endeavouring to compose his horror-stricken face into a semblance of the impassive mask ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... delight. It had been the hardest thing about her years in the world that there seemed to be so little Sabbath there. Only by going to her own room and fencing herself away from her friends, could she get any semblance of what had been so dear to her, that feeling of leisure to talk and think about Christ, her dearest friend. I grant she was an unusual girl. There is now and then an unusual girl. We do not always hear about them. They are not always beautiful nor gifted. It chanced that Marilyn ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... collected in a cue behind. His nose was prodigiously long, crooked, and inflammatory; his eyes full, brilliant, and acute; his chin and cheeks, although wrinkled with age, were broad, puffy, and double; but of ears of any kind or character there was not a semblance to be discovered upon any portion of his head. This odd little gentleman was dressed in a loose surtout of sky-blue satin, with tight breeches to match, fastened with silver buckles at the knees. His vest was of some bright yellow material; a white taffety ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... favourite lineaments of the women of Leonardo, the angels of Luini. Lady Culmer had seen crayon sketches of demoiselles of the French aristocracy resembling her. Some one mentioned an antique statue of a figure breathing into a flute: and the mouth at the flutestop might have a distant semblance of the bend of her mouth, but this comparison ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... were all exactly copied in the bird's plumage. And then she did sit so close, and simulate so well a shapeless, decaying piece of wood or bark! Twice I brought a companion, and, guiding his eye to the spot, noted how difficult it was for him to make out there, in full view upon the dry leaves, any semblance to a bird. When the bird returned after being disturbed, she would alight within a few inches of her eggs, and then, after a moment's pause, hobble awkwardly ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... certainly behaved like an escaped lunatic since early this morning, my good de Marmont," he said drily. "Don't you think that—as we shall have to mix again with our fellow-men presently—you might try to behave with some semblance of reasonableness." ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... quivering semblance of the confident woman who had run to meet him five minutes ago. Her knees shook under her with collapse. She sat down on the edge of the bed and stammered her explanations as if she had been a naughty child caught red-handed in some act of ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... sorrows, one consolation, and one only, remained to the fallen people: the high-priest occupied the Herodian palace in the market-place, and kept the semblance of a court there. What his authority really was is a matter of easy estimate. Judgment of life and death was retained by the procurator. Justice was administered in the name and according to the decretals of Rome. Yet ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... in weight and density. Silent, still, the world of Unaga seemed to have lost all semblance of life. White, white, eternal white, and above the heavy grey of an overburdened sky. Solitude, loneliness, desperately complete. It was the silence which well nigh drives the human brain to madness. From minutes to hours; from ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... occupation, and touched off almost 13 years of civil war. The 1991 Paris Peace Accords mandated democratic elections and a ceasefire, which was not fully respected by the Khmer Rouge. UN-sponsored elections in 1993 helped restore some semblance of normalcy under a coalition government. Factional fighting in 1997 ended the first coalition government, but a second round of national elections in 1998 led to the formation of another coalition government and renewed political stability. ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... that persons in ill-health may have their death expedited by believing in such fatal predictions. Tell a timorous man that he will die; and the sentence, if pronounced with sufficient solemnity, and the semblance of its fore-knowledge, will, under certain circumstances, execute itself. But, on the other hand, the self-sustaining power of the will, with a corresponding concentration of nervous energy, will sometimes triumph over the presence of disease, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... they were these provisions proved fruitless to check the fusion of the two races, while the growing independence of the Lords of the Pale threw off all but the semblance of obedience to the English government. It was this which stirred Richard to a serious effort for the conquest and organization of the island. In 1386 he granted the "entire dominion" of Ireland with the title ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... negro who was ready to execute the cruel sentence, he became exasperated, and hurled the executioner from the scaffold with a furious kick, indignantly exclaiming, "Is there no sword and some less unworthy hand to put a man like me to death? In this punishment there is no semblance of justice: It is base revenge!" He was however overpowered by numbers, and compelled to undergo the cruel and ignominious punishment to which he had been condemned. The name of Reynoso is still held in detestation, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... put forth for the use of the Church and nation under the authority of the Bishop of London, ought to have had the dignity and the reserve of a work meant for permanence and for the use of men of various opinions, and ought not to have had even the semblance, as this book has, of an ex parte pamphlet. The Bishop of London is, of course, quite right to let the Church know what he thinks about the Court of Final Appeal; and he is perfectly justified in recommending us, in forming our opinion, to study carefully the facts of the existing state ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... keep up a semblance of authority, they that night placed two men armed at the door of the posada where Antonio was lodged, as if he himself were a prisoner. These men, as often as the clock struck the hour, shouted "Ave Maria! Death to the heretics." Early in the morning the ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... the acting be true and impressive, as I have witnessed it in Mr. K.'s performance of that part, the painful anxiety about the act, the natural longing to prevent it while it yet seems unperpetrated, the too close pressing semblance of reality, give a pain and an uneasiness which totally destroy all the delight which the words in the book convey, where the deed doing never presses upon us with the painful sense of presence: it rather seems to belong to history,—to something past and ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... representations of the Saviour and of the Virgin abound in all catholic countries; nor do they much offend, unless when the crucifixion is represented with bleeding wounds; for, as both are known to have appeared in the human form, the mind is not shocked at seeing them in the semblance of humanity. But this was the first attempt to delineate the Deity we had yet seen; and it caused us all to shudder. He is represented in the person of an old man looking from the clouds, in the centre of the ceiling, and the King appears among the angels that surround him. ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... of wrecked automobiles in the center of the Queensboro Bridge and they were forced to push them apart to get through. While they were engaged in this arduous work, a drifting ferry bumped into a pier, shaking the dreaming captain into a semblance ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West

... instinctively and radically dissented. Mr. Hamlin's course was highly applauded by the mass of Republicans throughout the country, and especially by his old constituents in Maine. His action took from Mr. Johnson the last semblance of a prominent Republican friend in New England and gave an almost unprecedented solidity to the public opinion ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... childlike self; in it she was delightful to look upon, her sweet face circled with a halo of cambric and fluted lace. Her skin, white with the whiteness of unglazed porcelain, her forehead, where suffering had printed the semblance of deep thought, the purity of the lines refined by illness, the slowness of the glances, and the occasional fixity of the eyes, made Pierrette an almost perfect embodiment of melancholy. She was served by all with a sort of fanaticism; she was felt to be so gentle, so tender, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... was a plain, deal kitchen table, devoid of all ornament in the shape of draperies except the necessary linen coverings. Underneath it was a box, within which the vestments were stowed away; for there was no semblance of sacristy, and the priest's house was some yards distant. At the opposite end from the altar was a raised dais for the accommodation of the singers, of whom Bell herself was one. She could not recall what they were accustomed ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... again into a course of lawful and laudable pursuits: a new trial of the Bourbons has proved to the world their incompetence to the functions of the station they have occupied: and the recall of the usurper has clothed him with the semblance of a legitimate autocrat. If adversity should have taught him wisdom, of which I have little expectation, he may yet render some service to mankind, by teaching the ancient dynasties that they can be changed for misrule, and by wearing down the maritime power ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy soul's immensity; Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,— Mighty prophet! Seer blest! On whom those truths do ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... site of degraded Babylon. Not to speak of the ruins of the disrupted cliff, which formed a chaotic barrier in the vista to the northward, the surface of the ground in every other direction was strewn with huge tumuli, apparently the wreck of some gigantic structures of art; although, in detail, no semblance of art could be detected. Scoria were abundant, and large shapeless blocks of the black granite, intermingled with others of marl, {*6} and both granulated with metal. Of vegetation there were no traces whatsoever ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... objective, and now, as I look back, it seems as if I had never lived it at all. I seem to look down a long, dark funnel and see a little machine-man bearing my semblance, patiently, steadily, wearily turning the handle of a windlass in the clear, lancinating cold ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... of the side yard the heavy snow which a late March storm had brought overnight had been shovelled and manipulated into the semblance of a fort such as lads are wont to make. Between these two entrenchments a battle was raging. But it was no lads who held the places of the combatants. Instead, as he looked, Mr. Jefferson saw rising warily from behind the fort nearest him, a girlish figure in a scarlet blanket suit, its dark ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... sweet device of Faery That mocked my steps with many a lonely glade, And fancied wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid? Have these things been? or what rare witchery, Impregning with delights the charmed air, Enlighted up the semblance of a smile In those fine eyes? methought they spake the while Soft soothing things, which might enforce despair To drop the murdering knife, and let go by His foul resolve. And does the lonely glade Still court the foot-steps ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... I know better than that,' he returned cheerfully, and then he stepped up to the bed, and I followed him. The woman who lay there was still young in years, she could not have been more than three- or four-and-thirty, but every semblance of youth was crushed out of her by some subtile and mysterious suffering; it might have been the face of a dead woman, only for the living eyes that ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... horizon that opens between the hills. A dark speck mars that shadowy line. Thought follows across the space. It is a ship. Its sides are long, and black, and low; but high in front rises the prow, fashioned into the semblance of a gigantic golden dragon, against whose gleaming breast the divided waters angrily flash and gurgle. Along the top sides of the deck are hung a row of shining shields, in alternate breadths of red and white, like the variegated scales of a ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... of palm, And pass into the inner courts. Alas! I should be with them, should be one of them, But in an evil hour, an hour of weakness, That cometh unto all, I fell away From the old faith, and did not clutch the new, Only an outward semblance of belief; For the new faith I cannot make mine own, Not being born to it. It hath no root Within me. I am neither Jew nor Greek, But stand between them both, a renegade To each in turn; having no longer faith In gods or men. Then what mysterious ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... reconstruction, Mr. Carlyle goes back to something like the forms of feudalism for the model of the industrial organisation of the future; but in the spiritual order he is as far removed as possible from any semblance of that revival of the old ecclesiastical forms without the old theological ideas, which is the corner-stone of Comte's edifice. To the question whether mankind gained or lost by the French Revolution, Mr. Carlyle nowhere ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley

... simulacrum of the work of men. Perhaps it was the patient and particular mimicry of us by an unknown power, a power which was alarmingly interested in our doings; and in a frenzy over its partial failure it had attempted to demolish its laborious semblance of what we do. Was this power still observant of its work, and conscious of intruders? All this was a sinister warning of something invisible and malign, which brooded over our affairs, knew us ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson

... of each other like cigars in a box. Lines of fresh earth so long that you mistook them for trenches intended to conceal regiments were in reality graves. Some bodies lay for days uncovered until they had lost all human semblance. They were so many you ceased to regard them even as corpses. They had become just a part of the waste, a part of the shattered walls, uprooted trees, and fields ploughed by shells. What once had been your fellow men were only bundles of clothes, swollen and shapeless, ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis

... river and if I then found that I had not time to get back to camp this evening to remain all night here there being a few sticks of drift wood lying along shore which would answer for my fire, and a few sattering cottonwood trees a few hundred yards below which would afford me at least a semblance of a shelter. under this impression I scelected a fat buffaloe and shot him very well, through the lungs; while I was gazeing attentively on the poor anamal discharging blood in streams from his mouth and nostrils, expecting ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... rules of syntax and write faultless grammar. Look at your saint, Porbus. At first sight she is admirable; but at the very next glance we perceive that she is glued to the canvas, and that we cannot walk round her. She is a silhouette with only one side, a semblance cut in outline, an image that can't turn nor change her position. I feel no air between this arm and the background of the picture; space and depth are wanting. All is in good perspective; the atmospheric gradations are carefully observed, and yet in spite of your conscientious ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac

... the most rudimentary use of water colors. Somehow, Field made a worse botch in mixing and applying the colors than did either Ballantyne or I. They would never produce the effects intended. He made the most whimsical drawings, only to obliterate every semblance to his original conception in the coloring. To prevent his going on a strike, I ransacked Chicago for colored inks to match those required in the pictures that had been assigned to him. This inspired him with renewed enthusiasm, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... and feminine charm. After seeing that matchless impersonation it seemed strange that Portia should ever have been represented in any other light, and it was furthermore felt that the inferior, mechanical, utilitarian semblance of her could not again be endured. Ellen Terry's achievement was a complete vindication of the high view that Shakespearean study has almost always taken of that character, and it finally discredited the old stage notion that Portia is a type ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... that when Hiram said it. There was now in Tweet's question a tone of finality. Hiram felt that his reply would end the matter. Swiftly his mind grasped for a judicious rejoinder and settled on "No." He could not bring himself to part with this semblance ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins

... the dwarf endeavoured to control, by standing on his tiptoes, and looking fiercely around, as if to admonish the laughers that they indulged their mirth at their own peril. But perceiving that this only excited farther scorn, he composed himself into a semblance of careless contempt, observing, with a smile, that no one feared the glance of a chained lion; a magnificent simile, which rather increased than diminished the mirth ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... jerking him away whenever he strove to catch hold of the nearest stone, till, what with the scalding, strangling sensation in his nostrils, the deadening feeling of helplessness and weakness coming over him rapidly, all seemed to be darkening into the semblance of a feverish dream, from which he was roused ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn

... Properly speaking, the angels do not talk through their assumed bodies; yet there is a semblance of speech, in so far as they fashion sounds in the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... in spite of his calm understanding of the situation, the wound burned. As he went about putting things into some semblance of order, he paused once and looked hard into the fire.... When she did want to go back—let it be in six months or six weeks or six days—would things be the same? Something had been done to the very structure and fabric of their life. "Can it ever be the ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland

... looking a dreadful guy," she said; "and it is very good of you two not to laugh at me. I dare not even think of my hat, for nobody ever did, nor ever will, succeed in straightening that article into any semblance of its former shape when it has been once stove in. I have only one thing to be thankful for. Do you know what ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart

... and bridges, brought six hundred thousand children into school that two score tribes might find a common tongue, fought the devastating cattle plagues, wiped out brigandage and piracy, brought order and first semblance of prosperity to eight ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... threatened. Sychar had not been so roused for ages. The scribes and prophets waited in expectancy to see fire from heaven descend upon a city where such things had been suffered, or to see the young transgressor transformed, by the judgments of heaven, out of the proper semblance of womanhood. But when she appeared in the streets, with her sister maidens, performed her appointed tasks in rank and file with them, talked and chatted as heretofore—though perhaps gossiped less—and bore her ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... case may be. Afterwards if a woman so desires she gets herself tattooed on her other limbs. If an unmarried girl or widow becomes with child by a man of the Mahar caste or any higher one she is subjected after delivery to a semblance of the purification by fire known as Agnikasht. She is taken to the bank of a river and there five stalks of juari are placed round her and burnt. Having fasted all day, at night she gives a feast to the caste-men and eats with them. If she offends with a ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... I could understand his gabble, took the larger portion for read, after muttering the first words of the rubric. A little carven image of an acolyte—a weird boy who seemed to move by springs, whose hair had all the semblance of painted wood, and whose complexion was white and red like a clown's—did not make matters more ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... having reached this decision he determined to stage his effects. For two more Saturdays he continued in dignified isolation to escort Miss Travers to the weekly hop and back, guarding her scarf and fan, straining his mouth into the semblance of an interested smile while other fellows slipped their arms around the tiny figure and moved dexterously or ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... the maker of the Sphinx infused into his work, in as much greater measure as his nature was greater than that of other men, that yearning of pathetic solitude that most wrings a woman's heart; and the outward semblance, working in, wrought upon the heavy stone with incessant and accumulative power, till through that sluggish sandstone crept a confused thrill of consciousness, and the great creature felt the loneliness that she looked. Far away below her the Nile-valley teemed with life; the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... where good carpets are made; but Kermanshah, Tabriz, Yezd,—in fact, nearly all big centres, make carpets, each having special characteristics of their own, although in general appearance bearing to the uninitiated more or less similar semblance. ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... hands, and she began to feel drowsy. The twittering of the snow-birds sounded like the faint tinkling silver sleigh-bells far away; the bear loomed up before her, assuming gigantic proportions, his features at the same time taking a human semblance that somehow reminded her of the face of Pepin Quesnelle, then changing to that of some one whose identity she could not exactly recall. Stranger still, the weird face was making horrible grimaces and calling to her; her eyes closed, her head dropped, and she lurched forward suddenly; she had ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... as to endure one's thoughts. The war has used up words; they have weakened, they have deteriorated like motor car tires; they have, like millions of other things, been more overstrained and knocked about and voided of the happy semblance during the last six months than in all the long ages before, and we are now confronted with a depreciation of all our terms, or, otherwise speaking, with a loss of expression through increase of limpness, that may well make us wonder what ghosts ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... to look at the body. Under the pure white sheet a quilted counter-pane had been placed, for now, more than ever, Aunt Ann had need of warmth; and, the pillows removed, her spine and head rested flat, with the semblance of their life-long inflexibility; the coif banding the top of her brow was drawn on either side to the level of the ears, and between it and the sheet her face, almost as white, was turned with closed eyes to the faces of her brothers and sisters. In its ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... morning all of them set to work. Even Will was not allowed to begin with his beloved photography until some semblance of ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen

... reached the rim or top of one, we obtained exactly the same view for the next seven or eight miles. The country still retained all the appearance of fine, open, dry, grassy downs, and the triodia tops waving in the heated breeze had all the semblance of good grass. The afternoon had been very oppressive, and the horses were greatly disinclined to exert themselves, though my mare went very well. It was late by the time we encamped, and the horses were much in want of water, especially the big cob, who kept coming up to the camp all night, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... divine assistance, to guide mankind to truth and happiness. But we also know, that all her boasted pretensions are vain, the offspring of ignorance, wickedness, and pride. We know that she is indebted to that revelation which she presumes to ridicule, and contemn, for every semblance of truth or energy which she displays. We know that the most she can do, is to find men blind and leave them so; and to lead them still farther astray, in a labyrinth of vice, delusion, and wretchedness. This is incontrovertibly evident, both from past and ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... felt half the pride in himself that is felt in him by his representative in the nineteenth century, nor experienced half as much pleasure in gazing at his battered shield with its half-defaced cognisance, as now brings the blood to his descendant's cheek as he looks at the carved stone semblance of the original. In the trained sight of this modern gentleman, the past is more real than its own reality was long ago; he is more loyal than the law, more royalist than the king, more protestant than Luther, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... to get relief by this bit of ritual, but none came. When that which had been the semblance of his wife was no more than a little swollen rectangle of black ash, and the fire itself was dying down, he threw himself into ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King

... the young Radical lawyer from the next town, but simply for form's sake, and to lull the other side with the semblance of victory. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... metamorphosis, vortical motion, which is seen in eggs as in planets. These grand rhymes or returns in nature,—the dear, best-known face startling us at every turn, under a mask so unexpected that we think it the face of a stranger, and, carrying up the semblance into divine forms,—delighted the prophetic eye of Swedenborg; and he must be reckoned a leader in that revolution, which, by giving to science an idea, has given to an aimless accumulation of experiments, guidance and form, ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... once beyond power of repartee at the thought of the predicament which her carelessness had brought about. Her own humiliation and cook's disgust were as nothing, compared with the thought of her father's anger at the violation of his hospitable instincts. She could not retain even the semblance of composure, and the nervous, incoherent greeting which she accorded to the strangers was strangely in contrast with ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... of life, 't is thee we long to hear, Thine eyes we seek for, and thy touch we dream; Lost from our days, thou art a spirit near,— Life needs thine eloquence, and ways supreme. More real than we who but a semblance wear, We see thee not, because thou wilt ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... eyelids slowly opened, the eyes, fast growing dim, moved first from right to left, then from left to right, rested on the commissioner—saw him.... Something gleamed in their dull whites, the semblance of a flash came back to them, the blue lips were gradually unglued, and a hoarse, almost sepulchral, ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev

... had taken it up more warmly than he could have hoped. It was decided that they should return to their hotel without Phillida, but to send the car back for her later in the morning, as it would take her some time to pack her things and leave the deserted house in some semblance of order. ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... Since John A. Lomax brought out his collection in 1910, cowboy songs have found their way into scores of songbooks, have been recorded on hundreds of records, and have been popularized, often—and naturally—without any semblance to cowboy style, by thousands of radio singers. Two general anthologies are recommended especially for the cowboy songs they contain: American Ballads and Folk Songs, by John A. and Alan Lomax, Macmillan, New York, 1934; The American Songbag, by Carl Sandburg, Harcourt, ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... apparent in New Jersey or Pennsylvania as in New York, and I think it may be attributed to a very obvious consequence of a general equality of condition, a state of society in which no one is content to wear even the semblance of poverty, but those who cannot by any means prevent it; but, in which all strive to get as high as possible, in ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... back a little. She conveyed the suggestion that his nearness was offensive to her nostrils. And she laughed, with due semblance of real amusement. "What! Has she made a fool of you ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... had understood not a fifth nor a tenth of his grandfather's talk, and already he had "forgotten" all of it—yet not only were there many, many times in the boy's later life when, without ascertainable cause, he would remember the sunlight falling upon the old man's white head, to make that semblance of a glittering bird's-nest there, but with the picture came recollections of words and sentences spoken by the grandfather, though the listener, half-drowsily, had heard but the sound of an old, earnest voice—and even the veteran's ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington

... down the rocks, signaling frantically. It was a woman. Terrified and trembling, the sailors plucked up courage to land. Then for the first time Marguerite Roberval's spirit gave way. She could not speak; she seemed almost bereft of reason. It was only after the fishermen had nourished her back to semblance of womanhood that they drew from her the story. On returning to France, Marguerite Roberval entered a convent. It was there an old court friend of her chateau days sought her out and heard the tale from ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... taking the almost lifeless figure he was supporting tenderly in her arms, oblivious of everything save of her natural womanly pity and love. "The poor fellow! the poor fellow!" and she burst into tears over the miserable semblance of the man, who, coward and deserter as he had proved himself to be, had yet once been dear ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... continued to shine strongly in the midst of the deep shadow, and Mafuta's low, monotonous song went on. Then, so gradually that I knew not when the change began, I lost consciousness of everything except the gleaming disk and the sound of Mafuta's voice, from which all semblance of words had passed. Then the disk seemed slowly to fade out of sight, Mafuta's voice died away to silence, and I found myself seemingly standing upon gently rising ground, with a native village, of such dimensions that it deserved rather the name of a town, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... justice would be made elsewhere in the country. In the South the judge would dismiss the complainant or pay the fine himself; in the West he would be mobbed if he did not. New York would find a tactful and courteous way of avoiding the semblance of an arrest or the imposition of a fine; but in thrifty Massachusetts, and in thrice thrifty Great Barrington, and in twice thrice thrifty Pittsfield, pennies count, are counted, and most conscientiously received and receipted for by those who set ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... not ordinarily a close observer, and many things, specially things that pertain to the acts of women, pass by me unnoticed. But I saw in a moment that there was not, and never could be, more than the semblance of cordial amity between ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... Some semblance of coherence may, no doubt, be given to this poem by making the three first and the last stanzas to be spoken by the questioner, and the fourth by the philosopher. Even so, the subject has little charm. What we care for is the surprising energy with which the ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... should be transferred to the new capital. That even the temples often remained at the old spot is shown in the instances of Alba and of Caenina, towns which must still after their destruction have retained some semblance of existence in connection with religion. Even where the strength of the place that was razed rendered it really necessary to remove the inhabitants, they would be frequently settled, with a view to the cultivation of the soil, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... Italian queen falls in love with him. But neither her blandishments nor the terrible effects of her displeasure can make him inconstant to Iseria. After suffering incredible hardships, he returns to see Iseria once more before entering a monastery, but she, loyal even to the semblance of the man, refuses to ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... kindled. Only a small supply of wood had been collected, and even this was so placed that the flames blew away from the palisade instead of towards it. On the failure of this attempt to fire the fort all semblance of discipline was thrown to the winds. 'There also rose such disorder among them,' says Champlain, 'that one could not understand {110} another, which greatly troubled me. In vain did I shout in their ears and remonstrate to my utmost with them as to the danger to which ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby

... a Man: in som other, a Man a beast. You were also (Iupiter) a Swan, for the loue of Leda: O omnipotent Loue, how nere the God drew to the complexion of a Goose: a fault done first in the forme of a beast, (O Ioue, a beastly fault:) and then another fault, in the semblance of a Fowle, thinke on't (Ioue) a fowle-fault. When Gods haue hot backes, what shall poore men do? For me, I am heere a Windsor Stagge, and the fattest (I thinke) i'th Forrest. Send me a coole rut-time (Ioue) or who can blame me to pisse my Tallow? ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... march was therefore resumed, and there was some semblance of order in it, although Ney wrote Berthier that already on the fourth there were without exaggeration four thousand men of the grand army who refused to march in rank. The number was increasing daily. On the sixth Napoleon was informed that Victor, having effected a junction with ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... and severities were employed with persons of various stations, in order to give some semblance of proof to the above fantastic idea; and they terrorized many persons to make them relate, if possible, what suited their purpose, and no more. Some they tortured; others were left without food for two or three days, and one they deprived of drink for seventeen ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... short and looked at her. She returned the look, but without the slightest semblance of self-consciousness or embarrassment. She did not realize that she had said anything unusual, which must sound inexplicably strange to him. Her thoughts were centered in that adjoining room and she wondered why ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... or of human voices idealized by remoteness into faint haunting music, while before them white light touches the wooded heights of Cliefden,—distant heights full of picturesque mystery and passionate history,—touches and idealizes into a semblance of poetic realism the sham ruins of Hedsor, and spreads a pearly sheen over the unseen Valley of the Shadow of Light through which winds the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... than by innocence. Such a character is like a relic from the classical age, laid open by accident to our alien modern atmosphere. It has something of the clear ring, the eternal outline of the antique. Perhaps it is nearly always found with a corresponding outward semblance. The veil or mask of such a nature would be the very opposite of the "dim blackguardism" of Danton, the type Carlyle has made too popular for the true interest of art. It is just this sort of entire transparency of nature that lets through unconsciously all that is really lifegiving ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... through a forest. On a hilltop in the distance are the turrets of a castle; a lean hound follows the knight; on the ground between his horse's hoofs sprawls a lizard-like reptile; a figure on horseback approaches from the right, with the face half obliterated or eaten away to the semblance of a skull, and snakes encircling the temples. Behind comes on a demon or goblin shape, with a tall curving horn, which is "neither man nor woman, neither beast nor human," but one of those grotesque and obscene monsters which the mediaeval ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... the peerless blood That flows unmingled from the Flood, Thy scutcheon spotted with the stains Of Norman thieves and pirate Danes! The New World's foundling, in thy pride Scowl on the Hebrew at thy side, And lo! the very semblance there The Lord of Glory ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... with many of their rude representations of creeping things, amongst which the serpent class predominated; there were also other hideous shapes, of things such as can exist only in their imaginations, and they are but the weak endeavours of these benighted beings to give form and semblance to the symbolisms of the dread superstitions, that, haunting the vacant chambers of their darkened minds, pass amongst them in the place of either ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... on in the border commonwealths, the Union soldiers lay inactive along the Potomac. Constant drill had changed the mob into some semblance of an organized army, but the careful Scott feared to risk a general engagement. The hostile forces stretched in three pairs of groups across Virginia from northwest to southeast. In the southeastern part of the State, at Fortress Monroe, Butler ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... extent and more numerous population. So true it is, that man's mind alone was the creator of all that was good or great to man, and that Nature herself was only his first minister. England, seated far north in the turbid sea, now visits my dreams in the semblance of a vast and well-manned ship, which mastered the winds and rode proudly over the waves. In my boyish days she was the universe to me. When I stood on my native hills, and saw plain and mountain stretch out to the utmost limits of my vision, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... Of thy domain, strange contrast do present To house and home in many a craggy tent Of the wild Peak, where new born waters glide Through fields whose thrifty occupants abide As in a dear and chosen banishment With every semblance of entire content; So kind is simple Nature, fairly tried! Yet he whose heart in childhood gave his troth To pastoral dales, then set with modest farms, May learn, if judgment strengthen with his growth, That not for Fancy only, pomp hath charms; And, strenuous ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... is often more or less recognized and shared. Such cases are on the borderland of true sexual inversion, but they cannot be included within its region. Sex in these relationships is scarcely the essential and fundamental element; it is more or less subordinate and parasitic. There is often a semblance of a sex-relationship from the marked divergence of the friends in physical and psychic qualities, and the nervous development of one or both the friends is sometimes slightly abnormal. We have to regard such relationships as hypertrophied friendships, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... returned Almamen—who, though indeed amazed that one whom he had imagined his victim was thus unaccountably become his judge, retained, at least, the semblance of composure—"my answer is to be given only to my lord the king; it is his commands that ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... itself; lacking either opportunity or courage or experience. I despaired, maybe, of making myself understood, or I feared to be understood but too well; and yet the storm within me was ready to burst at every chance courteous look. In spite of my readiness to take the semblance of interest in look or word for a tenderer solicitude, I dared neither to speak nor to be silent seasonably. My words grew insignificant, and my silence stupid, by sheer stress of emotion. I was too ingenuous, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac



Words linked to "Semblance" :   phantom limb, pretext, phantom, Identikit, face value, verisimilitude, picture, guise, simulacrum, portrayal, pretence, disguise, icon, image, visual aspect, phantasma, pretense, portrait, Identikit picture, ikon, colour of law, fantasm, shadow, camouflage, likeness



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