"Allegorical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an allegorical representation of Peace. The number of figures necessary to form it is twenty. They are formed in six separate groups. The centre and principal group is a party of young ladies and gentlemen engaged in the merry dance. They are costumed in their holiday ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... Grail," one of the longest poems on this theme, there are countless adventures and journeys, "transformations of fair females into foul fiends, conversions wholesale and individual, allegorical visions, miracles, and portents. Eastern splendor and northern weirdness, angelry and deviltry, together with abundant fighting and quite a phenomenal amount of swooning, which seem to reflect a strange medley of Celtic, pagan, and mythological traditions, and ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... you are right," agreed Mr. Hichens. "The song is undoubtedly later than David, and was written as a Prothalamion for a royal bride. It is, as you say, exceedingly beautiful; but perhaps we had best confine our attention to its allegorical side. You probably do not guess ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Armine was a crank, but I do think he is an idealist. He considers Watts's allegorical pictures the greatest things in Art that have been done since Botticelli enshrined Purity in paint. In modern music Elgar's his man; in modern literature, Tolstoy. He loves those with ideals, even if their ideals ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Fame as an Actress in the AEneid, but the Part she acts is very short, and none of the most admired Circumstances in that Divine Work. We find in Mock-Heroic Poems, particularly in the Dispensary and the Lutrin [8] several Allegorical Persons of this Nature which are very beautiful in those Compositions, and may, perhaps, be used as an Argument, that the Authors of them were of Opinion, [such [9]] Characters might have a Place in an Epic Work. For my own part, I should be glad the Reader would think so, for the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... set in a flood of allegorical and fantastic absurdities, by which the fair domain of Heraldry was absolutely overwhelmed. Wild and strange speculations, in a truly vain philosophy, interwoven with distorted images of both the myths and the veritable records of classic antiquity, were either deduced from armorial blazonry, ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... the Japanese demonology. Here the physical replaces the philosophical; instead of principles we find allegorical personages, but they show just the same pleasing propensity ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... de France, even in this light I can recognise your charming, allegorical figures," he said with a smile. There were thirty notes—he counted them twice, for they were moist and very sticky. There was another paper. "This must be—" He rose to his feet and held the paper up towards the moon. "I can't read the writing," he murmured, "but I can see the figures—30,000. ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... of matter and translate him into the kingdom of light. According to the Gnostic teaching, Christ is one of these beings of light; he is one of the highest who appeared on earth, and is transformed into a mythical, allegorical being, with his human nature, his sufferings and death completely suppressed. The redeemed soul is then as a kind of angel, or ideal being, brought in triumph into the idealistic realm of light as soon as it has purified itself to the nature of a spirit, by means of penitence, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... the new railway station, of which we had already heard so much. This handsome structure, erected by the German Government at an enormous cost, had only been recently opened, and so great was the soreness of feeling excited by certain allegorical bas-reliefs decorating the faade that for many days after the opening of the station police-officers in plain clothes carefully watched the crowd of spectators, carrying off the more seditious to prison. To say ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... God's friendship, in which alone man's spiritual life consists. This is to be obtained by fixing the mind only on divine and heavenly things." We have next his two treatises, On the Inscriptions of the Psalms, and An Exposition of the sixth Psalm, full of allegorical and moral instructions. In the first of these, extolling the divine sentiments and instructions of those holy prayers, he says, that all Christians learned them, and thought that time lost in which they had them not in their mouths: even little children and old ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... he said, 'that ye take my words as other than allegorical. The lady Katharine may be spoken of as a king's mistress since in truth she were a fit mistress for a king, being fair, devout, learned, courteous, tall and sweet-voiced. But that she hath been kind to the King, God forbid ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... if the beholders fell into the trap and uttered exclamations of rapture at the 'Shepherdess' or the 'Madonna,' or whatever allegorical subject it happened to be, she would smile triumphantly and say-'Lady Wicketts!'—to all appearance enjoying the violent shock of incredulous amazement which her announcement invariably inflicted on all ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... lead, through God's grace and mercy manifested in Christ, to a perpetual union with Him. Hell, purgatory, and paradise give place and setting to the events of the drama. But the deeper meaning of the poem is allegorical. In a letter ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... of his life, but Browning filling in the bizarre outlines of his construction with appropriate psychological detail. Another symptom of decline in Browning's most characteristic kind of power is probably to be found in the play of symbolism which invests with an air of allegorical abstraction the "Tower" and the "Turf," and makes the whole poem, with all its prosaic realism, intelligibly regarded as a sort of ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... great purse by her side, and her fingers playing with the money, the black man in the bright vesture, Mr. Wordly-Wise-man and my Lord Hategood, Mr. Talkative, and Mrs. Timorous, all are actually existing beings to us. We follow the travellers through their allegorical progress with interest not inferior to that with which we follow Elizabeth from Siberia to Moscow, or Jeanie Deans from Edinburgh to London. Bunyan is almost the only writer who ever gave to the abstract the interest of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Roman physics and astronomy. In all forms of pantheism the knowledge of nature appears to be inseparable from that of God.[15] Art itself complied more and more with the tendency to express erudite ideas by subtle symbolism, and it represented in allegorical figures the relations of divine powers and cosmic forces, like the sky, the earth, the ocean, the planets, the constellations and the winds. The sculptors engraved on stone everything man thought and taught. In ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... have availed ourselves in the revision of the present chapter,[186] that Richard Doyle's first work was The Eglinton Tournament, or the Days of Chivalry Revived, which was published when he was only fifteen years old. Three years later he produced A Grand Historical, Allegorical, and Classical Procession, a humorous pageant which the same authority tells us combined "a curious medley of men and women who played a prominent part on the world's stage, bringing out into good-humoured relief the characteristic peculiarities of each." Apart from his talent, it was no doubt ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... splinters no smith can weld together—files them to dust, melts the dust, re-casts the sword and finishes it. Meantime Mime, working on, brews his poisonous broth, muttering to himself about his purpose. At the end Siegfried tests the sword and proves it true by splitting the anvil. All sorts of allegorical meanings may be found in this gigantic scene; but the plain meaning is that to a hero, unique, unparalleled in the history of the world, a patched-up weapon, used previously by lesser men, is useless: his sword must be new, and only ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... favourite object, as the Grand Signor would be, among six or seven hundred of the most beautiful women in the world, to make his choice. The only fault I find in this collection is that there were rather too many Scripture pieces, Crucifixions, Martyrdoms and allegorical pictures, and too few from historical or mythological subjects. Yet perhaps I am wrong in classing the Scripture pieces with Martyrdoms, Crucifixions, Grillings of Saints and Madonnas; there are very many beautiful episodes in the Scriptures ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... we should learn that just at the time that Chaucer was beginning the composition of his immortal works, there appeared an allegorical poem of considerable length, so earnest in tone, so richly imaginative, so full of picturesque descriptions, that it seemed rather a fulfilment than a prophecy; that this poem—called "The Vision of William concerning Piers Ploughman," and written by an obscure monk whose name ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... and the Legion, had conjoint duties to perform, in certain respects, and separate duties in others. All three, as they owed their allegorical elevation to, so were they dependent on, the people at the foot of the great social stick, for approbation and reward—that is to say for all rewards other than those which they have it in their power to bestow on themselves. There was another authority, or ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the whole night, an immense crowd surrounded the hotel, and filled the gardens of the prefecture, which were illuminated and ornamented with allegorical transparencies in praise of the First Consul; and each time he showed himself on the terrace of the garden the air resounded with applause and acclamations which seemed most ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Was there ever a theatre on Kennington Common? In the Biographia Dramatica of David Erskine Baker (edit. 1782, vol. ii. p. 239.), we are told, that the "satyrical comical allegorical farce," The Mock Preacher, published in 8vo. in 1739, was "Acted to a crowded audience at Kennington Common, and many other theatres, with the humours of the mob." Was it acted in a booth, or in a permanent theatre? The words, "many ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... upon the cornice are pigeons resting in the sun, so motionless and neutral-tinted that they might be mistaken for some portion of the carving. A double gilt ring, a circle in a circle, at the feet of an allegorical figure gleams brightly against the dark surface. The sky already seems farther away seen between the boles of stone, perpetual shade dwells in their depth, but two or three of the pigeons fluttering down are searching for food on the sunlit gravel at the bottom of the steps. To ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... accompany her, but followed her three hours later, to meet her at the Hotel de Ville. Nineteen coaches, glittering with burnished gold, and every panel of which was embellished with crowns, wreaths, or allegorical pictures, marching on at a stately walk toward the city gate, conveyed the queen, radiant with beauty and happiness, the sisters and aunts of the king, the long train of her and their ladies, and all the great officers of her ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... Even yet there was abundant indication that the room had once been the abode of one who put much of his own personality into his surroundings. The chair and the chest were carved with a rude device—the Devil grappling with the Son of God. The prints were crude allegorical representations of Life and Death. The books were full of the violent polemic of the Reformation. A flowerpot stood on the window-sill; perhaps ten years ago it had had a flower in it, but now it held the apothecary's ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... concerned his taste was subdued, timid, and unimaginative. For instance, she believed that he would not have approved her choice of light-blue satin for the upholstery of the drawing-room, nor of a marble statue—an allegorical figure of Truth, duly draped, as ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... circumstances of his life, and from the constitution of his mind. However imbued the surface might be with classical literature, he was a Hebrew in soul; and all things tended in him towards the sublime. Spenser, of a gentler nature, maintained his freedom by aid of his allegorical spirit, at one time inciting him to create persons out of abstractions; and, at another, by a superior effort of genius, to give the universality and permanence of abstractions to his human beings, by means of attributes and ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... but not to be taken seriously for a moment. It wasn't a healthy thing for Court to see much of this sort of thing. All this talk of a cross, and one dying for all! Mere foolishness and superstition! Very beautiful, and perhaps allegorical, but not at ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... referred to was the Princess Belgiojoso (1808-1871), who after the unsuccessful movement for Italian liberty in 1831 left Italy and resided in Paris, where Musset came often to her salon, i. LA NUIT, one of the famous allegorical statues made by Michaelangelo for the tombs of Giuliano and ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... stop. For while the romance of antiquity is a mere "sport," an accident of time and circumstance, the chanson de geste, majestic and interesting as it is, representative as it is to a certain extent of a nation and a language, has the capital defect of not being adaptable. Having little or no allegorical capacity, little "soul," so to speak, it was left by the tide of time on the shores thereof without much hope of floating and living again. The Arthurian Legend, if not from the very first, yet from the first ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... and the centurion in comfortable quarters at The Three Taverns; their reader carefully stowing away his bible in the bows of the long-boat before he joined the groups of fishermen on and about the bows—the great dog Pomp, so named after the illustrious Roman, Pompey the Great, and not after the allegorical personage to whom Will Shakspeare so earnestly recommends physic, came galloping forward and ascended the heel of the bowsprit, where he stood whining, and yelping, and wagging his tail, exceedingly delighted ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... Robert, "if all be allegorical, as some wise doctors do say, that they should be shadowy brooms ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... remaining six which he had planned some fragments were issued after his death. The poem is a combination of allegory and romance; and in this prefatory letter to Raleigh the poet himself explains the plan of the work and its main allegorical signification.] ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... on a throne in the accoutrements of Mars, with a gallant wig flowing in mazy ringlets from under the helmet upon his plated shoulders; overhead, upon a canopy of cloud, reclines a breezy assemblage of allegorical females—Truth, Mercy, Fame with her trumpet, and so forth. His nervous clean-shaven features do not wear the traditional smile; they are thoughtful, almost grim. On his left is portrayed a huge CANNON astride of which can be seen a chubby angel; the ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... listlessness with which one is apt to saunter about a museum in warm weather; sometimes lolling over the glass cases of minerals, sometimes studying the hieroglyphics on an Egyptian mummy, and some times trying, with nearly equal success, to comprehend the allegorical paintings on the lofty ceilings. Whilst I was gazing about in this idle way, my attention was attracted to a distant door, at the end of a suite of apartments. It was closed, but every now and then it would open, and some strange-favored ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... to some allegorical representation of Occasio; and is intended to convey the same meaning as our English proverb, "Seize time by the forelocks." From what ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... accept the view that she had formed a definite conception of the absolute, unmodified and historical veracity, in its direct and obvious sense, of every statement contained within the covers of the Bible. For her, and for my Father, nothing was symbolic, nothing allegorical or allusive in any part of Scripture, except what was, in so many words, proffered as a parable or a picture. Pushing this to its extreme limit, and allowing nothing for the changes of scene or time or ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... in human forms, did not hesitate to change them into monsters, if the addition of another leg or another arm, a dog's head or a serpent's tail, could better express the emblem they represented. They perverted their images into allegorical deformities; and receded from the beautiful in proportion as they indulged their false conceptions of the sublime. Besides, a painter or a sculptor must have a clear idea presented to him, to be long cherished and often revolved, if we desire to call forth all the inspiration of which his genius ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... agents are very happily adapted to the purposes of the poem. The heathen deities can no longer gain attention; we should have turned away from a contest between Venus and Diana. The employment of allegorical persons always excites conviction of its own absurdity; they may produce effects, but cannot conduct actions; when the phantom is put in motion it dissolves; thus Discord may raise a mutiny, but Discord cannot conduct a march nor besiege a town. Pope ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... ballet. It was the only new form of spectacle offered during all the festivities. Compared with those which were given in Rome on the occasion of Lucretia's betrothal, they were much inferior. Among the former we noticed several pastoral comedies with allegorical allusions to ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... last years Galds rose to a less particular, a more broad and poetic vision, to describe which we cannot do better than to quote some words of Gmez de Baquero.[6] "The last works of Galds, which belong to his allegorical manner, offer a sharp contrast to the intense realism, so plastic and so picturesque," of earlier writings. First he mastered inner motivation and minute description of external detail, and from that mastery ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... be discovered by a correct interpretation of the Bible. Everything which could possibly happen was recorded in the Scriptures; they contained the true explanation of all things. It was only a matter of selecting the right word and interpreting it correctly, for every word was ambiguous and allegorical. Every natural occurrence—an eclipse of the sun, a comet, or even a fire—stood for something else; it was the symbol of a spiritual event concealed behind a phenomenon. The allegorical interpretation of the Bible was carried to the point of abstruseness ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... soft glows on the fixtures beneath. They invest it with the appearance of a bower decorated with buds and blossoms. From this, on the right, a spacious arched door, surmounted by a semi-circle of stained glass containing devices of the Muses and other allegorical figures, leads into an immense parlour, having a centre arch hung with heavy folds of maroon coloured velvet overspread with lace. Look where you will, the picture of former wealth and taste presents itself. Around the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... is an oval containing an elaborate design most delicately worked in feather-stitch, the edges and outlines marked with very fine gold twist. On the upper board there is a seated allegorical figure with cornucopia, probably representing Plenty. Behind her is an ornamental landscape with a piece of water, the bright lines of which are feelingly rendered with small stitches of silver thread, hills ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... his own. The national type of drama which Lope had established was maintained in its essential characteristics by Calderon, and he produced abundant specimens of all its varieties. Of regular plays he has left a hundred and twenty; of "Autos Sacramentales," the peculiar Spanish allegorical development of the medieval mystery, we have seventy-three; besides ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... troubled by the introduction of the symbolical figures in such works as the "Shaw Memorial" and the Sherman statue; and, indeed, it was a bold enterprise to place them where they are, mingling thus in the same work the real and the ideal, the actual and the allegorical. But the boldness seems to me abundantly justified by success. In either case the entire work is pitched to the key of these figures; the treatment of the whole is so elevated by style and so infused ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... not changed by a dream in a series of tableaux; that a ghost cannot do much towards reforming an inordinately selfish person; that a life cannot be turned white, like a head of hair, in a single night, by the most allegorical apparition; that want and sin and shame cannot be cured by kettles singing on the hob; and gradually they ceased to make believe that there was virtue in these devices and appliances. Yet the ethical intention was not fruitless, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... directed against it. Ah! those tombs of the popes at St. Peter's, with their impudent, insolent glorification of the departed, their sumptuous, carnal hugeness, defying death and setting immortality upon this earth. There are giant popes of bronze, allegorical figures and angels of equivocal character wearing the beauty of lovely girls, of passion-compelling women with the thighs and the breasts of pagan goddesses! Paul III is seated on a high pedestal, Justice and Prudence are almost prostrate at his feet. Urban VIII is between Prudence ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Florentine magnificos in plaited skirts and starched collars, among the pines and porticos, the sprawling children, barking dogs, peacocks sunning themselves, and partridges picking up grain, of his Scripture histories; yet others using the antique as mere pageant shows, allegorical mummeries destined to amuse some Duke of Ferrara or Marquis of Mantua, together with hurdle races of Jews, hags, and ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... with him. As to the supposed miracle, it would, no doubt, be hard to say which were most to be pitied, the devils in the swine, or the swine with the devils in them; but has it never struck you that the whole may be an allegorical representation of the miserable and destructive effects of the union of the two vices of sensuality and profanity? They also (if all tales be true) lead to a steep place, but I have never heard that it ends ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... the last verse very good yet, but I think the second one is pretty. You know 'love-lies-bleeding' is a flower, but it sounds allegorical the way I have put it in. Don't you think so? You know what all the crosses ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... imported from the Orient; the philosophers themselves were by no means unaffected by the popular beliefs. Mingled with all these were the ancient legends of gods and heroes, accepted as inspired scripture by the people, and by philosophers in part explained away by an allegorical exegesis and in part felt increasingly as a burden to the intelligence. In this period of degeneracy there were none the less an awakening to religious needs and a profound longing for a new revelation of truth, which should satisfy at once ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... in giant flight, a sphere supported by four allegorical figures whose attitude of turning suggests some vague waltz-measure—a total effect of equilibrium well conveying the illusion of the sweeping onward of the earth; and there are arms raised to give the signal, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Angelo a Nilo at Naples contains the monument of Cardinal Brancacci, one of the most impressive tombs of this period. The scheme is a modification of the Coscia tomb. Instead of the three Virtues in niches at the base, there are three larger allegorical figures, which are free standing caryatides below the sarcophagus. They are allegorical figures, perhaps Fates, and correspond with the two somewhat similar statues at Montepulciano. The Cardinal's effigy lies upon the stone coffin, the face of which has a bas-relief between heraldic ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... searching a long while for liberty, but I can find her nowhere on this earth: let me be allegorical. If all the world are still in love with the name of Liberty, how much more were all the world in love with the nymph herself when she first made her appearance on earth. Every one would possess her, and every ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... apprehension, means Lady of the May, and nothing more.[14] A fool and a taborer seem also to have been indispensable; but the other dancers had neither names nor peculiar offices, and were unlimited in number. The Morris, then, though it lost in allegorical significance, would gain considerably in spirit and variety by combining with the other shows. Was it not natural, therefore, and in fact inevitable, that the old favorites of the populace, Robin Hood, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... peasants' homes is transformed by the gay wall coverings to one of hospitality and warmth. The hangings used are made of linen, either painted or embroidered in bright colours. The painted ones are especially interesting as they depict many historical scenes. Allegorical and religious subjects are also used to decorate many of these linen hangings. The Swedes are very patriotic, and on their wall hangings show all the saints clad in typical Swedish costumes. The apostles wear Swedish jack boots, loose collars, and pea jackets; and Joseph, as governor of Egypt, ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... who had before been most violent, now sat as if struck dumb. A silence of some minutes prevailed, when all at once, the spirit of revelation seemed to come on me, and I said, "Why, gentlemen, you must be sensible that it is but an allegorical expression;" and I added, "how often in the Bible ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... the wisdom of the world, from the earliest days to the present time, neatly bound in cloth, and I felt I was helping the cause of progress by reading them a few chapters. I began at page one," continued Eliph', opening the book in his hands, "skipping the allegorical frontispiece in three colors, and the index in ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... and the Knights of the Cross, among whom, besides St. Michael, St. Gabriel, Confession, Chastity, and Alms, are Arthur, Launcelot, and Gawain, contend against Antichrist and the infernal barons—Jupiter, Neptune, Beelzebub, and a crowd of allegorical personages. But the battles and debats of a chivalric age were not only religious; there are battles of wine and water, battles of fast and feasting, battles of the seven arts. A disputation between the body and the soul, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... an Opera, performed at the Queen's theatre in Dorset-Gardens, and printed in folio 1685. The subject of it is wholly allegorical, and intended to expose my lord Shaftfbury and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... Epistle of Barnabas was probably composed in A.D.135. [367:2] It is the production apparently of a convert from Judaism who took special pleasure in allegorical interpretations of Scripture. Hermas, the author of the little work called Pastor, or The Shepherd, is a writer of much the same character. He was, in all likelihood, the brother of Pius, [368:1] who flourished about the middle of the second century, and who was, perhaps, the first or second ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... of Philadelphia, has just finished designing a second formal garden, which is said to be delightfully un-American; and Mr. Frank Miles Day's Horticultural Hall is nearly ready to receive the mural coloring and allegorical painting which Mr. Joseph Lindon Smith is to execute. The latter will be a conspicuous departure ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol 1, No. 11, November, 1895 - The Country Houses of Normandy • Various
... into Wolsey's great Hall, up a most spacious staircase, the walls and ceiling of which were covered with an allegorical fresco by Verrio, wonderfully bright and well preserved; and without caring about the design or execution, I greatly liked the brilliancy of the colors. The great Hall is a most noble and beautiful room, above a hundred feet long and sixty high and broad. Most ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... attached to them was a repetition of timeworn phrases. Alexander Barclay, who is best known as the author of The Ship of Fools, published in 1508, but who also has to his credit several other translations of contemporary moral and allegorical poems from Latin and French and even, in anticipation of the newer era, a version of Sallust's Jugurthine War, offers his translations of The Ship of Fools[301] and of Mancini's Mirror of Good Manners[302] not to the learned, who might judge of their correctness, but to "rude ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... Italian student, I presume you have heard of the great Italian poet Dante. Now Dante in his Convito or "Banquet" tells his readers that writings may be understood, and therefore ought to be explained in four different senses or meanings. There is first the literal sense; secondly, the allegorical; thirdly, the moral; and fourthly, the anagorical. Now I know you can't explain this last word to me, for I would wager a large sum that you never tasted of Dante's Banquet—no, not so much as the smallest crumb from it; and therefore how should you know what he ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... of all criticism are made, is to be found anywhere. The bulk is not great: twelve or fifteen hundred lines must cover the whole of it. The form is not new, being merely the seven-line stanza already familiar in Chaucer. The arrangement is in no way novel, combining as it does the allegorical presentment of embodied virtues, vices, and qualities with the melancholy narrative common in poets for many years before. But the poetical value of the whole is extraordinary. The two constituents of that value, the formal and the material, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... the apostolic writings, namely, that the subject of which they treated did not lead them to any direct recital of the Christian history, belongs to the writings of the apostolic fathers. The epistle of Barnabas is, in its subject and general composition, much like the epistle to the Hebrews; an allegorical application of divers passages of the Jewish history, of their law and ritual, to those parts of the Christian dispensation in which the author perceived a resemblance. The epistle of Clement was written for the sole purpose of quieting certain dissensions ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... ingenuity is little inferior to their's. If totidem verbis[75] will not serve our turn, try totidem syllabis; if totidem syllabis fail, try totidem literis: then there is in our case, as well as in theirs, "an allegorical sense" to be adverted to; and if every other resource fail us, we come at last to the same conclusion as the Brothers adopted, that after all, those rigorous clauses require some allowance, and a favourable ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... Chamber of commerce of Rouen, on the 28th june 1786, in the great hall of the archbishop's palace, called the Salle des Etats. All the figures are of natural size, and are striking likenesses. The subject of the other painting is allegorical. ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet
... rubbing her nose as if she were a little vexed. 'That's his allegorical way of expressing it. He connects his illness with great disturbance and agitation, naturally, and that's the figure, or the simile, or whatever it's called, which he chooses to use. And why shouldn't he, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... 126. Plutarch mentions, that prophecies of evil events were uttered from the cave of Trophonius; but the allegorical story, that whoever entered this cavern were never again seen to smile, seems to have been designed to warn the contemplative from considering too much the dark side of nature. Thus an ancient poet is said to have written ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... seem incredible to the reader that I marveled much at the hidden meaning of this allegorical speech, and never for one moment supposed it to mean: "I, Dr. Foshay, with my botanic system of medicine, am the biggest humbug in these parts, and if you are going to succeed with me you must be another." ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... both at top and at bottom of the principal subject, there is a running allegorical ornament, of which I will not incur the presumption to suppose myself a successful interpreter. The constellations, and the symbols of agriculture and of a rural occupation form the chief subjects of this running ornament. All the inscriptions are executed in capital letters of about an inch ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... and Urdaneta presented in this volume was the work of the sculptor, Agustin Querol, and of the architect, Luis Maria Cabello. On the front and rear of the pedestal are the arms of Manila and Spain. On one side are allegorical representations of the sea and, valor for Legazpi, and on the other the emblems of science for Urdaneta. The pedestal ends above in a border upon which are the names of Magallanes, Elcano, Jofre de Loaisa, and Villalobos. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... fair, the names of the world's greatest countries at its gilded panels, supported by winged figures, and bearing engraven upon each shining surface the record of some great event. Its medallions and graceful groups, allegorical or symbolic, all mounting high, and higher, until illuminated by the opal-like circle of light at the summit, Dodge's great picture crowns the whole, with its circling procession of arts and sciences, ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... you find yourself in a common white-painted passage, and on either side of the drawing-room and dining-room are four allegorical female heads: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Further on is the hall, with its short polished oak stairway sloping gently to a balcony; and there are white painted pillars that support the low roof, and these pillars make a kind of entrance to the passage which traverses the house from ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... one word about the genesis of the book. Some time ago I wrote a number of short tales of an allegorical type. It was a curious experience. I seemed to have come upon them in my mind, as one comes upon a covey of birds in a field. One by one they took wings and flew; and when I had finished, though I was anxious to write more ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... polished satire—swaying parties and peoples, too, and challenging comparison with the higher (at times it might almost be said the highest) efforts of literature in that direction. The beauty and statuesque qualities of his allegorical figures, the dignity of his beasts, and the earnestness and directness of his designs, apart from the exquisite simplicity of his work at its best, are things previously unknown in the art of which he is the most accomplished master, standing alone and far ahead of any of his ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... still see her at the Art Museum; and the rival landscapes of Doughty and Fisher, much talked of and largely praised in those days; and the Murillo,—not from Marshal Soup's collection; and the portrait of Annibale Caracci by himself, which cost the Athenaeum a hundred dollars; and Cole's allegorical pictures, and his immense and dreary canvas, in which the prostrate shepherds and the angel in Joseph's coat of many colors look as if they must have been thrown in for nothing; and West's brawny Lear tearing his clothes to pieces. But why go on with the catalogue, ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... this satisfactory experiment, Palmer removed to the city of Albany, where he has since remained and won his well-deserved fame. His two allegorical pieces, 'Resignation' and 'Spring,' we cannot forbear to describe, familiar as they are to the virtuoso of art, and well known even ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... darkness, save a red glow in the chinks and ventilators of the stove. But now the landlady lit a lamp to see her new guests; I suppose the darkness was what saved us another expulsion; for I cannot say she looked gratified at our appearance. We were in a large bare apartment, adorned with two allegorical prints of Music and Painting, and a copy of the law against public drunkenness. On one side, there was a bit of a bar, with some half-a-dozen bottles. Two labourers sat waiting supper, in attitudes of extreme weariness; ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Stephen Lorimer was writing his sermon for the last Sunday in Advent. His theme was eternal punishment and one which he considered worthy of his utmost eloquence. There was nothing mythical or allegorical in that subject in the opinion of the Reverend Stephen. He believed in it most firmly, and the belief afforded him the keenest satisfaction. It was a nerve-shaking sermon. Had it been of a secular nature, ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... a thing of life—so elaborate and wonderful was its art. Built of massive ebony with the most remarkable ivory carvings set in its gleaming black surface, artists, as many as could touch the material, had worked two years on the carving alone. The allegorical pictures cut into the broad band of ivory which ran around the frame had required the time of four ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... only from his being eminently skilled in the knowledge of the ceremonies, customs, and habits of the ancients, but from his being so well acquainted with the different characters which those who invented them gave to their allegorical figures. Though Rubens has shown great fancy in his Satyrs, Silenuses, and Fauns, yet they are not that distinct, separate class of beings which is carefully exhibited by the ancients, and by Poussin. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... of the stage, with praise of Mrs. Bicknell and reproaches upon a young nobleman who came drunk to the play; the comparison of the rival beauties, Chloe and Clarissa; the satire on the Italian opera, and on Pinkethman's company of strollers; and the allegorical paper on Faelicia, or Britain. All these and other matters are dealt with in the four numbers which were distributed gratuitously; as the work progressed the principal change, besides the disappearance of the paragraphs of news, was the development of the sustained ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... attraction of the Huis ten Bosch is the gorgeous Orange Saloon, lighted by a cupola, fifty feet above the floor, the walls one blaze of pictures, chiefly of the gorgeous Jordaen school—"The Defeat of the Vices," "Time Vanquishing Slander"—mostly allegorical, in praise of all the virtues, in praise of enlightenment and progress. Aptly enough in a room so decorated, here was held the famous Peace Congress that closed the last century. One can hardly avoid smiling as one thinks of the solemn conclave of grandees assembled to proclaim the ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... because it was so definitely not Edinburgh. The air of the little quadrangle was fairly dense with the yellowed rays of extravagant light, and the walls were divided not into shops and houses, but into allegorical panels representing pleasure. They had stopped outside a florist's, in whose dismantled window a girl in black stretched out a long arm towards the last vase of chrysanthemums, which pressed against ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... sensible of their dying" (p. 56.). Sir Walter Scott quotes a curious tract in Woodstock, entitled Vindication of the Book of Common Prayer against the Contumelious Slanders of the Fanatic Party terming it "Porridge." The author of this singular and rare tract (says Sir W.) indulges in the allegorical style, till he fairly hunts down the allegory. The learned divine chases his metaphor at a very cold scent, through a pamphlet of his mortal quarto pages.—See a Parallel of the Liturgy with the Mass Book, Breviary, &c., by Robert Baylie. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... in the shop anything . . . such as . . ." muttered Obtyosov, moving his fingers, "something, so to say, allegorical . . . revivifying . . . seltzer-water, for instance. ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... fundamental question being whether God has spoken at all through the religious instincts of mankind, it may very well be that Christ was not God, and yet that He gave the highest revelation of God. If the 'first Man' was allegorical, why not the 'second'? It is, indeed, an historical fact that the 'second Man' existed, but so likewise may the 'first.' And, as regards the 'personal claims' of Christ, all that He said is not ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... close of 1822, Mr. Moore published "The Loves of the Angels," a poem of exquisite tenderness and beauty. The object of the poet is, by an allegorical medium, to shadow out the fall of the soul from its original purity—the loss of light and happiness which it suffers, in the pursuit of this world's perishable pleasures—and the punishments from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 12, No. 349, Supplement to Volume 12. • Various
... result is the allegorical interpretation which Krishna's romances now received. In Christian literature, the longing of the soul for God was occasionally expressed in terms of sexual imagery—the works of the Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross, including 'songs ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... the two beautiful nymphs in the foreground, is a splendid picture. Titian's Sacred and Profane Love puzzles me completely: I neither understand the name nor the intention of the picture. It is evidently allegorical: but an allegory very clumsily expressed. The aspect of Sacred Love would answer just as well for Profane Love. What is that little cupid about, who is groping in the cistern behind? why does Profane Love wear gloves? The picture, though so provokingly obscure in its subject, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... clear. "The Spider" was no allegorical term, but literal fact. That frightful monster with which he had just come face to face was indeed the demon-god of the Ba-gcatya! It was actually fed with living men, in accordance with some dark and mysterious superstition held by that ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... flat walls and semicircular spaces of the chapel. Michael Angelo, on account of his great age, was unable or unwilling to assist in the work. The present sarcophagi cannot have been intended to hold the allegorical figures in the way they do, for the under surfaces of the statues do not fit the top of the mouldings, and certainly the rough stones that project over them, forming a base for the feet, must have ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... to be engraved upon the bowlders and stones used in constructing the burial cists. De Zeltner states that "one often meets with stones covered with rude allegorical designs, representing men, pumas (tigre?), and birds. It is particularly in such huacas as have pillars and a vault that these curious specimens of ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... to see the passing show. First came a large body of knights and men-at-arms, with gay banners and trappings. Then rode the bridegroom, with the bride carried in a litter by his side. After this came several allegorical representations. Among these was the figure of a knight bearing the arms of Austria. Underneath his feet, on the car, lay a figure clad in a royal robe, across whom was thrown a banner with the leopards of England. The knight stood with ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... was the Romaunt of the Rose, an allegorical poem in French, by William de Lorris, continued, after his death in 1260, by Jean de Meun, who figured as a poet in the court of Charles le Bel, of France. This poem, esteemed by the French as the finest of their old romances, was rendered ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... controversies Dacier's preface states some of the typical themes of neo-Aristotelian criticism: the idea that proper tragedy is based on a fable that imitates an "Allegorical and Universal Action" intended "to Form the Manners," a view that closely relates tragic fable to epic fable as interpreted by Le Bossu;[16] that modern tragedy, being concerned with individuals and their intrigues, cannot be universal and is therefore ...
— The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry • Andre Dacier
... Protestants, (see Pearson and Dodwell de Success. Episcop. Roman,) but has been vigorously attacked by Spanheim, (Miscellanes Sacra, iii. 3.) According to Father Hardouin, the monks of the thirteenth century, who composed the Aeneid, represented St. Peter under the allegorical character of the Trojan hero. * Note: It is quite clear that, strictly speaking, the church of Rome was not founded by either of these apostles. St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans proves undeniably the flourishing ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... whom the work was dedicated. There were also scattered through the book several diagrams and maps, a fine portrait of the author, and a plan of the city of Norwich. Some of these illustrations and initials were signed J. B., others J. D. The title-page was also engraved with allegorical figures of the arts and sciences. There can be very little doubt that Day had spent his time abroad in studying the best models in ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... Reverend Mother to celebrate the saint's day by a masked ball, and the whole convent was engrossed in the invention of whimsical disguises. The nuns indeed were not to take part in the ball; but a number of them were to appear in an allegorical entertainment with which the evening was to open. The new Papal Nuncio, who was lately arrived in Venice, had promised to be present; and as he was known to be a man of pleasure there was scarce a sister in the convent ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... there was, to say the truth, a certain twist in the formation of the letters—an indescribable lee-lurch about the whole—-which foreboded, in the opinion of both seamen, a long run of dirty weather; and determined them at once, in the allegorical words of Legs himself, to "pump ship, clew up all sail, and scud ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... arrived, and these performed an allegorical dance and play, but nothing interested Sancho as much as the skimmings, to which he returned after having finished an argument with his master about the relative qualities of Camacho the Rich and the poor Basilio; Camacho being the better provider, ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... dost thou think of thyself alone, and live only for thyself—thou who art not a shoemaker? THY children are not ailing. THY wife is not hungry. Look around thee. Can'st thou not find a subject more fitting for thy thoughts than thy shoes?" That is what I want to say to you in allegorical language, Barbara. Maybe it savours a little of free-thought, dearest; but, such ideas WILL keep arising in my mind and finding utterance in impetuous speech. Why, therefore, should one not value oneself at a groat as one listens in fear and trembling ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... disquisition very distinctly. It was just after Ewart had been to Paris on a mysterious expedition to "rough in" some work for a rising American sculptor. This young man had a commission for an allegorical figure of Truth (draped, of course) for his State Capitol, and he needed help. Ewart had returned with his hair cut en brosse and with his costume completely translated into French. He wore, I remember, a bicycling suit of purplish-brown, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... books of the Old Testament made much impression upon him. The canon of the holy books was composed of two principal parts—the Law, that is to say, the Pentateuch, and the Prophets, such as we now possess them. An extensive allegorical exegesis was applied to all these books; and it was sought to draw from them something that was not in them, but which responded to the aspirations of the age. The Law, which represented not the ancient ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... which readily lends itself to an allegorical interpretation. For such an interpretation, the reader is referred to Mrs. Owen's paper, read before the Browning Society of London, and contained in the Society's Papers, Part IV., pp. 49* et seq. It is too long to be ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... Three circles.] According to the allegorical commentators, as Venturi has observed, Reason is represented under the person of Virgil, and Sense under that of Dante. The former leaves to the latter to discover for itself the three carnal sins, avarice, gluttony and libidinousness; having already declared the nature of the spiritual sins, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... your friend," she remarked, quietly, "is almost allegorical. He has gone into the land of ghosts—or are we the ghosts, I wonder, ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... besides this Highland goddess were two Scotchmen, who could not speak a word of any language but their own Erse; and to complete his astonishment at this allegorical entertainment, with the dessert there entered a little horse, and galloped round the table; a hieroglyphic I cannot solve. Poniatowski accounts for this profusion of kindness by his great-grandmother being a Gordon: ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... my eyes to the window, I was unable to discover on the fence opposite anything of the nature indicated in those words. I concluded that the whole was to be taken as one of those deeply allegorical expressions in which the Wallencamp ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... heaving and subsequent up-bubbling in the fluid compost of the mass that constitutes a nation. When freely developed, it is the pulse-beat of the people. And so, throughout the Netherlands, at the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth, we find the allegorical drama giving way to more definite and direct personations. Those cold representations of vices and virtues, of vice in its nakedness, such as to render the reading, when not absolutely tedious, distasteful, to say the least, to our modern ideas,—all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ancient sculpture except that in the British Museum, I have yet seen, and perhaps elsewhere unsurpassed, north of the Alps. The building which was finished by Klenze, in 1830, has an Ionic portico of white marble, with a group of allegorical figures, representing Sculpture and the kindred arts. On each side of the portico, there are three niches in the front, containing on one side, Pericles, Phidias and Vulcan; on the other, Hadrian, Prometheus ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... considered, concerning which I should be very glad to have your opinion; and the prize for the carvers we will set up to-morrow, when we are sober, if Diogenianus and this stranger think fit. Of representations, said I, some are allegorical, and some are farces; neither of these are fit for an entertainment; the first by reason of their length and cost, and the latter being so full of filthy discourse and lewd actions, that they are not fit to be seen by the foot-boys that ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the champions, the battle must needs be the merest show, though there were lookers-on who thought that, judging by appearances, the assailants ought to have the best chance of victory, both literal and allegorical. ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of steps, and seemed now to feel themselves dwarfs as they mounted—and entered the portico. Here are several groups of allegorical figures, and to the right and left the equestrian statues ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... Crit., ii, 44. "The nominative case is usually the agent or doer, and always the subject of the verb."—Smith's New Gram., p. 47. "There is an originality, richness, and variety in his [Spenser's] allegorical personages, which almost vies with the splendor of the ancient mythology."—Hazlitt's Lect., p. 68. "As neither the Jewish nor Christian revelation have been universal, and as they have been afforded to a greater or less part of the world at different times; ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... pictures with gilt skies, and angels in red and blue. Well, yesterday he called on papa, and requested his permission to ask me to sit—or, rather, stand—for the heroine of his next great work, which is to be an allegorical one, taken from the 'Faery Queen' or the 'Morte d'Arthur,' or some such book. I protested; it was no use. 'Good gracious, papa,' I said, 'do you know what he will make of me? He will give me a dirty brown face, and I shall wear a dirty green dress; and no doubt I shall be standing beside a pool of ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... which is placed a monumental bishop's throne, with elaborate armorial embellishments. A Renaissance tomb of the sixteenth century, by a pupil of Michel Colomb, now much injured in its sculptured details of angels and allegorical figures, is locally considered the ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... cafe below. The coloring was a little sombre for a French restaurant, and the illuminations a little less vivid. The walls, however, were panelled with what seemed to be a sort of dark mahogany, and on the ceiling was painted a great allegorical picture, the nature of which I could not at first surmise. The guests, of whom the room was almost full, were all well-dressed and apparently of the smart world. The tourist element was lacking. There ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... their holy books is the allegorical idea that the Brahmin, or priest, was the mouth of the original man; the warrior his arms; the agriculturist his thighs; while the Sudra, or common people, sprang out of his feet. The duties and relations of ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... good principle if it means that there is a vital distinction between the earth and the tree that has its roots in the earth; but it is a very bad principle if it means that the tree could grow just as well with its roots in the air. Every great literature has always been allegorical—allegorical of some view of the whole universe. The 'Iliad' is only great because all life is a battle, the 'Odyssey' because all life is a journey, the Book of Job because all life is a riddle. There is one attitude in which we think that all existence is summed up ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... The first of these allegorical dances was executed in the apartments of the Princesse de Conti, where a supper was prepared for her Majesty with an exclusiveness uncommon at the time, and which created considerable disappointment in the Court circle. None but the Princes then resident in the capital, namely MM. de Guise, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... scepticism on the one hand and Christianity on the other, the supporters of the old traditional religions were driven to search for ideas of a modern cast, which they could represent as the true inner meaning of the traditional rites. To this end they laid hold of the old myths, and applied to them an allegorical system of interpretation. Myth interpreted by the aid of allegory became the favourite means of infusing a new significance into ancient forms. But the theories thus developed are the falsest of false guides as to the original ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Surya is the spirit of the sun. We hear a good deal about him in the Rig-veda, but the whole of it is merely description of the power of the sun in the order of nature, partly allegorical, and partly literal. He is only a nature-power, not a personal god. The case is not quite so clear with Savita, whose name seems to mean literally "stimulator," "one who stirs up." On the whole it ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... meticulously into its precise place in a fantastic geometrical scheme. Just inside this boundary there stood a ring of statues of heroic size. Some of them were single figures of men and women; some were busts; some were groups in natural or allegorical poses—all were done with consummate skill and feeling. Between the statues there were fountains, magnificent bronze and glass groups of the strange aquatic denizens of this strange planet, bathed in geometrically ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... vessels. In one, the rudder-head is carved with the resemblance of some hideous monster; another shows goggling eyes and lolling tongues from its cat-heads; this has the patron saint, or the ever-kind Marie, embossed upon its mouldings or bows; while that is covered with the allegorical emblems of country and duty. Few of these efforts of nautical art are successful, though a better taste appears to be gradually redeeming even this branch of human industry from the rubbish of barbarism, and ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... Church wished to make things easier for men holding the opinions held by the late Mr. Darwin, or by Mr. Herbert Spencer and Professor Huxley? How can those who accept evolution with any thoroughness accept such doctrines as the Incarnation or the Redemption with any but a quasi-allegorical and poetical interpretation? Can we conceivably accept these doctrines in the literal sense in which the Church advances them? And can the leaders of the Church be blind to the resistlessness of the current that has set against those literal interpretations ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... above the surface of that in which their descendants dwelt. Myths of that world were still preserved in their archives, and in those myths were legends of a vaulted dome in which the lamps were lighted by no human hand. But such legends were considered by most commentators as allegorical fables. According to these traditions the earth itself, at the date to which the traditions ascend, was not indeed in its infancy, but in the throes and travail of transition from one form of development to another, and subject to many violent revolutions of nature. ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... with his golden arrow as she passed through the gates of Norwich. From the earlier years of her reign the new spirit of the Renascence had been pouring itself into the rough mould of the Mystery Plays, whose allegorical virtues and vices, or scriptural heroes and heroines, had handed on the spirit of the drama through the Middle Ages. Adaptations from classical pieces began to alternate with the purely religious "Moralities"; and an attempt at a livelier ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... regret in his elder brother, exasperation in Captain Lee, profound melancholy in Joseph Tipps, great admiration in Miss Stocks and the baby, and unutterable ennui in the children. Fortunately for the success of the day, in the middle of it, he took occasion to make some reference, with allegorical intentions, to the lower animals, and pointed to a pig which lay basking in the sunshine at no great distance, an unconcerned spectator of the scene. A rather obtuse, fat-faced boy, was suddenly smitten with ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... ceiling. The porch was supported by pillars of stone beautifully carved with figures of griffins and snakes. In the court-yard were two lions carved out of a purple marble, and in the middle of the yard was an immense brazen ram highly ornamented with hieroglyphics and allegorical designs. As for the temple itself, it was so vast, so intricate, and so various in its designs and gildings, that I can only say picture to yourself a building composed entirely of carving, coloured porcelain, and gilding, ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... that introduce such gods as these are worthy of death and are ungodly. If the stories of the gods be myths, then are the gods mere words: but if the stories be natural, then are they that wrought or endured such things no longer gods: if the stories be allegorical, then are the gods myths and nothing else. Therefore it hath been proven, O king, that all these idols, belonging to many gods, are works of error and destruction. So it is not meet to call those gods that are ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... just finished," resumed the great artist, his face expanding like that of a man whose hobby is stroked, "an allegorical figure of Harmony; and if you will come and see it, you will understand why it should have taken me two years to paint it. Everything is in it! At the first glance one divines the destiny of the globe. A queen holds a shepherd's crook in her hand,—symbolical ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... theories, supply and demand, and all that rubbish from the ruins of ancient Rome. He believes that gold is the only sound material for pillars of society. The aristocratic idea is in his bones." Edmonds, by a feat of virtuosity, sent a thin, straight column of smoke, as it might have been an allegorical and sardonic pillar itself, almost to the ceiling. "But he believes in fair play. Free speech. Open field. The rigor of the game. He's a sportsman in life and ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Fairy land, and Fairies of Spenser, have no connection with popular superstition, being only words used to denote an Utopian scene of action, and imaginary or allegorical characters; and the title of the "Fairy Queen" being probably suggested by the elfin mistress of Chaucer's Sir Thopas. The stealing of the Red Cross Knight, while a child, is the only incident in the poem which approaches to the popular character ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... Apocalypse, whoever the author may be, we find little or nothing of the characteristic Johannine Mysticism, and the influence of its vivid allegorical pictures has been less potent in this branch of theology than might ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... that there was an inner and an outer circle in this mystery. Every creed has an esoteric side which is kept from the common herd. I struck this side in Constantinople. Now there is a very famous Turkish shaka called Kasredin, one of those old half-comic miracle plays with an allegorical meaning which they call orta oyun, and which take a week to read. That tale tells of the coming of a prophet, and I found that the select of the faith spoke of the new revelation in terms of it. The ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... quintessential and tinctural essence. The figures are not precisely clear," he said to himself, as he ran his eye over the pen drawings, retouched in colour, representing, under the title of "The chemical coitus" various bottles and flasks each containing a liquid and imprisoning an allegorical creature. A green lion, with a crescent moon over him, hung head downward. Doves were trying to fly out through the neck of the bottle or to peck a way through the bottom. The liquid was black and undulated with waves of carmine and gold, or white and granulated with dots ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... obviously introduced to mislead and confuse the reader. The words themselves are not strictly consecutive, but, by the interpellation of certain other words, a series of intelligible sentences is obtained, the meaning of which is not very clear, but is no doubt allegorical. The method of decipherment is shown in the accompanying tables, and the full rendering suggested on the enclosed sheet. It is to be noted that the writer of this document was apparently quite ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... This is no less true of the pictures we may call "Adorations," in which, indeed, the contemplative attitude is still more marked. On the other hand, such pictures as the "Descents," the "Annunciations," and very many of the miscellaneous religious, allegorical, and genre pictures, portray a definite action or event. Now the pyramid type is characteristic of the "contemplative" pictures in a much higher degree. A class which might be supposed to suggest the same treatment in composition is that of the portraits, —absolute lack of action ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... and very singular drama opens with Bonaparte, who soliloquizes about Spain. Allegorical demons stand watching around, and when he has confessed the whole atrocity of his purposes, they seize and carry him off in a fiery car to the place of torment. Next appears Ferdinand VII. a ballet of angels listen to his promises of virtuous sway, and crown him ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... elevation. The leading incidents of the busy and intriguing reign of Charles II. are successively introduced in the following order. The city of London is discovered occupied by the republicans and fanatics, depicted under the allegorical personages Democracy and Zeal. General Monk, as Archon, charms the factions to sleep, and the Restoration is emblematized by the arrival of Charles, and the Duke of York, under the names of Albion and Albanius. The second act opens with a council of the ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... "merely the Dawn," or Light, or some other bright being carried away by Paris, who represents Night, or Winter, or the Cloud, or some other power of darkness. Without discussing these ideas, it may be said that the Greek poets (at all events before allegorical explanations of mythology came in, about five hundred years before Christ) regarded Helen simply as a woman of wonderful beauty. Homer was not thinking of the Dawn, or the Cloud when he described Helen among the Elders on the Ilian walls, or repeated her lament over the dead body ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... most trials for blasphemy during the past two hundred years fall under the second head. But the new Statute of 1698 was very intimidating, and we can easily understand how it drove heterodox writers to ambiguous disguises. One of these disguises was allegorical interpretation of Scripture. They showed that literal interpretation led to absurdities or to inconsistencies with the wisdom and justice of God, and pretended to infer that allegorical interpretation must be substituted. But they meant the reader ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... Adam the forbidden fruit); Diana, with the hound at her feet, and Bacchus and Ariadne (which the detective imagined were the Babes in the Wood). He knew that each of the statues had queer names, but thought they were merely allegorical. Passing over the bridge, with the water rippling quietly underneath, Brian went up the smooth yellow path to where the statue of Hebe, holding the cup, seems instinct with life; and turning down the path to the right, he left the gardens by the end gate, near ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... gorgeously ornamented, having on either side six lofty stained-glass windows with portraits of sovereigns, these windows being lighted at night from the outside. The room is ninety-one feet long, and at each end has three frescoed archways representing religious and allegorical subjects. Niches in the walls contain statues of the barons who compelled King John to sign Magna Charta. There are heraldic devices on the ceilings and walls, and the throne stands at the southern end. The ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... the soul and the body. These were the work not only of the monks, but also of the begging friars, and in {25} smaller part of the secular or parish clergy. They are full of the ascetic piety and superstition of the Middle Age, the childish belief in the marvelous, the allegorical interpretation of Scripture texts, the grotesque material horrors of hell with its grisly fiends, the vileness of the human body and the loathsome details of its corruption after death. Now and then a single poem rises above the tedious and hideous barbarism of the general level of this ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... recumbent posture; one arm embraces a sleeping lion, in the other hand he holds a number of bell flowers. In the opposite angle the sun shines brightly; a lizard is biting the heel of the sleeping youth. I shall not offer my own conjectures in explanation of this allegorical sculpture, unless your correspondents fail to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... feel small and humble in face of the firmly established fame and merits of the classics and the Italians. The large and fertile School of Amsterdam painters, Rembrandt foremost among them, felt this keenly: landscapes of Italy and allegorical and mythological subjects were preferred to the productions of an art intensely national, the sincerity of which failed to impress the Dutch amateurs. Even portraiture, an art where sincerity is so indispensable, felt the effects of the people's blindness, and in the last ...
— Rembrandt's Amsterdam • Frits Lugt
... portraits of politicians, who by intrinsic merit or political favour have become speakers, stare down from the walls in solitary grandeur, and already begin to overcrowd each other. We search in vain for allegorical paintings by eminent Canadian artists, or monuments of illustrious statesmen, such as we see in the Capitol at Washington, or in the elegant structure nearly ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... when all the Venice churches are draped in black, and services for the dead are held in them at dawn and twilight; and when I entered this Baroque interior, with its twisted columns and volutes and high-piled, hideous tombs, adorned with skeletons and allegorical figures and angels blowing trumpets—all so agitated, and yet all so dead and empty and frigid—I would find the fantastic darkness filled with glimmering candles, and kneeling figures, and the discordant noise of chanting. There I would sit, while outside ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... literal application, almost all the expositors find in the parable an allegorical representation of the world's lost state and Christ's redeeming work. In this scheme the wounded man represents our race ruined by sin; the robbers, the various classes of our spiritual enemies; the priest and Levite, the various ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... allegorical. In the character of a song-bird the bard relates the circumstances of his nativity, the simple habits of his progenitors, and his own rural tastes and recreations from infancy, giving the first place to the delights of melody. He proceeds to give an account of his flight to a strange ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the party, just in time to join the cast of Phillis' next production. This was an ambitious but complicated drama of an allegorical type, in which Robin appeared—not for the first time, evidently—as a boy called Henry, and Phillis doubled the parts of Henry's mother and a fairy. These two roles absorbed practically the whole of what is professionally known as "the fat" of the piece, and the other members of the company ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... been drifting, drifting towards death, and Ralph had stepped forward to save her; now, in an allegorical sense, the positions were reversed, and she was summoned to the rescue. There was no refusing a duty so obvious. Heavy and onerous as the responsibility might be, it had been placed in her hands. Darsie braced ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... expressed. Thus in his well-known 'Punch Song', he is mainly concerned with the ethical symbolism of the four elements,—the lemon-juice, the sugar, the water and the spirits. In other cases he suggests an allegorical symbolism, and leaves the reader puzzling over an intellectual query that may or may not be worth puzzling over. Examples are 'The Maiden from Afar', 'The Youth at the Brook', 'The Mountain Song'. He even wrote a number of professed poetic riddles,—which may ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... of the brothers disliked, because of that epithet silver, which could not, he humbly conceived, in propriety of speech be reasonably applied to a broom-stick; but it was replied upon him that this epithet was understood in a mythological and allegorical sense. However, he objected again why their father should forbid them to wear a broom- stick on their coats, a caution that seemed unnatural and impertinent; upon which he was taken up short, as one that spoke irreverently of a mystery which doubtless was very ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... Apollo's Train."[15] More concerned with Pope's potentialities than with his recent ignominy, George Lyttelton nevertheless made essentially the same point: Pope could never become the English Virgil if he "let meaner Satire ... stain the Glory" of his "nobler Lays."[16] And Aaron Hill wrote an allegorical poem to show Pope the error of The Dunciad and to suggest means of escape from entombment "in his own PROFUND."[17] In such censure we perhaps glimpse an opinion attributable to the still influential genres ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte |
