"Characteristic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a rope." The men spoke in low, ordinary tones—they appeared unexcited. Determination was the most apparent characteristic of the group. One of them ran back toward the bunkhouse for his rope. The others walked slowly in the direction of the rear of the office building. Grayson was not there. The search proceeded. The Americans were in advance. The Mexicans kept in a group by themselves a little ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and Fred dived into a grocery and came back with the articles demanded. Main Street's curiosity had never been so whetted and teased. If it had been any one but Amzi; but it was so unmistakably Amzi! Amzi placed the box under the window and stood upon it. Then with characteristic nonchalance he removed the wrapper from the cake of soap, while the crowd surged and shuffled, filling the street again in its anxiety to miss nothing. Amzi broke the bar of soap in two, and calmly trimmed half of it to serve as a crayon. As he began to write upon the glass, ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... of the poem we find a beauty of image and comparison that thrills us, and something of that strange, weird suggestiveness which was characteristic of all of Poe's poetry, the thing he has in ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... dilutions,—that quality by which any sort of masculine wickedness and brutality short of refusing ladies seats in horse-cars is made lovely and attractive to the well-read and well-bred of the sex,—is very pleasantly derided, while the tropical luxuriance of general information characteristic of "St. Elmo" is unsparingly ridiculed, with the help of frequent extracts from the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... her spring whimsies, her soft summer moods, her autumn dreams, her wintry tempers, and I had vaunted my faithfulness and love. But here was France in prime of summer, giving me of her best. My heart warmed to her loveliness, and I sniffed the perfume of her breath, mysteriously characteristic as the chosen perfume of some loved woman's laces. It was glorious to spin on, on, between the rows of sentinel poplars, bound for the horizon, yet never reaching it, and regarding crowded haunts of men more as ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Her fingers were yellow from peeling an orange, and her smart little hat was cocked on one side. There were grains of sand on her black gown, and when she saw her mistress she at once began to compress her lips, and to assume the expression of obstinate patience characteristic of properly-brought-up servants who find themselves travelling far ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... to this was brief, and characteristic of his insight where Walter was concerned. After assuring him that he had no objections to his leaving the stewardship in case the scholarship was open to him, ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... fell upon the pale, sad face of Carl, and he noticed his dwarfed and disfigured form, he had a feeling of pity for him. There was that about his manner which at once interested him. The boy's features were good, and yet they had that sharp, shrunken appearance which may be said to be characteristic of the majority of those afflicted with spinal trouble. He was a little humpback, who, from his size, would be taken for a lad of not more than thirteen, though he was then seventeen, one year older than Fred, as the ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... are little different from the villages of Normandy, but the churches have not the architectural beauty of the Normandy churches, being for the most part massive structures without any pretence to artistic embellishment in their construction. Monkish-looking priests are a characteristic feature of these villages, and when, on passing down the narrow, crooked streets of Fontenay, I wheel beneath a massive stone archway, and looking around, observe cowled priests and everything about the place seemingly ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... exceptional opportunities to learn of the modern world, but who, like every Eastern woman, clings with almost desperate tenacity to the traditions and customs of her race. Indeed, however the youth of Oriental countries may be changing, their mothers always exhibit that characteristic of woman-hood, conservatism, which is to them the safe-guard of their homes. Unlike the Western woman, accustomed to a broader horizon, the woman of China, secluded for generations within her narrow courtyards, prefers the ways and manners which she knows, rather than flying to ills she knows ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... How, he demands, does the actual life of every day fit into "that view of the scheme of things which bids us believe that the silent God above us is principally anxious about just one thing, the moral recovery and ingathering of these individual souls one by one"? The answer is given with characteristic confidence: "It does not fit into it at all; if God be as anxious about that as we are assured He is, He has a queer way ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... of the biographies he was reading. James A. Garfield was then spoken of for the presidency; Edward wondered whether it was true that the man who was likely to be President of the United States had once been a boy on the tow-path, and with a simple directness characteristic of his Dutch training, wrote to General Garfield, asking whether the boyhood episode was true, and explaining why he asked. Of course any public man, no matter how large his correspondence, is pleased to receive an earnest letter from an information-seeking ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... something which will convince Mademoiselle that she is mistaken. I was able to get hold of one of his Majesty's collars which he had just worn. Its size is distinctly characteristic, being 18 inches. Now it would be very easy to verify the fact that the real King wears this size and also whether it fits the supposed impostor. In any case, Monsieur, from inquiries made among the ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... army, and the character of its chiefs, are now wholly in the hands of your excellency. You and you alone will be held responsible for all that shall happen. The hour of clemency for Greece is past; the sword alone can decide the contest. Courage is a characteristic of men who deserve to be free. Let then the conduct of a few atrocious individuals yesterday be effaced by a march direct to Athens, at least to relieve the women and children now doomed to destruction, if prompt exertions be not made to save them. Your excellency ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... I saw you. The former favorite mistress of 826 B, who was displaced by Frederika, is a French girl, Celestine d'Aublay. She resented her downfall bitterly, and she hates Frederika with the characteristic vehemence of her race. She learned from the talk of the servants that a new victim—Estella—had been brought into the house, a girl of great beauty; and that Frederika was trying to prevent 826 B from seeing her. A sudden thought took possession of her mind; she would ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... this mighty river the most characteristic and persistent human features were the stacks of brush-wood and the piles of stove wood along the banks or loaded upon boats and barges for the market. The brush-wood was largely made from the boughs of pine, tied into bundles and stacked ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... improvement in taste during the previous twenty years was "as different as civilized people from savages"; while Stafford Smith, writing in 1779, tells that music was then "thought to be in greater perfection than among even the Italians themselves." There is a characteristic John Bull complacency about these statements which is hardly borne out by a study of the lives of the leading contemporary musicians. Even Mr Henry Davey, the applauding historian of English music, has to admit the evanescent character ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... ever more impersonal in his attitude toward government, and that very impersonality was the characteristic which most baffled the American people. Mr. Wilson had a genius for the advocacy of great principles, but he had no talent whatever for advocating himself, and to a country that is accustomed to think in headlines about ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... with the will, were a splendid fire-eyed motherly Britannia the figure sitting in the minds of men for our image—a palpitating figure, alive to change, penetrable to thought, and not a stolid concrete of our traditional old yeoman characteristic. Verily he lives for the present, all for the present, will be taught in sorrow that there is no life for him but of past and future: his delusion of the existence of a present hour for man will not outlast the season ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... have just mentioned show that to mere curiosity, the characteristic passion of our sex and so often its ruin, I am to ascribe the introduction, which was only prevented by events unparalleled in history from proving the most fortunate in my life as it is the most cherished in ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... station-basin is novel, characteristic, and not without its charms, especially when the sunset paints the plain with the red, red gold, and washes every barren peak with the tenderest, loveliest rosy pink. Under an intensely clear sapphire-coloured sky rises a distant rim of broken and chocolate-coloured ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... This is characteristic. For no people in the world are so fond or so long-suffering with children—children make the mirth and the adornment of their homes, serving them for playthings and for picture-galleries. 'Happy is the man that has his quiver full of them.' The stray bastard is contended for by rival ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... season of egg-laying for the megapodes in Bashti's private laying-yard did not begin until the period of the south-east trades. And Agno, having early conceived his plot, with the patience that was characteristic of him was content ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... was a temperament sensitive to the point of morbidness. This unhappy characteristic had been fostered only during his early years. But he had not attempted to change it till the period of his disgrace plainly offered a choice between a resolute stifling of his pain or downright madness. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... characteristic, Margaret, that you hadn't the least perception of it. Yes, I was done with you. I simply didn't need you any more. What you could give me, you had given me; you had fulfilled your function. You knew in the depths of your heart, you knew unconsciously ... that ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... are the born enemies of all characteristic music, and the greatest destroyers of style. May Fate preserve the orchestral conductor ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... said, with characteristic energy, "If any one, during my administration, shall appeal, I will make him a foot shorter, and send the pieces to Holland and let him appeal ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... Stoddard, in his "Men of Business," tells a characteristic story of the late Leland Stanford. When eighteen years of age his father purchased a tract of woodland, but had not the means to clear it as he wished. He told Leland that he could have all he could make ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... all classes: that he stands in an attitude towards the past unthinkable to Englishmen, and remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears, good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth generation. No more characteristic instance could be found than in the family of Kirstie Elliott. They were all, and Kirstie the first of all, ready and eager to pour forth the particulars of their genealogy, embellished with every detail that memory had handed down or fancy fabricated; and, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... regiments of its State in the number of its battle losses, or, excepting six regiments that spent most of their time in garrison duty, at the bottom of the list of all three years' regiments sent from the State. It would appear that the 103d Ohio had become pretty well imbued with the spirit characteristic of the headquarters with which it was associated, to claim credit in an inverse ratio ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger
... his indorsement and went to a chair and sat down. His Excellency was pursuing his familiar tactics in an emergency—the rough tactics that were characteristic of him. In this case Senator Corson approved and allowed the Governor to ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... in a very high degree impregnated with the taste and desire for art which seemed so generally the characteristic of our people. I speak not now of the degree of skill which she possessed. Her teacher was a foreigner, and a mere mechanic; but, while he taught her only the ordinary laws of painting, her natural endowment wrought more actively in favor of her performances. She soon discovered ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... have been a Venetian characteristic; nor is it now, when Venice is only a museum and show place. All the Venetians—the men, that is,—whom one sees in the Piazza have an air of profound self-satisfaction. And this palace of the Doges is no training-place ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... a place in Florence? One of the commentators, with characteristic carelessness, states that the places mentioned in the preachment of Fra Cipolla (an amusing specimen of the patter-sermon of the mendicant friar of the middle ages, that ecclesiastical Cheap Jack of his day) are all names of streets or places of Florence, a statement which, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... leaden, breathless silence, while Alex nervously clenched and unclenched his hands. At last the line again clicked open, and with a characteristic deliberation that caused the nerve-strung boy a moment's hysterical laugh, "B" announced: "Just got her. She's ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... Butterfly-collecting, singing to a guitar passionate songs of love and hate, and lying the live-long day on a long chair with a long tumbler in his hand, and a volume of Longfellow on the floor, are his characteristic pursuits. It is needless to say that he is the Accountant-General, and the last man in the world to suppose that I have given myself ten days' privilege leave to the Hills on urgent private affairs,—affairs de coeur, and ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... have at least taken a partial course—enough to catch the university spirit. All the controlling elements of German national life, therefore, have been trained to sympathize with the freedom, intellectual and individual, which is the characteristic of the university method." ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... each side; its pectoral fins are large, its ventral much smaller; the fin behind its anus small; its dorsal fin large, containing eight spines; its tail, where it joins to the tail-fin, remarkably broad, without any taperness, so as to be characteristic of this genus: the tail-fin is broad, and square at the end. From the breadth and muscular strength of the tail, it appears to ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... notice. They require the practice of a so-called virtue which is contrary to nature, and which, in my eyes, would be no virtue if it were practised. They are like clergymen who preach sermons against the love of money, but who know that the love of money is so distinctive a characteristic of humanity that such sermons are mere platitudes called for by customary but unintelligent piety. All material progress has come from man's desire to do the best he can for himself and those about him, and civilisation and Christianity ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... market in a way somewhat similar to that shown in Experiments 47 and 48, except that it is colored, salted, pressed into shape, and allowed to ripen. While ripening, changes take place in the ingredients of cheese which develop characteristic flavors ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... Holoptychus being occasionally found there, whilst Conularias, Nautili, Spirifers aviculus, Bellerophons, and others are numerous. The sand rock overlying it contains Calamites, Lepidodendrons, Ulodendrons, Sigillarias, &c., &c. Benthall Edge and Lincoln Hill yield characteristic fossils of the Wenlock limestone and Wenlock shales in great numbers and variety, corals being most abundant. Between the Severn and the Acton Burnell hills fossils of the Caradoc may be found in drift, in old walls by the ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... a characteristic thing. Folding his arms in front of him he grasped his own elbows and shook himself fiercely. The effort of will and body banished the shapes and illusions, and he went to ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... had taken the liberty to recommend a clever and accomplished friend of her own, one Mrs. Morris, a widow,—"of course, that's you, Madeline,"—and Mr. Osgood had accordingly done her the honor to offer the place to Mrs. Morris, and, "with characteristic consideration and delicacy," had inclosed a check, by way of an advance on her salary, which would be liberal, to defray the expense of an outfit,—"and there it was." His writing to her, Miss Wimple said, was a circumstance as strange as it was fortunate; for, in fact, she had, personally, but a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... assumed, that a turbid mixture of different races has a tendency to separate after a time into its constituent elements, and certain originally distinct types to re-appear with their characteristic features, how does this law ...
— A Glossary of Provincial Words & Phrases in use in Somersetshire • Wadham Pigott Williams
... esteemed by competent judges, including, of course, ourselves. We shall not follow the example of dear old Eckermann, nor preface our specimens by any critical remarks upon the scope and tendency of the great German's genius; neither shall we divide his works, as characteristic of his intellectual progress, into eras or into epochs; still less shall we attempt to institute a regular comparison between his merits and those of Schiller, whose finest productions (most worthily translated) have already enriched the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... married at the age of eighty. The young duke admired women, but he placed them too high and respected them too much; in fact, he adored them, and was only at his ease with those whom he could not respect. This characteristic caused him to lead a double life. He found compensation with women of easy virtue for the worship to which he surrendered himself in the salons, or, if you like, the boudoirs, of the faubourg Saint-Germain. ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... LORD BOB remarked: "I don't know whether the hon. Member regards me as a particularly frivolous person." General and generous cheering approved this implied disclaimer, and LORD BOB returned to consideration of "the characteristic vice of the Radical ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... flickerish prolixity, and a single downy woodpecker called sharply again and again. A mocking-bird near me (there is always a mocking-bird near you, in Florida) added his voice for a time, but soon relapsed into silence. The fact was characteristic; for, wherever I went, I found it true that the mocker grew less musical as the place grew wilder. By instinct he is a public performer, he demands an audience; and it is only in cities, like St. Augustine and Tallahassee, that he ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... into which the gulls and terns bring tidings of the sea, stands the fishing hamlet of Pittenloch. It is in the "East Neuk o' Fife," that bit of old Scotland "fronted with a girdle of little towns," of which Pittenloch is one of the smallest and the most characteristic. Some of the cottages stand upon the sands, others are grouped in a steep glen, and a few surmount ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... use of. For, there being ordinarily in each sort some leading qualities, to which we suppose the other ideas which make up our complex idea of that species annexed, we forwardly give the specific name to that thing wherein that characteristic mark is found, which we take to be the most distinguishing idea of that species. These leading or characteristical (as I may call them) ideas, in the sorts of animals and vegetables, are (as has been before remarked, ch vi. Section 29 and ch. ix. Section 15) mostly figure; and in inanimate ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... The worst characteristic of panic is that it is so horribly contagious. Let a crowd of people once get the idea into their heads that they are in peril, and they will fight together like wild beasts in their anxiety to escape. And the ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... and also of your unexpectedly being yet spared to us, were duly received, and I trust, I mourned and rejoiced on each occasion with all the moderation characteristic of a philosopher. In the first instance I consoled myself with the reflection that the world you had left was in a state of slavery, and pressed down by the iron arm of despotism, and that to die was gain, not only in all the parson tells ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... This brought round the characteristic elasticity of temper belonging to the Americans, and caused the doctor to give way to his mental speculations:—He would not go to Edinburgh; it was nonsense; here was a fortune made. He would form a company ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... Germany, and passed to England and France, everywhere awakening enthusiasm by its great symmetry and beauty. Without the sublimity of Handel's "Messiah," it is marked by a richness of melody, a serene elevation, a matchless variety in treatment, which make it the most characteristic of Haydn's works. Napoleon, the first consul, was hastening to the opera-house to hear this, January 24, 1801, when he was stopped by ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... was known as Kengi. They were a people of Semitic speech with pronounced Semitic affinities. From the earliest times the sculptors depicted them with abundant locks, long full beards, and the prominent distinctive noses and full lips, which we usually associate with the characteristic Jewish type, and also attired in long, flounced robes, suspended from their left shoulders, and reaching down to their ankles. In contrast, the Sumerians had clean-shaven faces and scalps, and noses of Egyptian and Grecian rather than ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... dissects again in the opposite manner, leaving us gasping, and finding that there really are two ways of looking at every question—a thing we never realize till we think about it. I have in this chapter taken five of Chesterton's most characteristic books of essays, displaying the enormous depth of his intellect, the vast range of subject, the unique use of paradox. Of these five books I have again taken rather necessarily at random subjects depicting the above Chestertonian ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... and beyond every other characteristic, Curtis was fair-minded. He read the girl's letter once in order to learn what had happened and why she had gone: then he reread it critically, word for word, trying to distil from its disjointed phrases "that essence of truth" which Hermione had spoken of. Evidently, she had ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... true fashionable is peculiar and characteristic. From the toe of his boot to the crown of his hat, there is that unostentatious, undefinable something about him distinctive of his social position. Professional men, every body knows, have an expression common to their profession. A purblind cyclops could never mistake the expression ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... out a piece of paper; smiling as he did so. It was covered with writing in Luther Barr's cramped hand and was a characteristic document. Stripped of its legal phraseology it was an agreement to the effect that if the boys would make no salvage charges for saving the yacht, they could have her free of cost to ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Oque. Some feeble attempts were made by returned missionaries to introduce it into several European countries, but it appears to have been imperfectly expounded. An example of this faulty exposition is found in the only extant sermon of the pious Bishop Rowley, a characteristic passage from ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... president, who was now in his element, served in their turn to blow up and keep ablaze the patriotic enthusiasm of his countrymen. These addresses, circulated everywhere in the newspapers, were collected at the time in a volume, and they appeared in Adams' works, of which they form a characteristic portion. A navy was set on foot, the old continental navy having become extinct. An army was voted and partly levied, of which Washington accepted the chief command, and merchant ships were authorized ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... the bride's description of the Bridegroom with the descriptions of "the Ancient of Days" in Dan. vii. 9, 10, and of our risen LORD in Rev. i. 13-16. The differences are very characteristic. ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor
... assumed that the "Chaudiere" of this story is the real Chaudiere of Quebec province. The name is characteristic, and for this reason alone I have ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... furnace, the products of combustion are made to warm up the air and gas which go to feed the flame, and the effect is a full and brilliant light with some economy of fuel. The use of coal-gas for heating purposes was another subject which he took up with characteristic earnestness, and he advocated for a time the use of gas stoves and fires in preference to those which burn coal, not only on account of their cleanliness and convenience, but on the score of preventing fogs in great cities, by checking the discharge ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... impure carbon by simple tests. Similarly the lime or carbon put into the electric furnace may contain small quantities of compounds which are naturally coloured; and which, reappearing in the sludge either in their original or in a different state of combination, confer upon the sludge their characteristic tinge. Spent lime of a yellowish brown colour is frequently to be met with in circumstances that are clearly no reproach to the generator. Doubtless the tint is due to the presence of some coloured metallic oxide or other compound which has escaped reduction in ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... Walter, meekly; and we think he was right, for a petticoat has never in our day been the only garment worn by females, nor even the most characteristic: fishermen wear petticoats, ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... by the frontiersmen in the direction of setting up a new state was very characteristic, as showing the military structure of the frontier settlements. To guard against Indian inroad and foray, and to punish them by reprisals, all the able-bodied, rifle-bearing males were enrolled in the militia; and the divisions of the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the amusements that each season brings round that no time of year lacks its own characteristic sport. In the spring, ere red coats and "leathers" are laid aside by the fox-hunting squire, there is the best of trout-fishing to be enjoyed in the Coln and Windrush—streams dear to the heart of the accomplished expert with the "dry" ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... touch another characteristic—his feeling for logic, for dialectic, which made him one of the severest reasoners that it would be possible to meet in argument. He used, in his admirably assumed air of brag, an attitude which he could take with perfect humour and perfect dignity—to protest that he was one of two ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... Napoleon replied, therefore, by a note suggesting not a definite peace, but a step toward it. If England would withdraw the orders in council of 1807, he would evacuate Holland and the Hanseatic towns. His note closed with a characteristic threat. If England should delay, having already lost her trade with Naples, Spain, Portugal, and the port of Triest, she would now lose that with Holland, the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... point in characteristic fashion. He protested his good faith elaborately, but the gist of his remarks was that he held the cards and that, consequently, it was he who must be trusted, whilst I ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... characteristic of good-breeding, a very necessary knowledge in our intercourse with men; for one of inferior parts, with the behaviour of a gentleman, is frequently better received than a man of sense, with the address and manners ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... important discoveries in this work appears under the title of "the state of the abdominal muscles during dyspepsia;" which is pronounced to be a very characteristic feature of the disease, never yet noticed by writers on the subject, or particularly attended to by physicians. It would certainly have been somewhat strange for medical writers to enlarge upon a symptom of one disease, which absolutely belongs to another; ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... of her hair rested against her brow. Save the scarlet lines which marked her lips, her face was of that clear colourlessness which can be likened only to the purest ivory. Though there was an utter absence of the rosy hue of health, the transparency of the complexion seemed characteristic of her type, and precluded all thought of disease. Miss Margaret muttered something inaudible in reply to her last remark, and Irene walked on to school. Her father's residence was about a mile from the town, but the winding road rendered the walk somewhat longer; ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... and frowning with the sanctions of incarnate law. The drapery of the lower part of the figure is inferior to the anatomy of the upper part. Remarkable as the execution of the statue is, the expression is yet more so; for notwithstanding its colossal proportions, its prominent characteristic is the embodiment of intellectual power. It is the great leader and lawgiver of his people that we see, whose voice was command, and whose outstretched arm sustained a nation's infant steps. He looks as if he might control the energies ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... Caledonia and lay my songs under your honored protection. I now obey her dictates." His mind was not active at this time, for beyond a few trivial verses he wrote nothing worthy of him except a short but characteristic 'Epistle to the Guidwife of Wauchope House.' He spent the winter of 1786 and the spring of 1787 in Edinburgh; and summer being close at hand, he resolved to return for a time to Mossgiel. There were strong reasons for his return, some of which pertained to his impoverished family, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... been, however, an exceptionally severe winter. On the way to Government House, my eyes were once more regaled with the gum trees, in the well-accustomed form of open forest, the ground being covered with grass, on which sheep were depasturing. This is the pleasing characteristic of much of ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... communicated it in detail to his father, the latter took the professional advice of his friend Mr. Percival, and in the course of a few weeks Joseph found himself regularly established in a business which had the—for him—novel characteristic of serving the purposes of purity. The manufactory was situated in a by-street on the north of Euston Road: a small concern, but at all events a genuine one. On the window of the office you read, 'Lake, Snowdon, & Co.' As it was necessary to account for this achievement ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... with the history of philosophy, or of philological and historical criticism, which is essential to any one who desires to obtain a right understanding of agnosticism. Incompetence in philosophy, and in all branches of science except mathematics, is the well-known mental characteristic of the founder of positivism. Faithfulness in disciples is an admirable quality in itself; the pity is that it not unfrequently leads to the imitation of the weaknesses as well as of the strength of the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... entered the room unperceived by both, and had heard all, and with the magnanimity so characteristic of him, he stepped nobly forward and placed Jessie's hand in that of the ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... the Thugs were utterly callous, utterly destitute of human feelings, heartless toward their own families as well as toward other people's; but this was not so. Like all other Indians, they had a passionate love for their kin. A shrewd British officer who knew the Indian character, took that characteristic into account in laying his plans for the capture of Eugene Sue's famous Feringhea. He found out Feringhea's hiding-place, and sent a guard by night to seize him, but the squad was awkward and he got away. However, they got the rest of the family—the mother, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... reproof in a penitent spirit; she expresses sincere sorrow for having thoughtlessly frightened you. Both yesterday and to-day she has made kind inquiries after your health. Come! come! don't bear malice—wish her good-by." Mrs. Ellmother's answer was characteristic. "I'll say good-by by telegraph, when ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... some of the characteristic features of country life in New England, I had especially in mind the beautiful mountain village in which this preface is written, and in which for nearly a quarter of a century I have felt myself more at home than in any other spot in ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... in any reputable book shop, and which ought to be much rarer than they are—namely, those that belong to the domain of indecent literature. Booksellers who deal in such wares often put them in catalogues under the head of facetiae, thus making a vile use of what should be characteristic only of books of wit or humor. Men of prurient tastes become collectors of such books, many of which are not without some literary merit, while many more are neither fit to be written, nor ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... incidents of the most frivolous nature. At this juncture the metropolis of England was divided and discomposed in a surprising manner, by a dispute in itself of so little consequence to the community, that it could not deserve a place in a general history, if it did not serve to convey a characteristic idea of the English nation. In the beginning of the year an obscure damsel, of low degree, whose name was Elizabeth Canning, promulgated a report, which in a little time attracted the attention of the public. She affirmed, that on the first day of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... of the Martyrs, the Pilgrim's difficulties in the Slough of Despond, or with the Giant Despair, afforded pleasurable reading; while Mr. Great Heart's courageous cheerfulness brought practically a new characteristic into Puritan literature. ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... from her seat, lighted her candles, and began to make her modest toilet for dinner with an air of satisfied finality. It was characteristic of her that she was never satisfied with half-measures, and was always supremely confident of her ability to carry out new resolutions. The determination to become a perfect character was taken as easily as if it had ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... is described in verse 17, with allusion to the closing prophecy of Malachi. That prophecy had kindled an expectation that Elijah, in person, would precede Messias. John was like a reincarnation of the stern prophet. He came in a similar epoch. His characteristic, like Elijah's, was 'power,' not gentleness. If the earlier prophet had to beard Ahab and Jezebel, the second Elijah had Herod and Herodias. Both haunted the desert, both pealed out thunders of rebuke. Both shook the nation, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... unhesitating. It was perhaps at that moment that a hidden characteristic of her features showed itself. Her mouth, sometimes almost too voluptuous in its softness, had straightened into a firm line of scarlet. The deeper violet of her eyes had gone. So a woman might have looked who watched suffering unmoved, the woman of the bull ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... attitude of a human and ethical religion towards that characteristic manifestation of piety which we call prayer? Doubtless its views will be found to diverge notably from those which were prevalent in other days when scientific knowledge was imperfect, and conceptions of man ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... numbered eleven, nine of which were still upon their feet, and, with the vindictive fearlessness which is the chief characteristic of the Cape buffalo, charging straight down upon our party; at a word, therefore, from the induna who was in command of the contingent, nine of the warriors flung away their shields and casting assagais, and, gripping the single bangwan, or ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... my sworn friend. With characteristic directness she had cut the Gordian knot of our misunderstanding by telling me, against Dicky's protests, all about the old secret which her past and that of my husband shared. After her story, with all that it revealed of her sacrifice and her fidelity to her own ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... but a solitary infant, and its solitary combat with grief—a mighty darkness, and a sorrow without a voice. But something of the same interest will be found, perhaps, to rekindle at a maturer age, when the characteristic features of the individual mind have been unfolded. And I contend that much more than amusement ought to settle upon any narrative of a life that is really confidential. It is singular—but many of my readers will ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... nothing more truly felt and meant. But the young make their own experience, and my father, with the smiling open look which disarmed opposition, and disguised all the time a certain stubborn independence of will, characteristic of him through life, took his own way. He went to New Zealand, and, now that it was done, the interest and sympathy of all his family and friends followed him. Let me give here the touching letter which Arthur Stanley, his ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... manufacture of cricket-balls, for example. You might not think it a very arduous occupation, but Dr. MACNAMARA assured the House that it required "a high standard of physical fitness," and that leather-stitching was as laborious as leather-hunting. It is true that some of the disabled men with characteristic intrepidity are willing to face the risk, but the Union concerned will not hear of it, and the MINISTER OF LABOUR appears to agree ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... more respectable, because she was singularly free from censoriousness, and discouraged scandal as much as vice. In dislike of backbiting indeed she and her husband cordially agreed; but they showed their dislike in different and in very characteristic ways. William preserved profound silence, and gave the talebearer a look which, as was said by a person who had once encountered it, and who took good care never to encounter it again, made your story go back down your throat. [57] Mary had a way of interrupting ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Sir Thomas Seymour, who, sailing forth into the chops of the channel, laid wait for any richly-laden craft he might happen to espy. Among other men of rank who thus distinguished themselves were the sons of Lord Chobham. Influenced by that hatred of Roman abominations which had long been the characteristic of their family, Thomas Chobham, the most daring of the brothers, had established himself in a strongly-fortified port in the south of Ireland, from whence, sailing forth with his stout ships, he attacked the Spaniards on their own coasts. ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... was a united civilization, the prime characteristic of which was the acceptation, absolute and unconditional, of one common mode of life by all those who dwelt within its boundaries. It is an idea very difficult for the modern man to seize, accustomed ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... much importance to the applause of a court, although it neither possessed judgment nor feeling for the merits of a writer, nor for poetical beauties; and he complains at the same time that this court had neither duly estimated his tragedies nor his epic poems. It is characteristic both of the court and of Voltaire that he eagerly pressed himself forward for admission to its favor, and sought to attract attention by a work which be himself called a piece of trash, and that the court extended its approbation and applause to this miserable and altogether inappropriate piece, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... had much to do with it," laughed the doctor, "beyond being, like Barkis, 'willing.' It's a queer story; some people profess not to believe it, but those who know her ladyship best think it is just the story that must be true, because it is so characteristic of her. And besides, I happen to know ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... girl's reply was thoroughly characteristic: "Every house has its ugly duckling, dear boy," she observed quaintly, "and they seldom turn out swans except in story-books. However, it does not matter very much about a man's personal appearance; and you—why, you might have been ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... the most austere of the ancient masters. I refer to Walt Whitman's "Out of the cradle endlessly rocking," in which the mockingbird plays a part. The poet's treatment of the bird is entirely ideal and eminently characteristic. That is to say, it is altogether poetical and not at all ornithological; yet it contains a rendering or free translation of a bird-song—the nocturne of the mockingbird, singing and calling through the night for its lost mate—that I consider quite ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... last century, Theodore Roosevelt said, "the one characteristic more essential than any other is foresight. . . It should be the growing nation with a future which takes the long ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William J. Clinton • William J. Clinton
... mace! All these men regard this slaughter of the foe by thee to be like that of Vritra by Indra himself! Who else, save thyself, O Vrikodara, could slay the heroic Duryodhana while careering in diverse kinds of motion and performing all the wheeling manoeuvres (characteristic of such encounters)? Thou hast now reached the other shore of these hostilities, that other shore which none else could reach. This feat that thou hast achieved is incapable of being achieved by any other warriors. By good luck, thou hast, O hero, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... actors know they are acting, and have to mask their faces with smiles, restrain the tears which they would fain let flow, and mouth witty sayings with breaking hearts. Surely the most bitter of all feelings is that cynical disbelief in human nature which is so characteristic of our ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... severe inflammation and the formation of a false membrane. In some instances this condition has been mistaken for foot-and-mouth disease, but it can be differentiated by the absence of the blister that is characteristic of that disease and by the further fact that it ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... religious duty that the latest of the Saint Legers should be so trained as to worthily sustain the traditions of his race. Not, it must be understood, that my father preserved the faintest trace of that unscrupulous, buccaneering propensity that was only too probably a strongly marked characteristic of the earlier Saint Legers; far from it; but it had evidently never occurred to him that it was even remotely possible that I should ever adopt any other profession than that of the sea, and, knowing ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... great hour! At times comes a beam of light from him on the world he is quitting. "I carry in my heart the death-dirge of the French Monarchy; the dead remains of it will now be the spoil of the factious." Or again, when he heard the cannon fire, what is characteristic too: "Have we the Achilles' Funeral already?" So likewise, while some friend is supporting him: "Yes, support that head; would I could bequeath it thee!" For the man dies as he has lived; self-conscious, conscious of a world looking on. He gazes forth ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the idea was suggested, it was certainly calculated to increase the agitation of her mind. In one respect however it produced an effect unlike that which might most obviously have been looked for. It roused within her the characteristic energy of mind, which she seemed partially to have forgotten. She saw the necessity of bringing the affair to a point, and not suffering months and years to roll on in uncertainty and suspence. This idea inspired her with an extraordinary resolution. The language she employed, was, ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... be amiss to glance, for an instant, toward the Senate Chamber; and especially at one characteristic incident. It was the afternoon of August the 1st, 1861,—scarce ten days since the check to the Union arms at Bull Run; and Breckinridge, of Kentucky, not yet expelled from the United States Senate, was making in that Body his great speech ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... the couch with more gentleness than might have been expected of him, he walked out of the room. For a little while she sat listening, then opened her eyes and glanced about her. Yes, he was gone. But it was characteristic of her that at such a time her chief and overpowering thought was Valerie as a rival! 'Valerie's lovers, Unziar and the Englishman!' A score of trifles rushed back upon her memory; but no it could not be. ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... unaccompanied by a prayer, to assist her endeavours to perform her duty in that station of life to which it might please Him to call her. We shall see, presently, how much more strongly in adversity each characteristic of ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... and chalky mud in wet, are the characteristic faults of this hundred kilometres or more of Herault roadway which one must cross to gain the shadow of the Pyrenees. There seems to be no help for it unless cobblestones were to be put down, which would be a ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... have a ship, monsieur, here in the Baltic?" asked Mathilde with more haste than was characteristic of her ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... are matters which must be relinquished to another pen. The history of the peace of Westphalia constitutes a whole, as important as the history of the war itself. A mere abridgment of it, would reduce to a mere skeleton one of the most interesting and characteristic monuments of human policy and passions, and deprive it of every feature calculated to fix the attention of the public, for which I write, and of which I ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... characteristic which beating and being deprived of her food may sometimes check, but which her own powers of reflection do not cure: and it is the same thing with most of her faults. At times it will be unreasoning obstinacy, but even where she uses a certain amount of reflection, the result ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann |
