"Characterise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up haughtily. "To please you in a whim, Major Strickland, which I cannot characterise as anything but ridiculous, I will try to discover this fancied resemblance." Speaking thus, her ladyship carried her glass to her eye, and favoured me with a cold, critical stare, under which I felt my blood boil with grief ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... shows very ingeniously that the earth must be at the centre of the sphere. He proves that, unless this were the case, each star would not appear to move with the absolute uniformity which does, as a matter of fact, characterise it. In all these reasonings we cannot but have the most profound admiration for the genius of Ptolemy, even though he had made an error so enormous in the fundamental point of the stability of the earth. Another error of a somewhat similar kind seemed to Ptolemy to be demonstrated. ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... rotation from the more rapidly moving centre, and would assume what appears to me to be their inherent normal condition, namely, spirality, as the prevailing character of their structure; and as that is actually the aspect which may be said to characterise the majority of those marvellous nebulae, as revealed to us by Lord Rosse's magnificent telescope, I am strongly impressed with the conviction that such reasons as I have assigned have been the cause of their spiral aspect ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... can be plainly seen how little sympathy they command, from the fact that but scanty remonstrance was raised at the treatment meted out to our native subjects in the Transvaal, when they were, to the number of nearly a million, handed over from the peace, justice, and security, that on the whole characterise our rule, to a state of things, and possibilities of wrong and suffering which I will ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... reply At what we figure as God's judgment bar! None of this vile way by the barren words Which, more than any deed, characterise Man as made subject to a curse: ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... dogs which have run wild in various countries and the several natural species of the family. The habit of barking, however, which is almost universal with domesticated dogs, forms an exception, as it does not characterise a single natural species of the family, though I am assured that the Canis latrans of North America utters a noise which closely approaches a bark. But this habit is soon lost by dogs when they become feral and is soon reacquired ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... young brothers and sisters who may read this page, and who have yet the making of their lives in their own hands, I would say, with all my heart, learn to do without the soft clothing and the many servants which characterise kings' courts. At table have your eye on the simpler dishes, those which supply the maximum of nutriment and strength, and do not allow your choice to be determined by what pleases the palate or gratifies the taste. A young friend stood me out the other day against ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... may confidently characterise the locomotive engine as an invention belonging to the first half of the nineteenth century, although tramways on the one hand, and steam-engines on the other hand, were ready for the application of steam transport, and the only work ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... little provision of any kind is made for the spiritual need of the people, or when, as in the same country in later years, "a system is pursued which would seem to indicate an utter indifference on the part of those who dispense the national treasure, whether truth or falsehood shall characterise the religious creeds of any of the colonists."[225] And thus, while the sum total of religious provision is very insufficient, that little is divided in a kind of scramble among various parties, so that Irish Roman Catholics, who cry up the voluntary system at home, are tempted to glory ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... be further remarked, that these Nereids are punctilious among themselves, and observe different ranks according to the commodities they deal in. One experienced dame was heard to characterise a younger damsel as "a puir silly thing, who had no ambition, and would never," she prophesied, "rise above the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... lecturing at the London Institution, Finsbury Circus, said English people were not an artistic nation, and instead of getting better, they appeared to be rapidly getting worse. The author of the present day was losing the sincerity and the individuality which ought to characterise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... or between the Eastern pariah dogs and jackals, or between the dogs which have run wild in various countries and the several natural species of the family. The habit of barking, however, which is almost universal with domesticated {27} dogs, and which does not characterise a single natural species of the family, seems an exception; but this habit is soon lost and soon reacquired. The case of the wild dogs on the island of Juan Fernandez having become dumb has often ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... willingness to disbelieve the accusations which come so suspiciously before us.[61] An approximation to the truth may be obtained if, rejecting as improbable the accusations of devil-worship and its concomitant rites which, invented to amuse the vulgar, characterise the proceedings, we admit the probability of a secret understanding with the Turks, or the possibility of infidelity to the religion of Christ. Their destruction had been predetermined; the slender element of truth might soon be exaggerated and confounded with every kind ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... that these fictions "originate in the feeling which has always pervaded the East unfavourable to the dignity of women." They belong to a certain stage of civilisation when the sexes are at war with each other; and they characterise chivalrous Europe as well as misogynous Asia; witness Jankins, clerk of Oxenforde; while AEsop's fable of the Lion and the Man also ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... perturbations of the satellite's path due to the surface features on Mars. Observe that the principal radiants are situated upon the boundary of the dark regions or at the oases. Higher surface levels may be involved in both cases. Some marked difference in topography must characterise both these features. The latter may possibly originate in the destruction of satellites. Or again, they may arise in crustal disturbance of a volcanic nature, primarily induced or localised by the crossing of two canals. Whatever the origin of these features it ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... quarters mainly on the ground floor—at the back of the central seats and at the sides. The poor have resting places found for them immediately in front of the pulpit and at the rear of the galleries. Very little of that unctuous spasmodic shouting, which used to characterise Wesleyanism, is heard in Lune-street Chapel. It has become unfashionable to bellow; it is not considered "the thing" to ride the high horse of vehement approval and burst into luminous showers of "Amens" ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... be well known to be thoroughly appreciated; cold and reserved at first, it is only on better acquaintance you learn the sterling worth, the truth, the real kindness of heart, and the hospitality which characterise the Sussex people. And the downs themselves will not yield all their beauty at once; you must live among them to thoroughly know and love them; cold and grey and monotonous as they look at first, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... attended with perpetual care, is an object no less interesting to the philosopher, than it is miraculous to the peasant, who places enjoyment in ease and animal indulgence. It is on the motives and actions which characterise this self-denial and enterprise, that the hero and the statesman fix their attention; forming their models, and drawing their conclusions, not from the passive inclinations, but from the capabilities of our species, not from what man would or ought to ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... can only characterise the Quarterly Reviewer's treatment of Mr. Darwin as alike unjust and unbecoming. Language of this strength requires justification, and on that ground I add the ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... least able to characterise the French, They have no traits so bold as the English, nor so minute as the Germans. I know them chiefly by their teeth and their laugh. The Italians I discover by the nose, small eyes, and projecting chin. The English by their foreheads and eyebrows. ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... adores a woman who is possessed by a husband. If he has long adored her, and known himself to be preferred by her in innocency of heart; if he has solved the problem of being her bosom's lord, without basely seeking to degrade her to being his mistress; the epithets to characterise him in our vernacular will probably be all the less flattering. Politically we are the most self-conscious people upon earth, and socially the frankest animals. The terrorism of our social laws is eminently serviceable, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... It would take pages to describe Ossaroo; and he is worthy of a full description: but we shall leave him to be known by his deeds. Suffice it to say, that Ossaroo is a Hindoo of handsome proportions, with his swarth complexion, large beautiful eyes, and luxuriant black hair, which characterise his race. He is by caste a "shikarree," or hunter, and is not only so by hereditary descent, but he is one of the noted "mighty hunters" in the province to which he belongs. Far and wide is his name known—for Ossaroo possesses, what ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... founded the chapel, which is considered to be a complete type of the pure gothic architecture, and which in that respect is not exceeded by any other in Europe; it has the most decided air of antiquity, with a richness and elegance which certainly characterise it as the beau ideal of that period. It is termed the Holy Chapel and now appropriated to the conservation of ancient records. From this interesting monument we turn with regret, but a new scene bursts upon us; it is the flower market, ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... possible upon the foundation and with the aid of the Darwinian theory, to show in what sequence the various smaller and larger circles had separated from the common fundamental form and from each other, in what sequence they had acquired the peculiarities which now characterise them, and what transformations they had undergone in the lapse of ages,—if the establishment of such a genealogical tree, of a primitive history of the group under consideration, free from internal contradictions, was possible,—then this conception, the more completely it took up all the ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... is that one cannot suspend judgment as to the possible existence of an inconceivability. For "mind" must be mind, as we know it. And it is a downright absurdity to speak of the possible existence of a "mind" while divesting it of all the qualities that characterise mind as we know it. Really between the statement that A. does not exist, and the affirmation that A. does exist, but differs in every conceivable particular from all known A.'s there is no difference whatever. We are denying its existence in the ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... more true to say that Physiology is the experimental science par excellence of all sciences; that in which there is least to be learnt by mere observation, and that which affords the greatest field for the exercise of those faculties which characterise the experimental philosopher. I confess, if any one were to ask me for a model application of the logic of experiment, I should know no better work to put into his hands than Bernard's late Researches on the ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... are concerned—with the usual exception of such occasional dilatations and compressions of time as are required in dramatic composition. And notwithstanding the limited imagination and the too artificial passion which characterise it, Philip van Artevelde is in very many respects a noble work, as it certainly is its author's chef-d'oeuvre. It has been pronounced by no mean authority the superior of every dramatic composition of modern times, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... of a mobile and expressive mouth. But it was not for charm she was looking, but for some signs of power quite apart from that of sex. Did her face express intellect, persistence and, above all, courage? The brow was good;—she would so characterise it in another. Surely a woman with such a forehead might do something even against odds. Nor was her chin weak; sometimes she had thought it too pronounced for beauty; but what had she to do with beauty now? And the neck so proudly ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... Roblado was furious would be to characterise very faintly the state he was in. But he had still one captive on which to vent his rage ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... confided to the encyclopaedia.... A modified conception of life is now becoming co-extensive with the whole range of our experience. Even a simple inorganic crystal does not spring ready formed from its solvent, but first passes through phases of granulation and striation comparable with those which characterise the beginnings of vital growth. Metals exhibit in some respects phenomena similar to those possessed by organised beings. Thus, they show fatigue under long continued stress, and they recover their strength with rest. They are also susceptible to certain of the poisons which destroy organic life. ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... such an origin as that suggested, Mars would possess a structure which, in the essential feature of heat-distribution, would be the very opposite of that which is believed to characterise the earth, yet it might have been produced by a very slight modification of the same process. This peculiar heat-distribution, together with a much smaller mass and gravitative force, would lead to a very different development of the ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... formidable as they are usually supposed to be. They are evidently not wantonly destructive; they act only under the influence of hunger, and even then their motions on land are awkward and ungainly, their action timid, and their whole demeanour devoid of the sagacity and courage which characterise other animals ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... God seems to be implied in the Christian belief in the brotherhood of man. By that phrase I meant to characterise Christianity, not to embark upon the question of Theism. It does not seem possible that we should ever have direct proof through human observation and reasoning of the existence of Deity or of the divine aim and will. ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith
... a task . to characterise Greek antiquity as irretrievably lost, and with it Christianity also and the foundations upon which, up to the present time, our society and ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... in a cloudless sky, shines for several hours with a brightness and warmth surpassing that of the British summer, and then sinks without a cloud behind the secondary ranges of the Maritime Alps, displaying in his setting the beautiful and varied succession of tints which characterise that glorious phenomenon of the refraction of light, asouthern sunset; when he imparts to the rugged mountains a softness of outline and a brilliancy of colouring which defy description. In the early stages of phthisis, and especially when ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... however, united together into one vast aggregation of worlds, having one common controlling centre of their own, and by their unity form a constellation, a larger and grander mechanism. Throughout the whole constellation there is the same order, and harmonious working of part with part, that characterise the solar system. Then these constellations increasing in their aggregations form a still larger complexity of systems, called a Galaxy; and galaxy being added to galaxy, constellation to constellation, there is formed by such union, an ocean of suns and stars like our ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... it presents in the whole range of organised beings a series of phenomena closely linked together, and upon it are based not only the higher manifestations of the mind, but the very permanence of the specific differences which characterise every organism. Most of the arguments in favour of the immortality of man apply equally to the permanency of this principle in other living beings. May I not add that a future life in which man would be deprived of that great source of enjoyment and intellectual and moral improvement which ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and dogged determination on the part of the Boers to 'stop the clock' affects not merely the Transvaal; it is vitally and perniciously affecting the whole of South Africa. But for the obstructiveness and obscurantism of the Transvaal Boers, the rate of progress and development which would characterise the whole South African continent would be unparalleled in the history of any other country. The reactionary policy of the Transvaal is the one spoke in the wheel. It must therefore be removed in the name ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... characterise a set of closely allied groups, termed "inter-periodic." Fourteen bars (or seven crossed) radiate from a centre, as in iron (1 on Plate IV), and the members of each group—iron, nickel, cobalt; ruthenium, rhodium, palladium; osmium, iridium, platinum—differ from each other by the weight ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater
... late guardian, big, florid, with that peculiar blue eye which seems to characterise hasty temper, stood by the window, tossing up and catching the glittering gold piece—souvenir of the directors' meeting which ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... was his companion. He was a young gentleman whom we cannot more easily characterise than by calling him, in the cant of the day, 'of the period.' He was essentially the most recent product of the age we live in. Manly enough in some things, he was fastidious in others to the very verge ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... them acquired by the same hard labour or skill by which an artisan gains his weekly wages,) would the equality of property long continue? Would not the sloth, improvidence, and imprudence, that ever distinguish a great proportion of mankind; and the industry, foresight, and ambition that characterise others, soon bring many of the equal lots into one, thus forming a great estate, the property of an individual,—when matters would just be at the point where his reverence found them? And then, of course, would follow another "equitable ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... never heard of any other of that name than the King Cimosco in the Orlando Furioso, who makes use of fire-arms; and Rosa Taddei was, it appears, of my opinion, since this was the Cimosco she chose to characterise; and she made thereby a very neat and happy comparison between the gun of Cimosco and the arrow of Cupid. This talent of the improvisatori is certainly wonderful, and one for which there is no accounting. It appears peculiar to the ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... misses and masters, are very good. However the exaltedness of some minds (or rather as I shrewdly suspect their insipidity and want of feeling or observation) may make them insensible to these light things, (I mean such as characterise and paint nature) yet surely they are as weighty and much more useful than your grave discourses upon the mind, the passions, and what not." And thereupon follows that fantastic utterance concerning the romances ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... among the vices of Front-de-Boeuf, a hard and griping man, avarice was predominant; and he preferred setting church and churchmen at defiance, to purchasing from them pardon and absolution at the price of treasure and of manors. Nor did the Templar, an infidel of another stamp, justly characterise his associate, when he said Front-de-Boeuf could assign no cause for his unbelief and contempt for the established faith; for the Baron would have alleged that the Church sold her wares too dear, that the spiritual freedom which she put up to sale was only to be bought like that of the chief ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... and Bourbon. These vicissitudes have left their traces everywhere. The Greek temples of Segeste and Girgenti and Selinus, the Roman amphitheatre of Syracuse, the Byzantine mosaics and Saracenic villas of Palermo, the Norman cathedrals of Monreale and Cefalu, and the Spanish habits which still characterise the life of Sicilian cities, testify to the successive strata of races which have been deposited upon the island. Amid its anarchy of tongues, the Latin alone has triumphed. In the time of the Greek colonists Sicily was polyglot. During the Saracenic ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... find no word to characterise his opinion of this offence, and drawing his breath between his teeth, passed into his dressing-room. Mrs. Pendyce hastened quietly out, and went to her son's room. She found George in his shirtsleeves, inserting the links ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Lindley, it has no peculiar constitutional characteristics by which it may be distinguished from other wheats. Its superior quality is entirely owing to local conditions; to the peculiar temperature, the brilliant light, the soil, and those other circumstances which characterise ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... vista of saloons and tobacco-shops. He slowly climbed the great steps, hesitating a little, even wondering why he had come. The superficial reason was obvious enough, but there was a real one behind it that struck him as rather wanting in the solidity which should characterise the motives of an emissary of Prince Bismarck. The superficial reason was a belief that Mrs. Steuben would pay her visit first—it was probably only a question of leaving cards—and bring her young friend to the Capitol at the hour when the yellow afternoon light would give a tone ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... a Chinese chair at Columbia University naturally suggests the acquisition of a good Chinese library. At the University of Cambridge, England, there is what I can only characterise as an ideal Chinese library. It was not bought off-hand in the market,—such a collection indeed would never come into the market,—but the books were patiently and carefully brought together by my predecessor ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... is a Rabelaisian plainness of speech on certain subjects, which one must admit to be apt to characterise boys' conversation, which it is impossible to construct or include, and yet the omission of which subtracts considerable reality from the picture. Genius might triumph over all these obstacles, of course, but even a genius would find it very difficult to ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... accordance with our monistic conception of the cell-soul, we must conclude that the fertilised ovum-cell already virtually possesses those psychical properties which, by the special combination of the peculiarities inherited from both parents, characterise the individual soul of the new person; in the course of the development of the germ, the cell-soul of the fertilised ovum naturally is developed simultaneously with its material substratum, and subsequently, after birth, ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... except for shelter, wood, water, and repairs. For the infractions of the treaty several vessels were seized, and more than one of them condemned. A clamour was raised in the United States on the ground that the Canadians were wanting in that spirit of friendly intercourse which should characterise the relations of neighbouring peoples. The fact is, the Canadians were bound to adhere to their legal rights—rights which had always been maintained before 1854; which had remained in abeyance between 1854 and 1866; which naturally revived after the ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... inadvertences which characterise him could hardly be better instanced than in his calling the eminent O'Donovan Rossa "le depute-martyr de Tipperary." In English, if not in French, a "deputy-martyr" ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... child, unless she can find a man who will patronise it as a father; in which case, the man is considered as having appropriated the woman to himself, and she is accordingly extruded from this hopeful society. These few anecdotes sufficiently characterise ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... find fault with their regimen. They live chiefly upon a light but nutritious diet of fruit and seeds, or upon the abundant nectar of rich tropical flowers. And it is mainly for the sake of getting at their chosen food that they have developed the large and powerful bills which characterise the family. You may have perhaps noted that most tropical fruit-eaters, like the hornbills and the toucans, are remarkable for the size and strength of their beaks: if you haven't, I dare say you will generously take my word for it. And, per contra, it may also have struck you ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... monophysite could not look for the sympathy of Christ in his own struggles, nor could he appeal to Christ's example in respect of works of human charity. Monophysitism considers only the religious nature of man, and takes no account of his other needs. We must therefore characterise the system as ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... playgoer were gifted with Pepys's frankness, I have little doubt that he would echo the diarist's condemnation of Shakespeare in his poetic purity, of Shakespeare as the mere interpreter of human nature, of Shakespeare without flying machines, of Shakespeare without song and dance; he would characterise undiluted Shakespearean drama as "a mean thing," or the most tedious entertainment that ever he ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... turn for bread, or on whom to pour his rage—beheld suddenly, in a quiet, half-built street, which led from the suburb to the New Road, Arabella Crane standing right in his path. She had emerged from one of the many straight intersecting roads which characterise that crude nebula of a future city; and the woman and the man met thus face to face; not another passer-by visible in the thoroughfare;—at a distance the dozing hack cab-stand; round and about them carcases of brick and mortar—some with gaunt scaffolding fixed into their ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... these were crowned by a firm, unhesitating, devout belief in the doctrines of our faith, which issued in strictness to himself and the warmest, gentlest charity to his fellow-creatures. The result was what you might expect. Altogether it would be hard to say whether you would characterise him as a man unusually popular or ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of theology, of which the MYSTICAL was one. I think that mysticism and scholasticism both had a profound influence on the mediaeval mind, sometimes acting as opposing forces, sometimes operating harmoniously with one another. As Professor WINDELBAND puts it: "We no longer onesidedly characterise the philosophy of the middle ages as scholasticism, but rather place mysticism beside it as of equal rank, and even as being the ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... the other vices denounced by the prophet's burning words, but we must premise the general observation that the same uncompromising plainness and boldness in speaking out as to social sins ought to characterise Christian teachers to-day. The prophet's office is not extinct ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... will undoubtedly characterise what we say, For LONGFELLOW'S longest lines skip along when we've long longed for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... Its trunk rose full seventy feet without a branch; and then it spread out in every direction in numerous horizontal limbs, that forked and forked again until they became slender boughs. These branches were clad with the delicate pinnate leaves that characterise the family of ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... remarkable either in his wit, or his person; but his sentiments were worthy of the fortune which awaited him, when, on the very point of his elevation, he was killed at sea. Never did disinterestedness so perfectly characterise the greatness of the soul: he had no views but what tended to the glory of his master: his credit was never employed but in advising him to reward services, or to confer favours on merit: so polished in conversation, that the greater his power, the greater was his humility; and ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... own style of verse. Later modernisations—even of those which a band of poets in some instances singularly qualified for the task put forth in a collection published in the year 1841, and which, on the part of some of them at least, was the result of conscientious endeavour—it is needless to characterise here. Slight incidental use has been made of some of these in this essay, the author of which would gladly have abstained from printing a single modernised phrase or word—most of all any which he has himself been guilty of re-casting. ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... they can be influenced by such efforts of visible despair, and that we have too much reverence for the honor of the American Congress to prostitute its authority, by filling our own newspapers with the same kind of invented tales, which characterise the ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... condyles of the occiput, and the position of the jaws with the upper canine teeth projecting in a most anomalous manner in front of the lower canines, may be attributed to these parts not having been fully exercised.... These modifications of structure, which are all strictly inherited, characterise several improved breeds, so that they cannot have been derived from any single domestic or wild stock. With respect to cattle, Professor Tanner has remarked that the lungs and liver in the improved breeds ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... a very pleasant recollection of "Garibaldi's Englishman," Colonel Peard. Peard had many more qualities and capabilities than such as are essential to a soldier of fortune. The phrase, however, is perhaps not exactly that which should be used to characterise him. He had qualities which the true soldier of fortune should not possess. His partisanship was with him in the highest degree a matter of conviction and conscientious opinion, and nothing would have tempted him to change his colours or ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... what term is left to designate that faculty of which the Poet is 'all compact;' he whose eye glances from earth to heaven, whose spiritual attributes body forth what his pen is prompt in turning to shape; or what is left to characterise Fancy, as insinuating herself into the heart of objects with creative activity? Imagination, in the sense of the word as giving title to a class of the following Poems, has no reference to images that are merely a faithful ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... ground when he tells us that "in curiously vivid and pungent fashion this little play outlines the breezy freshness and the originality of outlook which almost invariably characterise the politicians and statesmen of the Prairie, the Veldt and the Bush, and which more than anything else perhaps differentiates them from the men of an older land, hampered as these latter often are by long and stately traditions." Certainly, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various
... were used without much motion; and when they were dead set, as they were not unfrequently, it would seem as though he were defying those on whom he looked. Thus he made many afraid of him, and many who were not afraid of him, disliked him because of a certain ferocity which seemed to characterise his face. He wore no beard beyond a heavy black moustache, which quite covered his upper lip. His nose was long and straight, his mouth large, and his chin square. No doubt he was a handsome man. ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... and natural during the heat of 1861 to characterise as traitors the men who went with their States to fight against the flag of their country. Looking at the matter now, forty-seven years later, we are better able to estimate the character and the integrity of the motives by which they were actuated. We do not ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... of Australia or South America. We do not find, for example, in the Europaeo-Asiatic province fossil kangaroos, or armadillos, but the elephant, rhinoceros, horse, bear, hyaena, beaver, hare, mole, and others, which still characterise ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... was no brilliant, victorious hero, judged by the standard of a century which had seen such military geniuses as Turenne, as the great Conde, as Marlborough and Eugene of Savoy. Villars was essentially a wily tactician, and his exploits were useful, but he lacked the dash, the verve which characterise the great commanders of that epoch. It was his system to overrun an invaded country, skilfully avoiding actual combat with the defending army, which pursued him impotently along the ghastly trail of ravage. Thus Villars, with no loss to his troops, spread famine through the land, for he ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... has its roots in the throne of an All-wise and an All-good; that in the wildest illusions by which muititudes are frenzied, there may be detected gleams of prophetic truths; that in the fiercest crimes which, like the disease of an epidemic, characterise a peculiar epoch under abnormal circumstances, there might be found instincts or aspirations towards some social virtues to be realised ages afterwards by happier generations, all tending to save man from despair ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... personal confessions of the interior life; but it has the further claim to notice that it is the signal expression of the spirit of its time, though we can no longer call it the modern spirit. The book perfectly renders the disillusion, languor and sentimentality which characterise a self-centred scepticism. It is the record, indeed, of a morbid mind, but of a mind gifted with extraordinary acuteness and with the utmost delicacy of perception. Amiel wrote also several essays and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... fossil wood which has been "silicified" or converted into flint (silex). In such cases we have fossil wood which presents the rings of growth and fibrous structure of recent wood, and which under the microscope exhibits the minutest vessels which characterise ligneous tissue, together with the even more minute markings of the vessels (fig. 2). The whole, however, instead of being composed of the original carbonaceous matter of the wood, is now converted into flint. The only explanation that can be given of this by ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... It is unfair to characterise all deficiencies as defalcations, for from the nature of the case a deficiency does not always constitute a defalcation. The report specified the sub-divisions of monies which had yet to be accounted for. The first item in such deficiencies ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... of unwonted eloquence. Quite overflowing wealth of imagery: described School Board as the ogre that eats up everything; that enough by way of description; but TEMPLE rising to fresh heights, went on to characterise it as the thin edge ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... painter declared that he had no intention to give offence, or to characterise particular persons: they affirmed the resemblance was too palpable to be overlooked; they taxed him with insolence, malice, and ingratitude; and their clamours being overheard by the public, the captain was ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... cause, their faults (so far as truth permitteth and need requireth) may be detected and displayed. For this cause particularly may we presume our Lord (otherwise so meek in His temper, and mild in His carriage towards all men) did characterise the Jewish scribes in such terms, that their authority, being then so prevalent with the people, might not prejudice the truth, and hinder the efficacy of His doctrine. This is part of that [Greek], that duty of contending earnestly for the faith, which ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... back than the other. The posterior development is so marked, that anatomists have assigned to that part the character of a third lobe; 'it is peculiar to the genus Homo, and equally peculiar is the posterior horn of the lateral ventricle and the 'hippocampus minor,' which characterise the hind lobe of each hemisphere'."—'Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society, Vol. ii. ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... the wisdom and vigour which you have displayed upon this important occasion, and participates in the success of the country with the enthusiasm and energy which characterise our soldiers. It is only to be hoped, however, that the Government will not be playing at see saw, and thus throw itself into the opposite party. Wisdom and moderate views alone can establish the happiness of the country on a sure foundation. As for myself, this is the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... mentioned. It is sufficient to discuss cases in which a piece on the one side plays against a stronger one on the other, because in endings where several pieces are left on either side, fortuitous circumstances are generally the deciding factors, and it would be impossible to characterise and classify positions of that kind, by giving typical illustrations. Besides, they are reduced sooner or later by exchanges to such end-games as have been treated already, or are ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... in the general relations of the country they wrought no change at all. On the contrary, these were developed on a still larger scale, owing to the complicated family connexions which so peculiarly characterise that epoch. From the county of Anjou which, like the dominion of the Capets, had been formed in the struggle against the invasion of the Normans, a sovereign arose who had the right to rule the Norman conquests, the son of the Conqueror's granddaughter, ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... genius. Besides, they were friends, neighbours; he would like to give her a chance of distinguishing herself—the chance which she was seeking. All the time he could not but realise that, however he might accentuate and characterise the part of the sentimental girl, Rose would not be able to do much with it. To bring out her special powers something strange, wild, or tragic was required. But of what use thinking of what was not to be? Having ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... that fifteen years later, in the French Revolution, the same officer, then a Vice-Admiral, again distinguished himself by his bearing in face of great odds, bringing five ships safe off, out of the jaws of a dozen. It illustrates how luck seems in many cases to characterise a man's personality, much as temperament does. Cornwallis, familiarly known as "Billy Blue" to the seamen of his day, never won a victory, nor had a chance of winning one; but in command both of ships and of divisions, he repeatedly distinguished ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... whatever were observable than the shape of the space occupied by the water as it varies in time, we should have no ground for the assumption that water consists of movable particles. But all the same we could characterise ...
— Sidelights on Relativity • Albert Einstein
... inspirer and its guide. For the human spirit by its expression as intellect judges, decides, directs, controls. Its activity is the outcome of its thinking; and if without caring for thought you plunge into action, you have the constant experiments, feeble and fruitless, which so largely characterise ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... school-study and nursery routine, are not only perfectly correct in spelling and grammar, but display the same lucidity of meaning, and scrupulous accuracy in punctuation and the other minor details of the literary art, which characterise his ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... or exultation, a jest thrown out against one of his books, a dream which for a short time restored to him that beautiful face over which the grave had closed for ever, led him to musings, which without effort shaped themselves into verse. The unity of sentiment and severity of style which characterise these little pieces remind us of the Greek Anthology, or perhaps still more of the Collects of the English Liturgy. The noble poem on the Massacres of Piedmont is strictly ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is rather imposing; the members behave with extraordinary decorum; and to people accustomed to the noises and unseemly interruptions which characterise the British House of Commons, the silence and order of the Canadian House are very agreeable. [Footnote: In justice to the Canadian Parliament, I must insert the following extract from the 'Toronto Globe,' from which it will ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... health or otherwise, the Fielding of Amelia is suddenly a far older man than the Fielding of Tom Jones. The robust and irrepressible vitality, the full veined delight of living, the energy of observation and strength of satire, which characterise the one, give place in the other to a calmer retrospection, a more compassionate humanity, a more benignant criticism of life." Murphy's Irish tongue declares a similar feeling in his comparison ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... system of the enclosed pupa) are far forward, and these may be situated at the tips of long sometimes branching processes, which recall the thoracic gills of the aquatic pupae mentioned a few pages above. Adaptations, various and beautiful, to special modes of life, are thus seen to characterise ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... been beautifully confirmed by a distinguished physiologist (Denis), who has succeeded in converting fibrine into albumen, that is, in giving it the solubility, and coagulability by heat, which characterise the white ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig
... hour or thereabouts the new house is finished, though on a very rude and artificial type. Now here the organisation is far higher; the instrumentality obviously serves the needs of the animal and suffices for them; and we characterise the action, on account of its uniformity ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... that the peculiar nature of this tremulous motion should be ascertained, as well for the sake of giving to it its proper designation, as for assisting in forming probable conjectures, as to the nature of the malady, which it helps to characterise. Tremors were distinguished by Juncker into Active, those proceeding from sudden affection of the minds, as terror, anger, &c. and Passive, dependant on debilitating causes, such as advanced age, palsy, &c[2]. But a much more satisfactory and useful distinction is made ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... though, as his tale proceeded, the memories it roused seemed to carry him farther than he at first intended, and reckless and light-hearted ease gave way to that fierce and varied play of countenance and passion of gesture which characterise the ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... she is the main pillar of the Opera Comique. She never has been handsome, at least when closely viewed, and is now on the wane, being turned of forty-five; but her graceful little figure and delicate features make her appear pretty on the stage. Neatness and naivete characterise her acting. She has scarcely any voice, but no other songs than romances or ballads are assigned to her. She formerly played at the Grand French Opera, where she was applauded in noble and impassioned parts, though they are not, in general, suited to her manner. But an actress, high in favour ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... he, more quietly and with more dignity than was likely from his previous conduct. "I will not allow you to characterise as folly what might be presumptuous on my part—I had no business to express myself so soon—but which in its foundation was true and sincere. That I can answer for most solemnly. It is possible, though it may not be a usual thing, for a man to feel so strongly attracted by the charms ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... "it is certainly not for you to accuse me of crime, lack of decency, and what you are pleased to call disgraceful butchery, seeing who was the probable cause of the honourable encounter which you characterise in such tasteful language." ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... Indeed, during the whole fast of Rhamadan, the Negroes behaved themselves with the greatest meekness and humility; forming a striking contrast to the savage intolerance and brutal bigotry which at this period characterise the Moors. ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... this action was, another exceeded it in ferocity. A father, irritated by the cries of his child, an infant in the cradle, snatched it up, and threw it into a vessel full of boiling whale-oil. These examples are sufficient to characterise this hateful people, who appear to be in every respect the very refuse ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue |
