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Spectator   /spˈɛkteɪtər/   Listen
Spectator

noun
1.
A close observer; someone who looks at something (such as an exhibition of some kind).  Synonyms: looker, viewer, watcher, witness.  "Television viewers" , "Sky watchers discovered a new star"
2.
A woman's pump with medium heel; usually in contrasting colors for toe and heel.  Synonym: spectator pump.



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"Spectator" Quotes from Famous Books



... detected and exposed. Whether displayed in manners or intellectual efforts, conceit is rebuked and effectually repressed. Modest merit and refined tastes are appreciated, first by the select few, and then by the less discerning many. Each individual spectator of the goings-on of this active life is learning intellectual and moral lessons which he cannot forget if he would, and which he would not if he could, and he comes away with a rich freight of the most salutary experiences of culture in his tastes, ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker

... replied the doctor, "all the scenes of which charity compels you to be a spectator; but you will get used to it in time, as we all do. It is the law of existence. The confessor, the magistrate, the lawyer would find life unendurable if the spirit of the State did not assert itself above the ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... — N. presence; occupancy, occupation; attendance; whereness^. permeation, pervasion; diffusion &c (dispersion) 73. ubiety^, ubiquity, ubiquitariness^; omnipresence. bystander &c (spectator) 444. V. exist in space, be present &c adj.; assister^; make one of, make one at; look on, attend, remain; find oneself, present oneself; show one's face; fall in the way of, occur in a place; lie, stand; occupy; be there. people; inhabit, dwell, reside, stay, sojourn, live, abide, lodge, nestle, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... carefully wrought background of habit, manners, usage, and social condition. The habit of observation and the wide acquaintance with cultivated and elegant social life which was a necessary part of the training for the work which was later to appear in the pages of the Spectator, were perhaps the richest educational results of these years of travel and study; for Addison the official is a comparatively obscure figure, but Addison the writer is one of the most admirable and attractive figures in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... and discontented. Ellieslaw himself made such forced efforts to raise the spirits of the company, as plainly marked the flagging of his own. Ratcliffe watched the scene with the composure of a vigilant but uninterested spectator. Mareschal alone, true to the thoughtless vivacity of his character, ate and drank, laughed and jested, and seemed even to find amusement in ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... with his spear the beautiful young woman, thus for a moment, as it seemed, lost in a trance of gratitude and love, would that angelic form have stood the test unscathed? A spectator, marking the scene, might have observed a strange gleam in her eyes—a strange expression in her face—an influence for a moment not angelic, like a shadow of some passing spirit, cross her visibly, as she leaned over the gentle lady's ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... he must attempt this independent action, that in order to remain the Ross Murdock he had always been, he must be an actor not a spectator. ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton

... lineaments of their daughters' faces, where frequently their own similitude is found flatteringly associated with softness of hue and delicacy of outline. I was just wondering how that picture, to me so interesting, would strike an impartial spectator, when a voice close behind ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... contact with the tumultuous throng. Under such circumstances, I venture to offer for introduction into your useful and entertaining miscellany some incidents connected with that event in which I was either personally an actor or spectator—things not in themselves important, yet which may be to some of your readers acceptable and interesting as records of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 48, Saturday, September 28, 1850 • Various

... on the husks of learning. He is the infant reciting bore in second childishness. We wish in vain that it were in mere oblivion. From the ladies' tea-tables the Greek and Latin quoting bores were driven away long ago by the Guardian and the Spectator, and seldom now translate for the country gentlewomen. But the mere English quotation-dealer, a mortal tiresome creature! still prevails, and figures still in certain circles of old blues, who are civil enough still to admire that wonderful memory ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... the rid gentlemin have a love fur us, as me mither obsarved, when she cracked the head of me father,' remarked Mickey, who had seated himself upon the ground with all the indifference of an unconcerned spectator. ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis

... that, at present, it can. We consider not, that the fantastical desire of shewing liberty, is here the motive of our actions. And it seems certain, that, however we may imagine we feel a liberty within ourselves, a spectator can commonly infer our actions from our motives and character; and even where he cannot, he concludes in general, that he might, were he perfectly acquainted with every circumstance of our situation and temper, and the most secret springs of our complexion and disposition. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al

... she said aloud. "If one had to make a spectacle of one's self,—and apparently it is to be my fate through life,—surely no one could choose a kinder looking spectator." ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards

... came down the stairs to them. He was shaken and trembling. He, the spectator of dramas, was now a character in one most tragically ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... she told him, giving him an assurance which he doubted, and which he would not have valued had he known it to be true. He was perfectly indifferent as to the chance that this negligible person might have been a spectator to the scene between the son of the house and a guest. If she said anything about it, he meant to give the all-sufficing explanation that he and Miss Marshall had just become engaged. This would of course, it seemed self-evident to him, make ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... father's murderer. While his brother Maurice with a fleet of twenty Dutch war-ships was attempting in vain to rescue Calais from the grasp of the Spanish king, Philip William of Nassau was looking on, a pleased and passive spectator of the desperate and unsuccessful efforts at defence. The assault was then ordered? The-first storm was repulsed, mainly by the Dutch companies, who fought in the breach until most of their numbers were killed or wounded, their captains Dominique and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... to fall away from the white throat, with its single string of pearls. The onlooker suggested she be snapped with a little black "Pom," who had found his way into the room and was now an interested spectator, on his vantage ground, a big sofa. So little "Joy" was gathered up and held in affectionate, motherly arms, close against his mistress' face. It was all very human and natural, and gave another side to the singer's character from the side she ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower

... over (December 26) to Fort Sumter, a stronger position. The South Carolinians, looking upon this as a hostile act, took possession of the remaining forts, commenced erecting batteries, and prepared to reduce Fort Sumter. Major Anderson was compelled by his instructions to remain a quiet spectator of these preparations. The Star of the West, an unarmed steamer, bearing troops and supplies to the fort, was fired upon and driven back. The Southern leaders declared that any attempt to relieve Fort Sumter would be a declaration ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... Mankind' (Edinburgh, 1704), p. 10, Sir Andrew Fletcher, of Saltoun, tells us the opinion of 'a very wise man,' that 'if a man were permitted to make all the ballads of a nation, he need not care who should make its laws.' A writer in the Spectator, no. 502, refers to a similar opinion as having been entertained in England earlier than the time of Fletcher. 'I have heard,' he says, 'that a minister of state in the reign of Elizabeth had all manner of books and ballads brought to him, of what kind soever, and took ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... long way off. It was not, however, till we stood almost beneath it that we really felt the grandeur of this great arch, including so large a space of the blue sky in its airy sweep. At a distance, it impresses the spectator with its solidity; nearer, with the lofty vacancy beneath it. There is a spiral staircase within one of its immense limbs; and, climbing steadily upward, lighted by a lantern which the door-keeper's wife gave us, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... I was no unmoved spectator of these proceedings; to all the others it was a thing to which they had been accustomed from their youth up; but I was so horrified that I could not help telling the ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous

... painted canisters, and handed about by powder-monkeys in livery, and consumed by those who liked it, amidst the chattering of parrots and the squalling of kittens. I longed for the days of the Spectator, when I might have laid my penny on the bar, and retired without ceremony—But no—this blessed decoction was circulated under the auspices of some half-crazed blue-stocking or other, and we were saddled with all the formality of an entertainment, for this miserable allowance of a cockle-shell ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... gained them through suffering. Even to the kings and princes, who so easily gained them, what did they yield besides themselves? I do not suppose that, if we were invited to give authenticated instances of intelligence on the part of our royal pets, we could fill half a column of the Spectator. In fact, their lives are so full they have no time for thought, the highest energy of man. Now, it was to thought that my life should be dedicated. Action, apart from its absorption of time, would ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... to report that Mr. Wail met with an unfortunate accident at Broadstairs ten days ago. As a spectator at the annual Lawn Tennis Tournament he was demonstrating to a group of experts the methods which Mr. Wilding ought properly to employ in making his lifting forehand drive, when he struck himself a violent blow on the head, partly severing the right ear. This is ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various

... affection, maintaining the rights of a brother under circumstances of peril, of desertion, and consequently of perfect self-reliance. Iphigenia, again, though not dramatically coming before us in her own person, but according to the beautiful report of a spectator, presents us with a fine statuesque model of heroic fortitude, and of one whose young heart, even in the very agonies of her cruel immolation, refused to forget, by a single indecorous gesture, or so much as a moment's neglect of her own princely descent, and that she herself was "a lady in ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... but a spectator only, while the French ruler played that curiously calculated game of his, which did so much towards insuring the independence of Italy and its consolidation into one free monarchy. It was no disinterested game, ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... times the three heads appeared on the surface and a spectator could have seen that Harris retained his grip. Then the ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake

... Manner of representing the same Image. The Drama presents to the Eyes of a Spectator an Actor, who speaks and acts as the Person, whom he represents, is suppos'd to speak and act in real Life. The Characteristic Writer introduces, in a descriptive manner, before a Reader, the same Person, as speaking and acting in the ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally

... makes the authorities forbid cockfighting and bull-baiting. It must be that although these are exhibitions of courage and skill, the exhibition is degrading to the spectators and to those who urge the creatures to fight. But what is the difference, so far as the spectator is concerned, between watching a combat between animals or birds and following a vivid dramatization of cruelty on the stage? In the latter case the mental sufferings which are portrayed are frequently more ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... essays together, out of doors, and some stories which had been our dear friends at school, like "Leslie Goldthwaite." There was a very good library in the house, and we both like old books, so we enjoyed that. And we used to read the Spectator, and many old-fashioned stories and essays and sermons, with much more pleasure because they had such quaint old brown leather bindings. You will not doubt that we had some cherished volumes of poetry, or that we used to read them aloud to each other when ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... the body of the church and on the tambours of the domes are very narrow, and those on the tambours or cylinders of the smaller cupolas are curved and slope obliquely at an angle of seventy degrees, which gives the spectator the impression that they are leaning, somewhat in the same manner as the well-known spire at Chesterfield. The ornamentation on the outside surpasses all powers of description. It comprises a large corded moulding, about halfway between the pediment and ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... exhausted yet; for there remains another 'day of His coming' for judgment. The prophets did not see the perspective of the future, and often bring together events widely separated in time, just as, to a spectator on a mountain, distances between points far away towards the horizon are not measurable. We ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... sentiment she would have shared, an opinion she would have combated. Or perhaps it was that some one he met set him thinking of her shrewd swift judgments; some scene in which he played a part that made him imagine her an amused spectator of its unconscious absurdity. He had turned her thyme flowers out of his pocket; he had no sentiment about them or her, but he did not forget her; their acquaintance had, to a certain extent, been a thing of mind, and in mind it seemed he occasionally came in contact ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... Donald has a real understanding of boy nature, and he has in consequence written a capital story, judged from their stand-point, with a true ring all through which ensures its success."—The Spectator. ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty

... along with the flecks of eagle-down that floated away from their bodies with the vigors of the dance, floating away from their dark warm bodies, and their jet-blue hair. It is the incomparable understanding of their own inventive rhythms that inspire and impress you as spectator. It is the swift comprehension of change in rhythm given them by the drummers, the speedy response of their so living pulsating bodies, the irresistible rapport with the varying themes, that thrills and invites you ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... good-will than they shook hands with us all round. After this ceremony was gone through, Jack went up to the girl, who had never once moved from the rock where she had been left, but had continued an eager spectator of all that had passed. He made signs to her to follow him, and then, taking the chief by the hand, was about to conduct him to the bower, when his eye fell on the poor infant which had been thrown into ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... similar little flings. It is a question not of rights, but of powers. The poet and the painter and the novelist, not to mention all the non-human agents in the universe, are bound to do a good many things much better than the composer can; and even if he may personally aspire to be a kind of spectator of all time and existence, he has no means of making his listeners see eye to eye with himself. The risk he runs may be too great. Realizing as we must that all this ferment of suggestion-seeking has undoubtedly ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... of discussion. Wearing a broad grin of mingled pride and bashfulness, and looking very stiff and awkward in one of the brightest tweed suits ever seen off the stage, Spike stood for a moment in the doorway to let his appearance sink into the spectator, then advanced ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... by professions of perfect security, and magnanimous declarations of the wisdom of extinguishing peril by exhibiting the absence of fear! My part was now done, and I was thenceforth to be only a spectator. But the course of things was not to be controlled by the confidence of cabinets. The sun went down, notwithstanding the government conviction that it would shine through the whole twenty-four hours; the political night came, as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... interest. More than one Member of Parliament brought his lady friends to see the new star. Indeed, he was so much monopolised that for a time he had little opportunity to take notice of the guests as a whole. By and by, however, he managed to get away by himself, and to take the part of a spectator. ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking

... had read, heard, thought, and seen enough to furnish matter for twice that number. He himself confesseth, in a letter written a year or two before his death, that he felt as if he had a thousand essays swelling within him. Oh that Elia, like Mr. Spectator, had printed himself out ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... may: whether Henry of Monmouth's noviciate in arms was passed on the Scotch borders, (for in Ireland, as the companion of Richard, he had been merely a spectator,) or whether, as the evidence seems to preponderate, we consider the chroniclers to have antedated his first campaign, he was not allowed to remain long without being personally engaged in a struggle of far greater magnitude in itself, and of vastly more ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... with his verecundious holiness; for, if it be true, whenever the lascivious consent to uncleanness and are pleased to join in unlawful mixture, God is forced to stand a spectator of their vile impurities, stooping from his throne to attend their bestial practices, and raining down showers of souls to animate ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... carried along on the road were obliged to turn and stare at him. They would leave what they were about, and stand still a great while, looking after him, for the loveliness of the child was so wondrous that it held the gaze of the spectator. The daughter of Pharaoh, perceiving Moses to be an extraordinary lad, adopted him as her son, for she had no child of her own. She informed her father of her intention concerning him, in these words: "I have brought up a child, who is divine ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... numbered about four or five thousand, and there were few who were not young, sinewy, stalwart fellows. When they had reached the further end of Abbey-street, the ground about Beresford-place was gradually becoming clear, and the spectator had some opportunity afforded of glancing more closely at the component parts of the great crowd. All round the Custom-house was still packed a dense throng, and large streams were flowing from the northern districts, ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan

... strain of being a spectator instead of a participant no longer endurable, he wandered upstairs and bathed his face. The pain was getting worse and he had a horrible suspicion that the swelling was increasing. In the men's dressing-room he found a game of craps in progress, and, upon being asked to join, was so grateful ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... an active age more agreeable to live in, than a soporific one. But, O my dear Sir, I must adopt your patriotism-Is not it laudable to be revived with the revival of British glory? Can I be an indifferent spectator of the triumphs of my country'? Can I help feeling a tattoo at my heart, when the Duke of Newcastle makes as great a figure in history as Burleigh or Godolphin-nay, as Queen Bess herself! She gained no battles in person; she was only the actuating genius. You seem to have heard ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... the fidelity of his dog, that he made a wager that he would entrust him with a fixed number of sheep and oxen to drive alone to market. It was stipulated that no person should be within sight or hearing, who had the least control over the dog; nor was any spectator to interfere, or be within a quarter of a mile. On the day of trial, the dog proceeded with his business in the most dexterous and steady manner; and although he had frequently to drive his charge through the herds who were grazing, yet he never ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst

... the pride of her mysticism, she had fancied herself above so commonplace a passion as love. It was a curious feature of lower humanity, which she might investigate and analyse harmlessly as a cold scientific spectator; and, in her mingled pride and purity, she used to indulge Lancelot in metaphysical disquisitions about love and beauty, like that first one in their walk home from Minchampstead, from which a less celestially innocent ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... simple admirer of the war-horse instantly fell back to a low, gaunt, switch-tailed mare, that was unconsciously gleaning the faded herbage of the camp nigh by; where, leaning with one elbow on the blanket that concealed an apology for a saddle, he became a spectator of the departure, while a foal was quietly making its morning repast, on the opposite ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... perhaps not much more so than the mountainous Doctor himself) and looks down upon the spectator from its pedestal of ten or twelve feet high, with a broad and heavy benignity of aspect, very like in feature to Sir Joshua Reynolds's portrait of Johnson, but calmer and sweeter in expression. Several big books are piled up beneath his chair, and, if I mistake not, he holds a volume in his hand, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... times, just to show how far he was from being tired, and how much better he could have done it had it been necessary. Then with a final swoop and a volley of "clickers" he dashed into the bush to receive the congratulations of the one for whom it all was meant and the only spectator for whose opinion he cared in ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... there had been no such thing as her illness, no such thing as his grief. And then came hurried dreams, in which Dr. Doddleson was knocking at the farmhouse door, with the printer of the Cheapside. And then he was a spectator in a mighty theatre, large as those Roman amphitheatres, wherein the audience seemed a mass of flies, looking down on the encounter of two other flies, and all the glory of an imperial court only a little spot of purple and gold, gleaming ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... and triumph, bound to carry all before it. I mustered all my forces, in accordance with that splendid maxim of antiquity, "Know thyself!" and boundless was my delight in thus making my own acquaintance. Griffith was the sole spectator of this doll's play, in which I was at once doll and child. You think you know me? ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... difficult play when the throw is to the baseman's left, in toward the runner, because of the danger of a collision with the latter. To the average spectator who may never have had much experience on the field, these collisions between players may seem trifling affairs, but they are not so regarded by the players themselves. In the history of the sport many men have been seriously injured ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward

... bending sky was the pearly light; and she felt the largeness of the world and the manifold wakings of men to labor and endurance. She was a part of that involuntary, palpitating life, and could neither look out on it from her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes in ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... him. The form of Meg Merrilies, which stalked about him, sometimes in the light, sometimes partially obscured in the smoke or darkness, contrasted strongly with the sitting figure of Hatteraick as he bent over the flame, and from his stationary posture was constantly visible to the spectator, while that of the female flitted around, appearing or ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... unfortunately, according to one's point of view, this deponent was not a spectator of the fight in the House of Commons this afternoon, having been himself previously knocked out by a catarrhal microbe possessing, as the sporting journals say, "a remarkable punch." He therefore gives the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various

... festive band. Sir David Wilkie was languid and dispirited from bad health, and my feelings were not such as to enable me to join in what seemed to me little else than a mockery of human life; but rather than "displace the mirth," I tried, but could not long remain a passive spectator; the glee seemed forced and unnatural. It touched no sympathetic chord; it only jarred the feelings; it was the last attempt at gaiety I witnessed within ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... Arcadian; the young girl had lost some of her restraint with her confidences, and lounging together side by side, without the least consciousness of any sentiment in their words or actions, they nevertheless contrived to impress the spectator with the idea that they were a charming pair of pastoral lovers. So strong was this impression that, as they approached Aunt Chloe's laundry, a pretty rose-covered cottage with an enormous whitewashed ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... but it seems to be natural. Sir Timothy did not impose on those who looked at him as do these men. You could see a little of the paint, you could hear the crumple of the starch and the padding; you could trace something of uneasiness in the would-be composed grandeur of the brow. "Turveydrop!" the spectator would say to himself. But after all it may be a question whether a man be open to reproach for not doing that well which the greatest among us,—if we could find one great enough,—would not ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... passengers by the hundreds. Men and women,—especially the men, for the women knowing their ignorance are generally willing to trust to the pundits of the place,—look doubtful, uneasy, and bewildered. But they all do get properly placed and unplaced, so that the spectator at last acknowledges that over all this apparent chaos there is presiding a great genius of order. From dusky morn to dark night, and indeed almost throughout the night, the air is loaded with a succession ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... the Ambassadors and Envoys were brilliant and glittering curves of colour: the effect greatly enhanced by the Republican simplicity of the men to whose country they were accredited. The Judges of the Supreme Court, in their flowing silk gowns, alone reminded the spectator that the United States had not sprung full-fledged from nothing, without traditions ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... Schurz, I'm certain, but not on your side exactly either. I like to look on and hold the balance evenly, not to throw my own weight too lightly into either stale. The objective attitude of the mere spectator is after all the right one for an ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... line is pleasing because the eye is so hung as to move best in it; but we may take it as one instance of the numberless conditions for healthy action which a beautiful form fulfills. A well- composed picture calls up in the spectator just such a balanced relation of impulses of attention and incipient movements as suits an organism which is also balanced—bilateral—in its own impulses to movement, and at the same time stable; and it is the correspondence ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... could be more rotten than the condition of oligarchical government into which Rome had fallen; and we are inclined to agree with Mommsen, because we have seen what followed. But that Cicero, living and seeing it all as a present spectator, should have hoped better things, should not, I think, cause us to doubt either Cicero's wisdom or his patriotism. I cannot but think that, had I been a Roman of those days, I should have preferred Cicero, ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... impressiveness about the solemn passing of these great beasts. It affected the human spectator almost painfully. The hush of this fatal valley, the long line of elephants watching the death of their kindred, the pathos of the end of the stately animals which in obedience to some mysterious impulse, had ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... worth six lines in The Tribune. But if it was and is the purpose of those for whom you pettifog to keep woman off the platform of that Convention, and deny her any part in its proceedings except as a spectator, what does all your talk about Higginson's untimeliness and the Committees being full amount to? Why not treat the subject with some ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... covered with mattresses and beds, where the wounded lay about in every attitude of suffering. No doubt everything was in the most perfect order, and the nurses and doctors knew how to thread their way through it all, but to the hurried spectator in the doorway the effect was one of the most macabre confusion. Only one object stood out—the large naked back of a Belgian soldier, who sat on the edge of his bed waiting to be washed. He must have been really the most cheerful and (comparatively) uninjured figure in the whole crowd, but he ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair

... neutrality which should violate no treaties, offend no national friendships, provoke no jealousies, and leave England and France to fight their own battles, content that the United States should be an impartial spectator. Thirty years afterward, when the Federal party had ceased to exist under that title, this was announced as the true American policy, and was thenceforth known as "The Monroe Doctrine," though the merit, even of re-discovery, did not belong to ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay

... spectator in the midst of the apparent general bustle, was Mr Meadows; who viewed all that passed without troubling himself to interfere, and with an air of the most evident carelessness whether matters went ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... from picket on the morning of the 8th, and returned to our camp, remaining quiet during the day. Executions by hanging took place every day, but after the first horrible experience nothing would induce me to be a spectator. The rain, which had begun on the 3rd, continued almost without intermission, our camp becoming a quagmire, and the muggy, moist atmosphere increasing the ravages of cholera amongst ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... could be trusted to remain for a sufficient time in the required position. A sore trial of patience was this to artist, to model, to Mr. Hengler, who held him down, and to the artist's father, who was present as spectator. Finally the rye,—the 'particularly tall rye' in which, as Colonel Siborne says, the action was fought,—was conscientiously sought for, and found, after much trouble, ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... The spectator of whom they would thus well have been worthy might have read meanings of his own into the intensity of their communion—or indeed, even without meanings, have found his account, aesthetically, in some gratified play of our modern sense of type, so scantly to be distinguished from our ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... State of New-York. The city was entitled to thirteen members of Assembly. They were federalists, and were elected by an average majority of 944; the whole number of votes being about 6000. Colonel Burr during this year was not in public life, but he was not an idle spectator of passing events. The year following a President of the United States was to be elected. It was now certain, that unless the vote of the State of New-York could be obtained for Mr. Jefferson, he could not be elected. It was equally certain, that ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... was embarrassment. Here she always condemned herself as an indifferent, perhaps unnatural, mother. She couldn't help it. In the same sense she must be an unsatisfactory wife. Linda was unable to shake off the conviction that it was like a play in which she had no more than a spectator's part. ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... ship was about to be blown up; but he didn't take much interest in it himself. It didn't seem to affect him. Somehow he was so far away. All that was happening was happening in a dream-world of which he was a spectator only. True he felt a vague discomfort at the heart; but he knew that in a minute he should wake up—to find mother's eyes smiling into his, ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... with French criminals, altogether failed with Gascoigne. The Englishman certainly had started at the first sight of the corpse, but it was a natural movement of horror which might have escaped any unconcerned spectator at being brought into the presence of death in such a hideous form. After betraying this first and not unnatural sign of emotion, Gascoigne remained perfectly cool, ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... old mythic story on which the drama was founded stood, before he entered the theatre, traced in its bare outlines upon the spectator's mind; it stood in his memory as a group of statuary, faintly seen, at the end of a long dark vista. Then came the poet, embodying outlines, developing situations, not a word wasted, not a sentiment capriciously thrown in. Stroke upon stroke, the drama ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... compelled him, perhaps too young, to seek the comfort of life from internal sources. There were excellent books in the house,—Shakespeare and Milton, of course, but also Pope's "Iliad," Thomson's "Seasons," the "Spectator," "Pilgrim's Progress," and the "Faerie Queene," and the time had now come when these would be serviceable to him. He was not the only boy that has enjoyed Shakespeare at the age of ten, but that he should have found interest in Spenser's "Faerie Queene" is ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... arm was stretched across a table, conspicuous from a carrot-coloured cloth, and the hand was extended over a pile of folios; but it looked quite unequal to the task of opening them. The other arm was disposed of in some manner satisfactory to the artist, no doubt, but by no means easy for the spectator to discover, since the brick-coloured drapery which formed the back-ground to the whole, certainly encroached on the side where nature had placed it. Such as it was, however, Miss Patsey admired this painting more ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... venture on land with so small a force against so great a multitude, or even to approach too near the shore, lest the enemies might assail him in their almadias and tonis. He lay off, therefore, at a considerable distance, where he remained a spectator of the valiant defence made by our people at the factory, whence they killed great numbers of the assailants. But their enemies always increased in numbers, and they at length brought up certain engines to beat down part of the wall, in which they at length succeeded. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... wealth of detail accumulated and reproduced by him will be held by many people to have defeated its own ends. Ornaments, carvings, colorings, of which ancient castles may severally offer single or a few specimens, were here crowded together in such emphatic profusion as to fill the mind of the spectator with a sense of something novel rather than of anything antique. In a certain spectacular sense Cardiff Castle is large, but for practical purposes it is very much the reverse. I stayed there—and this was my first introduction to Wales—for the Eisteddfod, of which for that year Lord Bute ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... the position was a singular one. The Duke of Alencon had been an unwilling spectator of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. He was jealous of Anjou, and restless and discontented, and he contemplated going over to the Huguenots. The King of Navarre and his cousin Conde, and the Huguenot gentlemen with him, were equally anxious to leave the camp, where they were closely watched; and ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty

... a house rendered vacant and sacred by Death. A sore calamity has fallen on us, or rather has fallen on my poor Wife (for what am I but like a spectator in comparison?): she has lost unexpectedly her good Mother, her sole surviving Parent, and almost only relative of much value that was left to her. The manner too was almost tragic. We had heard of illness here, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... down. I was an unwilling spectator of all that horrible massacre, and shall never get over it. I can still see the fiendish savages running about with the reeking scalps of their own people. I actually counted the bodies of forty-nine grown Christians and twenty-seven children. An hour after you left ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... unexpected sight of Dagobert, which gave to her features an expression of uneasiness and alarm—she exclaimed, in an agitated voice, after the moment's silence necessary to collect her thoughts: "Oh, madame! I have just been the spectator of a great misfortune. Excuse my agitation! but I ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... observer. Time, while impairing this artless painting, had made it yet more grotesque by introducing some uncertain features which must have puzzled the conscientious idler. For instance, the cat's tail had been eaten into in such a way that it might now have been taken for the figure of a spectator—so long, and thick, and furry were the tails of our forefathers' cats. To the right of the picture, on an azure field which ill-disguised the decay of the wood, might be read the name "Guillaume," and to the left, "Successor to Master ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac

... her, he is given over to pleasure, and like a brutish beast he rushes on to enjoy and beget; he consorts with wantonness, and is not afraid or ashamed of pursuing pleasure in violation of nature. But he whose initiation is recent, and who has been the spectator of many glories in the other world, is amazed when he sees any one having a godlike face or form, which is the expression of divine beauty; and at first a shudder runs through him, and again the old awe steals over him; ...
— Phaedrus • Plato

... picture calculated to impress upon the mind an idea of inanimate stillness, of that motionless torpor with which our feelings have nothing congenial; of anything, in short, but life. In the very silence there is a deadness with which a human spectator appears out of keeping. The presence of man seems an intrusion on the dreary solitude of this wintry desert, which even its native animals have for a ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... case, reading his copy, verifying the words in the composing-stick, and leading the lines, till a ream of damp paper weighted with heavy slabs, and set down in the middle of the gangway, tripped up the bemused spectator, or he caught his hip against the angle of a bench, to the huge delight of boys, "bears," and "monkeys." No wight had ever been known to reach the further end without accident. A couple of glass-windowed cages had been built out into the yard at the back; the foreman sat in ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... it on as the fashion in France prescribes to all the ladies of condition, who indeed cannot appear without this badge of distinction, is to disguise themselves in such a manner, as to render them odious and detestable to every spectator, who has the least relish left for nature and propriety. As for the fard or white, with which their necks and shoulders are plaistered, it may be in some measure excusable, as their skins are naturally brown, or sallow; but the rouge, which is daubed on their ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... an amusing reference to The Emperor of the Moon in The Spectator, No. 22 (Steele), Monday, 26 March, 1711. 'Your most humble servant, William Serene' writes to Mr. Spectator bewailing the fact that nobody on the stage rises according to merit. Although grown old in the playhouse service, and having often appeared on the boards, he has never had a line given him to speak. None the less 'I have acted', he asserts, 'several Parts of Household-stuff with great Applause ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... Light." This is the largest and most valuable diamond in the world, said to be worth L2,000,000 sterling. It is indeed a great source of attraction to those who go to the Exhibition for the first time, but it is doubtful whether it obtains such admiration afterwards. We saw more than one spectator turn away with the idea that after all it was only a piece of glass. After some jamming, I got a look at the precious jewel, and although in a brass-grated cage, strong enough to hold a lion, I found it to be no larger than the third of a hen's egg. Two policemen remain ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... forehead, a hundred feet in height; the nose, with its long bridge; and the vast lips, which, if they could have spoken, would have rolled their thunder accents from one end of the valley to the other. True it is, that if the spectator approached too near, he lost the outline of the gigantic visage, and could discern only a heap of ponderous and gigantic rocks, piled in chaotic ruin one upon another. Retracing his steps, however, the wondrous features would again be seen; and the farther he withdrew from them, the more like a human ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... astonished mother, while the disc, for experimental purposes, was being placed in a cask floating in the water. On the fuse being fired, this cask was blown "into matchwood"—a wreck so complete that the most ignorant spectator could not fail to understand what would have been the fate of a boat and its crew ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... is surpassingly glorious; but there, as if in obedience to an almighty edict, everything vanishes. A single faint star is visible within the opening, producing a curious effect upon the sensitive spectator, like the sight of a tiny islet in the midst of a black, motionless, waveless tarn. The dimensions of the lagoon of darkness, which is oval or pear-shaped, are eight degrees by five, so that it occupies ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... imagine how little I liked the prospect of this lonely vigil; and yet there was something very stimulating in the vital responsibility which it involved. Hitherto I had been a mere spectator. Now I was to take part in the game. And the fresh excitement made me more than ever insensible to those considerations of conscience and of safety which were already as dead nerves in ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... valuable diamond in his majesty's diadem fell from it, and was for some time lost, but it was afterwards found, and restored to his crown. The coronation of George III. could boast of one very extraordinary spectator among the many thousands present. This was Charles Edward Stuart, the young Pretender, who had come over in disguise, and who obtained admission into the abbey, and witnessed all the ceremonies consecrating a king on that throne which he considered legitimately ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... the thin end of the wedge and Sunday cricket also be permitted. But no; when the war was over and the Americans left us, the old Sabbatarianism reasserted itself. If, however, we ever exchanged national games, and cricket were played in America and baseball in England, it is the English spectator who would have the better of the exchange. I am convinced that although we should quickly find baseball diverting, nothing would ever persuade an American crowd to be ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... seen faces elsewhere tinctured with an idle gloom void of meaning, but here, with a pleasing alertness: Their appearance was strongly marked with the modes of civil life: I mixed a variety of company, chiefly of the lower ranks, and rather as a silent spectator: I was treated with an easy freedom by all, and with marks of favour by some: Hospitality seemed to claim this happy people for her own, though I knew not at that ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... in front of some fields of vivid yellow stubble on which trees made olive shadows, and which was overhung by a china-blue sky and sundry little white clouds. He fiddled away perfunctorily at it. A spectator would have believed, probably, that he was sketching the pines on the hill where shone the ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane

... third spectator of the scene, unknown to all of them, who was aware of it. The cochero could not at first tell what were the things striking him in the pit of the stomach, as if he was being pelted with pebbles! But he could see they came from the hands of the hunchback, flung ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... are Witnesses for me, that I have not stood by as an unconcerned Spectator amidst the Desolations of your respective Families, when GOD's awful Hand hath been lopping off those tender Branches from them, which were once our common Hope and Delight. I have often put my Soul in the stead of yours, and ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge

... once or twice she was moved to a pained protest. Her criticism of the actors was indulgent; she felt the value of her praise, but was equally aware of the weight of her censure. So the sunny afternoon went by. Here and there a spectator nodded drowsily; others conversed under their breath—not of the bard of Avon. The air was full of that insect humming which is ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... One spectator in the crowd was bitterly disappointed. This was Boxtel, who had bribed the headsman to let him have Van Baerle's clothes, believing that he would thus obtain ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... mob was with them, and together they fought, first at the gates, then in the streets, in the Forum, retreating always, but like lions, their face to the foe. The volatile mob, noting the retreat, turned from combatant into spectator. Let the soldiers fight; it was their duty, not theirs; and, as the struggle continued, from roof and window they eyed it with that artistic delight which the arena had developed, applauding the clever thrusts, abusing the vanquished, robbing ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... time there seems to have been a sort of meteoric shower of chipmunk magazines, following in the luminous pathway of the "Spectator" and the "Tatler." Burke was passing through his poetic period, and supplied various stanzas of alleged poetry to these magazines for a modest consideration. For one poem he received eighteen pence, as tearfully told by Shackleton, but we have Hawkins for it that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... too much restraint in ill-educated country girls, in romps, in hoydens, and in wards on whom the mercenary have designs. She wore a bib and tucker, and pinafore, with a bouncing propriety, fit to make the boldest spectator alarmed at the idea of bringing such a household responsibility on his shoulders. To see her when thus attired, shed blubbering tears for some disappointment, and eat all the while a great thick ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various

... mention the pompous, characterless language of King Lear, the same in which all Shakespeare's kings speak, the reader or spectator cannot conceive that a king, however old and stupid he may be, could believe the words of the vicious daughters with whom he had passed his whole life, and not believe his favourite daughter, but curse and banish her; ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... water with that of its fac-simile, would become as confused and hazy as any clergyman taxed to differentiate his creed from that of the mollah running the opposition. And Nature, in taking this mirthless rise out of the spectator, never repeats herself in the particulars of distance, area or configuration of her simulacre; it may be a mere stripe across the road—the brown, sinuous track disappearing beneath its surface, to re-appear on the opposing shore—it may be no larger than a good gilgie; or it may be the counterfeit ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... had come to be a spectator of our proceedings, I should have felt sufficiently discontented; but as she brought with her the three ladies and the gentleman whom I had seen below, I didn't know what to do. In my politeness, I would have stopped; ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... the grave. He had no occult persuasions. He just sat in his rocker and smoked hard and imagined hard. He imagined the lives of his family not only as they might have been, but as they ought to have been. He was like a spectator at a play, mingling belief and make-belief inextricably, knowing it all untrue, yet weeping, laughing, thrilling as if it were the ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... disappeared in America, but which still looms in awful official grandeur before the mind's eye of every London-bred child. On these occasions he is in all his glory: his military costume and silver-headed staff are the very embodiment of dignity, and to the less awed spectator of riper years he fills in a niche of old-time conventionality very picturesquely. The service is followed by the wedding of the successful candidate of the previous occasion, so that each of the two ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... we have given can give no adequate expression to the literary vividness and noble ethical atmosphere which pervade the whole book.' —SPECTATOR. ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare

... to appear as a contributor to some of the leading papers. This is, with the English, a thing that always adds prestige. To be able to call oneself a "contributor" to the Times or to Punch or the Morning Post or the Spectator, is a high honour. I have met these "contributors" all over the British Empire. Some, I admit, look strange. An ancient wreck in the back bar of an Ontario tavern (ancient regime) has told me that he was a contributor to the Times: the janitor of the building where I lived admits ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... brave, and even if he had forgotten it, Mrs. Penniman would have remembered it for him. Mrs. Penniman delighted of all things in a drama, and she flattered herself that a drama would now be enacted. Combining as she did the zeal of the prompter with the impatience of the spectator, she had long since done her utmost to pull up the curtain. She too expected to figure in the performance— to be the confidante, the Chorus, to speak the epilogue. It may even be said that there were times when she lost sight altogether of the modest heroine of the play, in the ...
— Washington Square • Henry James

... for it in the earth, looking neither volcanic nor even combustible, but more like thin green paint than anything else, except when it has become adulterated with water, when it assumes a bilious, yellow appearance, exceedingly uninviting to the spectator. In this case it is allowed to remain undisturbed in the tank until the oil and water have separated, when the latter is drawn off ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... a rock by the fire, long, slender legs crossed, hands clasping one knee, an amused spectator of the scene, looked up ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... last day of carnival, which is the most noisy festival of the year, when a fever of joy, a mania of amusement, unparalleled in any other country, seized the Roman people. Everybody is disguised; hardly does there remain at the windows, an unmasked spectator: the scene of gaiety commences at a given hour on a certain day, and scarcely ever does any public or private event of the year hinder any person from joining the sports of ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... misfortune to slip and fall on one such occasion he was so sensitive to the amused smiles of the ladies that he gave up dancing, and decided to dominate society otherwise than by the graces and talents of the drawing-room. Thus it was that he became merely a spectator of these festivities, the memory of ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... moment every eye in the court was focused on Mrs. Bunting, but soon those who had stared so hungrily, so intently, at her, realised that she had nothing to do with the case. She was evidently there as a spectator, and, more fortunate than most, she had a "friend at court," and so was able to sit comfortably, instead of having ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... with his usual air of plaintive assurance, and seated himself a contemplative spectator in the chimney corner, regardless of the looks and signs of unwelcome on the part of ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... touching sight was seen that day than these thousands of boys and girls passing into the churches, with the sound of solemn music, to thank God for the blessings of Fatherland and Emperor,—a scene which caused tears to roll down the cheeks of many a spectator. It will be hard to uproot German patriotism while its future fathers and mothers ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... called it his study, though it may be doubted if he ever studied anything but his Times, Spectator, and his three favourite authors, Thackeray, Dickens, and Kingsley; but his wife was a great reader, and there were few modern books that she could ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... historian has rather had occasion to complain of the embarras des richesses; for, in the multiplicity of contradictory testimony, it is not always easy to detect the truth, as the multiplicity of cross-lights is apt to dazzle and bewilder the eye of the spectator. ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... has existed in England since Milton; but it seems to me that he ought never to have abandoned the contemplative position which is peculiarly—perhaps, I might say exclusively—fitted for him. His proper title is 'Spectator ab extra'." ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... scenery. When the clouds permit, this spot affords a magnificent view of the sea, and the neighbouring coasts. An horizon of more than twenty-two leagues radius is visible; the white and barren shore reflects a dazzling mass of light; and the spectator beholds at his feet Cabo Blanco, the village of Maiquetia with its cocoa-trees, La Guayra, and the vessels in the port. But I found this view far more extraordinary, when the sky was not serene, and when trains of clouds, strongly illumined on their ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... glass in front of the other image. As green and red are complementary colors, the result was not changed upon the screen; there was a little less light, that was all. But if, at this moment, the spectator places a green glass before his right eye and a red one before his left, he will find himself in the condition desired for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various

... amusement, an expression which tended to rouse the worst in the spectator, as Dane knew of old when that same mocking appraisal had been turned on him as the rawest of the ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... round him, and trying to pull the sack off his back; but the old man shook himself free. After this, a black cat as large as a foal, which had been sitting on the doorstep glaring with fiery eyes, leaped upon the old man's sack, and then disappeared in the cottage. But as the spectator's head ached and everything swam before his eyes, his report was not clear, and people could not quite distinguish between the false and the true. It was remarkable that such stories were repeated about the Wood of Tontla from generation to generation, without anybody being able ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... To an indifferent spectator, armed especially with the political experiences of twenty additional centuries, it seems difficult to understand how Italy could govern the world. That the world and Italy besides should continue subject ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... self-defence of superstition. Thus, desolate of belief, you sought for the permanent element of life— precisely where Pascal recognised all that was most fleeting and unsubstantial—in divertissement; in the pleasure of looking on, a spectator of the accidents of existence, an observer of the follies of mankind. Like the Gods of the Epicurean, you seem to regard our life as a play that is played, as a comedy; yet how often the tragic note ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang

... theaters. The difference is one of principle, and even this difference may easily be exaggerated. When we say that Elizabethan stagings were 'symbolic,' whereas ours are pictorial, we mean that on the former the presence of a few selected objects suggested to the mind of the spectator all the others which go to make up the kind of scene presented. When a few trees were placed upon the stage, the audience supplied in {43} imagination the other objects that belong in a forest; when a throne was there, they saw with the mind's eye a room of state in a palace. ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... intention, and evidently shunned her. Mr. Sandford was now the only person to whom she could speak of Miss Milner, and the delight he took to expatiate on her faults, was more sorrow to her friend, than not to speak of her at all. She, therefore, sat a silent spectator, waiting with dread for the time when she, who now scorned her advice, would fly to her ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent's own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. As the means of making the nearest approach to this ideal, ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill

... right-hand gallery staircase, and reached the auditorium, where to his astonishment a good deal of electricity, at one penny three farthings a unit, was blazing. Every seat in the narrow and high-pitched gallery, where at the sides the knees of one spectator would be on a level with the picture-hat of the spectator in the row beneath, had a perfect and entire view of the proscenium opening. And Edward Henry now proved this unprecedented fact by climbing ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... when some hero's funerals are decreed In grateful honor of the mighty dead;* Where high rewards the vigorous youth inflame (Some golden tripod, or some lovely dame) The panting coursers swiftly turn the goal, And with them turns the raised spectator's soul: Thus three times round the Trojan wall they fly. The gazing gods ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... conceited fellow. Were a man to write so now, the boys would throw stones at him.' He, however, did not alter my opinion of a favourite authour, to whom I was first directed by his being quoted in The Spectator[566], and in whom I have found much shrewd and lively sense, expressed indeed in a style somewhat quaint, which, however, I do not dislike. His book has an air of originality. We figure to ourselves an ancient gentleman ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... the providence of God in the history of David, that shepherd boy of Bethlehem, at whose coronation all Israel was gathered together at Hebron, just behind the spectator ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... like the hero of 'Quentin Durward,' The lad's journey across France, and his hairbreadth escapes, makes up as good a narrative of the kind as we have ever read. For freshness of treatment and variety of incident Mr. Henty has surpassed himself."—Spectator. ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne



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