"Literal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with far-reaching results. The authorities of the ports ... were impressed with a sense of their responsibilities; not only did they organize special arrangements for the inspection of ships from infected countries, but they also recognized the necessity of setting their own houses in order in a literal sense, and many of them for the first time displayed activity in providing pure water, efficient sewerage, and a prompt removal of nuisances.... The communications of the Board's expert with the local authorities and their officers ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... take counsel with her about certain projects that he had in his mind. This lady, speaking one day to our new soldier of Christ, said to him, "Would that the Lord Jesus might appear to you some day!" Ignatius, wondering at her words, understood in a literal sense, and asked her, "What would He look like if He were to ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola
... of J. G.'s head, and the back of his neck. Sary longed for sight of the woman horse doctor, and when she essayed to crowd in and usurp Ellen's point of vantage, there ensued a war of extermination which ended in the literal ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... disclose that background is welcome. It has to be noted, however, that though many learned Japanese commentators have sought to rationalize the events described in the Records and the Chronicles, the great bulk of the nation believes in the literal accuracy of these works as profoundly as the great bulk of Anglo-Saxon people believes in the Bible, its ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... wished-for return to her mother, and the beginning with her of a new life of industry and privation. Summoned at last to her grandmother's bedside, and kneeling to ask for reconciliation, she is forced to stay there, and to listen to the most cruel and literal account of her mother's life, its early errors, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... which merely addresses the eye; it does not in any particular exercise the moral sense. And second, painting, in common with all the other arts, implies the dangerous quality of imagination. A man of imagination is never moral; he outsoars literal demarcations and reviews life under too many shifting lights to rest content with the invidious distinctions of ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... confessedly a meritorious servant, for disobedience of orders, although his case was not a great deal more than a question by whom the orders were to be obeyed.[12] Yet the Directors were so sensible of the necessity of a punctual and literal obedience, that, conceiving their orders went to the parties who were to obey, as well as to the act to be done, they proceeded with a strictness that, in all cases except that of their peculiar government, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Bruno de Malpas would even have thought of alluding to the literal and primary meaning of the words. From the first moment of their joint existence, Jerusalem and Rome have been enemies and rivals. Not content with, so far as in her lay, blotting out the very name ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... preamble to this statute went so far as to renounce all right even of defensive arms against the king; and much observation has been made with regard to a concession esteemed so singular. Were these terms taken in their full literal sense, they imply a total renunciation of limitations to monarchy, and of all privileges in the subject, independent of the will of the sovereign. For as no rights can subsist without some remedy, still ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... a whole, is the poem both of Personality and of Democracy; and, it may be added, of American nationalism. It is par excellence the modern poem. It is distinguished also by this peculiarity— that in it the most literal view of things is continually merging into the most rhapsodic or passionately abstract. Picturesqueness it has, but mostly of a somewhat patriarchal kind, not deriving from the "word-painting" of the litterateur; a certain echo of the old Hebrew poetry ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... astonished when informed by disinterested spectators that they ranged from twelve to fifteen years. Nothing, in fact, could astonish me after learning that the horses in Iceland are fed during the winter on dried fish. This is a literal fact. Owing to the absence of grain and the scarcity of grass, it becomes necessary to keep life in the poor animals during the severest months of the season by giving them the refuse of the fisheries; and, what is very surprising, they relish it in preference ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... is the proudest designation of the German Kaiser. "Little Father" is alike the literal meaning of Attila, the name of the far-famed leader of the "Huns," in the dark ages of Europe, and of batyushka, the affectionate term by which the peasant of Russia speaks of ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... Thorpe's meditative comment. "How they shoot up! Why I was thinking she was a little girl." "She never will be tall, I'm afraid," said the literal mother. "She favours her father's family. But Alfred is more of a Thorpe. I'm sorry you missed seeing them last summer—but of course they didn't stop long with me. This was no place for them—and they had a good many invitations to visit schoolfellows and friends ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... 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 ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... Press," the last book printed at the Kelmscott Press, contains a few errors in the "Bibliography." These errors have been allowed to stand in reprinting the "Note" here, in order that the reprint shall be a literal one. ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... only a few of many. The Memoires of Retz far surpass the rest not only in their historical interest, but in their literary excellence. Arranging facts and dates so that he might superbly figure in the drama designed for future generations, he falsifies the literal truth of things; but he lays bare the inner truth of politics, of life, of character, with incomparable mastery. He exposes the disorder of his conduct in early years with little scruple. The origins ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... Thus, for instance, "two men" become amplified verbally into "man two individual," or, as the Chinaman puts it, in pidgin English, "two piecey man." For in this respect Chinese resembles Japanese, though in very little else, and pidgin English is nothing but the literal translation of the Chinese idiom into Anglo-Saxon words. The necessity for such elaborate qualification arises from the excessive simplicity of the Japanese nouns. As we have seen, the noun is so indefinite a generality that simply to multiply it by a number cannot possibly produce ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... military power of the others; and so the Socialist movement was a world movement, an organization of all mankind to establish liberty and fraternity. It was the new religion of humanity—or you might say it was the fulfillment of the old religion, since it implied but the literal application of ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... of poetry of its own-and, in evident earnest, attributes its success to the few words of commendation with which we had prefaced it in this paper.—It will throw light on his sane character to give a literal copy of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... book printed at Amsterdam, written to make out no case whatever, and tiresome enough in its literal dictionary-like minuteness, scattered up and down the pages of which is full authority for my marquis. This is "Mercier's Tableau de Paris." Rousseau is the authority for the peasant's shutting up his house when he had a bit of meat. The ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... me, that the true simple word to represent the Greek, and the most literal as well by which to translate it, is the verb mirror—when the sentence, so far, would run thus: 'But we all, with unveiled face, mirroring the glory of ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... that sad Procession, it may surely be expected that we should lay it to Heart, so as to be quicken'd and improved by the View. "Have my Children died in the Morning of their Days, and can I promise myself that I shall see the Evening of mine? Now perhaps may I say, in a more literal Sense than ever, The Graves are ready for me[h]. One of my Family, and some of us may add, the Firft-born of it, is gone as it were to take Possession of the Sepulchre in all our Names; and ere long I shall lie down ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... affirmed that benevolence is not an ultimate fact, but an emanation from self-love, through the association of ideas, it has been fancied that these writers dispute the existence of disinterested benevolence or sympathy. Now, the selfish system, in its literal import, is flatly inconsistent with obvious facts, but this is not the system contended for by the writers in question. Still, this distortion has been laid hold of by the opponents of utility, and maintained to be a necessary part of that system; hence the supporters of utility are styled ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... vocabulary. Associated Words: glossary, glossarist, glossography, glossology, glossologist, lexicology, lexicologist, etymology, etymologist, etymologize, neology, lexicography, terminology, paronomasia, pun, punning, onomatopoeoea, syncope, syncopation, literal, literally, literalism, transliteration, verbal, verbalist, verbalism, battology, logomachy, logomachist, verbarium, apocope, kyriology, metonomy, autonomasia, multiloquence, perissology, purism, purist, elision, polysynthesis, coin, coinage, apheresis, aphetic, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the commonplace, after all, it may have been that certain stars had already begun to sing while St. George sat staring at the little bowing flames of the juniper branches and Olivia was taking her tea. Then in came Mrs. Hastings, a very literal interfering goddess, and her bonnet was frightfully awry so that the parrot upon it looked shockingly coquettish and irreverent and lent to her dignity a flavour of ill-timed waggishness. But it must be admitted that Mrs. Hastings and everything that she wore were "les antipodes des graces." ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... blunder of Shakespeare's, but a mistake of Johnson's, who considers the passage alluded to in a more literal sense than the author intended it. Sir Proteus, it is true, had seen Silvia for a few moments; but though he could form from thence some idea of her person, he was still unacquainted with her temper, manners, and the qualities of her mind. He, therefore, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... had their reasons, and on the whole sound ones, for so regarding them. The educated classes had given up any honest and literal worship of the old gods. They were trying to excuse themselves for their lingering half belief in them, by turning them into allegories, powers of nature, metaphysical abstractions, as did Porphyry and ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... hardly less terrible than that from which the eight souls were saved of old, a destruction in which the wrath of man had become as broad as the earth and as merciless as the sea, and who saw the actual and literal edifice of the Church raked up, itself like an ark in the midst of the waters. No marvel if with the surf of the Adriatic rolling between them and the shores of their birth, from which they were separated for ever, they should have ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... stronger, fiercer vocabulary than we ever need. In saying this I am not dodging the issue; I am stating a fact which rules in all historical interpretation. To make the phraseology of two thousand years before Christ the literal expression of the thought of two thousand years after Him is to be archaic beyond reason. Having grasped a principle, we phrase it in ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... and the imminent danger of famine and attack for many weeks. It sent its echoes down into the south-west part of the territories where the warlike Blackfeet confederacy had its centre. At each of these points, as at Prince Albert, the few Mounted Police that were on duty became a literal tower of strength. At Battleford, Inspector Morris, with his few men, organizing also a home guard, guarded nearly 400 women and children who sought refuge inside the stockade. And Constable Storer, riding out alone from that stockade, when all the wires were cut, though pursued for 60 miles, ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... doubt the prophet was thinking of the literal Jerusalem; but the city is ideal, as is shown by the bulwarks which defend, and by the qualifications which permit entrance. And so we must pass beyond the literalities of Palestine, and, as I think, must not apply the symbol to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Prescheurs ou Jacobins du Paris." La Monnaye says that the translation was made from the Latin of Cessoles, and was begun in the year 1347. It has not been printed.[10] The translation is considered a literal version of the ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... It would take the Border States and the control of the Mississippi, and worse than this, it would establish a war which would rage without intermission until we should be crushed, perhaps into literal tribute and vassalage. Every dispute arising from our entangled neighborhood—and these would be innumerable—would be determined with an insolence and a cruelty far surpassing any thing which we have heretofore experienced; and at every manifestation of unwillingness on our part to submit, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... matter of Mr. Lewisham's thoughts, and he was mechanically trying to keep the book open in three places at once, at the text, the notes, and the literal translation, while he turned up the vocabulary for ludibrium, when his attention, wandering dangerously near the top of the page, fell over the edge and escaped with incredible swiftness down ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... the glad tidings had been so published that "almost the whole city came together to hear the Word of God; when the Jews saw the multitudes they were filled with envy, and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming." Then the literal fulfilment of this prophetic Parable followed. "Paul and Barnabas waxed bold and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you; but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... Ruth, "that Laura is gone. She is very literal-minded. She might not understand that we could be hastily married and even lease a house, this way, and still be only ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... though they were circling above it in an airplane. As a result of the extraordinary advantage which the Austrians enjoy in this respect, it has been found necessary to screen certain of the roads not only on both sides but above, so that in places the traffic passes for miles through literal tunnels of matting. This road masking is a simple form of the art of concealment to which the French have given the name "camouflage," which has been developed to an extraordinary degree on the Western Front. That the Italians have not made a greater ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... and tried to exalt reason in certain matters, in civil and religious affairs, where they took the Old Testament as affording literal and minute directions for all sorts of human actions for all time, they could allow little liberty of opinion. This was apparent when into this theocratic state came Roger Williams, afterward the founder ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... men of the Revolution, was an enemy of the Church; but he was not an atheist. On the contrary he accepted in a very literal, dogmatic and zealous way the doctrines of Rousseau, his prophet not only in politics but in religion. To Robespierre the Hebertist cult of Reason was as gross blasphemy as it was to the most ardent Catholic, and the Jacobin leader ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... not consider it possible that the people of a century that saw the use of wireless, the airship, radium, and the X-ray could think intoxication with its literal poisoning funny, could make a stock humorous situation out of it, and could regard the habit-forming drug that caused ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... to hear not only of Brissot and his Friends of the Blacks, but by and by of a whole St. Domingo blazing skyward; blazing in literal fire, and in far worse metaphorical; beaconing the nightly main. Also of the shipping interest, and the landed-interest, and all manner of interests, reduced to distress. Of Industry every where manacled, bewildered; and only Rebellion thriving. Of sub-officers, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... here spoken of continued to be preserved in Hawkshead School, though the inscriptions were not brought down to our time. This, and other poems connected with Matthew, would not gain by a literal detail of facts. Like the Wanderer in 'The Excursion' this Schoolmaster was made up of several, both of his class and men of other occupations. I do not ask pardon for what there is of untruth in such verses, considered strictly as matters ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... to do is to guard yourself from growing rich and from growing old, and then the delight of Christmas is yours forever. It is not difficult; it is very simple; for even if years and riches come upon you in a literal way, you can by a little trying keep yourself young and poor in spirit. Then you can always rejoice with the innocent ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... This account of Henry Morgan's deeds at Maracaibo is taken from the narrative of John Esquemeling, but no attempt has been made to give a literal translation of his words. Morgan had passed through the Gulf of Venezuela, captured the town of Maracaibo and made his way through the narrow passage into the lake of the same name, where he captured and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... you are in error," said the literal Agatha, as she smoothed down Little Poll's skirts and twisted her ringlets into formal corkscrews. "Right THERE, you are in error, my dear. The reason I told Robert to marry you was because he said to me, when he suggested going after you to stay the night with ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... class-room tone. He was all brown like a leaf with Valley dust and sun and rain. The old cadet cap was older yet, the ancient boots as grotesquely large, the curious lift of his hand to Heaven no less curious than it had always been. He was as awkward, as hypochondriac, as literal, as strict as ever. Moreover, there should have hung about him the cloud of disfavour and hostility raised by that icy march to Romney less than three months ago. And yet—and yet! What had happened since then? Not much, indeed. The return of the Stonewall Brigade to Winchester, Loring's representations, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Governor, a fat, swarthy personage in the full dress uniform of a general, received us in a haughty manner, and cross-questioned us in the most minute and tedious manner. Dennis somewhat puzzled him by the style of his answers, which were anything but literal translations of what Captain Hassall said. The result, however, was favourable, and we were allowed to go wherever we chose about the city, and to get the necessary repairs of our ships executed, and to obtain all the stores and provisions ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... very well," my literal mind continues, "If I were in Greenwich I might be in yesterday. Strange things happen in Greenwich. But I know as sure as I am living that I am here, now, in to-day, June 7, and that I took the sun here, now, to-day, June 7. Therefore, I must correct the ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... what a privilege to be allowed to run out on the field and fetch the nose-guard or useless bandage, thrown down haphazard, with the confidence that he, the Big Man, was there to fetch and guard! Then he was permitted to share their studies, to read slowly from handy, literal translations, his head cushioned on the Egghead's knee, while the lounging group swore genially at Pius AEneas or sympathized with Catiline. He shagged elusive balls and paraded the bats at shoulder-arms. He ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... has been the oldest in the office, but, as he feels, has not yet sufficient influence or force of character to lead his countrymen at critical times. He is, however, a humble child of God, and growing in grace as well as experience. John has a little speech to make, and here is the literal translation of it:—"Sometimes when we are busy, we do not always use the Scriptures daily. Mostly we do. The distress of our body often causes us to seek the Word of God. If the everlasting Gospel were well considered by all, there would be ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... concerning our Lord's life and death, which did not have an actual fulfillment; and does not this show us how we are to treat the prophecies which foretell His future glory and second advent? They too shall have a literal and exact fulfillment. ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... to me a very happy period of my life in reminding me of that labor of love. You perhaps imagine from this that I understood German, which I then did not; my acquaintance with the German drama existing only through very admirably executed literal French translations, which formed part of an immense collection of plays, the dramatic literature of Europe in innumerable volumes, which was one of my favorite ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... comfort his friends who are left? As we read over the story of the sorrow of the Bethany home we find the answer to our question. You say, "He brought back their dead, thus comforting them with the literal undoing of the work of death and grief. If only he would do this now, in every case where love cries to him, that would be comfort indeed." But we must remember that the return of Lazarus to his home was only a temporary restoration. He came ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... that one. "Queen Elizabeth told me," was the literal truth, but somehow it didn't sound like it. And he couldn't find another answer to give ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... paper by Jouglet in the Comptes Rendus, of which the other references are abstracts. The account in Dingier is a literal translation of the original paper, and the note in the Central Zeitung is abbreviated sufficiently to be of no value. The details are briefly ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... a literal prediction of what Hood actually did. It was dictated by a clear military foresight, whether of Grant or Rawlins. How far world-wide approval of Sherman's plans after their brilliant success may ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... this did George Muller ever resort to the lot: once at a literal parting of the ways when he was led by it to take the wrong fork of the road, and afterward in a far more important matter, but with a like result: in both cases he found he had been misled, and henceforth abandoned all such chance methods of determining the ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... minutes. His speech was excessively ingenious, as well as eloquent, and directed to move the sympathy of his hearers as much as possible, without any deviation from literal truth. He said that it was true that he had tried to escape to France, but that his motive was not treasonable; he knew the King to be justly incensed, and thought that from La Rochelle he might negotiate his pardon. What he said about ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... is only now and then that critical hints have been given. In the discussion of phenomena of minor importance it has been impossible to avoid the oratio obliqua of exposition; but, wherever practicable, we have let the philosophers themselves develop their doctrines and reasons, not so much by literal quotations from their works, as by free, condensed reproductions of their leading ideas. If the principiant view of the forces which control the history of philosophy, and of the progress of modern philosophy, expressed ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... away, perforce, in the evening-time from all this lovely landscape, from the pure air, from the cascades, the rocks, and the ferns, from everything agreeable to the senses, to the most literal, shameful, wallowing in the mire. We have spoken, so far, only of the scene; let add a word in very truth, about 'man and his dwelling-place.' How shall we describe it? We are at the Hotel de la Poste, and we are housed like pigs; we (some ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... disgusting. Your sister will notice nothing unless you tell her. But I was candid with you—I always am. I told you last night that I had no scruples. You thought it was a woman's exaggeration; it was the literal truth! If a man drinks, or is vicious, so long as he doesn't hurl the furniture at my head, or behave himself offensively to me, what does it matter to me! If he drinks so that he can't paint, and he wants to paint, well!—then he seems to me another instance of ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... receipt is a literal copy of the original, now in my possession. It purports to have been written with the mixture it specifies.) * * * * ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... Java." As I have embodied in the text some extracts from Raffles' translations, it may be well to say a word as to the value of these versions. What Vreede says of a particular passage is true of these renderings in general: "They are not literal translations, but the spirit of the work is ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... Islay. His four volumes, Popular Tales of the West Highlands (Edinburgh, 1860-2, recently republished by the Islay Association), contain some 120 folk- and hero-tales, told with strict adherence to the language of the narrators, which is given with a literal, a rather too literal, English version. This careful accuracy has given an un-English air to his versions, and has prevented them attaining their due popularity. What Campbell has published represents only a tithe of what he collected. At ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... stored with a treasure of Greek learning: history and fable, philosophy and grammar, were alike at his command; and he read the poems of Homer in the schools of Florence. It was from his explanation that Boccace composed [* and transcribed a literal prose version of the Iliad and Odyssey, which satisfied the thirst of his friend Petrarch, and which, perhaps, in the succeeding century, was clandestinely used by Laurentius Valla, the Latin interpreter. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... is fairly literal, and Malleson (a clergyman) has taken pains with the scientific portions of the work and added the chapter headings, he has made some unfortunate emendations mainly concerning biblical references, and has added a few 'improvements' of his ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... church, but on which (especially in the dwellings of the clergy) there is a better dinner than usual. I never knew man or woman in all my life who on a Fast-day refrained from eating. And quite right, too. The growth of common sense has gradually abolished literal fasting. In a Oriental climate, abstinence from food may give the mind the preeminence over the body, and so leave the mind better fitted for religious duties. In our country, literal fasting would have just the contrary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... that time till 130 B.C. by the translation of the rest, the whole being in reality the achievement of several independent workmen, who executed their parts, some with greater some with less ability and success; it is often literal to a painful degree, and it swarms with such pronounced Hebraisms, that a pure Greek would often fail to understand it. It was the version current everywhere at the time of the planting of the Christian Church, and the numerous quotations in the New ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Great indeed was his inheritance, for he came into possession of the wonderful sword Angurvadel, on the blade of which were mystic runes [Footnote: Runes, letters or characters of ancient Scandinavian alphabets. The literal meaning of rune, a secret or mystery, is explained by the fact that at first these symbols could be read only by a few.] dull in times of peace, but fiery red in war; the magic ring or armlet made by Vaulund the smith, and the ship Ellida, built in the shape of a dragon ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... asserting a proprietorship over his soul and body that was at once more grim and more ridiculous than anything in Mr Venus's rare collection. That light-haired gentleman followed close upon their heels, at least backing up Mr Boffin in a literal sense, if he had not had recent opportunities of doing so spiritually; while Mr Boffin, trotting on as hard as he could trot, involved Silas Wegg in frequent collisions with the public, much as a pre-occupied blind man's dog may be seen ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the chief impression made on a near observer. In politics the Americans are first and foremost jurists, and indeed in a narrower and more literal sense than the English Imperialists, with whom, according to their old traditions, justice only serves as a cloak for their political ambitions. I cannot judge how far the Americans have become full-blooded Imperialists ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... entirely a new Undertaking, and might perhaps, if properly encouraged, be carried on with other Latin Poets, we shall only observe, that the utmost Care hath been taken to preserve the Spirit and true Sense of the Author, and where we have been obliged to deviate, we have given the literal ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... A literal prose translation of Homer, by Mr. T. A. Buckley, has just appeared in London. No prose version will cause any just notion of the spirit of Homer. Of the half dozen metrical translations published recently, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... have been wholly uninfluenced—being a woman of an alert mind—by the controversy which, in the seventies and eighties, was raging about a pretty crass and literal materialism, and her writings probably reflect—with a good deal of indirection—that controversy. Here is a possible key to a good many things which are otherwise puzzling enough. She is, in her own fashion, the defender of an idealistic interpretation of reality and experience. Now ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... the use of such plain speaking. He allows Teucer to call Hector a dog, but apologizes in a note. "This is literal from the Greek," he says, "and I have ventured it;" though he quotes Milton's "dogs of hell" to back himself with a precedent. But he cannot quite stand Homer's downright comparison of Ajax to an ass, and speaks of him ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... prefer being shot to being clubbed to death, and he bore dangerous malice for a long time, until he learned what everybody else knew, that Macfarlan always did what he thought he ought, and never spoke anything but the literal truth, whether it hurt ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... will!" she exclaimed. "But it is the will of God, and let that be sufficient to me. I will go with Master Foster as unresistingly as ever did a literal sacrifice. He is a father at least; and will have decency, if not humanity. For thee, Varney, were it my latest word, thou art an equal ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... for his first friend a comrade who knew exactly his own limits. Guynemer could save Jean Krebs from his excess of literal honesty by showing him the enchantment of his own ecstasies, but Jean Krebs furnished the motor for Guynemer's ambitious young wings. Without the technical lessons of Jean Krebs, could Guynemer later have got into the aviation field at ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... for you. The Greek hymns are all in rhythmical prose, like the Te Deum and the Gloria. A literal translation can be sung as well as the originals. You will then enter into the mind and spirit of the ancient Eastern Church before the ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... of her telling me her secrets that for the moment my indignation did not come to a head,—my indignation, I mean, at her accusing poor Lady Emily (and even the girl herself) of having "trapped" our friend. Later I said to myself that I supposed she was within her literal right in abusing her rival, if she was trying sincerely to give him up. "I don't know anything about his having been hunted down," I said; "but this I do know, Lady Vandeleur, I assure you, that if he should throw Joscelind ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James
... dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Cybele, built while the Roman Empire was yet heathen, and while Constantinople was still called by the name of Byzantium. It is well known that the superstition of the Egyptians—vulgarly gross in its literal meaning as well as in its mystical interpretation, and peculiarly the foundation of many wild doctrines,—was disowned by the principles of general toleration, and the system of polytheism received by Rome, and was excluded by repeated ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... caricature of his race, and by dint of much practice, added to a naturally alert mind, he became astonishingly ingenious in the torture of that honest but unimaginative gentleman whom he considered his best friend. He achieved the most surprising expressions by the mere literal translation of French idiom, and he could at any time bring Hartley to a crimson agony by calling him "my dear "'before other men, whereas at the equivalent "mon cher" the Englishman would doubtless never, as the phrase goes, have ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... some ways. The people about them were gross and unwashed and stupid, but they were human. There was none of that diabolical feeling of terror all about. There were no strained, fear haunted faces upon the deck reserved for deck passengers and other cattle. The talk was ungrammatical and literal and of the earth. The women were stolid-faced and reserved. But when the long rows of hammocks were slung out in the open air, in the casual fashion of sleeping arrangements in the back-country of all South ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... breaking point. But I emphatically dispute his assumption that the matter was a simple one. It was not the saintly, single-minded and sweet-natured C.O.'s of Christopher Sterling's type that made the chief difficulty. There were few of this literal interpretation and heroic texture. The real difficulty was created by men of a very different character and in much greater numbers, sincere in varying degrees, but deliberately, passionately and unscrupulously obstructive, bent on baulking the national will and making anything ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... volcanoes to powder magazines, which are things that sparks do set off. Any one with even a moderate amount of what I may call mental agility would have followed me without any difficulty, and refrained from asking your very foolish question. But it is difficult to be literal enough to please you. What I ought to have said, what I would have said if I had realised at the moment that I was talking to you, is this. We are living the kind of life comparable to that of the people whose cottages are built ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... volumes of the Protestant Bible, amidst enthusiastic cheers for the Catholic religion, the immaculate Virgin Mary, and the High Priest Leo XIII.—cheers raised spontaneously by the Catholic people." [Footnote: Literal ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... this word [Hebrew: 'iyzebel] might, without any great forcing of the literal sense, imply "the undefiled," [Greek: Amiautos]; and this conjecture is supported by comparing 2 Kings, ix. 37. with the same verse in the Targum of Jonathan. They ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... the Mythus generally; still they are truly everywhere, not only in the Italian Sea, but also in the sea of life, and they appear not only to the professional sailor but to every human navigator. Are literal rocks passed by putting wax into the ears of the crew and by tying the captain to the mast? Surely some ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... wishes to state emphatically that he has authority for every single bit of Folk-lore recorded. Very often his work was merely that of a translator, for most of his information, derived from the people, was spoken in Welsh, but he has given in every instance a literal rendering of the narrative, just as he heard it, without embellishments or additions of any ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... You mustn't be so literal about everything. I mean let's not become baggy-minded. Take Flora again. Flora was her class poetess and I don't believe she has a literary thought or a book in her head now except her account book. Let us improve ourselves, Albert. Read evenings and subscribe to ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... therewith, these passionate joys of poor mediaeval humanity are such as we should contemplate with sympathy only and respect, even when the miracle is conceived and felt in the grossest, least spiritual manner. That act of material assimilation, that feeding off the very Godhead in most literal manner, as described in the hymn to the Most Holy Sacrament, was symbolic of the return from exile of the long-persecuted instincts of mankind. It meant that, spiritually or grossly, each according to his nature, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... commonly desirous, and their interest certainly requires it, that the peasant who, in a literal sense, sustains the heat and burden of the day, and pays so great a proportion of the national taxes, should meet with favour and encouragement. But the kind and good intentions of princes are too often defeated by the insatiable ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... pagan mysteries into lower and more literal forms, the Ivy preserved two meanings. It was already the vine of life, and the early Christians laid it in the coffins of their departed, as the emblem of a new life in Christ.[4] It had hung upon the limbs of naked nymphs, convulsed in passionate orgies, as a type of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... which had been translated from the Latin at the end of the fifteenth century, 'human beings are mere puppets, inhabiting the great fabric of mediaeval thought and mediaeval institution.... It was the work of the Renaissance to recover the literal and obvious sense of human life, as it was the work of the closely-allied Reformation to recover the ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Scott[164] and Mr Gosse;[165] Laxdaela has been treated as it deserves in the longest and nearly the finest section of Mr Morris's Earthly Paradise;[166] and the same writer with Dr Magnusson has given a literal translation ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Dome of Auvergne. But the life of Mortain as Mortain is, or rather as Mortain, with its counts and its canons, once was, began at a lower point, at a point lower than the town itself. The Moretolian akropolis, like some others, was not an akropolis in the literal sense, for the good reason that the point of most value for military purposes was not the most lofty. The windings of the little stream allow of the projection of a bold peninsular rock, joined by a kind of isthmus to the main hill on which the town stands. Here stood the ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... dips deep into the promise of God to Abraham and brings forth beautiful teaching which shows that, to him, God's promise to Abraham was spiritual as well as material, that there was to be a spiritual seed as well as literal seed, and that "faith" is as potent as natural birth in making men children of Abraham. Also in these verses Abraham is made the "father of us all," even of Gentiles, which of course could not be true except ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... is, in a very literal and real sense, the creator-god in whom this world lives, moves and has its being; and he is the saviour-god who was born of a virgin nebula, and every winter descends into hell and rises from the dead (the southern solstice) by a new birth and ascends into heaven to ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... pretty and pleasant, but as to the literal value of the prediction, M. Jules Verne would be the best authority to consult. Poets are fond of that branch of science which, if the imaginative Frenchman gave it a name, he ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... [9] The literal "cooked," with no burlesque intention, was used of punitory burning quite early; but it is not certain that the transferred sense of cuire, "to pain," is not nearly or quite ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... September, we arrived at the Blackfoot crossing of the Bow River, one hundred and eighteen miles from where we forded the Red Deer River. The Bow River is a noble stream. The current is pretty rapid, but at this "ridge under the water" (which is the literal translation of the Blackfoot name for the ford) the bed of the river is pebbly and the footing consequently good. Though we found the water almost as deep as at the Red Deer River, yet under the guidance of Mr. French, a small trader who lives near the ford, we, without almost ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... in such terrible letters, for example, as those numbered 27, 35, 107, 255, and many others, sometimes seems to set human ingenuity at defiance. It would of course have been possible, by disentangling dove-tailed sentences and by giving the approximate meaning where the literal was impossible, to turn all this into fairly smooth English. But in such a process all the strength and individual character of the original would inevitably have been lost. What I have endeavoured to do is to indicate the diction which ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... all, the virtuoso was an amateur. In the literal sense the amateur loves the activities in which he engages, and in the figurative sense he remains independent of any Establishment. Not trained in any rigorous, prescribed discipline, he was not committed to any set doctrine. Furthermore, he was not restricted by the regulations which all ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... whiles managed to do fairly well in the Tripos, to finish a new and original translation of Quintilian, another of Petronius Arbiter and also a literal rendering into the English of the Memoirs of the ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol |
