"Delineate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Meditation on Police, will expressly forbid his wife to receive the visits of a celibate whom he suspects of being her lover, and whom she has promised never again to see. Some minor scenes of the domestic interior we leave for matrimonial imaginations to conjure up; a husband can delineate them much better than we can; he will betake himself in thought back to those days when delightful longings invited sincere confidences and when the workings of his policy put into motion ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... whom his necessities soon alienated; so that he had perhaps a more numerous acquaintance than any man ever before attained, there being scarcely any person eminent on any account to whom he was not known, or whose character he was not in some degree able to delineate. To the acquisition of this extensive acquaintance every circumstance of his life contributed. He excelled in the arts of conversation, and therefore willingly practised them. He had seldom any home, or even a lodging, in which he could be private, and therefore was driven ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... contrary, the conception always relates immediately to the schema of the imagination, as a rule for the determination of our intuition, in conformity with a certain general conception. The conception of a dog indicates a rule, according to which my imagination can delineate the figure of a four-footed animal in general, without being limited to any particular individual form which experience presents to me, or indeed to any possible image that I can represent to myself in concreto. This schematism ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... sat down to delineate the stately pile of the palace, soaring aloft amid its enveloping greenery, than he is attracted by a fascinating glimpse of the lake, where, perhaps, a royal elephant comes down to drink, or a crimson-clad bevy of Rajputni lasses stoop ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... vesture stained red; on the lower part of the arm, a man and woman; on one side of the Cross, the appearance of a half moon, with a face; on the other side, the sun; on the top of the Cross, the letters I.H.S.; on the left arm, a man and woman dancing, with an effort to delineate the female's dress; under which, initials.' Another seaman 'had, on the lower part of the right arm, the device of a sailor and a female; the man holding the Union Jack with a streamer, the folds of which waved ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... me was more than I could accomplish; and you must now be but too well convinced that the apprehension of my inability was not unfounded. It may not, perhaps, be difficult for a man of sound judgment to seize and delineate the general progress of the human mind during a determined period; but to follow successively, through all their details, the ramifications of the arts and sciences, is a labour which requires much more knowledge and experience than I can pretend to: nor did self-love ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... thy hospitable roof Ulysses graced, confirm by faithful proof; Delineate to my view my warlike lord, His form, his ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... possessed by many emancipists, the splendour of their equipage, and the luxurious profligacy of their lives, were exhibited as the larger prizes of a fruitful lottery. Among these works, the most popular, that of Cunningham, professed to delineate the sentiments of the prisoners, from which it might be inferred that few conditions of human life offered so many chances of gaiety ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... scenery for France; St Pierre portrayed it poetically, not only in Paul and Virginia, but in Chaumiere Indienne and Etudes de la Nature. The science which these two writers lacked, Buffon possessed in a high degree; but he had not the power to delineate Nature and feeling in combination: he lacked insight into the hidden analogies between the movements of the mind and the phenomena of the outer world. Chateaubriand, on the contrary, had this faculty to its full modern extent. It is true that ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... and the well-known statement in the Apocalypse fastened the Hebrew feeling regarding them with a new meaning into the mind of the early Church: hence it was that the medieval map-makers took great pains to delineate these monsters and their habitations on the maps. For centuries no map was considered orthodox which did ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... these missed opportunities! ("You're leaving out his nose, Guv'nor!" from a Blazer, and giggles from idiotic girls in front.) I feel very forlorn and friendless up here. Professor has finished measuring, and is preparing to "delineate" me. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... and every muscle tense and rigid, preliminary to a sweeping blow. He "took" him with a monstrous pile of logs on his brawny shoulder; he portrayed him resting for a moment in the midst of his toil; he even attempted to delineate him tumbling over one of the logs, and hurling a shoulder-load upon the ground; but he failed utterly in the last attempt, being quite destitute of comical perception, and he did not finally conclude until Gibault went forward and informed him that ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... us in detail what the condition the outcast will be, and what will be the constituents of their suffering? We cannot. Rome has impiously traded upon this weakness of humanity. She has parcelled out her purgatory, as we delineate this upper world on a map. This is the machinery whereby she is enabled to traffic in the souls of men. No; that condition lies in outer darkness; I cannot see through the veil, and tell the specific sufferings that lie beneath ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... upon the distribution of electricity producing the field. When we know the strength and direction of this resultant force, we know all the properties of the field, and we can express them numerically or delineate them graphically, Faraday (Exp. Res., Sec. 3122 et seq.) showed how the distribution of the forces in any electric field can be graphically depicted by drawing lines (which he called lines of force) whose direction at every point coincides with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... was, must not be supposed to be entirely perfect. To be as he was, is indeed subject of panegyrick enough to any man in this state of being; but in every picture there should be shade as well as light, and when I delineate him without reserve, I do what he himself recommended, both by his precept and ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... fields of which I was writing the other day, I found an artist at work at his easel; and a pleasant nook be had chosen. His brush did its work with a steady and sure stroke that indicated command of his materials. He could delineate whatever he selected with technical skill at all events. He had pitched his easel where two hedges formed an angle, and one of them was full of oak-trees. The hedge was singularly full of "bits"—bryony, tangles ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... horror, what perfection of iniquity, present themselves in contemplating the character and reviewing the history of such governments! If we would delineate human nature with a baseness of heart and hypocrisy of countenance that reflection would shudder at and humanity disown, it is kings, courts and cabinets that must sit for the portrait. Man, naturally as he is, with all his faults about him, is ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Eton will not, I hope, be construed into any intention of the author's to follow in the track of any previous publication: his object is faithfully to delineate character, not to encourage vulgar phraseology, or ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... ladies not of the highest class; enjoined simplicity in costumes for the no dance, in children's toys, in women's pipes, or tobacco-pouches, and in ladies' hairpins or hairdress; forbade gold lacquer in any form except to delineate family crests; limited the size of dolls; vetoed banquets, musical entertainments, and all idle pleasures except such as were justified by social status, and actually went to the length of ordering women to dress their own hair, dispensing ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... confusion in my brain, which refuses to delineate distinctly succeeding events. Sometimes the irradiation of my friend's gentle smile comes before me; and methinks its light spans and fills eternity—then, again, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... in regard to the 'Songs of the Ark,' seemed to think that a sufficiency of eastern scenery did not obtain in them. Doubtless this was correct; but I remark, that if my object in the undertaking had been to delineate scenery, I would not have turned my attention to the East, the scenes of which I never saw. Human nature being radically the same everywhere, a man, through the sympathies of that nature, can know to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... translation, however, but imitation; the scene of the piece lay in Italy, and the actors appeared in the national dress,(37) the -toga-. Here the Latin life and doings were brought out with peculiar freshness. The pieces delineate the civil life of the middle-sized towns of Latium; the very titles, such as -Psaltria- or -Ferentinatis- , -Tibicina-, -Iurisperita-, -Fullones-, indicate this; and many particular incidents, such as that of the townsman who has his shoes made after ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... cherish His memory, and thus implore His regard. Perishable and imperfect is everything human: but in these very qualities I find the best reason for striving to attain what is least so. Would not any father be gratified by seeing his child attempt to delineate his features? And would not the gratification be rather increased than diminished by his incapacity? How long shall the narrow mind of man stand between goodness and omnipotence? Perhaps the effigy of your ancestor Isknos is unlike ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... intoxication; their virtues are the more laudable, as they were not affected by the hypocrisy of social manners, nor imposed by the rigid constraint of laws and education. I should not be apprehensive of deviating from my subject, if it were in my power to delineate the private life of the conquerors of Italy; and I shall relate with pleasure the adventurous gallantry of Autharis, which breathes the true spirit of chivalry and romance. [50] After the loss of his promised bride, a Merovingian princess, he sought in marriage the daughter of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... us, to be tinged with a red colour, which, contrasted with the snow on their summits and the deep azure sky above, against which their huge forms appeared to lean, produced a scene as difficult to delineate as it was sublime ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... man, guileless of passions and devoted to science and work, he never can so completely transfuse himself into the body of a dashing, sensual, and violent man, of exuberant vitality, torn by every desire or even by every vice, as to understand and delineate the inmost impulses and sensations of a being so unlike himself, even though he may very adequately foresee and relate all the actions ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... spirit of the old masters has not been successfully imitated by any modern artist who has attempted to delineate the Infant Jesus and Saint John, nor is this to be expected. There are many pleasing works of art, however, which, though differing widely from early Italian standards, have an ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... and Judgment. Orcagna, in the Strozzi Chapel of S. Maria Novella, set forth these scenes with a wonderful blending of beauty and grotesque invention. In the treatment of the Inferno he strove to delineate the whole geography of Dante's first cantica, tracing the successive circles and introducing the various episodes commemorated by the poet. Interesting as this work may be for the illustration of the "Divine Comedy" as understood ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... I have endeavored to delineate the effects of ardent spirit upon man, and more especially to portray its influence on his moral, intellectual, and physical powers. And now let me mention a few things which MUST BE DONE in order that the evil ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... riches and privilege ... they shall perceive who the most affluent man is. The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself. The American bard shall delineate no class of persons nor one or two out of the strata of interests nor love most nor truth most nor the soul most nor the body most ... and not be for the eastern states more than the western or the northern states ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... has not gained a place on the French stage, it nevertheless possesses some fine passages. Molire wished to create a counterpart of Sganarelle, the type of ridiculous jealousy, and to delineate passionate jealousy, its doubts, fears, perplexities and anxieties, and in this he has succeeded admirably. However noble-minded Don Garcia may be, there rages within his soul a mean passion which tortures and degrades ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... the Lusiads and in the dramas of Marlowe, but Marlowe was by far the wider in his intellectual range. Worlds were open to his glance beyond the Indies and Cathay that were shut to Camoens. Yet Camoens is a heroic figure. He found it easy to delineate Vasco da Gama; he had but to speak with his own voice, and utter simply his own heart's desires, hates, musings, and Vasco da Gama's sister would have turned to listen, thinking she heard the accents, the trick, the very manner that betrayed ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... well-expanded bust, and closely girt about at the waist by a neatly-knotted Indian belt, while the flowing folds below streamed gracefully aside in the wind, he displayed one of those compact, shapely figures, which the old Grecian sculptors so delighted to delineate. And in addition to these advantages of figure, he possessed an extremely fine set of features, which were shown off effectively by the profusion of short, jetty locks, that curled naturally around his white temples ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... art of hawking has been so frequently and so fully explained, that it would be superfluous, if not arrogant, to trace its progress, or delineate its history, in this place. In the earliest periods it appears to have been exclusively practised by the nobility; and, indeed, the great expense at which the amusement was supported, seems to have been ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... is represented, on the floor of Siena Cathedral, as offering to a Jew and a Gentile—nine represents the sun and all beautiful bright things that draw their influence from it, as the gleam of beaten gold, the rustle of silken stuffs, the smell of the flower heliotrope, and all such men as delineate human beings with colours, or make their effigy in stone or metal; moreover, Phoebus Apollo, whom the poets describe as the most beautiful of the gods, as indeed he is represented in all statues ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... landscapes and figures. He was a sober, diligent, and ingenious young man, and greatly regretted by Mr Banks; who hoped, by his means, to have gratified his friends in England with representations of this country and its inhabitants, which no other person on board could delineate with the same accuracy and elegance. He had always been subject to epileptic fits, one of which seized him on the mountains of Terra del Fuego, and this disorder being aggravated by a bilious complaint which he contracted on board the ship, at length put an end to his life. It was at ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... of them wanted me to stay in the neighborhood and deliver a lecture the next night on Phrenology. But as we were billed at Elkhart for that date, it was impossible to do so. We remained over night with the school director, and the next morning he requested me to delineate the character of his son by ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... been the more anxious to delineate fully the person and habits of Wouter Van Twiller, from the consideration that he was not only the first but also the best Governor that ever presided over this ancient and respectable province; and so tranquil and ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... a creature she was at the time when our friend Pen first set eyes on her: and I warn my reader, as beforehand, that the pencil which illustrates this work (and can draw an ugly face tolerably well, but is sadly put out when it tries to delineate a beauty) can give no sort of notion of her. She was of the tallest of women, and at her then age of six-and-twenty-for six-and-twenty she was, though she vows she was only nineteen—in the prime and fulness of her beauty. Her forehead was vast, and her black ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 16. p. 1095. The epithet [Greek: peptokos] could not properly be given to a serpent: but to a building decayed, and in ruins nothing is more applicable. A serpent creeps upon its belly, and is even with the ground, which he goes over, and cannot fall lower. The moderns indeed delineate dragons with legs: but I do not know that this ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... reading my chapter I'll read you the letter. And then remember that our story is to be built up solely upon this document. There are to be no characters in the story except those mentioned in the letter, and our task must be to delineate them in such a way that they are in keeping with the suggestions the letter gives us. ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... this book is to tell the story of Burton's life, to delineate as vividly as possible his remarkable character—his magnetic personality, and to defend him alike from enemy and friend. In writing it my difficulties have been two. First, Burton himself was woefully inaccurate as an autobiographer, and we must also add regretfully that we have occasionally ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... not endeavour to delineate my feelings as I contemplated the ruins of the house where dwelt the lady whom the amorous Petrarch immortalised in his verse—verse made to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and character, are drawn with a more discriminating touch, take stronger hold upon the interest, than those of his earlier. Ursula Malbone is a finer girl than Cecilia Howard, or even Elizabeth Temple. So when he has occasion to delineate a woman who, from her position in life, or the peculiar circumstances into which she is thrown, is moved by deeper springs of feeling, is obliged to put forth sterner energies, than are known to females reared in the sheltered air of prosperity and civilization,—when he paints ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... The ruin of so many glorious once And perfet while they stood; how last unfould The secrets of another world, perhaps Not lawful to reveal? yet for thy good 570 This is dispenc't, and what surmounts the reach Of human sense, I shall delineate so, By lik'ning spiritual to corporal forms, As may express them best, though what if Earth Be but the shaddow of Heav'n, and things therein Each to other like, more then on earth is thought? As yet this world was not, and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... kind I am induced to send it with all its imperfections. This letter, dreadful as are the scenes herein described, gives you but a faint idea of the awful reality. The anguish, the agony of mind, resulting from a thousand little circumstances impossible to delineate on paper, can be known by those only who have been in similar situations. Pray for us, my dear brother and sister, that these heavy afflictions may not be in vain, but may be blessed to our spiritual good, and the advancement of Christ's church ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... engrave spoons and forks with crests and ciphers. From silver- chasing, he went on to teach himself engraving on copper, principally griffins and monsters of heraldry, in the course of which practice he became ambitious to delineate the varieties of human character. The singular excellence which he reached in this art, was mainly the result of careful observation and study. He had the gift, which he sedulously cultivated, of committing to memory the precise features of any ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... little woman informed him that the patient had been covered with blisters that would not "pull," that would not "delineate," that would not, what call ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... between two and three thousand years ago, although many persons would think this a sufficient reason. Neither have I done so because I had, in my own opinion, failed in the delineation which I intended to effect. I intended to delineate the feelings of one of the last of the Greek religious philosophers, one of the family of Orpheus and Musaeus, having survived his fellows, living on into a time when the habits of Greek thought ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... reporters' room is gloomy and desolate. Mr. Scalper is a man of sensitive temperament and the dreariness of his surroundings depresses him. He opens the letter of a correspondent, examines the handwriting narrowly, casts his eye around the room for inspiration, and proceeds to delineate: ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... were as multifarious as have been portrayed by the whole band of Italian painters; but, as a wizard in words, he resembled the magician in mosaic, who can delineate in stone every feature of those portraits because he can discriminate and imitate shades of color more numberless ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... see the drama free itself from sensualism and frivolity, and rise to the Shaksperian dignity of true passion; while the romance will learn better its true ground, and will create, rather than portray—delineate, rather than dissect human sentiment ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... which an attempt is made to delineate, just as they occurred, those scenes which, to my mind at least, were new and interesting, were originally penned for the private perusal of those whom I esteem; and by their persuasion they are now ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... I see in him delineate His mother's visage; those his eyes are hers, Who, looking wistly {262a} on me, made me blush; For faults against themselves give evidence: Lust is a fire; and men, like lanterns, show Light lust within themselves even through themselves. Away, loose silks of wavering vanity! Shall the ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... attempted to delineate that group of beliefs which stood in close connection with the Roman religion, and among the subjects treated are Dreams, Nature Worship, Roman Magic, Divination, Holy Places, Victims, etc. Thus the book is, apart from its immediate subject, a ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... very age and body of the time its form and pressure.] i.e., to delineate exactly the manners of the age, and the particular humours of the day—pressure signifying ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... Attempts to delineate local character are always liable to misconstruction; for, the more truthful the sketch, the greater is the number of persons, to whom resemblance may be discovered; and thus, while in fact only describing the characteristics of a class, authors ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... Robbers it was my object to delineate the victim of an extravagant sensibility; here I endeavor to paint the reverse; a victim of art and intrigue. But, however strongly marked in the page of history the unfortunate project of Fiesco may appear, on the stage it may prove ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... by their fellow-creatures, than in any other of the numerous gradations into which the social scale has been divided. He who reads our present legend with the eyes that we could wish, will find in its moral the illustration of this truth; for, if it is our intention to delineate some of the wrongs that spring from the abuses of the privileged and powerful, we hope equally to show how completely they fall short of their object, by failing to confer that exclusive happiness which is the goal ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... delay—a piece of undignified conduct which would bitterly have scandalised Lady Foljambe, could she have seen it. By the time that Kate returned with the articles prescribed, Agatha had possessed herself of a lighted candle, wherein she burnt the end of the cork, and with it proceeded to delineate, in the middle of the sheet, a very clever sketch of a ferocious Turk, with moustaches of stupendous length. Then elevating the long mop till it reached about a yard above her head, she instructed Kate to arrange the sheet thereon in such a manner that the Turk's face showed close to the ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... intelligent, addressed for two hours by Bryant, with all his cool, judicious, deliberate criticism, warmed into glowing appreciation of the most delicate and peculiar beauties of the character and literary services he was to delineate,—and this rich banquet fittingly desserted by the periods of Everett,—such an evening was worthy of the subject, and worthy to be remembered. The heartiness and the genial insight into Irving's best traits which the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... vapour sweeps up from the sea. What was she doing? talking to other people, existing for others, laughing with others! There were miles between himself and Fenmarket. Life! what was life? A few moments of living and long, dreary gaps between. All this, however, is a vain attempt to delineate what was shapeless. It was an intolerable, unvanquishable oppression. This was Love; this was the blessing which the god with the ruddy wings had bestowed on him. It was a relief to him when the coach rattled through Islington, ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... last, with a groan, he dropped into a chair, where, crossing his arms upon his breast, he remained for awhile lost in thought. Who can say what were the reflections that filled his mind? Was he considering whether the painter meant to delineate insanity, or whether it was not a delusion springing from his own ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... TO TALK ABOUT NOT RESORTING TO FORCE. Every body must look to the introduction of force of some kind or other—and it is in truth a question of expediency; of moral justice; of political good faith—whether we shall fairly delineate our whole system on the face of the bill, or leave the acquisition of extorted consent to other processes. The real question—the only question of magnitude to be settled, is the great preliminary question—Do ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... natural impulse toward narrative invention in Lowell that, unlike Longfellow and Holmes, he never tried his hand at a novel. One of the most important parts of a novelist's equipment he certainly possesses, namely, an insight into character and an ability to delineate it. This gift is seen especially in his sketch of Parson Wilbur, who edited the Biglow Papers with a delightfully pedantic introduction, glossary, and notes; in the prose essay On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... solidity of this branch of learning. And shall we esteem it worthy the labour of a philosopher to give us a true system of the planets, and adjust the position and order of those remote bodies; while we affect to overlook those, who, with so much success, delineate the parts of the mind, in which we are ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... the general tenor of his opinion; for this country, in its ordinary aspects, probably presents as barren a field to the writer of fiction, and to the dramatist, as any other on earth; we are not certain that we might not say the most barren. We believe that no attempt to delineate ordinary American life, either on the stage, or in the pages of a novel, has been rewarded with success. Even those works in which the desire to illustrate a principle has been the aim, when the picture has been brought within this homely frame, have had to contend with disadvantages that ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... other things proves how deeply a man may be read in human nature, what an insight he may acquire into the springs of action and feeling, and yet how incapable he may be of making any practical application of the knowledge he has acquired and the result of which he can faithfully delineate. He gives a list of the books he had read at eighteen which appears incredible, particularly as he says that he was always idle, and eight years after Scott says he did not appear well read either in poetry or history. Swift says 'some men know books ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... truth so much as to expose error. And yet it was his object to attain correct ideas as to moral obligations. He was the first who recognized natural right, and held that virtue and vice are inseparably united. He proclaimed the sovereignty of virtue, and the immutability of justice. He sought to delineate and enforce the practical duties of life. His great object was the elucidation of morals, and he was the first to teach ethics systematically, and from the immutable principles of moral obligation. Moral certitude was the lofty platform ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... of geographers delineate it, the whole of the region which we have been speaking of is thus divided. From the north to the Caspian gates it borders on the Cadusii, and on many Scythian tribes, and on the Arimaspi, a fierce one-eyed ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... in uniting conjunction, you may both remain to formulate ideas and to delineate. You are no doubt desirous of the full enfranchisement of the human race. You seem just and liberal, as read by these various lights, amid contentions, yet with one central ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... short of the truth, they are, I feel, in the absence of any nearer approach to the truth, capable of rendering excellent service. However faintly and hazily the outlines of Deity be shown in them, the Deity whom they so imperfectly delineate is yet one to whom may justly be ascribed glory in the highest, one worthy of all trust, love, and adoration—of an adoration, too, inclusive not more of ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... people, and missionary life as it now exists; the two to form a succinct whole, illustrating each other.' The volume before us has been written in fulfilment of the foregoing pledge. In it the writer has attempted to delineate that which came within his immediate observation, during a residence of four years on the Group. As a description of the familiar life of a people, in a novel and interesting position, one which may with propriety be termed a state of transition from barbarism ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... power of efficiently describing in words the pictures that are hung up in the long gallery of my memory: a man may see very distinctly the landscape before him, yet he may be unable to delineate that which he gazes upon and is intimately acquainted with. A viva voce narrative of an incident told to a friend in conversation may pass muster, and one is able to fill up any gaps in an imperfect description; but it always occurred to me that I had no right to task a reader's ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... several trivial, indeed contemptible, anecdotes prove? What arguments in regard to a nation of forty-seven millions of people can be bolstered up by instancing the imperfect acquaintance of a Japanese pastry-cook with the English language? The writer does not in so many words delineate the future of Japan as it appears to him, but he suggests it, and his Japan of the future is quite evidently to be nothing more or less than a kind of international dustheap whereon Europe and America have dumped all that is bad and rotten and deplorable in their modern social and political ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... came, and where we mean to go. [Laughter and applause.] The colossal ignorance of the ordinary New Englander [laughter and applause]—I mean in regard to the Dutch [laughter]—is something that I would delineate were it not for the presence of the President of the Mayflower Society. [Renewed laughter.] Why, it was only the other night that at one of these entertainments when I was representing you and doing the best I could with my medal and my ribbon, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... the money first, but the kapala's wife, who was a very nice woman, began to sing, her friend frequently joining in the song. This was the initial prayer, without which there could be no story-telling. She was a blian, and her way of relating legends was to delineate stories in song form, she informed me. As there was nobody to interpret I was reluctantly compelled to dispense with her demonstration, although I had found it interesting to watch the strange expression of her eyes as she sang and the trance-like ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... picture of nature which I have endeavored to delineate would be incomplete if I did not venture to trace a few of the most marked features of the human race, considered with reference to physical gradations—to the geographical distribution of contemporaneous types—to the influence exercised upon man by the forces of nature, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... most careful preparations, in order to be able to profit by every opportunity, and induced Dr Daniel Solander, a distinguished pupil of Linnaeus, to accompany him. He even engaged draughtsmen and painters to delineate such objects of interest as did not admit of being transported or preserved. The voyage occupied three years and many hardships had to be undergone; but the rich harvest of discovery was more than adequate compensation. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... all, they had every reason to believe he was actually paying his address to Miss Angelina Porter, a daughter of Old Joe Porter, who kept the groggery. This, of course, was very distasteful even to Mr. and Miss Sealy; but language would fail us in any attempt we might make to delineate the utter consternation of the high-toned Mrs. Sealy when she became satisfied that the rumor was founded on fact. She had again and again remonstrated with him, but without effect, as he had treated her remonstrances with good-natured contempt; and when she resorted to harsher means and ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... Sir David. That would be jolly to paint, in the old man—the withered ruddiness of a winter apple, especially if the eye were still alive and the white hair carried out the frosty look. Arthur Ashmore's hair had a midsummer glow, but Lyon was glad his commission had been to delineate the father rather than the son, in spite of his never having seen the one and of the other being seated there before him now in the happy expansion of ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... malicious mockery; they were insulted with the form, but denied the reality, for there was one man excepted from their choice. The character of the man, thus fatally excepted, I have no purpose to delineate. Lampoon itself would disdain to speak ill of him of whom no man speaks well. Every lover of liberty stands doubtful of the fate of posterity, because the chief county in England cannot take its representative from ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... and poetical, that might give the idea of our possessing a brave heart under a most gentle exterior; but when roused, then indeed are we a very dragon; or rather, to keep up our former simile, (which we think a taking one, though, alas! it is not our own,) and delineate, by one expressive phrase, a mouldering, rage kept in check; by the constitutional cowardice on which it is superinduced—then are we a pigeon-hearted hawk, wanting only the courage to be desperately cross! (An ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... philanthropic interest, she wrote, during another winter in this city, her novel, "Ramona," a book composed with the greatest rapidity, and printed first in the Christian Union, afterward appearing in a volume in 1884. Its sole object was further to delineate the wrongs of the aborigines. Besides these two books, she wrote, during this later period, some children's stories, "Nelly's Silver Mine, a Story of Colorado Life" (1878), and three little volumes of tales about cats. But her life-work, as she ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... clinging to them, giving a freshness and a fragrance not otherwise to be conveyed. In other cases, as in the few poems of shipwreck or of mental conflict, we can only wonder at the gift of vivid imagination by which this recluse woman can delineate, by a few touches, the very crises of physical or mental struggle. And sometimes again we catch glimpses of a lyric strain, sustained perhaps but for a line or two at a time, and making the reader regret its sudden cessation. But the main quality of these ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... of contention include the use of water and mineral (especially petroleum) resources, fisheries, dams, and nuclear power plants. Many islands or island groups are also disputed, including those at sea and in streams. Nonetheless, many nations are actively cooperating to clarify, delineate, and demarcate their international borders. The tragic aspect of international discord is the impact on the sustenance and welfare of populations caught in the conflict. It is frequently left to members of the world community to cope with enormous refugee situations, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... found so complet as we wished: and againe, vnderstanding of the great charges and notable enterprise of that worthie Gentleman maister Thomas Sackford, in procuring the Charts of the seuerall prouinces of this realme to be set foorth, we are in hope that in time he will delineate this whole land so perfectlie, as shall be comparable or beyond anie delineation heretofore made of anie other region; and therefore leaue that to his well deserued praise. If any well willer will imitate him in so praiseworthie a worke for the two other ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (1 of 12) - William the Conqueror • Raphael Holinshed
... annals of American history. We do not give his history to show how he struggled through privations, overcoming all obstacles, until victory at last crowned his efforts, as so many of our great men have been obliged to do, but we do delineate his achievements to illustrate what hard work will do, provided a man has ability to develop. Yes, to show what hard work will do. But some will say, 'Well, that does sound well, but I guess if Edward Everett had been an ordinary man no amount of ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... discussions. All parties were wrong, and nobody was convinced. This vexed political question always brought before my mental vision a ludicrous sort of caricature, which, if I had the artistic skill to delineate, would form no bad illustration ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... significant of the lack of a natural impulse {499} toward narrative invention in Lowell, that, unlike Longfellow and Holmes, he never tried his hand at a novel. One of the most important parts of a novelist's equipment he certainly possesses; namely, an insight into character, and an ability to delineate it. This gift is seen especially in his sketch of Parson Wilbur, who edited the Biglow Papers with a delightfully pedantic introduction, glossary, and notes; in the prose essay On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners, and ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... is certain, that much of the ostentation and a multitude of the luxuries which subsist in European and Asiatic society are just topics of regret, and that, if ever those improvements in civilisation take place which philosophy has essayed to delineate, there would be a great abridgment of the manual labour that we now see around us, and the humbler classes of the community would enter into the inheritance of a more considerable portion of leisure than at present ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... initiation was begun. She was to read, to study, to depict by a gesture, a look, the passions she was to delineate on the boards; lessons dangerous, in truth, to some, but not to the pure enthusiasm that comes from art; for the mind that rightly conceives art is but a mirror which gives back what is cast on its surface faithfully only—while unsullied. She seized ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the most effective, as it is the most valuable, mode of conveying knowledge of this nature, he would have made a far better book. But in commencing to describe scenes, and perhaps he may add characters, that were so familiar to his own youth, there was a constant temptation to delineate that which he had known, rather than that which he might have imagined. This rigid adhesion to truth, an indispensable requisite in history and travels, destroys the charm of fiction; for all that is necessary to be conveyed to the mind by the latter had better be done by delineations of principles, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... described her, she exhibited a gentle affection, tempered by a compassionate pity for her weaknesses and waverings; an attitude, he fatuously told himself, forced upon her because her own standards were so much higher than any he could delineate or conceive. For Joan there was also compassion, but it was ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... college. The worst of all these biographical sketches of remarkable men is, that delicacy, discretion, or some other euphemistically named form of hesitancy, induces writers to suppress the incidents which supply the very angles of the form they want to delineate; and it is especially so in Shelley's case. I am sure, that, if Mary, or my father, or any of those with whom Shelley conversed most thoroughly, had related some of the more extravagant incidents of his early life exactly as they occurred, we should better understand ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... thence the airy forms Afar, nor suffer them to approach the blood, Till with Tiresias thou have first conferr'd. Then, glorious Chief! the Prophet shall himself Appear, who will instruct thee, and thy course Delineate, measuring from place to place Thy whole return athwart the fishy flood. While thus she spake, the golden dawn arose, When, putting on me my attire, the nymph 660 Next, cloath'd herself, and girding to her waist With an embroider'd zone her snowy robe Graceful, redundant, veil'd her ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... not fearful of tiring the reader, I could continue a long chain of rencontres of a similar nature, which occurred to me in my youthful days; but as I have, I think, given quite sufficient to delineate the decisive character of the author at that period, I shall proceed, with other matters; only just observing by the way, that a frequent recurrence of such events obtained for me the name of a very violent young man, though, nineteen times out of twenty ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... lively description of his tour in Corsica, but his fame rests on his "Life of Dr. Johnson" (see LIVES AND LETTERS), and his "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D." was really the first portion of that great work, and was meant, as he himself said, "to delineate Dr. Johnson's manners and character" more than to give any detailed descriptions of scenery. We have chosen to include it in the travel section of our work, however, as it might be more readily looked for there than under "Johnson" ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... literature. The great Realists have never been mere Realists; they have never thought that to produce art it is sufficient merely to reproduce fact. The word "Truth" has been introduced in the most shameless fashion. It is true that there are men without arms and legs and noses, but to delineate such a creature with exquisite accuracy is not to produce a faithful rendering of life. It is true that there are drab, sordid, expressionless lives, without happiness, without hope, without ideals. To describe these ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... See Machiavelli's critique of Lionardo d'Arezzo and Messer Poggio, in the Proemio to his Florentine History. His own conception of history, as the attempt to delineate the very spirit of a ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... irresistible force and energy which must the more transport her hearers the more they possessed within themselves true intellectual sensibility. "Corinne," said he, "is indubitably the most celebrated woman of our country, and nevertheless it is only her friends who can properly delineate her; for we must always have recourse, in some degree, to conjecture, in order to discover the genuine qualities of the soul. They may be concealed from our knowledge by celebrity as well as obscurity, if some sort of sympathy does ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... intended, or ought to be, a new Iliad or Odyssey; in other words, a poetic representation of a course of events consistent with the highest laws of moral government, whether it delineate the general history of a people, or narrate the fortunes of a chosen hero. If we pass in review the romances of the last three centuries, we shall find that those only have arrested the attention of more than one or two generations which have satisfied this requirement. Every other romance, ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... invention of the knave as well as at the gullibility of the old man, Before this comedy appeared the French stage was chiefly filled with plays full of intrigue, but with scarcely any attempt to delineate character or manners. In this piece the plot is carried on, partly in imitation of the Spanish taste, by a servant, Mascarille, who is the first original personage Moliere has created; he is not a mere imitation of the valets of the Italian or classical ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... Priorie St. Maries, when a child, voyded a lumbricus biceps. Mr. Winceslaus Hollar, when he was at Mechlin, saw an amphisbna, which he did very curiously delineate, and coloured it in water colours, of the very colour: it was exactly the colour of the inner peele of an onyon: it was about six inches long, but in its repture it made the figure of a semicircle; both the heads advancing equally. It was found under ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... it, an immovable heart amidst even the most imperious causes of subduing emotion, is perhaps not an impossible constitution of mind, but it is the utmost and rarest endowment of humanity."[30] Such a character, almost as difficult to delineate in fiction as to find in real life, has Shakspeare given us in Helena; touched with the most soul-subduing pathos, and developed ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... the hour of twelve at night when the lamp was extinguished. The miserable king had ceased to breathe. The ensuing scene no pen can delineate or pencil paint. The courtiers, totally forgetful of French etiquette, rushed down the stairs, crowded into their carriages, and the silence of night was disturbed by the clattering of the horses' hoofs, as they were urged, at their utmost speed, to ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... is, so to narrate them that their characteristic elements shall be shown; to give such an account of the general career as may make it clear what these chosen events really were,—to show their respective bearings to one another; to delineate what is expressive in such a manner as to ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... had recovered the art of reading, and its use a little perplexed him, for he became much puzzled with the opinions of the Ranters, as set forth in their books. It is extremely difficult to delineate their sentiments; they were despised by all the sects which had been connected with the government, because, with the Quakers and Baptists, they denied any magisterial or state authority over conscience, and refused maintenance to ministers; but from the testimony of Bunyan, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... his works: prejudiced, he was not false; cold, he was rarely cruel; egotistical, he was seldom vain-glorious. Every age should have a Horace Walpole; every country possess a chronicler so sure, so keen to perceive, so exact to delineate ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... reach Of human sense I shall delineate so By likening spiritual to corporeal forms, As may express them best; though what if Earth Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein. Each to the other like, more than ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... which our powers of analysis can discern, and which modern society has created; one of the most remarkable men of our age, whose death is a recent loss to the world of letters, Beyle (Stendhal), was the first to delineate them to perfection. ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last come to the conclusion ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... done upon the northern coasts of Australia. Beginning with the north-eastern coast, I have been enabled to lay down a very safe and convenient track for vessels bound through Torres Strait, and to delineate the coastline between Cape Hillsborough, in 20 degrees 54 minutes South, and Cape York, the north extremity of New South Wales; a distance of six hundred and ninety miles. As my instructions did not authorise my delaying to examine any part of this coast I could ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... an attitude of perfect and unstudied grace she would have delightedly sketched in another. Have ever I described my favorite's appearance? I believe not; and yet there was much in her face and figure to arrest and enchant younger eyes than mine. I could not, if I would, delineate her features, for I only recall their charm of emotion, their attractive variety of sentiment. Her eyes were gray, with dark lashes, and their expression was at once brilliant and melancholy, and the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... affection for me. It was really then that my artistic education began. It was then that I acquired the knowledge and the rules which placed me in a position to discern the characteristics of a true artist. I learned to distinguish and to delineate the comic and the dramatic passions. My temperament caused me to incline greatly toward the tender ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... it. * * * * The powers which are found necessary to be given, are therefore delegated generally, and particular and minute specification is left to the Legislature. * * * It is not within the limits of human capacity to delineate on paper all those particular cases and circumstances, in which legislation by the general legislature, would be necessary." Governor Randolph said: "Holland has no ten miles square, but she has the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... prepare the reader to look at the pictures we are about to sketch, with less surprise than he might otherwise feel; and a few additional explanations may carry him back in imagination to the precise condition of society that we desire to delineate. It is matter of history that the settlements on the eastern shores of the Hudson, such as Claverack, Kinderhook, and even Poughkeepsie, were not regarded as safe from Indian incursions a century since; and there is still standing on the banks of the same river, and within musket-shot of the wharves ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... have been governed by no partial motives whatever. On the contrary, I have laboured to represent every object faithfully as it has affected my senses. I am, however, conscious at the same time, that it requires an abler pen than mine to delineate adequately the sublime and majestic works of nature in the regions I have been describing, and to portray them to the imagination in all their simplicity, beauty, and grandeur. Siberia does not possess the climate of Italy, nor the luxurious productions ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... justled, bulled, and lastauriated in one day the third part of the world, beasts and people, floods and mountains; that was Europa. For this grand subagitatory achievement the Ammonians caused draw, delineate, and paint him in the figure and shape of a ram ramming, and horned ram. But I know well enough how to shield and preserve myself from that horned champion. He will not, trust me, have to deal in my person with a sottish, dunsical Amphitryon, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... should do and see, and that should happen, as will be seen further on. Also, Lords Princes, I resolved to describe each night what passed in the day, and to note each day how I navigated at night. I propose to construct a new chart for navigating, on which I shall delineate all the sea and lands of the Ocean in their proper positions under their bearings; and further, I propose to prepare a book, and to put down all as it were in a picture, by latitude from the equator, ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... divisions also. Then let him turn his face directly opposite to the midst of the horizon, keeping his body fixed, and draw what is directly before his eyes upon the middle division of the tablet: then turn his head, but not his body,[96] to the left hand and delineate what he views there, joining it properly to what he had done before; and, lastly, do the same by what is to be seen upon his right hand, laying down everything exactly, both with respect to distance and proportion. One example ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... favourite as talentless, prosaic, and vulgar. The public were not to be robbed of their amusement for the sake of any abstract aesthetic considerations; and young authors, taking Gogol for their model, chose their subjects from real life, and endeavoured to delineate with minute truthfulness. ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... view are used to mark those in other views, and to find their shapes or curvature as they will appear in other views. Thus, in Figure 225a we have a spiral, wound around a cylinder whose end is cut off at an angle. The pitch of the spiral is the distance A B, and we may delineate the curve of the spiral looking at the cylinder from two positions (one at a right-angle to the other, as is shown in the figure), by means of a circle having a circumference equal ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... brilliant colors the mere outside of a house thus distinguished by this strange festivity, in which there is no actual pleasure,—this crowding of carriages—this shouting of small boys and policemen?—who can, in words, delineate the various phases of lofty indignation and offense on the countenances of pompous coachmen, forced into contention with vulgar but good-natured "cabbys"—for right of way? . . . who can sufficiently ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... impossible for me to delineate the occurrences incident to my hunting days. The story told in full would fill a volume, but if it were not in connection with my father's family and how we got along, when I was at home with him, I should not mention it at all. As it is, I ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... present to the reader a man, whose conversation was nothing but alternate jest and quotation—a due union of Yorick and Partridge. This would, however, be rendering great injustice to the character I wish to delineate. There were times when Vincent was earnestly engrossed in discussion in which a jest rarely escaped him, and quotation was introduced only as a serious illustration, not as a humorous peculiarity. He possessed great miscellaneous ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of all beauty and harmony, and her trustful reverence, free from pretence and cant. It is not unlikely that the surviving sharers of her love and friendship may feel the inadequateness of this brief memorial, for I close it with the consciousness of having failed to fully delineate the picture which my memory holds of a wise and brave, but tender and loving woman, of whom it might well have been said, in the words of the old Hebrew text, "Many, daughters have done virtuously, but thou ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... in such different lights in the successive stages of life, it is no easy matter to delineate his character without an uncommon mixture and vast variety of colours. He was in the British empire not unlike one of those strange and erratic meteors which appear now and then in the system of nature. In his youth, as ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... Borough thrown all into red or white heat; into blazing paroxysms of activity and enthusiasm, which render the inner life of it (and of England and the world through it) luminously transparent, so to speak;—of which opportunity our friend and his "Muse" take dexterous advantage, to delineate the same. His pictures are uncommonly good; brief, joyous, sometimes conclusively true: in rigorously compressed shape; all is merry freshness and exuberance: we have leafy summer embowering red bricks and small human interests, presented ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... habitually resort to extreme quaintnesses and singularities of circumstance, in order to confer upon their weak portraitures some vigor of outline. It takes a Giotto to draw readily a nearly perfect O; but a nearly perfect triangle any one can draw. Shakspeare is able to delineate a Gentleman,—one, that is, who, while nobly and profoundly a man, is so delicately individualized, that the impression of him, however vigorous and commanding, cannot be harsh: Shakspeare is equal to this task, but even so very able a painter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... plan, chart, ground plan, projection, elevation (plan) 626. ichnography[obs3], cartography; atlas; outline, scheme; view &c. (painting) 556; radiograph, scotograph[obs3], sciagraph[obs3]; spectrogram, heliogram[obs3]. V. represent, delineate; depict, depicture[obs3]; portray; take a likeness, catch a likeness &c. n.; hit off, photograph, daguerreotype; snapshot; figure, shadow forth, shadow out; adumbrate; body forth; describe &c. 594; trace, copy; mold. dress ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... describing the operations of the Underground Rail Road. I never kept any record of those persons passing through my hands, nor did I ever anticipate that the history of that perilous period would ever be written. I can only refer to the part I took in it from memory, and if I could delineate the actual facts as they occurred they would savor so much of egotism that I should feel ashamed to make them public. I willingly refer to a few incidents which you may select and use as you ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... set high upon her head, held by a square tortoise-shell comb, and carelessly thrown off her forehead with a parting on one side. Be sure some sad story underlies her career. She is of just that gypsy cast that painters love to delineate. They sit down at a side table and order ices, cake, and champagne. These are consumed amid jests and laughter, the spurious champagne, at a fabulous cost, is drunk merrily, the hours creep on, and the couple retire to ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... it was as nearly a canvas upon which to delineate almost anything in the range of emotion as it was possible for a visage of flesh ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... daily holds the axe or the plough, how much more refined on the contrary those of the European, whose mind is improved by education, example, books, and by every acquired advantage! Those feelings, however, I will delineate as well as I can, agreeably to your ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... The Deerslayer (1841), The Two Admirals (1842), and Satanstoe (1845). He also wrote a Naval History of the United States (1839). C. was possessed of remarkable narrative and descriptive powers, and could occasionally delineate character. He had the merit of opening up an entirely new field, and giving expression to the spirit of the New World, but his true range was limited, and he sometimes showed a lack of judgment in choosing subjects with which ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... pacify the Countess Guiccioli, who had quarrelled with him for maintaining that "love was not the loftiest theme for true tragedy," and, in part, to prove that he was not a slave to his own ideals, and could imagine and delineate a woman who was both passionate and high-minded. Diodorus (Bibl. Hist., lib. iii. p. 130) records the exploits of Myrina, Queen of the Amazons, but it is probable that Byron named his Ionian slave after Mirra, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... the pen of a Tacitus to delineate with accuracy the character of such a man, who, to use the words of the lamented Moreau, "had covered the French name with such shame and disgrace, that it would be almost a disgrace to bear it; and who had brought upon that unhappy ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... of Constantine is considered, even in the present age, as an object either of satire or of panegyric. By the impartial union of those defects which are confessed by his warmest admirers, and of those virtues which are acknowledged by his most-implacable enemies, we might hope to delineate a just portrait of that extraordinary man, which the truth and candor of history should adopt without a blush. But it would soon appear, that the vain attempt to blend such discordant colors, and to reconcile such inconsistent qualities, must produce a figure monstrous rather than human, unless ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... which occurred between the time of being "hatcheled" and that of being "woven," that it exceeds my powers to delineate. All around me seemed to be in a state of inextricable confusion, out of which order finally appeared in the shape of a piece of cambric, of a quality that brought the workmen far and near to visit it. We were a single family ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... experience the emotions whereof he writes. The divine Hyspiros depicts murderers, cowards, and slaves in his sublime Tragedies,—but thinkest thou it was essential for him to become a murderer, coward, and slave himself in order to delineate these characters? And I ... I write of Love,—love spiritual, love eternal,—love fitted for the angels I have dreamt of—but not for such animals as men,—and what matters it that I know naught of such love, . . unless ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... used to call a Brynhild. It was tall blondes he really admired. Hence, notwithstanding his love of the economies of gipsy life, his gipsy women are all mere scenic characters, they clothe and beautify the scene: they are not dramatic characters. When he comes to delineate a heroine, Isopel Bernes, she is physically the very opposite of the Romany ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... There is neither sentiment nor declamation—painting nor reflection. He is neither descriptive nor didactic. With great powers for portraying nature, as the exquisite choice of his epithets, and the occasional force of his similes prove, he never makes any laboured attempt to delineate her features. He had the eye of a great painter; but his pictorial talents are employed, almost unconsciously, in the fervour of narrating events, or the animation of giving utterance to thoughts. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... it; you cannot turn to the right nor to the left; there is but one course for you. You must go forward, or the ruin of your child is sealed. You have come to an important crisis in the history of your child, and if you need motive to influence you to act, you may delineate as upon a map his temporal and eternal destiny—these mainly depend upon the issue of the present struggle. If you succeed, your child is saved; if you fail, he is lost. You may think perhaps your child will die before he will yield. We had almost said he might as well die as not to yield. ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... to be said of Cicero's writings in the following pages, as it is my object to delineate the literary man as well as the politician. In doing this, there arises a difficulty as to the sequence in which his works should be taken. It will hardly suit the purpose in view to speak of them all either chronologically or separately as ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... is preferred, inasmuch as it exhibits in a more natural and consistent manner the twofold character of Madog, as a soldier and a courtier, which appears to be the object of the Bard to delineate. Our inference on this point is moreover supported by more obvious passages of that description, which occur again in ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... one, dealing as little as possible with outward events, and taking hold of these only where it cannot be helped, in order by means of them to delineate the history of a mind bewildered in certain errors. We would not willingly, if we could, give a lively and picturesque surrounding to this delineation, but it is necessary that we should advert to the circumstances ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
