"Figurative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Mistress is filled with conceits, is very copiously displayed by Addison. Love is by Cowley, as by other poets, expressed metaphorically by flame and fire; and that which is true of real fire is said of love, or figurative fire, the same word in the same sentence retaining both significations. Thus, "observing the cold regard of his mistress's eyes, and, at the same time, their power of producing love in him, he considers them as burning-glasses made of ice. Finding ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... earth, and the waters with countless creatures of his fancy; his expressions are figurative and metaphorical; he is quick to seize analogies; and when he cannot explain he is ever ready to invent. This is shown in his inappeasable love of story telling. As a raconteur he is untiring. He has, in the highest degree, Goethe's Lust zu fabuliren. ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... then, the Prvapakshin resumes, that the 'seeing' of the text denotes not 'seeing' in its primary, direct sense—such as belongs to intelligent beings only; but 'seeing' in a secondary, figurative sense which there is ascribed to the Pradhna in the same way as in passages immediately following it is ascribed to fire and water—'the fire saw'; 'the water saw' (Ch. Up. VI, 2, 3). The transference, to non- existent things, of attributes properly ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... diction was elegant and copious. But his devotional poetry is, like that of others, unsatisfactory. The paucity of its topicks enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity of the matter rejects the ornaments of figurative diction. It is sufficient for Watts to have done better than others what ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... in an extraordinary degree. His carriage was erect and commanding, and there was an air of hauteur in his countenance, arising from an elevated pride of soul, which did not forsake it when life was extinct. He was habitually taciturn, but, when excited, his eloquence was nervous, concise, and figurative. His dress was plain, and he was never known to indulge in the gaudy decoration of his person, which is the common practice of the Indians. On the day of his death, he wore a dressed deer skin coat and pantaloons. He was present ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... about on the boundless sea. And as for you, Johanna," says I, "you've committed a grievous sin, and you're a fallen creature. But Jacob Engstrand," says I, "he's got two good legs to stand upon, he has—" You see, your Reverence, I was speaking figurative-like. ...
— Ghosts • Henrik Ibsen
... most practical and urgent purpose. It will be answered to me that the first Kind of Man of whom I spoke could not really be on boards and committees, as modern England is managed. His dirt, though necessary and honourable, would be offensive: his speech, though rich and figurative, would be almost incomprehensible. Let us grant, for the moment, that this is so. This Kind of Man, with his sooty hair or sanguinary adjectives, cannot be represented at our committees of arbitration. Therefore, the ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... figurative politeness of a negro chief, he assured me that his town, his forests, his slaves, his wives, were mine (he was quite sincere with regard to the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... teeth, the character of their stomachs, and the shortness of their bowels, and fed, for the time they remained in it, exclusively on vegetable substances, which, in ordinary circumstances, their lacteals could not have converted into chyle. Certain figurative expressions in Scripture taken literally, which refer to a class of wild animals whose real destiny is rather, it would seem, to be extirpated than to be changed, coupled with the belief, now no longer tenable, that there was a time, ere man had sinned, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... he hadn't any ship, Any flocks at his command, Nor to feed them any land; Said he never in his life Owned a mine to keep a wife. But the guilty stammer so That his meaning wouldn't flow; So he thought his aim to reach By some figurative speech: Said his Fate had been unkind Had pursued him from behind (How the mischief could ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... answered in the following couplet, which convinced me of the truth of the supposition of Mr. Thomas Campbell, the intended lecturer of poetry to the London University, that mankind in an aboriginal state is essentially poetical, and express their ideas either in rhythmical or figurative language— ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... impressively, "as to get a three-pound bass to the top of the water and have your line break. I've had a big fellow get away like that and chase me a mile with its thumb on its nose." This last, of course, was purely figurative. ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... broom, that it had formerly been a novice who neglected to sweep out the Council room, hence was reborn as a broom,(!) therefore the wisest of all the world's sages stands accused of idiotic superstition. Why not try and understand the true meaning of the figurative statement before criticising? Is or is not that which is called magnetic effluvia a something, a stuff or a substance, invisible and imponderable though it be?... The mesmeric or magnetic fluid which emanates from man to man, or even from man to what is termed an inanimate ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... Shaftesbury, on the contrary, who aimed at the same easy, degage mode of communicating his thoughts to the world, has quite spoiled his matter, which is sometimes valuable, by his manner, in which he carries a certain flaunting, flowery, figurative, flirting style of amicable condescension to the reader, to an excess more tantalising than the most starched and ridiculous formality of the age of James I. There is nothing so tormenting as the affectation of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... "hire" or "wages" imply a [181] "hirer" or "wage-giver." Therefore, when a man in "the original state of things" gathered fruit or killed game for his own sustenance, the fruit or the game could be called his "wages" only in a figurative sense; as one sees if the term "hire," which has a more limited connotation, is substituted for "wage." If not, it must be assumed that the savage hired himself to get his own dinner; whereby we are led to the tolerably absurd conclusion ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... the opposite political party at one time during a campaign, Lincoln said: "My opponent uses a figurative expression to the effect that 'the Democrats are vulnerable in the heel, but they are sound in the heart and head.' The first branch of the figure—that is the Democrats are vulnerable in the heel—I admit is not merely figuratively ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... however, the work of Puttenham is most of all to be valued for the remarks on language and on manners, and the contemporary anecdotes with which it abounds, and of which some examples may be quoted. After observing that "as it hath been always reputed a great fault to use figurative speeches foolishly and indiscreetly, so it is esteemed no less an imperfection in man's utterance, to have none use of figure at all, specially in our writing and speeches public, making them but as our ordinary talk, than which nothing can be more unsavory ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the river, obtained some information from Moors and from negroes, on its course by Timbuctoo. The Jinnie of Park is synonymous with Jenne, Gine, Dhjenne, of other writers, as Jenne has again been confounded with Kano or Kanno. It may be a figurative term—for the Jinnie of Park was on an island, as was the Jenne of the Moorish reports, while the Jenne of some travellers is at a short distance from the river. This cannot be the case with regard to Timbuctoo, which is visited ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... complete standard of Christian faith and morals, adapted to the interval between the ascension of Christ and his return with the kingdom which he has received from God; the Apocalypse, or Revelation of Jesus Christ to John, in Patmos, as a figurative and prospective view of all the fortunes of Christianity, from its date to the return of ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... Clyde, of Portland Place, London, England, a pleasure tourist in Canada, with a (figurative) mortgage on every town he visited, and a claim on the hand of one ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... unnecessary space. The only difference between the two traditions is that the otter, which is emblematical of one of the four Medicine Spirits who are believed to preside over the Midawe rites, is used in one in the same figurative manner as the seashell is used in the other, first appearing to the ancient An-ish-in-aub-ag from the depths of the great salt water, again on the river St. Lawrence, then on Lake Huron at Sault Ste. Marie, again at La Pointe, but lastly ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... symbolical language in both being the same, but the meaning of it being taken differently. In course of time, as knowledge makes its way among the people, and religious enlightenment with it, much of what had been received literally will relapse into its original figurative or symbolical meaning. Reason will resume her supremacy, and stereotyped dogmas will fall like ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... lesson on the harpsichord, and found the teacher a most charming man: for each finger of the right and left hand he had a nickname, by which he indicated in the merriest way when it was to be used. The black and white keys were likewise symbolically designated, and even the tones appeared under figurative names. Such a motley company worked most pleasantly together. Fingering and time seemed to become perfectly easy and obvious; and, while the scholar was put into the best humor, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the literature and history of the Scandinavians, and the people listened, not as to the inspiration of an individual mind, but to the pulsation of its own past life. Their praises were desired, their satire feared, by the greatest heroes and kings. Their style was figurative, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... it; e.g., doctrines about Adam, universal sinfulness, the fall, predestination, Theodicy, etc., besides all kinds of ideas about redemption. Besides these spiritual doctrines there were not a few spiritualised myths which were variously made use of in the Apocalypses. A rich, spiritual, figurative style, only too rich and therefore confused, waited for the theological artist to purify, reduce and vigorously fashion. There really remained very little of the Cosmico-Mythological in the doctrine of ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... moral or metaphysical theories of their own to support. The image of a vinculum juris colours and pervades every part of the Roman law of Contract and Delict. The law bound the parties together, and the chain could only be undone by the process called solutio, an expression still figurative, to which our word "payment" is only occasionally and incidentally equivalent. The consistency with which the figurative image was allowed to present itself, explains an otherwise puzzling peculiarity of Roman legal phraseology, the fact that "Obligation" signified rights as well as duties, the ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... me of holding discourse together in public? But already had he bethought himself of acting in more subtle ways; and now he would speak to this one, now to that one, words whereby I, being most eager for such enlightenment, discovered that whatever he said to these was fraught with figurative and hidden meanings, intended to show forth his ardent affection for myself. When he was sensible that I had a clear perception of the occult significance of his questions and answers, he went still further, and by gestures, and ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... this technical and figurative expression beyond her, paused in her knitting and looked anxiously at Phoebe, to see how she would take it. After a moment of thought, the young ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... of writing a hymn on the Beauty of Viceroys; and have repeatedly attuned my mind to the subject; but my inability to express myself in figurative language, and my total ignorance of everything pertaining to metre, rhythm, and rhyme, make me rather hesitate to employ verse. Certainly, the subject is inviting, and I am surprised that no singer has arisen. How can any one view the Viceroyal halo of scarlet ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... let us get, as quickly as may be, at the exact meaning with which the advocates of "High Art" use that somewhat obscure and figurative term. ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... They are the remains of tyranny on one part and slavery on the other; and the name of the Creator ought not to be introduced to witness the degradation of his creation; or if taken, as is already mentioned, as figurative of the nation, it is in this place redundant. But whatever apology may be made for oaths at the first establishment of a government, they ought not to be permitted afterwards. If a government requires the support of oaths, it is a sign that it is not worth ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Introduction to the Pentateuch, Gospels, and Acts. 4. Interpretation of the Gospels in Harmony and of the Acts. 5. Interpretation of the Historical Writings of Moses. 6. Particular Introduction to the several Books of the Old and New Testaments. 7. Hebrew Poetry, including Figurative and Symbolical Language of Scripture. 8. Interpretation of Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. 9. Epistles to Romans, Corinthians, Timothy, and I Peter. 10. Nature and Fulfilment of Prophecy, particularly in reference to the Messiah. 11. Interpretation of Isaiah, Zechariah, ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... Opposite Influences.*—(b) Since we are now dropping the figurative manner of expression hitherto employed, by which we spoke of sources of sexual excitement, we may now assume that all the connecting ways leading from other functions to sexuality must also be passable in the reverse direction. For example, if the lip ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... remained in the dock. The days of the years of his pilgrimage were not few, and quite probably, except in a figurative sense, not evil. He was of sturdy build, quiet manners, and his countenance was indicative of great sincerity. In a voice extremely deferential he stated that he had once ministered to a dying Confederate, and it was impossible ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... cap, the blanket, leggins, and moccasins, worn by all the tribes; the women among the New-Brunswick Indians frequently wear a round hat, a shawl, and short clothes, resembling the short gown and petticoat worn by the French and Dutch women. The Indian language is bold and figurative, abounding in hyperbolical expressions, and is said to be susceptible of much elegance. To give the reader some notion of the manner in which these people conduct their conferences with each other, ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... cup to drink, he adds, "This do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me." The words, "this is my body—this cup is the New Testament in my blood," appeared to me only what they really are, figurative expressions, signifying that the bread represented his body, and the wine his blood. These words do in no degree change or modify the principal idea, that of commemoration, which runs throughout ...
— The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssiere; and History of a Bible • Anonymous
... order by which the Almighty regulates the common course of things. Nature is not a person; it is not active; it neither creates nor performs actions more or less energetically, nor learns, nor forgets, nor reexerts itself, nor recruits its vigour. Perhaps it will be said that all this is merely figurative language. Figurative language is very much misplaced in strict philosophical investigations; and these particular figures, which might be quite consistent with the atheistical philosophy of Lucretius, sound ill in the mouth of a pious Christian, which Mr. Coleridge undoubtedly was. He ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... think that the failing of the sight is here to be understood. But I am surprized, how they happened not to take notice, that every thing in this discourse, even to the most minute circumstances, is expressed in words bearing a figurative sense. For whereas, in describing the infirmities of Old-age, the injuries of the operations of the mind, as the most grievous of all, were not to be pretermitted; so these could not be more clearly expressed, than by the obscuration of the coelestial luminous ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... ridiculous toy to match the cottage piano, he was taking in the details around him with a keen and thoroughly kind sensibility. He remembered a home no longer than this on the outskirts of Bohemia; and in the figurative Bohemia too he had had large acquaintance with the variety and romance which belong to small incomes. He addressed Mrs. Meyrick ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... devout mind, full of the figurative sacred writings then current, must have overflowed with visions, ecstasies and miracles! And what tremors of awe must he have felt, in putting these visions into colour! His Madonnas, their features suffused with candour and humility, bend with maternal grace hitherto ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... threat. High is thus used in a number of figurative senses, e.g. a high wind, a high hand, high passions (Par. Lost, ix. 123), high descent, high ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... Spaniard, and the levity of the Frenchman, are as evident in all their productions as in their persons themselves; and the style of my countrymen is as naturally strong and nervous, as that of an Arabian or Persian is rich and figurative. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... prohibits image-worship. On this point Aristotle and the Bible are in accord. The inference is that in the Holy Scriptures there are many metaphors and words with a double or allegoric sense. Such is the case with the word "image." It has two meanings, the one usual and obvious, the other figurative. Here the word must be taken in its figurative sense. God is conceived as the highest Reason, and as reason is the specific attribute which characterizes the human mind, it follows that man, by virtue of his possession of reason, resembles God, and the more fully he realizes ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... the carking cares and tribulations of the present life, were kept in view the far more important realities of the life that is to come, and the souls of the people were enbraved and strengthened for the conflicts, both literal and figurative, to which they ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... those texts of Scripture which represent the earth as the immovable center of the universe, we shall be referred to the figurative language of the Psalms, the book of Job, and other poetical parts of Scripture, which speak of the "foundations of the earth," "the earth being established," "abiding for ever," and the like, when the slightest ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Hernandez to suppose that the Mayas had Trinitarian doctrines. When they said that the god of the merchants and planters supplied the wants of men and furnished the world with desirable things, it was but a slightly figurative way of stating ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... of the same incident occurs in No. IV of M. Emile Legrand's Receuil de Contes Populaires Grecs (Paris, 1881), where a prince sets out in quest of some maiden acquainted with "figurative language," whom he would marry. He comes upon an old man and his daughter, and overhears the latter address her father in metaphorical terms, which she has to explain to the old man, at which the prince is highly pleased, and following them ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... truth. To my present feelings it seems incredible that I should ever believe that I believed in transubstantiation. But my conqueror oppressed me with the sacramental words, 'Hoc est corpus meum,' and dashed against each other the figurative half meanings of the Protestant sects; every objection was resolved into omnipotence, and, after repeating at St. Mary's the Athanasian Creed, I humbly acquiesced in the mystery of ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... writing thus constituted by the metrical or rhythmical structure of its sentences; and is not necessarily any more figurative or obscure than prose writing. It is, also, a term sometimes applied to the language of excited imagination ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... birds with one stone—that is to say, he killed the sugar speculation by holding for high rates till he had to sell at the bottom figure, and that calamity killed the mule that laid the golden egg—which is but a figurative expression and will be so understood. Sellers had returned home cheerful but empty-handed, and the mule business lapsed into other hands. The sale of the Hawkins property by the Sheriff had followed, and the Hawkins ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... while, and gall the wounded sufferer. Their smartness is pleasant, and delights the company; and those that are pleased with the saving seem to believe the detracting speaker. For according to Theophrastus, a jeer is a figurative reproach for some fault or misdemeanor; and therefore he that hears it supplies the concealed part, as if he knew and gave credit to the thing. For he that laughs and is tickled at what Theocritus said to one whom he suspected of a design upon his clothes, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... medicine man: he has no bones, always lies out in the open air, and is rolled over from one side to the other twice a year, during spring and fall. He adds that an intelligent Indian once suggested that this was a figurative representation of the ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... herself that they should pretend not to understand the simile of which she had made use, accustomed as she was to speak in figurative language. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the Prophecies, we are, in the first place, to acquaint our-selves with the figurative language of the Prophets. This language is taken from the analogy between the world natural, and an empire or kingdom considered ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... fire with a stick until the sparks rose like quail out of the grass, Dr. Slavens vowed solemnly that he would win that fee or take in his shingle—which, of course, was a figurative shingle only at that time—and Agnes pledged herself to stand by and help him do it as faithfully as if they were already in the future and bound to sustain each other's hands in the bitter and the ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... who has persuaded an enlightened body of electors to receive L10,000 decimated amongst them, and has in return the honour of sleeping in "St. Stephen's," and smoking in "Bellamy's," or, to be less figurative, who has been returned as their representative in Parliament, receives the foretaste of his importance in a "public dinner," which commemorates his election; or should he desire to express "the deep ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... the quartermaster; "the armies have kept a respectful distance; they were like nothing I can think of," said the figurative Frenchman, "except two hideous serpents wallowing in mire, and vomiting at each other whole rivers of fire ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Societys great, or small—in short of leading them in the Study, and Practice of the exalted Virtues of the Christian system, which will happily tend to subdue the turbulent passions of Men, and introduce that Golden Age beautifully described in figurative language; when the Wolf shall dwell with the Lamb, and the Leopard lie down with the Kid—the Cow, and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together, and the Lyon shall eat straw like the Ox—none shall then hurt, or destroy; for the ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... windows of heaven" and taught that they were opened when it rained, and closed when it ceased to rain. Hence it is evident that the ancient Astronomers did not refer to these pillars and windows in a figurative sense, but as real appurtenances to a solid firmament, as will be seen by reference to Gen. vii. 11, and viii. 2, Job xxvi. ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... [155] A figurative and highly poetic expression as old as Homer. In this instance it is said to signify that the sun had been two gharis above ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... moral resurrection "coming" on a more extensive scale, even embracing all men. Jesus changes one word only, using graves,—more properly tombs,—instead of death. But coming out of death into life, and coming out of the tombs into life, are essentially the same thing. Both are figurative expressions. I insist that where Jesus says, "The hour is coming and now is," he conveys the impression that the then present process was in its nature the same as the coming one, only that the latter would be more ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... object in itself. The grapes of Zeuxis at which birds pecked, the painted dog at which a cat's hair bristles—if such grapes or such a dog were ever put on canvas—are but evidences of the artist's skill, not of his faculty as artist. These two plastic, or, as I prefer to call them, figurative arts, use their imitation of the external world for the expression, the presentation of internal, spiritual things. The human form is for them the outward symbol of the inner human spirit, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... rebuking this last speech, added in a tone of gentle remonstrance, that the first remark, though far from being respectful, was more endurable because it was a proverb and implied that a Superior had been given to them who was less capable than his predecessor, and that this was expressed in figurative terms, as David speaks of himself in relation to Almighty God in one of the Psalms when he says: I am become as a beast before Thee.[1] "The second sarcasm, however," he added, "has nothing figurative in it, and is absolutely and grossly insulting. We must never speak ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... Barclay (see above, pp. xxvii., liv.), apart from the probability that, as contemporaries resident in the same provincial town, Ely, they were well acquainted with each other, leave little doubt that the two were personal friends. Bulleyn's figurative description of the poet, quoted at p. xxvii., is scarcely complete without the following verses, which are appended to it by way of summary of his teachings (similar verses are appended to the descriptions of ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... of imagery and nowise elevated above every-day life. But energetical passions electrify all the mental powers, and will consequently, in highly-favoured natures, give utterance to themselves in ingenious and figurative expressions. It has been often remarked that indignation makes a man witty; and as despair occasionally breaks out into laughter, it may sometimes also give vent to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... his finest poetry are a tender love of nature, a profusion of figurative language, and a ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... than they. Among their own brethren they could think of many a one who had hung upon the cross for his brethren or died at the stake for his God. They took up the cross and followed Christ, bearing the reproach. That cross and that reproach were not figurative. Witness these gloomy labyrinths, fit home for the dead only, which nevertheless for years opened to shelter the living. Witness these names of martyrs, those words of despair. The walls carry down to later ages the words of grief, of ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... madam," said the elder Devlin, "you are mistaken in the meaning of that text, which has a figurative sense, and has no reference to corn, pumpkins, rye, or any other crop that your ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... accounts the Deity brings into being personages who continue the work of world-making and such entities as mind, time and desire are produced before the material world. But everything in these creation stories is figurative. The faithful are not perplexed by the discrepancies in the inspired narratives, and one can hardly imagine an Indian sect agitated by the question whether God made the world in ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... full of romantic charm * * * it possesses ingenuity of incident, a figurative designation of the unhallowed scenes in which unlicensed love accomplishes and wrecks faith ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... Jesus. Isaac is an only son, is offered in sacrifice, has secured for him a bride in a most unusual manner. This again in many ways illustrates the attitude and work of the Savior. But Joseph is perhaps more highly figurative of the Redeemer. His being hated and cast out by his brethren is like the rejection of Jesus; the way his wicked brethren came to him in their extremity and received forgiveness and sustenance suggest how a sinner finds mercy and life in Jesus; his prosperity and honor ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... Thames. Setting the butt of his rifle on the ground and resting his hand upon the muzzle, the young Kentuckian now addressed the chieftain, not only speaking to him in his own language, but adopting the poetical and figurative style of expression peculiar ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... freely imparted to others, and his books he gladly lent. This is apparent in the Philobiblon; and his generous spirit warms his diction—not always chaste—into a fluent eloquence. His composition overflows with figurative expressions, yet the rude, ungainly form on which they are moulded deprive them of all claim to elegance or chastity; but while the homeliness of his diction fails to impress us with an idea of his versatility as a writer, his chatty anecdotal style rivets ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... evil, and less attributable to the visionary humour and weak judgment of the individual expositors, is the literal rendering of Scripture in passages, which the number and variety of images employed in different places to express one and the same verity, plainly mark out for figurative. And lastly, add to all these the strange—in all other writings unexampled—practice of bringing together into logical dependency detached sentences from books composed at the distance of centuries, nay, sometimes a millennium from each other, under different dispensations, and for different ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... little narrow lagunes, over which the high trees spread in vaulted cupolas almost impervious to the light of day, there dwells the powerful giant snake (Eunectes murinus, Wagl.), called by the Indians, in their figurative language, yacumaman, "mother of the waters." Stretched in listless repose, or winding round the stem of an old tree, bathing her tail in the cool lagune, she watches wistfully for the animals of the forest who come to the waters to quench their thirst. Whilst she gazes at her distant ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... must be understood in the figurative sense of the mantram. Generally speaking, the rivers of India, beginning with the thrice sacred Ganges, are dreadfully dirty, especially near villages ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... or scarified on the chest, sufficient to draw blood and cause pain, the natural accompaniments of his figurative death. He took his position opposite the singers, facing the pole, and dragging the skull by leather thongs which were merely fastened about his shoulders. During a later period, incisions were made in the breast or back, sometimes both, through ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... English for years and thought she knew it, and yet she found it difficult fully, to comprehend all the figurative phrases of this pleasing ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... particularly 1), "one of the most important rules of true rhetoric," "that there is nothing beautiful except that which is true; which would take away from discourse a multitude of vain ornaments and false thoughts;" and 2) the doctrine that "the figurative style commonly expresses, with the things, the emotions which we experience in conceiving or speaking of them," and hence in the light of the adjustment of feeling to the situation "we may judge the use which ought ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... is reduced to nothing—that all is illusion, appearance, dream; that the moral metempsychosis is only the figurative sense of the physical metempsychosis, or the successive movement of the elements of bodies which perish not, but which, having composed one body, pass when that is dissolved, into other mediums and form other combinations. The soul is but the vital principle which results from ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... arms, bared almost to the shoulder, seemed designed as a sculptor's model rather than to wield the brush with which she scoured the paint and woodwork; but she thought not of sculpture except in the remote and figurative way of querying, with mind far absent from her work, how best she could carve their humble fortunes out of the unpromising material of the present and ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... to the Cross in "Science and Health," but the word is used generally in a figurative and sentimental way. Mrs. Eddy's cross is simply the pain of being misunderstood and criticised in the preaching and practice of Christian Science, though indeed the Cross of Jesus was also the outcome of hostilities and misunderstandings and a final ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... of taking the stick from a minister was less figurative in Queen Anne's days than now. The white wand of office was carried before every Cabinet Minister, not only in his public ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... own State consisted of two dissolute bears holding up the head of a dead and gone cask between them and making the pertinent remark, "UNITED, WE STAND—(hic!)—DIVIDED, WE FALL." It was always too figurative for the author of this book. But the Mormon crest was easy. And it was simple, unostentatious, and fitted like a glove. It was a representation of a GOLDEN BEEHIVE, with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "That's only figurative. Polly, why have you gone back to braids and bows? You look very infantile for a real ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... incomprehensible, but also distinct and permanent in spite of its metamorphoses, declares, on the strength of the sensations and ideas which this essence suggests to it, that the NOT-ME is extended and impenetrable. Impenetrability is a figurative term, an image by which thought, a division of the absolute, pictures to itself material reality, another division of the absolute; but this impenetrability, without which matter disappears, is, in the last analysis, only a spontaneous judgment of inward sensation, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... conduct which has been pursued. It is said and believed through Paris literally, that the Count de Montmorin, "pleuroit comme un enfant," when obliged to sign the counter-declaration. Considering the phrase as figurative, I believe it expresses the distress of his heart. Indeed, he has made no secret of his individual opinion. In the meantime, the Principal goes on with a firm and patriotic spirit, in reforming the cruel abuses of the government, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... on the surface of a mirror. Such concrete character, however, Greek poet or sculptor, from time to time, impressed on the vague world of popular belief and usage around him; and in the Bacchanals of Euripides we have an example of the figurative or imaginative power of poetry, selecting and combining, at will, from that mixed and floating mass, weaving the many-coloured threads together, blending the various phases of legend—all the light and shade of the [54] subject—into a shape, substantial and firmly set, through ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... of the Aryan peoples in their ancient home was full of imagination. They never ceased to wonder at what they heard and saw in the sky and upon the earth. Their language was highly figurative, and so the things which struck them with wonder, and which they could not explain, were described under forms and names which were familiar to them. Thus the thunder was to them the bellowing of a mighty beast ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... conventional art is, that it puts no bounds to the fancy of the designer. It is a figurative language in which he may get away from commonplace statement. What has always seemed to me a very logical employment of convention appears in the Punch cartoons of Sir John Tenniel and Mr. Lindley Sambourne. Even ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... images and figures have also been received in the language of the vulgar, so natural it is for men to be sensible of the wonderful art that fills all nature. Poetry did only ascribe to inanimate creatures the art and design of the Creator, who does everything in them. From the figurative language of the poets those notions passed into the theology of the heathens, whose divines were the poets. They supposed an art, a power, or a wisdom, which they called numen, in creatures the most destitute of understanding. With them great rivers were gods; ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... for regarding the whole Man as compounded of BODY, SOUL, and SPIRIT. The Farewell Address, in a lower and figurative sense, is likewise so compounded. If these were divisible and distributable, we might, though not with full and exact propriety, allot the SOUL to Washington, and the SPIRIT to Hamilton. The elementary body is Washington's, also; but Hamilton has ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... which she had for so many years beheld him, that she dismissed, as typically chimerical "notions," the speculations of her doctor—also a lifelong friend of her husband's—as to what Judge Emery might have become if—the doctor spoke in his usual highly figurative and fantastic jargon—"he had not had to hurry so with that wheel in his cage." "When I first knew Nat Emery," he once said, "he was sitting up till all hours reading Les Miserables, and would knock you down if you didn't bow your head at the mention of Thackeray. He might have liked music, ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... felicity to the righteous, in the future world, though the precise nature of that felicity may not be defined, are illustrated by every image that can swell the imagination: while the misery of the 'lost', in its unutterable intensity, though the language that describes it is all necessarily figurative, is there exhibited as resulting chiefly, if not wholly, from the withdrawment of the 'light of God's countenance', and a banishment from his 'presence!'—best comprehended in this world, by reflecting on the desolations which would instantly follow the loss ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... upon the impressive procession with pride unutterable; very soon I also should walk two and two in the sunshine, my dome crowned with figurative laurels, cracking scientific witticisms with my fellow inmates, or, perhaps, squeezing the pretty fingers of ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... difficulty is rather within than without us, it arises from a lack of will power. But hard or easy, these occasions must nevertheless be removed. Let the suffering entailed be what it may, the eye must be plucked out, the arm must be lopped off, to use the Saviour's figurative language, if in no other way the soul can be saved from sin. Better to leave your father's house, better to give up your very life, than to damn your soul for all eternity. But extremes are rarely called for; small sacrifices often cost more than great ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... that class of myths which have been dramatized in ritual, or, to put it otherwise, which have been performed as magical ceremonies for the sake of producing those natural effects which they describe in figurative language. A myth is never so graphic and precise in its details as when it is, so to speak, the book of the words which are spoken and acted by the performers of the sacred rite. That the Norse story of Balder was a ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... Philo, notably Professor Drummond,[219] have examined his words more carefully and studied them in relation to their context; and they have shown how, judged in this critical fashion, the personality of the Logos is only figurative. It is, indeed, probable that certain extreme passages, where the Logos is presented most explicitly as a separate Deity, are due to Christological interpolation. The Church Fathers found in the popular belief in the Divine Word a remarkable support of the Trinity, ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... word to thwart her sisters: she even went so far as to explain to Mr. Trinder that they would not have to carry parcels, as Phillis meant to hire a boy. She had no idea that this magnanimous speech was in a figurative manner the last straw that broke the camel's back. Mr. Trinder pushed back his chair hastily, made some excuse that his train must be due, and beat a retreat an hour before the time, unable to pursue such a painful subject ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... nineteen-twentieths would take care of themselves. The bacilli are not the only ones who can be numbered in their billions. If there are billions of them there are billions of us. We are not mere units—scarcely even individuals—except in a broad and figurative sense. We are confederacies of billions upon billions of little, living animalcules which we call cells. These cells of ours are no Sunday-school class. They are old and tough and cunning to a degree. They are war-worn veterans, carrying the scars of a score of victories written ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... notwithstanding, was a good Catholic, or at least pretended to be one, and certainly desired to become such, but it appeared to her that the Scriptures were too literally and harshly explained, supposing that all we read of everlasting torments were figurative threatenings, and the death of Jesus Christ an example of charity, truly divine, which should teach mankind to love God and each other; in a word, faithful to the religion she had embraced, she acquiesced in all its professions of faith, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered." There is no modern writer who possesses so large a profusion of figurative language. His works are also full of the pithiest and most memorable sayings, ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... in society, such as heart disease. Such handicaps, however, are limited to relatively few of a population. The raison d'etre of the greater number of minor mental inefficiencies the psychanalyst puts down to handicaps in the unconscious. Again he mistakes figurative imagery for explanations. The conception of endocrine diversity in the make-up supplies us with the rationale of the vast majority of organic and functional defects and inferiorities, in short, subnormalities of any ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... heaven, was believed to have united himself in marriage with Gaea, the earth; and a moment's reflection will show what a truly poetical, and also what a logical idea this was; for, taken in a figurative sense, {12} this union actually does exist. The smiles of heaven produce the flowers of earth, whereas his long-continued frowns exercise so depressing an influence upon his loving partner, that she no longer decks herself in bright and festive robes, but responds with ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... of biological equality of the two sexes must use the word in a figurative sense, not ignoring the differentiation of the two sexes, as extreme feminists are inclined to do. To this differentiation ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... hear everything," he interposed quickly; for an idea came to him—if Mrs. Dickson had to hear the tale she should hear it from him, with certain little embellishments and figurative allusions, which would effectually destroy any chance Ailleen might have of making capital out ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... the moral side of life the Greek is, of course, supreme. It is hardly too much to say that intellectual progress has only pursued a steady and consistent course when men's minds have been in touch with the Greek. The sense of beauty in all the arts, intellectual and figurative, was the prerogative of the Hellenic communities, or, rather, of Athens, for only in Athens was perfection in the arts achieved. The Greek was the best, as he was the first, director and teacher. It is true that the artists of Florence, Umbria, Lombardy, and Venice equalled the ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... speculations will deal. For this argument that he will perhaps be able to buy up the architect and the tailor and the decorator and so forth is merely preliminary to the graver issue. It is just possible that the shareholder may, to a very large extent—in a certain figurative sense, at least—buy up much of the womankind that would otherwise be available to constitute those severe, capable, and probably by no means unhappy little establishments to which our typical engineers will tend, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... it; and now, to make things quite pleasant, there descended upon us a thicker fog than I should have thought the atmosphere capable of sustaining; it seemed to hang in solid festoons from the masts and spars. To say that you could not see your hand, ceased almost to be any longer figurative; even the ice was hid—except those fragments immediately adjacent, whose ghastly brilliancy the mist itself could not quite extinguish, as they glimmered round the vessel like a circle of luminous phantoms. The perfect stillness of the sea and sky added very much to the solemnity ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... "Sundus," a kind of brocade (low Lat. brocare to figure cloth), silk worked in high relief with gold and silver. The idea is figurative meaning it was hung outside and inside with fine stuff, like the Ka'abah, the "Bride of Meccah." The "lords" means ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... is harder, tighter, more closely packed with figurative meaning than perhaps any of Swinburne's later verse. It is less fluid, less 'exuberant and effusive' (to accept two epithets of his own in reference to the verse of Atalanta in Calydon). He is ready to be harsh when harshness is required, abrupt for some sharp effect; ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... act as his messenger, and in general to be subject to his directions. It gave to the aid the office of chief and rendered probable his election as the successor of his principal after the decease of the latter. In their figurative language these aids of the sachems were styled "Braces in the Long House," which ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... "The Lyon Campaign," by Eugene F. Ware, pp. 324-339.) I have read somewhere this saying of Bonaparte's: "An army of deer commanded by a lion is better than an army of lions commanded by a deer." While that statement is only figurative in its nature, it is, however, a strong epigrammatic expression of the fact that the commander of soldiers in battle should be, above all other things, a forcible, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... been dispelled from every stage and process of the social training of men. Things long hidden appeared discovered with an amazing clearness and nakedness. These men who had awakened, laughed dissolvent laughs, and the old muddle of schools and colleges, books and traditions, the old fumbling, half-figurative, half-formal teaching of the Churches, the complex of weakening and confusing suggestions and hints, amidst which the pride and honor of adolescence doubted and stumbled and fell, became nothing but a curious and pleasantly faded memory. "There must ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... than he who has none, though in his hand may be all the aces of the others, diamonds included. But, lest I go too far beyond the analogy—as I might ignorantly do, being unskilled in the many games of cards—I will drop the figurative.... Keep your heart for faith, love, friendship, for God, your country, and truth. And where the heart is given, it should be unreservedly. Its allegiance is too often withheld where it is due, yet this is better than a half-way loyalty; there should be ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... occurrences in his life corresponding to such traits as tortured limbs and burning thirst, pierced hands and parted garments, has driven some critics to the hypothesis that we have here a psalm of the exile describing either actual sufferings inflicted on some unknown confessor in Babylon, or in figurative language the calamities of Israel there. But the Davidic origin is confirmed by many obvious points of resemblance with the psalms which are indisputably his, and especially with those of the Sauline period, while the difficulty of finding historical facts answering ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... conclude, they must all act according to their distinct and peculiar characters. If the persons represented were to speak upon the stage, it would follow, of necessity, that the expressions should be lofty, figurative, and majestical: but the nature of an opera denies the frequent use of these poetical ornaments; for vocal music, though it often admits a loftiness of sound, yet always exacts an harmonious sweetness; or, to distinguish yet more justly, the recitative part of the opera requires a more masculine ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... his countenance, and his whole person. Having somewhat recovered himself, instead of following his discourse, inspired with a divine impulse, he declared to his audience the encounter, and shock of the two navies, but in a mysterious and figurative manner. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden |
