"Descriptive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Socratic fancy, [157] to bring them to the birth, was after all the proper function of the teacher, however unusual it might seem in so ancient a university. "Fantastic!"—from first to last, that was the descriptive epithet; and the very word, carrying us to Shakespeare, reminds one how characteristic of the age such habit was, and that it was pre- eminently due to Italy. A man of books, he had yet so vivid a hold on people and things, that ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... the "Saxon Razor;" but have not yet summoned up sufficient courage to try this article, which "no gentleman's dressing-case should be without." We cannot dispossess our minds of the apprehension of cutting ourselves, remembering that line descriptive of the combat between FITZ-JAMES and RODERICK DHU, in which ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... depart the realm. In the same year first appeared the celebrated Act for the punishment of beggars and vagabonds and forbidding beggary, and requiring them to labor or be whipped. Herbert Spencer states in his "Descriptive Sociology" that it punishes with loss of an ear the third conviction for joining a trades-union, which, if true, would justify much of the bitterness of modern labor unions against the common law. The provision ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... of other remarkable features of the island, the great rocks which are piled along its coasts, are all descriptive and not legendary names—the Devil's Chimney, the Cheeses, the Templar's Rock, the Gannett Rock, the Mousehole. These names will have been given in comparatively recent times, at least since the Saxon invasion, for they show a different mentality from the Celtic names which are found ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... six odes we must rank (a) the fragment of the 'May Ode,' immortal on account of the famous passage of inimitable beauty descriptive ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is perfectly descriptive of the book. Mr. Crawford, who has studied Rome in all its phases and has been writing novels and serious books about it for twenty years, has undertaken to put "the heart of Rome" into his latest novel. Many authors have undertaken to do this, ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... St. Edmund in Lombard Street since 1601, and might therefore have seen, and been seen by, Shakespeare. Besides other trifles, he had published, in 1635, a book called "Christianographia" or a descriptive enumeration of the various sorts of Christians in the world out of the pale of the Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps because he had thus acquired a fondness for the statistics of religious denominations, it occurred to him to write, by way of sequel, a "Heresiography; or, A Description of the Hereticks ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... you are a good sailor. But the forms are too fleeting, they change too quickly—so quickly, indeed, that I have never succeeded in so fixing their record upon my memory as to be able to develop one form from the other in descriptive notes. It is that very fact, I believe, upon which hinges the curative value of the sight: you are so completely absorbed by the moment, and all other things fall away. Many and many a day have I lain in my deck chair on board a liner and watched the play of the waves; but the pleasure, ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... which he had seen there was so terrifying as what they now beheld. One creature, which seemed to be the unresisted master of this kingdom of phosphorescent life, appears to have exceeded in strangeness the utmost descriptive powers of all those who looked upon it, for their written accounts are filled with ejaculations, and are more or less inconsistent with one another. The reader gathers from them, however, the general impression that it made upon their ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... fifteen Books, contains 160 pieces, nearly all of them short, and descriptive of manners and events in several of the feudal states of Kau. The title has been translated by The Manners of the Different States, 'Les Moeurs des Royaumes,' and, which I prefer, ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... of morals,"[2] claims that veracity "usually increases with civilization," and he seeks to show why it is so. But this view of Lecky's is an unfounded assumption, in support of which he proffers no evidence; while Herbert Spencer's exhibit of facts, in his "Cyclopaedia of Descriptive Sociology," seems to disprove the claim of Lecky; and he directly asserts that "surviving remnants of some primitive races in India have natures in which truthfulness seems to be organic; that not only to the surrounding Hindoos, higher intellectually and relatively ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... his old chief, Captain Freeman, who was master of the "Northfleet" when the rescue of the crew of the "Hebe" took place, a large oil-painting descriptive of the scene, accompanied by a letter, from which we ...
— Notes by the Way in A Sailor's Life • Arthur E. Knights
... on this occasion is always very great, the Seniors usually siding with the former, and the Juniors with the latter class. The result is generally in favor of the Sophomores. College poets and prose-writers have often chosen the game of football as a topic on which to exercise their descriptive powers. One invokes his muse, in imitation of a great poet, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... what he calls the "Words of Difference": large, long, small, stout, broad, thick, narrow, thin, young, old, fat, lean, pretty, ugly, hard, soft, and so forth; in fact any word descriptive of a quality "whereby a thing may be differentiated from the thing ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... the neighbourhood of a certain drawer which contained preserved cherries. Of his cheek in daring to address the assistant as "Pretty" without the Mr., and, the youth objecting, his ready substitution of an adjective which certainly was more descriptive of his appearance. Of his riding on Mr. Pretty's back when he, in pursuit of his duty, must crawl on all fours under the counter; his clinging to his legs when duty again called him to mount the steps for the topmost shelf. Nothing was too absurd, no tiny record ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... in color, with descriptive verses, by E. W. Kemble the famous delineator of "Kemble's Coons." Large quarto, 9x12, on plate ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... very beautifully expressed; nothing can be more descriptive of a poor pilgrim who has been toiling through the valley of the shadow of death, and upon whose soul the day-spring from on ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Chasseurs d'Afrique, and the trial of Anastasius Papadopoulos, I must refer you to the Algerian, Parisian, and London Press. There you will find an eagerly picturesque account of the whole miserable affair. Now, not only am I unable to compete with descriptive verbatim reporters on their own ground, but also a consecutive statement, either bald or graphic, of the tedious horrors Lola Brandt and I had to undergo, would be foreign to the purpose of these notes, ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... Washington, 1820-23, Stratford Canning, was published by Arthur J. May.[2] In Naval and Mail Steamers of the United States, by Charles B. Stuart,[3] and The Steam Navy of the United States, by Frank M. Bennett,[4] the history of the ship and some descriptive facts are given. Stuart, in an appendix, gives in full the report of the Supervisory Committee (set up to administer the building contract). Tyler and Stuart, and the Committee Report are the principal sources ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle
... published by John Ashton. The names of the writers are not given, but their strong nautical flavour and queer composition indicate their origin. No landsman can ever imitate the sailor when the power of song or composition is on him. He puts his own funny sentiment and descriptive faculty into his work, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... in England are often named after animals with an adjective descriptive of the color of the sign; as, The ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... admitted that it might be; a third conversed with the driver in low tones, and then leaped upon the box. We drove rapidly away, and before I had, in view of this mysterious proceeding, composed a fitting paragraph for the Fatti Diversi of the Osservatore Triestino, descriptive of the state in which the Guardie di Polizia should find me floating in the bay, exanimate and evidently the prey of a triste evvenimento—the driver pulled up once more, and now beside a steamer. It was the steamer for Venice, he said, in precisely the tone which he would have used had he driven ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... character; pose as; act; play &c. (drama) 599; mimic &c. (imitate) 19; hold the mirror up to nature. Adj. represent, representing &c. v., representative; *illustrative; represented &c. v.; imitative, figurative; iconic. like &c. 17; graphic &c. (descriptive) 594; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... compared to another, descriptive of the same divinity, preserved in Sahagun's MS. in Madrid. It is as follows, with ...
— Rig Veda Americanus - Sacred Songs Of The Ancient Mexicans, With A Gloss In Nahuatl • Various
... sense, signifying the word by which a person or thing is called or known, includes all other words of this group; in this sense every noun is a name; in the more limited sense a name is personal, an appellation is descriptive, a title is official. In the phrase William the Conqueror, King of England, William is the man's name, which belongs to him personally, independently of any rank or achievement; Conqueror is the appellation which he won by his acquisition of ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... calmly before my own typewriter at night, privileged to write one hundred thousand words if I choose. I can't get over the habit of crowding the story all into the first paragraph. Whenever I flower into a descriptive passage I glance nervously over my shoulder, expecting to find Norberg stationed behind me, scissors and blue pencil in hand. Consequently the book, thus far, sounds very much like a police reporter's story of a fire four minutes before ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... have satisfied yourself with the limiting, you begin on the descriptive adjectives, and pronounce me egotistical. Certainly. I should be unlike all others of my race, if I were not. It is a wise and merciful arrangement of Providence, that every one is to himself the centre of the universe. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... traveled extensively in the East, doing brilliant work for his paper. When England went to war with King Theodore of Abyssinia, he accompanied the English army to Abyssinia, and from thence wrote vivid descriptive letters to the Herald. The child whose early advantages were only such as a Welsh poorhouse afforded, was already, through his own unaided efforts, a leader in his profession. He was soon to become a leader ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... notions can be depended upon to fail of containing such impropriety,—can, if those notions are accepted as the canon, be placed with a sense of security in the hands of girls and youths, or read aloud to women; and this holds good just as much of severely moral or plainly descriptive as of avowedly playful, knowing, or licentious books. For my part, I am far from thinking that earlier state of literature, and the public feeling from which it sprang, the wrong ones— and our present condition the only right one. Equally ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... the second roll of papyrus are so broken as to be undecipherable. They seem to have been descriptive of Cleopatra's voyage up the Cydnus to ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... vivacity with which She Stoops to Conquer opens. The novice does not yet understand the art of making his characters explain themselves; and accordingly the benevolent uncle and honest Jarvis indulge in a conversation which, laboriously descriptive of the character of young Honeywood, is spoken "at" the audience. With the entrance of young Honeywood himself, Goldsmith endeavours to become a little more sprightly; but there is still anxiety hanging over him, ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... Dr. Culin states, is played among eighty-one Indian tribes of the United States. The game bears different names in the various languages of these tribes. Hand Game is a descriptive term and not a translation of any native name; it refers to the fact that the object is held in the hand during the play. The following form of this game is the way it was formerly played among the Nez Perce Indians ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... Worcester, Johnson and the most eminent English and American authorities. Containing over thirty-two thousand words with accurate definitions, proper spelling and exact pronunciation, and contains a special department of Law, Banks and Banking. Complete descriptive Dictionary and Encyclopedia, including Mercantile Law, Constitution of the United States, etc.; 544 pages, 12mo; over 500 illustrations; bound in ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... inflections of the substantive. Good and bad, high and low, black and white, are in all cases employed in a transitive sense, and with strict relation to the objects characterized. The Indian compound terms are so descriptive, so graphic, so local, so characterizing, yet so flexible and transpositive, that the legends derive no little of their characteristic features as well as melody of utterance from these traits. Sometimes these terms cannot be literally translated, and they ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... 50,000 inscribed pieces of terracotta or clay-tablets, forming the libraries of Assyria and Babylonia. Page 134 The great impetus given to cuneiform studies has made it necessary that the tablets should be catalogued, and the trustees have now issued a descriptive catalogue of some 8,000 inscribed tablets. The inscriptions in question come from the Kuyuryik Mound, at Nineveh. The tablets embrace every class of literature, historical documents, hymns, prayers and educational works, such as syllabaries or spelling-books, and dictionaries. The catalogues, ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... the descriptive material embodied in these volumes, and of preparing the photographs which accompany them, had its inception in 1898. Since that time, during each year, months of arduous labor have been spent in accumulating the data necessary to form a comprehensive and permanent record of all the important ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... has rendered valuable assistance in cutting certain chapters and abridging others. Also, with the author's approval, cuts have been made where the descriptive matter ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... of Mr. Blacklock's poetry, so far as it was descriptive of visible objects; and observed, that 'as its authour had the misfortune to be blind, we may be absolutely sure that such passages are combinations of what he has remembered of the works of other writers who could see. That foolish fellow, Spence, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Pictures of Animal Pets, Costumed, Posed, and Photographed from Life Each with a Descriptive Story Square 8vo Cloth ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... The descriptive stage direction, effectively used by Ibsen, is further expanded by Hauptmann. But it remains impersonal and never becomes direct comment or even argument as in Shaw. It is used not only to suggest the scene but, above all, its atmosphere, ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... places. The habits of this bird are in a great measure aquatic; and the setting in of the rains is the season in which they pair; the peacock is, therefore, always introduced in the description of cloudy or rainy weather. Thus, in a little poem, descriptive of the rainy season, &c., the author says, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... the architectural branch, which commences in the student's second year, with Greek, Roman, and Mediaeval architectural history, the Orders and their applications, drawing, sketching, and tracing, analytic geometry, differential calculus, physics, descriptive geometry, botany, and physical geography. In the third year the course is extended to the theory of decoration, color, form, and proportion; conventionalism, symbolism, the decorative arts, stained glass, fresco painting, tiles, terra-cotta, original designs, specifications, integral ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... chance to revise her manuscript. But on reflection I realized that, although the matter came through Mrs. Piper, it could not have come from her, wherever it came from; and that if George Eliot were communicating tidings naturally within our comprehension, and merely descriptive of superficial experience as distinct from reflection, and were communicating, through a poor telephone, words to be recorded by an indifferent scribe, this material would not seem absolutely incongruous with its alleged source, and to a reader knowing that the stuff claimed to be hers, might ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... Tory War of Ulster,' by John P. Prendergast, author of 'The Cromwellian Settlement.' This pamphlet abounds in the most curious information, collected from judicial records, descriptive of Ireland from the Restoration ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... in South Africa' (Murray's edition of 1868). The points of disagreement are many, and such as to make it entirely improbable that this fly is the true tsetse, though my men unanimously stated that its bite was fatal to horses as well as to donkeys. A descriptive abstract of the tsetse would read thus: "Not much larger than a common house-fly, nearly of the same brown colour as the honey-bee. After-part of the body has yellow bars across it. It has a peculiar buzz, and its bite is ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... "begotten," hence, born in the purple, royal. This term, or "porphyrogenitus," was applied in the Byzantine empire to children of the monarch born after his accession to the throne. It is not clear whether the word is used here as a descriptive adjective or as the ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... preparation of a report upon the exhibits of the Bureau of Ethnology and the Geological Survey at the Cincinnati Industrial Exposition, 1884; the Southern Exposition at Louisville, 1884; and the Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition at New Orleans, 1884-'85. The report includes a descriptive catalogue of the various exhibits. As these consisted largely of models, and as the locality or object represented by each model was described in detail, the report was lengthy. It was finished in October and transmitted ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... all that bad news, rather than leave you ignorant of our doings; but I have the pleasure of mending your prospect a little. Yesterday the Common Council met, and resolved upon instructions to their members, which, except one not very descriptive paragraph, contains nothing personal -,against our new earl; and ends with resolutions "to stand by our present constitution." Mind what followed! One of them proposed to insert "the King and Royal Family" before the words, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... purely descriptive power, his aptitude for still-life and landscape, is unmistakably vivid and sound. Take, for an instance, this ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... the style of his time, and possessing small conception of literary form. In editing this manuscript for modern readers I have therefore been compelled to practically rewrite it entirely, retaining merely the essential facts, with an occasional descriptive passage, although I have conscientiously followed the original development of the tale. In this reconstruction much quaintness of language, as well as appeal to probability, may have been lost, and for this my only excuse ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... in his Journey. He is, however, mistaken in thinking that the Celtick name, Auchinleck, has no relation to the natural appearance of it. I believe every Celtick name of a place will be found very descriptive. Auchinleck does not signify a 'stony field', as he has said, but a 'field of flag stones'; and this place has a number of rocks, which abound in strata of that kind. The 'sullen dignity of the old castle', as he has forcibly expressed it, delighted him exceedingly. On one side of the ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... implements used in smoking, from the first discovery of the plant until now, and turn to other implements used in connection with the pipe. We, however, give the following from Cop's "Tobacco Plant," descriptive of the part played by tobacco on the ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles, by Lord Mahon, Vol. III. The third volume of this new and cheaper edition of Lord Mahon's valuable history comprehends the period from 1740 to 1748.—English Forests and Forest Trees; Historical, Legendary, and Descriptive, with numerous Illustrations. This volume, one of the Illustrated London Library, is a pleasant chatty compilation on a subject which will interest many of our readers and correspondents by furnishing them with a series of notices of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 187, May 28, 1853 • Various
... didn't relish that little dash of descriptive writing. In conjunction with the noun horse Cappy Ricks had employed the indefinite article a, and while a horse was a horse and Cappy might have had a Shetland pony in mind when he coined the simile, nevertheless, a still small voice whispered to Matt Peasley ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... pen which ever came before the public. The occasion of its being written was this:—I had been asked to breakfast by the late Rev. Caesar Otway, some time I think in the winter of 1829. About that time, or a little before, he had brought out his admirable work called, "Sketches in Ireland, descriptive of interesting portions of Donegal, Cork, and Kerry." Among the remarkable localities of Donegal, of course it was natural to suppose, that "Lough Derg," or the celebrated "Purgatory of St. Patrick," would not be omitted. Neither was it; and nothing ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... Haystack. Vulgar folks have called it Mount Lafayette, since the visit of that brave old Frenchman in 1825 or 1826. If they had asked his opinion, he would have told them the names of mountains couldn't be altered, and especially names like that, so appropriate, so descriptive, and so picturesque. A little hard white cloud, that looked like a hundred fleeces of wool rolled into one, was climbing rapidly along up the northwestern ridge, that ascended to the lonely top of Great Haystack. All the others were bare. Four or ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... fighting men. The dangers and hardships which these courageous soldiers of Italy and Austria have been called upon to undergo are not easily appreciated unless one has been on the very ground on which they do some of their fighting. The following extracts from descriptive articles from the pen of Lord Northcliffe, Mr. Hilaire Belloc, and some special correspondents of the London "Times" give a most vivid picture of actual conditions in the Austro-Italian mountains in ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... good reading is that it fills the mind with beautiful pictures of places that we cannot visit or that live only in the eyes of the imagination. A powerful descriptive writer takes his reader with him, and by graphic words makes visible and almost real the scenes among which they wander. One may sit in the light of his study lamp during a black northern winter and read himself away from the chill and dreariness ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... take their places in America. Hence, they set their wits to work in order to delay the return of the troops to England. The first thing they did was to pass a resolution directing General Heath to transmit to the board of war, a descriptive list of every person comprehended in the convention. Burgoyne and his officers bitterly resented the insinuations of congress, and raised objections to such a humiliating measure; but his army was, nevertheless, described ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... JOEL COOK, author of "A Holiday Tour in Europe," etc. With 487 finely engraved illustrations, descriptive of the most famous and attractive places, as well as of the historic scenes and rural life of England and Wales. With Mr. Cook's admirable descriptions of the places and the country, and the splendid ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... type of magazine article, not so much in subject as in form and style. The most marked difference lies in the fact that it supplements the recognized methods of literary and scientific exposition with the more striking devices of narrative, descriptive, and dramatic writing. ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... at the time of Mr. Nelson's death, was one given by the Reverend Jesse Halsey, the beloved former minister of the Seventh Presbyterian Church, who culled the phrase "An Unmitered Bishop," a title which is signally descriptive of the man by reason of the many civic causes to which he was spiritual advisor, and thus a father-in-God to diverse groups scattered over the seven hills and in the "bottoms." He actively furthered many humanitarian causes: the Juvenile Protective Association, ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... appendix of "Critical Notices" kindly at the advent of humbler merit, treated "Merry-Mount" with the distinction implied in a review of nearly twenty pages. This was a great contrast to the brief and slighting notice of "Morton's Hope." The reviewer thinks the author's descriptive power wholly exceeds his conception of character ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... objects on export are subject to a tax of 10 percent. ad valorem unless declared entirely valueless by the Commission. Antiquities imported into the country must be declared in the Customs House and reported to the Ephor General of Antiquities, a descriptive catalogue in duplicate being sent, and cannot be re- exported without permission, which is obtained by producing the articles with the original catalogue to the Ephor General; if not reported they are regarded as having been ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... young friend and cousin, by way of reply, a big packet of manuscript, the leaves of which were of all sizes, over which he had poured forth torrents of poetry, amorous and descriptive, under the title: ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... be observed, to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency, and approbation, are all the advantages which they seek." True! my male readers will probably exclaim; but let them, before they draw any conclusion, recollect, that this was not written originally as descriptive of women, but of the rich. In Dr. Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, I have found a general character of people of rank and fortune, that in my opinion, might with the greatest propriety be applied to the female sex. I refer the sagacious reader to ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... own prudence is everything and divine providence nothing. I remarked that man has no proprium unless you want to call it his proprium that he is such or such a subject or organ or form. This is not the proprium that is meant, however, for it is only descriptive of the nature of man. No man, I said, has any proprium as the word is commonly understood. At this those who ascribed everything to their own prudence and who may be called the very picture of proprietorship, flared up so that flames seemed to come from their nostrils ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... of Massachusetts. It is curious to trace in these first flights of a genius that has since learned its legitimate field, a tendency to the breadth of Motley's later efforts, an instinctive and evidently unconscious passion for the descriptive, an admirably curbed yet still powerful impatience of the light fetters, the toy regulations of the realm of Fiction, and an earnestness that has since bloomed in the world of Fact and History. The very imperfections of the novelist have become the charms of the historian. His student-life ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... would breed infinitely more disgust than desire. The man must be prurient and lecherous as a dog-faced baboon in rut to have aught of passion excited by either. And most inept is the conclusion, "So long as Mr. Payne's translation remains defiled by words, sentences, and whole paragraphs descriptive of coarse and often horribly depraved sensuality, it can never stand beside Lane's, which still remains the standard version of the Arabian Nights" (p. 179). Altro! No one knows better than the clique that Lane, after an artificially prolonged life of some half-century, has at last been ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... surveyors and nautical cartographers to achieve standardization in nautical charts and electronic chart displays; to provide advice on nautical cartography and hydrography; to develop the sciences in the field of hydrography and techniques used for descriptive oceanography ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... and "an ingenious poet in his Montpellerian dialect," (3/11.) taught Fabre never to forget the value of style and the importance of form, even in the exposition of a purely descriptive science such as botany. He did even more, by one day suddenly showing Fabre, between the fruit and the cheese, "in a plate of water," the anatomy of the snail. This was his first introduction to his true destiny before the final revelation of which ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... public questions which he discussed have lost interest and his historical works have been in part rewritten. In these outdoor papers, besides the thrilling adventures which they—very modestly—record, there are even passages of descriptive beauty and chapters of graphic narrative, like the tale of the pursuit and capture of the three robbers who stole the boats on the Missouri River, which belonged to the Roosevelt ranch. This last would ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... such mechanical descriptive skill would hardly give more satisfaction to the reader than the skill of the photographer does to the anxious mother desirous to possess an absolute duplicate of her beloved child. The likeness is indeed true, but it is a dull, dead, unfeeling, inauspicious likeness. The ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the merchants told me it was useless to offer them anything but the best. An Indian who could not speak English or French, and wanted five things, divided his money according to his idea of their relative cost in little piles on the counter, and going through a pantomime descriptive of his wants, was handed first some silk handkerchiefs. Taking one up, he felt it, held it up to the light, and throwing it aside, shook his head vigorously, uttering an "Ugh!" of disgust. When shown a better one he was doubtful, but upon a much superior article being produced he took it, ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... can sell you a Radion Enlarging Printer. If yours cannot, write direct to us. Write anyway for descriptive circulars that will be of great ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant
... I do not know whether these mouldings are called by architects chamfers or beads; but I think bead a bad word for a continuous moulding, and the proper sense of the word chamfer is fixed by Spenser as descriptive not merely of truncation, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... narrative was by no means recommended by its eloquence; but neither did all its value flow from my relationship to the author. Its style had an unaffected and picturesque simplicity. The great variety and circumstantial display of the incidents, together with their intrinsic importance as descriptive of human manners and passions, made it the most useful book in my collection. It was late: but, being sensible of no inclination to sleep, I resolved to betake myself to ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... said that his country was South Carolina. Nothing can exceed the innocent, childlike manner in which this design is carried out in Number III. First, the children are favored with a series of chapters descriptive of North Carolina, written in the style of a school geography, with an occasional piece of poetry on a North Carolina subject by a North Carolina poet. Once, however, the compiler ventures to depart from his plan by inserting the ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... English composition, algebra through quadratic equations, plane geometry, descriptive geography, physical geography, United States history and the outlines ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... word is not a proper name but a descriptive designation, and must be understood in this way when used by Dr. Griffis in his Mikado's Empire and by Dr. Rein in his two works on Japan. In the successive issues of the Resume Statistique, published by the Statistical Bureau, the term Nippon is used ...
— Japan • David Murray
... much, and one perceives that Balzac lived too soon to profit by Balzac. The later men, especially the Russians, have known how to forbear the excesses of analysis, to withhold the weakly recurring descriptive and caressing epithets, to let the characters suffice for themselves. All this does not mean that 'Cesar Birotteau' is not a beautiful and pathetic story, full of shrewdly considered knowledge of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... did: but we should regret to see a bishop, or even a dean, have recourse to such means of producing an impression. We shall give one other extract descriptive of Chalmers's manner: ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... has truly said, "has the character of youth in its defects and its beauties. The redundance of its descriptive passages is in marked contrast to the terseness of description which Horace studies in his Odes; and there is something declamatory in its general tone which is at variance with the simpler utterance of ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... holy season of Easter that Mr. Maundrell visited Jerusalem, when he witnessed the annual service performed by the monks; rather too minutely descriptive, perhaps, of the great event to which it refers. "Their ceremony begins on Good Friday night, which is called by them the Nox Tenebrosa, and is observed with such an extraordinary solemnity that I cannot omit to give a particular description of it:—As ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... the glory of June sunlight over the shoulder of Storm King. A perfect morning, if ever any one was perfect since the world began—soft airs stirring in the forest, golden robins' full-throated song, the melody of the scarlet tropic birds they had named "fire-birds" for want of any more descriptive title, the chatter of gray squirrels on the branches overhead, all blent, under a sky of wondrous azure, to tell them of life, full ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... some of them obsolete. Thus "bridegroom" is the newly married man, and "bride-bell," "bride-banquet" are old equivalents of wedding-bells, wedding-breakfast. "Bridal" (from Bride-ale), originally the wedding-feast itself, has grown into a general descriptive adjective, e.g. the bridal party, the bridal ceremony. The bride-cake had its origin in the Roman confarreatio, a form of marriage, the essential features of which were the eating by the couple of a cake made of salt, water and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... more archaeological than descriptive, however, and we must acknowledge our indebtedness again to Miss Scidmore for the following passage to show the scope ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... you, ragged Nance?" said Mrs. Rooney; for that was the unenviable but descriptive title the new-comer was known by: and though she knew it for her soubriquet, yet she also knew Mrs. Rooney would not call her by it if she were not in an ill temper, so she began humbly to explain the cause of her visit, when Mrs. Rooney broke ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... phrase which has the value of a noun. Nouns are ordinarily very general and indefinite in meaning, for example, man conveys only a very general idea. To make that idea definite we need the help of one or more descriptive words such as ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... literary work was in the line of her earliest writings, descriptive of the every-day life of the middle classes. Her novels in this line have an unusual charm of expression, whose definable elements are an unaffected simplicity and a certain quiet humor which admirably fits the chosen milieu. Besides ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the official note, "I beg to call your attention to what I imagine must, in some way, have been an oversight. Your cat, described on the entrance form as 'a black male, named Beauty,' which was, on the evening of its arrival, placed in the class pertaining to the descriptive form, was found this morning to have presented us with four remarkably fine kittens. This, of course, necessitated the family's removal from the male cat class. I have much pleasure in being able to inform you that both mother and kittens are in the best of health, and will be carefully attended ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... apposite—they explored several small islands not identifiable by their names but said to have been in Kibi, which was the term then applied to the provinces of Bingo, Bitchu, and Bizen, lying along the south coast of the Inland Sea and thus facing the sun, so that the descriptive epithet "sun-direction" applied to the region ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... had no numbers, but the streets had descriptive names. Along the river, Wapping, changing to The Keys and East to West Landing where all the busy loading and unloading of vessels took place. Just above there running west off Water Street for a short distance was Cherry ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... man a nature lover, a nature limner, worthy to take his place among our Giffords, Whittredges, McEntees, Bierstadts, and Beards? Truly original, natural, and American, who among our descriptive writers can surpass H. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... across the rich perspective of a miscellaneous dessert to see, as in a black dose darkly, the family doctor looming in the distance. We know, I have no doubt we all know, what it is to assist at those little maternal anecdotes and table entertainments illustrated with imitations and descriptive dialogue which might not be inaptly called, after the manner of my friend Mr. Albert Smith, the toilsome ascent of Miss Mary and the eruption (cutaneous) of Master Alexander. We know what it is when ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... a strange fact that light literature concerned itself more with these grave questions. The rites of the exotic religions stimulated the imagination of the satirists, and the pomp of the festivities furnished the novelists with brilliant descriptive matter. Juvenal laughs at the mortifications of the devotees of Isis; in his Necromancy Lucian parodies the interminable purifications of the magi, and in the Metamorphoses Apuleius relates the various scenes ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... Complete Handbook of Yellowstone Park; 1921 ed. 8 vo., 160 pp. Officially approved by The National Park Service, Washington, D. C., and The Yellowstone Trail Association. Illustrated, maps, diagrams, charts. Descriptive, Historical, Geological, and contains the Motorists' Complete Road Log; By J. E. Haynes, ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough
... other French novelists. She is vigorous in conception, often great in the apprehension and the contrast of characters. She knows passion, as has been hinted, at a white heat, when all the lower particles are remoulded by its power. Her descriptive talent is very great, and her poetic feeling exquisite. She wants but little of being a poet, but that little is indispensable. Yet she keeps us always hovering on the borders of enchanted fields. She has, to a signal degree, that power of exact transcript from her ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... tree, which is also met with in the bushes, is not only seen by the traveller, but occasionally felt, and remembered, for its name is highly descriptive. ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... fluent, and convincing, and everybody on board the cutter grinned while the old sea-dog expressed a highly colored opinion of the whole tribe of ship-fitters, machinists, and mechanics generally. After ten minutes of descriptive shouting, during which he never repeated an adjective twice, he wound up by saying that he considered "an engine-room an insult to a seaman's intelligence," and said that "he'd like to pave the bottom of the sea with the skeletons ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the main merit of "The Shipwreck." It has in most of its descriptive passages a certain rugged strength and truth, which prove at once the perspicacity and the poetic vision of the author, who, while he sees all the minute details of his subject, sees also the glory of imagination shining around them. A ship appears before his view, with its every ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... expression, now most often used figuratively, was probably in the olden time a plain and literal description of an actual fact. The Anglo-Norman Poem on the Conquest of Ireland by Henry II., descriptive of events which occurred at the close of the twelfth century, informs us (at p. 53.) that one of the English knights, named Maurice de Prendergast, being desirous of returning with his followers to Wales, was impeded in his march by "les traitres de Weyseford;" ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... the words will, I hope, appear as we advance. For the present it will be enough to say that there are really in our text three co-ordinate clauses, all descriptive of the subjects of the monarch, regarded as a band of warriors—and that the main ideas are these:—the subjects are willing soldiers; the soldiers are priests; the priest-soldiers are as dew upon the earth. Or, in other words, we have here the very heart of the Christian character ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... The descriptive poems of Catullus are superior to the others, and discover a lively imagination. Amongst the best of his productions, is a translation of the celebrated ode ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... easier matter. Burke would have told of them. There would have been old country houses filled with portraits, and garrulous old housekeepers learned in the traditions of the past. There would have been mouldering tombs and tarnished brasses in quiet country churches, with descriptive epitaphs, and many escutcheons. There would have been crumbling parchments recording the prowess of Sir Reginald, knight, or the learning of Sir Rupert, counsellor and judge. The Haygarths were a race of provincial ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... than ever. His home at Allahabad was with Professor Hill, a man of science attached to the Allahabad College. But the continuity of his life was broken by various journeys undertaken in the interest of the paper—one through Rajputana, from which he wrote a series of descriptive letters, called "Letters of Marque"; another to Calcutta and through Bengal, which resulted in "The City of Dreadful Night" and other letters describing the little-known conditions of the vast presidency; ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of list price. Send for Descriptive Circular. Permanent and profitable employment for ladies. Exclusive territory given. CAUTION.—All Corsets manufactured by me have the stamp and Trade Mark inside. Reliable information any infringements sent to my address will be suitably rewarded. ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... thought of the nation, has never had a more enthusiastic eulogist than the author of this historical plea for Rationalism. If the demands of the Deists were "modest," who shall be able to find a term sufficiently descriptive of the ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... contained in the Principles of Sociology and in Part II. of the Principles of Ethics are based mainly, though not wholly, upon the classified materials contained in The Descriptive Sociology, compiled between 1867 and 1881 by three University men I engaged for the purpose. When using this compilation of facts concerning sixty-eight different societies I have habitually trusted to the compilers. For even had I been in good health, it would have been impossible for ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... great surprise was "Werewolves of War." From the few notes about it I surmised that it was another one of those hero-dying-and-saving-his-country stories; and it was—but not the kind I expected it to be. The author's narrative and descriptive abilities were such that I forgot all about the plot running throughout the story. ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... bishop, as denoting the president of the presbytery, marks an era in the history of ecclesiastical polity. New terms are not coined without necessity; neither, without an adequate cause, is a new meaning annexed to an ancient designation. When the name bishop was first used as descriptive of the chief pastor, there must have been some special reason for such an application of the title; and the rise of the hierarchy furnishes the only satisfactory explanation.[550:2] If then we can ascertain when this new nomenclature first made its appearance, we can also fix the date of the origin ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... was a direct person, as we know, but true descendants of the Puritans believe in the decency of preliminaries, and here was certainly an affair not to be plunged into. Euphrasia was a spinster in the strictest sense of that formidable and highly descriptive term, and she intended ultimately to discuss with Tom a subject of which she was supposed by tradition to be wholly ignorant, the mere mention of which still brought warmth to her cheeks. Such a delicate matter should ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... he published in Philadelphia, 'Human Histology, in its Relations to Descriptive Anatomy, Physiology, and Pathology,' in which were given for the first time, by translation, the experiments of Robin and Verdell on Anatomical Chemistry. But the one great work which will identify him with ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... is a perfect earmark of eighteenth-century descriptive verse: the shore is gilded and so are groves, clouds, etc. Contentment gilds the scene, and the stars gild the gloomy night (Parnell) or the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... was careful not to say too much for fear that he should let out some secrets that Rodney had not yet had opportunity to tell him. Of course the captain was delighted to see the recruit from Louisiana, shook him by the hand as if he had been a younger brother, and sent for an officer to take his descriptive list. He was not required to pass the surgeon, and the oath he took was to the effect that he would obey Governor Jackson and nobody else. This being done Dick took him off to introduce him to the ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... of Congress passed over. It was the long one, and ran into May 1792. I find in the collection only three letters to Mr. Lear dated in that year. The first is from Mount Vernon, July 30, '92, soon after he had left Philadelphia, and is familiarly descriptive of his journey homewards. His horses plagued him a good deal, he says, and the sick mare, owing to a dose of physic administered the night he reached Chester, was so much weakened as to be unable to carry Austin [one of the postilions] further than the Susquehannah; had ...
— Washington in Domestic Life • Richard Rush
... first Dutch residents of the Bossen Bouwerie—or Sappocanican as it was still occasionally called—are not known, but it is certain that there were a number of them. In the epoch of Peter Stuyvesant someone mentioned the houses at "Sappokanigan," and in 1679, after the British had arrived, a descriptive little entry was made in one of those delightfully detailed journals of an older and more precise generation than ours. The diary was the one kept by the Labadist missionaries—Dankers and Sluyter—and was only recently unearthed by Henry Murphy ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... know which of the candidates he is, i.e. we do not know any proposition of the form 'A is the candidate who will get most votes' where A is one of the candidates by name. We shall say that we have 'merely descriptive knowledge' of the so-and-so when, although we know that the so-and-so exists, and although we may possibly be acquainted with the object which is, in fact, the so-and-so, yet we do not know any proposition ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... from your subject; though I admit the justice of your remarks, as generally applicable to what is termed the higher ranks of society, and that they are imitated or aped in succession to those of the lower orders; but we appear to have imperceptibly got into a long descriptive conversation, instead of pursuing our usual plan of drawing inferences from actual observation. Let us ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... very loveliest things in nature, and many celebrated writers have exhausted their descriptive powers in vain efforts to picture them to the imagination. The temptation was certainly great, after describing the rich setting of tropical foliage and flower, to speak at length of the wonderful gem contained within it; but they would in this case have been wise to imitate ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... there are two mistakes very common among reviewers: one is the overvaluation of what is usually considered as literary ability ("brilliant writing" it is called; "literary tinsel" would be more descriptive) to the prejudice of Invention and Individuality; the other is the overvaluation of what they call "solid acquirements," which really mean no more than an acquaintance with the classics. As a fact, literary ability and solid acquirements ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... the approach. Style, sir, has been defined by my brother, Mr Joshua Benny—You may have heard of him, by the way, as being prominently connected with the London press. . . . No? A man of remarkable talent, though I say it. They tell me that for lightness of touch in a Descriptive Middle, it would be hard to find his match in Fleet Street. . . . As I was saying, sir, my brother Joshua has defined style as the art of speaking or writing with propriety, whatever the subject. By propriety, sir, he means what is ordinarily termed appropriateness. ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... to shake hands with him; however his name might be blasted at home, he had done nothing to make himself unworthy of his mother and Jenny—and there was a sob again. So I let him know that up to my last letters from home Jenny was unmarried. I even remembered those descriptive words of yours, Nannie, 'living in patient peacefulness and ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... craft, and dealt in island produce on a large scale. For the rest he lived solitary, but not misanthropic, with his books and his collection, classing and arranging specimens, corresponding with entomologists in Europe, writing up a descriptive catalogue of his treasures. Such was the history of the man whom I had come to consult upon Jim's case without any definite hope. Simply to hear what he would have to say would have been a relief. I was very anxious, but I respected the intense, almost passionate, absorption ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... of sentimentalism were not grasped by any noteworthy poet before Thomson. The Seasons was an innovation, and its novelty lay not so much in the choice of the subject as in the interpretation. Didactic as well as descriptive, it was designed not merely to present realistic pictures but to arouse certain explicitly stated thoughts and feelings. Thomson had absorbed some of Shaftesbury's ideas. Such sketches as that of the hardships ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... thought—is Realism? What is the meaning of that word so wildly used? Is it descriptive of technique, or descriptive of the spirit of the artist; or both, or neither? Was Turgenev a realist? No greater poet ever wrote in prose, nor any one who more closely brought the actual shapes of men and things before us. No more fervent ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... poems were issued in parts, and with long intervals of unequal duration between the parts; but the same result was brought about by different causes and produced a dissimilar effect. Childe Harold consists of three distinct poems descriptive of three successive travels or journeys in foreign lands. The adventures of the hero are but the pretext for the shifting of the diorama; whereas in Don Juan the story is continuous, and the scenery is exhibited ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... to speculate vaguely whether or not Desmond knew the nature of the tight place—tight was such a very descriptive adjective—out of which he had pulled Scaife. Then he ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... may be published at this time, now appear in book form. This book brings out many thrilling adventures that have occurred in the war zone of the high seas—and has official sanction. Miss Sterne's descriptive powers are equaled by few. She has the dramatic touch which compels interest. Her book, which contains many photographic scenes, will be warmly welcomed in navy circles, and particularly by those in ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... invariably recognised as valuable and one which, I think, under the matter-of-fact scientific obsession, is altogether underrated and neglected The first, which is the social side of history, makes up the bulk of valid sociological work at the present time. Of history there is the purely descriptive part, the detailed account of past or contemporary social conditions, or of the sequence of such conditions; and, in addition, there is the sort of historical literature that seeks to elucidate and impose ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... conventional letter sent out by investment concerns: "In response to your inquiry, we take pleasure in sending you herewith a booklet descriptive of the White Cloud Investment Company." Cut and dried—there is nothing that jars us out of our indifference; nothing to tempt us to read the proposition that follows. Here is a letter that is certain to interest the reader because it approaches ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous |
