"Figurative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mrs. March saw the intent was only figurative she drew her lips close and dropped ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... Holy Eucharist. The term "Real Presence" is intended to signify that the Presence of our Lord in this Sacrament is a reality; that while His Presence is spiritual, it is none the less real, and not simply figurative. The sacrament is not a mere sign or token of an absent {225} Christ. It is a great deal more. As it is Christ who invites, bids and calls us to this Feast and provides the spiritual food for it, it would be strange indeed ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... everything was ready. The pack-train got slowly under way. We leaped into our saddles—"leaped" being a figurative term which grew more and more figurative as time went on and we grew saddle-weary and stiff—and, passing the pack-train on a canter, led off ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... quarrels of the marriage-bed; to conclude, they must all act according to their distinct and peculiar characters. If the persons represented were to speak upon the stage, it would follow, of necessity, that the expressions should be lofty, figurative, and majestical: but the nature of an opera denies the frequent use of these poetical ornaments; for vocal music, though it often admits a loftiness of sound, yet always exacts an harmonious sweetness; or, to distinguish ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... here in the cold light of day, her words of the night before seemed more than a little fantastic; but perhaps he had not understood, or perhaps she had spoken figuratively. "The nations of the world in the hollow of his hand"—that, of course, was figurative. And, equally of course, Vard's plan would come to nothing. But it would be interesting to ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... regard for the novelty of the thing; they mean from one to three weeks' work, day and night without let-up. But the blinding work is not the worst of it; the suspense is what unnerves and worries. A fellow never knows what moment he is going to get a figurative knock-out from the head office official. The inspector, if he happens to have indigestion or domestic trouble, can be ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... "l'ennuit les avoit gagnes," by the context of which it was plain he meant, that the common influence of the night, in bringing on heaviness and yawning, had come upon them. The proper sense is totally antiquated, but the figurative remains in full currency ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... however figurative your way of putting it may be, I'm afraid that the Archdeacon ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... to myself—how much greater might the great poet have become had he ever known a public and real actors! It is remarkable, by the way, that Schiller, who is not at bottom very objective, lends himself so perfectly to an objective representation. He became figurative, while believing himself to be only eloquent—one more proof of his incomparable genius. In Goethe we find the exact opposite. While he is ordinarily called objective and is so to a great extent, his characters lose in the actual representation. His figurativeness is only for the imagination; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the word 'founded' in a literal as well as figurative sense. While the merchants, in their year of victories, threw down the walls of the war-towers, they as eagerly and diligently set their best craftsmen to lift higher the walls of their churches. For the most part, the Early Norman or Basilican forms were too ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... is not difficult to learn. The vowels occur much more frequently than the consonants, our c, g, k, s, and p, being entirely wanting. Cook and his companions made considerable progress in it; and one of them says—"It is rich in figurative modes of expression; and I am convinced that a nearer acquaintance with it would place it on a level with the most distinguished for boldness ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... "mother," so does "hire" or "wages" imply a [181] "hirer" or "wage-giver." Therefore, when a man in "the original state of things" gathered fruit or killed game for his own sustenance, the fruit or the game could be called his "wages" only in a figurative sense; as one sees if the term "hire," which has a more limited connotation, is substituted for "wage." If not, it must be assumed that the savage hired himself to get his own dinner; whereby we are led to the tolerably absurd conclusion that, as in the "state ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... with large and brilliant stars, brilliant yet mellow, unlike the crisp scintillating presentment in northern latitudes, might have served as an illustration of an air-tight bowl, flung down relentlessly upon this part of the world. Inside this figurative bowl it was chill, yet the air was stirless. It was without refreshment; it became a labor and not an exhilaration to breath it. A pall of suffocating dust rolled above and about the Irrawaddy flotilla boat which, buffeted ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... dream work. The first dream thoughts which are unravelled by analysis frequently strike one by their unusual wording. They do not appear to be expressed in the sober form which our thinking prefers; rather are they expressed symbolically by allegories and metaphors like the figurative language of the poets. It is not difficult to find the motives for this degree of constraint in the expression of dream ideas. The dream content consists chiefly of visual scenes; hence the dream ideas must, in the first place, be prepared ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... the equilibrium of his mind. Such passions as anger, hatred, jealousy, sorrow, worry, grudge, and fear always untune one's mood and break the harmony of one's mind. They poison one's body, not in a figurative, but in a literal sense of the word. Obnoxious passions once aroused never fail to bring about the physiological change in the nerves, in the organs, and eventually in the whole constitution, and leave those injurious impressions ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... nothing is said of the word [Hebrew: PETACH]. I do not know of any place in Holy Scripture where this word is used figuratively, and unless this can be shown, there is no supporting so strong a metaphor as the advocates of the figurative meaning of the passage contend for. Davison takes no notice of the remainder of the verse.... Now the words are remarkable; they are the same as those in which the Lord declares the subjection of Eve to her husband, Gen. iii. 16. I have always thought this passage (Gen. iv. 7.) to allude to Abel; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... that of Milton's prose works, is more remarkable than that of many of our writers of verse. He speaks in figures, images, symbols; and the musical cadence of his sentences reflects the influence of his wide reading of poetry. Not only in figurative expression, but much more in spirit, he belongs with the poets of the revival. At times his language is pseudo-classic, reflecting the influence of Johnson and his school; but his thought is always romantic; he is governed by ideal rather than by practical interests, and a ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... He caught hold of things then and dragged himself along as far as the after skylight where he would sit for hours. Our, then young, friend offered once to assist him and this service was the first beginning of a sort of friendship. He clung hard to one—Powell says, with no figurative intention. Powell was always on the lookout to assist, and to assist mainly Mrs Anthony, because he clung so jolly hard to her that Powell was afraid of her being dragged down notwithstanding that she very soon became very sure-footed ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... often thought of writing a hymn on the Beauty of Viceroys; and have repeatedly attuned my mind to the subject; but my inability to express myself in figurative language, and my total ignorance of everything pertaining to metre, rhythm, and rhyme, make me rather hesitate to employ verse. Certainly, the subject is inviting, and I am surprised that no singer has arisen. How can any one ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... man peoples air, earth, and the waters with countless creatures of his fancy; his expressions are figurative and metaphorical; he is quick to seize analogies; and when he cannot explain he is ever ready to invent. This is shown in his inappeasable love of story telling. As a raconteur he is untiring. ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... from my purpose, which was to assure you, that I know you as well as the mother who did not bear you, for MacDuff's peculiarity sticks to your whole race. You are not born of woman, unless, indeed, in that figurative sense, in which the celebrated Maria Edgeworth may, in her state of single blessedness, be termed mother of the finest family in England. You belong, sir, to the Editors of the land of Utopia, a sort of persons for whom I have the highest esteem. How is it possible ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... gas, even the idea of it, has gone out of fashion, through its figurative use to designate empty, vapouring talk; therefore, when deipnosophist and gastronomer are spoken, the former is employed to denote learned talkers at supper, such as we were half an hour ago, and the latter, to signify one who ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... opposition was, moreover, made in the house of lords; and, had Bute been wise, he would have bowed deferentially to the public feeling, and have adopted some other mode of raising the money less repugnant to the temper and disposition of the people. Bute, however, to use a figurative expression, proudly bared his head to the tempest which was playing around him. He was determined that the bill should pass, and he carried his point despite the fierce opposition of the whole country. The bill passed into a law, and although there ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... still kindled though they burn not as brightly as of yore. Nor do the young braves listen to the wisdom, or ever now in their Councils witness the allegorical or figurative language so beautifully illustrating the discourses of Red Jacket, Corn Planter, Farmers Brother and other Chiefs, thus eulogized by PRES. DWIGHT: "In strength and sublimity of their eloquence they may be fairly compared ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... Sodom and saved lot, all of which suggests the attitude and work of Jesus. Isaac is an only son, is offered in sacrifice, has secured for him a bride in a most unusual manner. This again in many ways illustrates the attitude and work of the Savior. But Joseph is perhaps more highly figurative of the Redeemer. His being hated and cast out by his brethren is like the rejection of Jesus; the way his wicked brethren came to him in their extremity and received forgiveness and sustenance suggest how a sinner finds mercy and life in ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... candidate with the cross, the consecration and giving of salt, which was entitled the sacrament of catechumens, repeated exorcisms, or prayers and adjurations to cast out the power of Satan, anointing with oil, and other mystical and figurative rites. In the course of many ages, when the Christian church had overspread the face of the world, and infidelity had become in most places extinct, the form of admission to the class of catechumens was from a veneration for old customs in many ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... something great in the half-success that has attended the effort of turning into an emotional religion, Bald Conduct, without any appeal, or almost none, to the figurative, mysterious, and constitutive facts of life. Not that conduct is not constitutive, but dear! it's dreary! On the whole, conduct is better dealt with on the cast-iron 'gentleman' and duty formula, with as little fervour and poetry as possible; ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the word "gig" in a figurative sense. It was a power launch that put smartly away from the "Reed" and was speedily alongside. Dan waved his hand to his chum, who was leaning ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... moon-god the eldest son of En-lil or Bel; and, similarly, a goddess like Bau would be called the daughter of Anu. It is a mistake, however, to interpret the use of 'daughter' and 'son' literally. Such terms are employed in all Semitic languages in a figurative sense, to indicate a dependent position of some sort. Again, we have seen that the union of a number of cities or states under one head would be followed by a union of the deities proper to these ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... waxen head on the rocks when she was alone, and sometimes dragged it with a string round its neck to and from school. At other times, setting it up on her desk, she made a pincushion of its patient and inoffensive body. Whether this was done in revenge of what she considered a second figurative obtrusion of Clytie's excellencies upon her; or whether she had an intuitive appreciation of the rites of certain other heathens, and indulging in that "fetich" ceremony imagined that the original of her wax model would pine away ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... settled country, neglected by the average tourist, but affording keen delight to the few enlightened travellers who sojourn within its borders. It is a field which has been neglected by anthologists and essayists; one of its few serious recognitions being in a certain "Treatise of Figurative Language," which says: "Nonsense; shall we dignify that with a place on our list? Assuredly will vote for doing so every one who hath at all duly noticed what admirable and wise uses it can be, and often is, put to, though ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... expected to judge the quality of literature, distinguishing with ease between what is literal and what is imaginative, or figurative, or humorous. When they read that the rope with which the powerful Fenris-Wolf was bound was "made out of such things as the sound of a cat's footsteps, the roots of the mountains, the breath of a fish and ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... duty to stand behind his superior on all occasions of ceremony, to act as his messenger, and in general to be subject to his directions. It gave to the aid the office of chief and rendered probable his election as the successor of his principal after the decease of the latter. In their figurative language these aids of the sachems were styled "Braces in the Long House," ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... the meanest artifices in order to apologise for the numerous glaring falsehoods and horrid violations of all decency and decorum, which abound in almost every page. Any thing, it seems, will do with these men but the word of God. They ridicule the figurative language of Scripture, but will run allegory-mad in support of the most worthless productions that ever were published. I should think it time lost to translate any of them; and only a sense of duty excites me to read them. ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... You recognize women as people, for you count them in the basis of representation. Half our Congressmen hold their seats to-day as representatives of women. We help to swell the figures by which you are here, and too many of you, alas, are only figurative representatives, paying little heed to our ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... motion from. Fly may be used, in a figurative sense, of persons, to indicate great speed as of wings. "I flew to his rescue." "He flew to my rescue." "Resist the devil and he will ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... leads inevitably to death. He is excluding himself from that sphere of good, that career of service and devotion, wherein alone true life is to be found. He is banishing himself to that outer darkness which is our figurative expression for the absence of all those rewards of virtue and the presence of all those penalties of vice which our previous studies have brought to our attention. "Sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death." "The wages of ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... Meuse should not give way to riot or disorder on that occasion. He hoped and believed it would not—here M. le Maire laid his hand on his heart—but a spark, as I knew, fired tinder, and the St. Meuse populace were at present figurative tinder. ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... artist almost of a certainty produced both of these figurative tombstones. The handicraft is similar, the idea in each is equally daring and grotesque, and the phraseology of the inscriptions is nearly identical. I thought both conceptions original and native to the place, but I do not think so now. In point of taste, the first, ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... road built along the rocky shore of a seaside, being a figurative application of the architectural ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... attempt to perpetrate innovations. From time to time they resume forgotten expressions in their vocabulary, which they restore to use; or they borrow from some particular class of the community a term peculiar to it, which they introduce with a figurative meaning into the language of daily life. Many expressions which originally belonged to the technical language of a profession or a party, are thus drawn into ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... that St. Luke the Evangelist was early regarded as the great authority with respect to the few Scripture particulars relating to the character and life of Mary; so that, in the figurative sense, he may be said to have painted that portrait of her which has been since received as the perfect type of womanhood:—1. Her noble, trustful humility, when she receives the salutation of the angel (Luke i. 38); the complete and feminine surrender of her whole being to the ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... right, Whizzer! Kick him if you can—I'll stand by you!" This assertion, you understand, was purely figurative; the Little Doctor would have hesitated long before attempting ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... questions as: What are the limits of each art? What can be represented with colours, and what with sounds? What with simple monochromatic lines, and what with touches of various colours? What with notes, and what with metres and rhymes? What are the limits between the figurative and the auditional arts, between painting and ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... she dismissed, as typically chimerical "notions," the speculations of her doctor—also a lifelong friend of her husband's—as to what Judge Emery might have become if—the doctor spoke in his usual highly figurative and fantastic jargon—"he had not had to hurry so with that wheel in his cage." "When I first knew Nat Emery," he once said, "he was sitting up till all hours reading Les Miserables, and would knock you down if you didn't bow your head at the mention of Thackeray. He might ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... when he returned from what he and his friends, by an agreeable fiction, called an "office," where he generally spent as many hours as served to give him a flavor of business and a figurative title as a businessman—where were to be found the best cigars and choicest wines, and generally a pleasant circle of good fellows congregated—he found Percy with the most charming little dinner awaiting ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... hae run about the braes And pu'd the gowans' fine —in a figurative point of view—on several occasions. I am not exactly aware,' said Mr. Micawber, with the old roll in his voice, and the old indescribable air of saying something genteel, 'what gowans may be, but I have no doubt that Copperfield and myself would frequently have taken a pull at ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... compromise with any modern theorists. To all such he says, "The narration of Moses is historical and is to be received in its natural sense, and no right-thinking man will deny this." To those who favoured the figurative interpretation he says, "With such reasonings any passage of Scripture can ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... taken up my affair, and kept me for a week or two careering through the public prints, in my decapitated state, like Irving's Headless Horseman, ghastly and grim, and longing to be buried, as a political dead man ought. So much for my figurative self. The real human being all this time, with his head safely on his shoulders, had brought himself to the comfortable conclusion that everything was for the best; and making an investment in ink, paper, and steel pens, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... foot, graceful in movement, and give them a form like the Apollo's; he may put as much expression as he pleases into their black eyes; he may tessellate their speech as freely as he will with poetical and figurative expressions, drawn from the aspects of the external world: for all this there is authority, and chapter and verse may be cited in support of it. But we have a right to ask that he shall not transcend the bounds of reason and possibility, and represent his red men as moved by motives and guided ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... point, particularly, is vital. To return to the direct view of things beyond all figurative symbols, to descend into the inmost depths of being, to watch the throbbing life in its pure state, and listen to the secret rhythm of its inmost breath, to measure it, at least so far as measurement is possible, has always ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... mountain solitude, Might some aspiring artist dare To seize whate'er, through misty air, A ghost, by glimpses, may present Of imitable lineament, And give the phantom an array That less should scorn the abandoned clay; Then let him hew with patient stroke An Ossian out of mural rock, And leave the figurative Man— Upon thy margin, roaring Bran!— Fixed like the Templar of the steep, An everlasting watch to keep; With local sanctities in trust, More precious than a hermit's dust; And virtues through the mass infused, ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... order to see the conclusion that is implicated in the premises. Without this, he falls into confusion and fallacy, or fails, with the premises both before him, to get the conclusion. The "clear and steady mental eye", in less figurative language, means the ability to check hasty responses to either premise alone, or to extraneous features of the situation, so as to insure that "unitary response" to the combination of premises which constitutes the ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... the moment that must break him utterly! we none of us like him here; we hate him, rather; and yet I have a sense—I don't think at my time of life it can be pity—but a reluctance rather, to break anything so big and figurative, as though he were a big porcelain pot or a big picture of high price. Ay, there is what I was waiting for!' he cried, as the lights of a second chaise swam in sight. 'It is he beyond a doubt. The first was the signature and the next the flourish. Two chaises, the second following ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rate the glorious hills and valleys bordering the Bay, which have inspired more than one Welsh literary itinerant to rhapsody, and furnished Mr. Lloyd George with many a homely and figurative peroration, have proved no mean asset to the proprietors of a railway, whose traffic consists so largely of tourists. To the shareholders of the Cambrian has come the satisfaction of knowing that a concern, which was born under, and for many years continued ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... the figurative finds on entering the New York Stock-Exchange a strong suggestion of having penetrated a die with which Giants have been casting lots. The first impression is one of cubical dimensions—and unless the curb be drawn, a fancy so spurred will plunge to yet other ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... the social training of men. Things long hidden appeared discovered with an amazing clearness and nakedness. These men who had awakened, laughed dissolvent laughs, and the old muddle of schools and colleges, books and traditions, the old fumbling, half-figurative, half-formal teaching of the Churches, the complex of weakening and confusing suggestions and hints, amidst which the pride and honor of adolescence doubted and stumbled and fell, became nothing ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... himself was not likely to fall into that error. He speaks against it most emphatically. "Either," he says, "the first eleven chapters of Genesis—all due allowance being made for a figurative Eastern style—are true, or the whole fabric of our national religion is false; a conclusion which none of us, I trust, would wish to be drawn. But it is not the truth of our national religion as such that I have ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... we wonder at such language? Is it merely figurative, expressive of more than the reality?—He gave Himself for us; after that pledge of His affection we must cease to marvel at any expression of the interest He feels in us. Anything He can say or do is infinitely less than what He ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... Thine eyes, wherein I confess unto Thee, that I believe, O Lord, that Thou spokest not so in vain; nor will I suppress, what this lesson suggests to me. For it is true, nor do I see what should hinder me from thus understanding the figurative sayings of Thy Bible. For I know a thing to be manifoldly signified by corporeal expressions, which is understood one way by the mind; and that understood many ways in the mind, which is signified one way by corporeal expression. Behold, the single love of God and our neighbour, by what manifold ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... sir," said Denham quietly. "I was not speaking in a figurative way, but in plain, downright English. That really is part of an ancient gold-mine, in which the water has collected ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... tighter, more closely packed with figurative meaning than perhaps any of Swinburne's later verse. It is less fluid, less 'exuberant and effusive' (to accept two epithets of his own in reference to the verse of Atalanta in Calydon). He is ready to be harsh when harshness is required, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... with perspiration, drenched with rain, with his clothes hanging in ribbons, his hands flayed, his elbows bleeding, his knees torn, Thenardier had reached what children, in their figurative language, call the edge of the wall of the ruin, there he had stretched himself out at full length, and there his strength had failed him. A steep escarpment three stories high separated him from the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... quite right; you mean your father wou'd bring his corn to a fine market: You mean it as a figurative expression, I presume. ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... morals, adapted to the interval between the ascension of Christ and his return with the kingdom which he has received from God; the Apocalypse, or Revelation of Jesus Christ to John, in Patmos, as a figurative and prospective view of all the fortunes of Christianity, from its date to ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... with some probability that in the mind of the natives such resemblances are not purely figurative or symbolic, but that they are also magical in intention, being supposed not merely to represent the object of the supplicant's prayer, but actually, on the principle of homoeopathic or imitative magic, to contribute to its accomplishment. If that ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... of all nations generally wrote from passion excited by real events; they wrote naturally, and as men: feeling powerfully as they did, their language was daring, and figurative. In succeeding times, Poets, and Men ambitious of the fame of Poets, perceiving the influence of such language, and desirous of producing the same effect without being animated by the same passion, set themselves to a mechanical ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... hunter will rest till morning, the eagle will show him the way to the nest of his white dove," was the reply of the Indian, in that figurative style so general among his people; and then taking him by the hand he led him through the rapidly increasing darkness, until they reached a small encampment lying near the river, and under the cover of some trees which grew upon its banks. ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... privileged forms, the other as the hidden possibility that pervades all things. One or the other must abate something: either the image must become less sacred, or the meaning narrower; for the language of painting is not figurative, like the language of poetry, but figure, and unless the form bear on its face that it is not all that is meant, its inherent limitations are transferred to the thought itself. When Dante tells us that Brunetto Latini and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... the learned man's astonishment, when that unaccountable person flung the money on the pavement, and requested in figurative terms to be allowed the pleasure of fighting him ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... the blanket, leggins, and moccasins, worn by all the tribes; the women among the New-Brunswick Indians frequently wear a round hat, a shawl, and short clothes, resembling the short gown and petticoat worn by the French and Dutch women. The Indian language is bold and figurative, abounding in hyperbolical expressions, and is said to be susceptible of much elegance. To give the reader some notion of the manner in which these people conduct their conferences with each other, and with Europeans, ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... gives in his verdict, unavoidable accident and no one to blame but the sufferer. 'He was slinking about in his boat,' says Tom, 'which slinking were, not to speak ill of the dead, the manner of the man, when he come right athwart the steamer's bows and she cut him in two.' Mr Tootle is so far figurative, touching the dismemberment, as that he means the boat, and not the man. For, the man lies whole ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... mind by that book, that there is any other kind of invention or discovery intended in the practical applications of this method? The very free, but of course not pedantic, use of the new terminology of a new school in philosophy, in which this author indulges—a terminology of a somewhat figurative and poetic kind, one cannot but observe, for a philosopher of so strictly a logical turn of mind, one whose thoughts were running on abstractions so entirely, to construct; his continued preference for ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Indeed the latter is a class that requires as much sustainment and comfort as the other—being as they are, more numerous, and suffering all the privations of widowhood, poor things, except its reality. The expression, my Lord, is figurative, and taken from the agricultural occupation of ploughing; for whenever one animal is unyoked for any other purpose, such as travelling a journey or the like, the other is forthwith turned into some park or grassy paddock, and indeed generally enjoys more comfortable times than if still with the ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... endeavoring to write poetically of the sun, tells you that "The Lilies of the field are his workmanship," you may observe, first, that since the sun is not a man, nothing that he does is workmanship; while even the figurative statement that he rejoices as a strong man to run his course, is one which Professor Tyndall has no intention whatever of admitting. And you may then observe, in the second place, that, if even in that figurative sense, ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... chance of winning than he who has none, though in his hand may be all the aces of the others, diamonds included. But, lest I go too far beyond the analogy—as I might ignorantly do, being unskilled in the many games of cards—I will drop the figurative.... Keep your heart for faith, love, friendship, for God, your country, and truth. And where the heart is given, it should be unreservedly. Its allegiance is too often withheld where it is due, yet this is better than a half-way loyalty; there should be no if, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... The opportunities for figurative flying were not wanting. There were no vessels in the port which might be engaged for an indeterminate voyage in pursuit of a British man-of-war, but there was a goodly sloop about to sail in ballast for Belize. Before sunset three passages were ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... bearing the burdens of the weak; the rich cast down and the poor exalted; brother sharing with brother, according to their needs. We are accustomed to make ourselves complaisant with the reflection that these were figurative expressions, and not meant as literal commands. But if we consider candidly, we must confess that if it is the spirit of its Master's commands which the Church means to follow, it is very far, as a body, from reaching up to their full ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... used in this way, that when we hear it we do not think of the concrete, the material connection implied in every relationship. We should notice it more if we were told that "Tous les arts sont cousins," for the word "cousin" is not so often employed in a figurative sense; that is why the word here already assumes a slight tinge of the comic. But let us go further still, and suppose that our attention is attracted to the material side of the metaphor by the choice of a relationship ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... personage, long-nosed and shrewd-looking. The detective explained that Mr. Holden was an ex-police sergeant, retained for many years at headquarters on account of his fluency in the language of Tasso. Winter did not mention Tasso. This is figurative. ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... one stone—that is to say, he killed the sugar speculation by holding for high rates till he had to sell at the bottom figure, and that calamity killed the mule that laid the golden egg—which is but a figurative expression and will be so understood. Sellers had returned home cheerful but empty-handed, and the mule business lapsed into other hands. The sale of the Hawkins property by the Sheriff had followed, and the Hawkins ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Book of Esther, ii. 18: "And he made a release to the provinces and gave gifts . . ." Line 80 is figurative: the king's releases and gifts did not actually "invite" the masses of his subjects (see N. to l. 56) to the royal nuptials, but "made them partake of the joy" of these nuptials.—Leurs princes Ahasuerus and his new queen. ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... far as in them lay. What arrant rogues are we in all climes and under whatever rule, quoth I, internally, as I listened to these wordy disputants; for, to do messieurs the pilots justice, the matter was conducted in a manner more worthy the courts, better argued, and in language less offensively figurative, than similar disputes at which it has been my chance to assist between angry members of our ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... from beginning to end is figurative, a piece of far-fetched, enigmatical symbolism in the ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... might say, degraded, is still poetical. There is so much poetry in the thought that the flattening of the phraseology cannot smother it, the lines still remaining poetically alive, their poetry shining through the plainer and less figurative words. And the thought is poetical because it is the result of a flight of intellect made by aid of imagination's wings, these being moved by the soaring demands of the beautiful, and beating an atmosphere exhaled from sensibility. ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... desire to shine betrayed him at times into very ridiculous blunders. I once heard him say, after having spent some time in explaining his text, "But that I may devil-hope the subject a little more fully, I would observe, that the words are mephitical." He, of course, meant to say, metaphorical, figurative, not mephitical which means of a bad smell. My plan secured me against ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... should adopt the simplest style and manner; he will avoid all ornaments as something injurious to his subject, and should bear in mind the saying of the first king of Great Britain respecting a sermon which was excellent in doctrine but overcharged with poetical allusions and figurative language, "that the tropes and metaphors of the speaker were like the brilliant wild flowers in a field of corn—very pretty, but which did very much hurt the corn." In announcing even the greatest and most important discoveries, the true ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... no very choice language; for, among their other accomplishments, the Crows are famed for possessing a Billingsgate vocabulary of unrivalled opulence, and for being by no means sparing of it whenever an occasion offers. Indeed, though Indians are generally very lofty, rhetorical, and figurative in their language at all great talks, and high ceremonials, yet, if trappers and traders may be believed, they are the most unsavory vagabonds in their ordinary colloquies; they make no hesitation to call a spade a spade; and ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... primitive stage of language, all nouns had a gender, either male or female; and verbs, even auxiliary verbs, it is alleged, expressed activity of some sort. On the basis of these facts it has been inferred, that, at a later day, figurative expressions, descriptive of natural changes, were taken as literal; as if one should interpret the saying, "the sun follows the dawn," as meaning that one person pursues another. By this kind of misunderstanding, it has been ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... remained in the dock. The days of the years of his pilgrimage were not few, and quite probably, except in a figurative sense, not evil. He was of sturdy build, quiet manners, and his countenance was indicative of great sincerity. In a voice extremely deferential he stated that he had once ministered to a dying Confederate, and it was impossible ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... life hurts so much," he said impressively, "as to get a three-pound bass to the top of the water and have your line break. I've had a big fellow get away like that and chase me a mile with its thumb on its nose." This last, of course, was purely figurative. ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to hear that he had shaved his beard—had laid aside his sad-colored clothes, and was adorned like a bridegroom of ancient days. What could be the meaning of all this? Was Toad-in-the-hole mad? or how? Soon after the secret was explained—in more than a figurative sense "the murder was out." For in came the London morning papers, by which it appeared that but three days before a murder, the most superb of the century by many degrees had occurred in the heart of London. I need hardly say, that ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Bible there are many other instances besides those just given in which there is a figurative use of the word light. It is a natural and beautiful figure. A person in doubt intellectually or spiritually looks upon himself as in darkness, and light to him is an intellectual or spiritual awakening. The light that came to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... to resume the old reliance on the Scriptures. No case, indeed, can try so severely, or put upon record so conspicuously, this indestructible propensity for seeking light out of darkness—this thirst for looking into the future by the aid of dice, real or figurative, as the fact of men eminent for piety having yielded to the temptation. We give one instance—the instance of a person who, in practical theology, has been, perhaps, more popular than any other in ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... letter. These Midrashim have little or nothing to do with the Halachoth or legal decisions of the Talmud, except in aim, which is that of illustration and explanation. They are not literal interpretations, but figurative and allegorical, and as such enigmatic. They are, however, to be received as utterances of the sages, and some even regard them of as binding obligation as the law of Moses itself. The following are fairly ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... not think himself so bad as Judas Iscariot.' BOSWELL. 'But, Sir, Taylor means it literally, for he founds a conceit upon it. When praying for the conversion of sinners, and of himself in particular, he says, "LORD, thou wilt not leave thy chief work undone." JOHNSON. 'I do not approve of figurative expressions in addressing the Supreme Being; and I never use them[906]. Taylor gives a very good advice: "Never lie in your prayers; never confess more than you really believe; never promise more than you mean to perform[907]." I recollected this precept in his Golden Grove; but his example ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... Government of Societys great, or small—in short of leading them in the Study, and Practice of the exalted Virtues of the Christian system, which will happily tend to subdue the turbulent passions of Men, and introduce that Golden Age beautifully described in figurative language; when the Wolf shall dwell with the Lamb, and the Leopard lie down with the Kid—the Cow, and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together, and the Lyon shall eat straw like the Ox—none shall then hurt, ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... were large by which his fancy was to be supplied. His ear was well tuned, and his diction was elegant and copious. But his devotional poetry is, like that of others, unsatisfactory. The paucity of its topics enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity of the matter rejects the ornaments of figurative diction. It is sufficient for Watts to have done better than others what no man has done well. His poems on other subjects seldom rise higher than might be expected from the amusements of a man of letters, and have different degrees of ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... skillful a dialectician as Douglas found this compact structure of history and argument a serious matter. Its simple solidity was not so susceptible to treatment by the perverting process as had been the figurative and prophetic utterance about the "house divided against itself." Neither could he find a chink between the facts and the inferences. One aspect of the speech, however, could not be passed over. Lincoln said that he had not charged "Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James" with collusion and conspiracy; ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... upright as an Alif, or slender and bending as a branch of the Ban-tree which we should call a willow-wand,[FN307] while Age, crabbed and crooked, bends groundwards vainly seeking in the dust his lost juvenility. As Baron de Slane says of these stock comparisons (Ibn Khall. i. xxxvi.), "The figurative language of Moslem poets is often difficult to be understood. The narcissus is the eye; the feeble stem of that plant bends languidly under its dower, and thus recalls to mind the languor of the eyes. Pearls signify both tears and teeth; the latter are sometimes called hailstones, from their ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... potent reason is to be found in the power of that loving sympathy which the Army extends even to the vilest, to those from whom the least puritanical of us would shrink. It shows such men that they are not utterly lost, as these believe; that it, at any rate, does not mark them with a figurative broad arrow and consign them to a separate division of society; that it is able to give them back the self-respect without which mankind is lower than the beast, and to place them, regenerated, upon a path that, if it be steep and thorny, still leads ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... most of all to be valued for the remarks on language and on manners, and the contemporary anecdotes with which it abounds, and of which some examples may be quoted. After observing that "as it hath been always reputed a great fault to use figurative speeches foolishly and indiscreetly, so it is esteemed no less an imperfection in man's utterance, to have none use of figure at all, specially in our writing and speeches public, making them but as our ordinary talk, than which nothing can be more unsavory and far from all civility:—'I ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... and, not disconcerted by her curt refusal, he drew a wicker box from beneath a seat and opened it. His reference to a "bite and a drop" was obviously figurative, especially the "drop," which grew to the dimensions of a pint, which he swallowed quickly. Perhaps the flavor of the wine made him less attentive to his prisoner, for as he lifted the receptacle to his lips, she thrust her arms through the window and a ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... besides the Psalms and Annotations, on its first pages, a "Preface declaring the reason and use of the Book;" and at the last pages a "Table directing to some principal things observed in the Annotations of the Psalms," a list of "Hebrew phrases observed which are somewhat hard and figurative," and also some ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... said that in an advanced stage of yoga, one is enabled to behold one's Soul, or, a sort of double existence is realised in consequence of which the Soul becomes an object of internal survey to the Soul itself. Very probably, writers on yoga employ this language in a figurative sense. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... stretch'd, the Image is most Sublime; if we consider no foreign Assistances. As Homer say's, The Horses of the Gods, sprung as far at every Stride, as a Man can see who sit's upon the Sea-shore. But foreign Assistances, as a figurative Turn, &c. may raise a passage to an equal degree of Sublimity, which yet does not so largely dilate the Mind; as this of Shakespear's is more ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... Divine protest against Hurry. It was a Divine object lesson of perfect law, perfect plan, perfect order, perfect method. Six days of work carefully planned, scheduled and completed were followed by,—rest. Whether we accept the story as literal or as figurative, as the account of successive days or of ages comprising millions of years, matters little if we ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... Commission except for one most practical and urgent purpose. It will be answered to me that the first Kind of Man of whom I spoke could not really be on boards and committees, as modern England is managed. His dirt, though necessary and honourable, would be offensive: his speech, though rich and figurative, would be almost incomprehensible. Let us grant, for the moment, that this is so. This Kind of Man, with his sooty hair or sanguinary adjectives, cannot be represented at our committees of arbitration. Therefore, the other Kind of Man, fairly ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... figurative expression, the mask of night; and every one reading this speech with the context, must have felt the peculiar propriety of its simplicity, though perhaps without examining the cause of an omission which certainly is not fortuitous. The reason lies in the situation and in ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... where its remotest descendants still flourish. But that these trees should have waded the Pacific, or sent their acorns on a voyage of discovery after new habitats on the Asiatic coast, is hardly more probable than Jason's voyage after the golden fleece, in any other than a highly figurative sense. The spontaneous appearance of a forest of oaks on the eastern shores of Asia was just as probable, under favoring conditions—though occurring subsequently to the time of their appearance on this continent—as that of the ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... and full of romantic charm * * * it possesses ingenuity of incident, a figurative designation of the unhallowed scenes in which unlicensed love accomplishes and wrecks ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... unmanageable precept. Much of its contents, it is true, are of such a nature that they may be glossed over,—explained away,—ignored,—set aside. The reading is doubtful: or there are two opinions, (perhaps twenty,) concerning it: or the language may be figurative: or the words are not to be pressed too closely: or a perverse logic may pretend to find in it agreeable confirmation, instead of stern reproof. Not a few places there are, however, which defy any such handling; stubborn rocks which refuse to yield a single trace of the wished-for vegetation, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... and had seen beside all the usual events in the life of that savage region, the author violates no probability in putting into his mouth the most strange and characteristic stories. The whole are told with a fictitious reproduction of the teser and somewhat monotonous, yet figurative style, proper to all savages. La Grande Kabylie recounts the personal experiences of the author in that yet unconquered country of the Arabs, whither he went with Marshal Bugeaud in his last expedition. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... a jaw like a bulldog, an' a mouth on him ye couldn't span with your two hands." Further description proceeded in the same strain, and even allowing for the exuberancies of my friend's southern imagination, and his wide command of figurative language, this account of the kind of people who constitute ninety-nine hundredths of Mr. Gladstone's allies ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... listener. But there was no attempt nor impulse of the kind on the part of the orators, nor apparent expectation of such a phenomenon on that of the audience. In fact, I imagine that the latter were best pleased when the speaker embodied his ideas in the figurative language of arithmetic, or struck upon any hard matter of business or statistics, as a heavy-laden bark bumps upon a rock in mid-ocean. The sad severity, the too earnest utilitarianism, of modern life, have wrought a radical and lamentable change, I am afraid, in this ancient ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... of this wood." What figurative language! The flatterer adopts the grand style to add dignity to his speech, to make it more attractive. Will the child understand this cunning? Does he know, how could he possibly know, what is meant by ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... leads us back to Gen. xlix. 10; and, in general, the announcements of Balaam have, throughout, the promises and hopes of the Patriarchs for their foundation. As in the fundamental passage, so here also, the sceptre, the symbol of dominion, stands for dominion itself. The substance of the two figurative expressions is briefly stated in ver. 19, in the words, "They shall rule out of Jacob," which are tantamount to, "A Ruler shall ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... Makololo, whose acquaintance I had made on our former visit, and who was now located on the island Mahonta (lat. 17d 58' S., long. 24d 6' E.). The villagers looked as we may suppose people do who see a ghost, and in their figurative way of speaking said, "He has dropped among us from the clouds, yet came riding on the back of a hippopotamus! We Makololo thought no one could cross the Chobe without our knowledge, but here he drops among ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... take strange gods for deified men or for demons, would consider all these figurative representations as idols. The seductions of the naturalistic worships, which intoxicated the more sensitive nations, never affected him. He was doubtless ignorant of what the ancient sanctuary of Melkarth, at Tyre, might still contain of a primitive worship more or less analogous to ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... take care of themselves. The bacilli are not the only ones who can be numbered in their billions. If there are billions of them there are billions of us. We are not mere units—scarcely even individuals—except in a broad and figurative sense. We are confederacies of billions upon billions of little, living animalcules which we call cells. These cells of ours are no Sunday-school class. They are old and tough and cunning to a degree. They are war-worn veterans, carrying the scars of a score of victories ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... logically, before he proceeds to express himself imaginatively. All that is essential is that the kernel of his personality, that which determines philosophies as it determines every other achievement, should be directly, immediately, expressed in the figurative language of his art. This is the central, the all-important thing, that final, essential, and therefore indefinable entity which has thrust itself upon us when we say of a man that he has an "interesting personality." The more powerful and energetic ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... children, that we have no real authority for the reveries to which it is owing. We are told nothing distinctly of the heavenly world; except that it will be free from sorrow, and pure from sin. What is said of pearl gates, golden floors, and the like, is accepted as merely figurative by religious enthusiasts themselves; and whatever they pass their time in conceiving, whether of the happiness of risen souls, of their intercourse, or of the appearance and employment of the heavenly powers, is entirely the product of their own ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... driving up the lane at this moment and Marilla made off, feeling that she had escaped from the snare of the fowler, and wishing devoutly that Mr. Bell were not quite so highly figurative in his public petitions, especially in the hearing of small boys who were ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... borrowed my idea from the words of the wise king of Israel:—"Hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother; for they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head," &c., and other Scripture passages of similar figurative meaning; for, though often given in a sportive way, it is my design that no moral shall be conveyed in the volume, but such as a good and judicious parent would wish ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... concentration in war, and was one reason of their decided superiority over all the other nations of America. In council, where all common and tribal affairs were decided, the Iroquois showed great capacity for calm deliberation, and became quite eloquent at times. Their language was extremely figurative, though incapable of the expression of abstract thought, as is the case with Indian tongues generally. The Indian—essentially a materialist—could only find his similes, metaphors, and illustrations in the objects of nature, but these he used with great skill. ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... present took up the argument against him, and maintained that no man ever thinks of the NOSE OF THE MIND, not adverting that though that figurative sense seems strange to us, as very unusual, it is truly not more forced than Hamlet's 'In my MIND'S EYE, Horatio.' He persisted much too long, and appeared to Johnson as putting himself forward as his antagonist with too much presumption; upon ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... of the moment of spontaneity in productive art, and he praised Schelling for having drawn attention to the figurative arts, as being less liable than poetry to be diverted to false and illusory moralistic ends. Before he begins the study of the place due to the artistic activity in Ethic, he carefully excludes from the study of Aesthetic all practical ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... money out of his own possession. It had been hidden in the cellar, hidden in the parlor, hidden in the kitchen, and hidden in his chamber; but no place seemed to be safe, and the miser trembled when awake, and trembled when asleep, in his dreams, lest the figurative description of riches should be realized, and his gold should take to itself wings and ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... and mischievous design. Thus, when two men did witness that our Lord affirmed, he "could demolish the Temple, and rear it again in three days"—although he did, indeed, speak words to that purpose, meaning them in a figurative sense, discernible enough to those who would candidly have minded his drift and way of speaking:—yet they who crudely alleged them against him are called false witnesses. "At last," saith the Gospel, "came two false witnesses, and said, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... thing be more clear! more natural! more agreeable to the true spirit of simplicity! Here are no tropes,—no figurative expressions,—not even so much as an invocation to the Muse. He does not detain his readers by any needless circumlocution; by unnecessarily informing them, what he is going to sing; or still more unnecessarily enumerating what ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... magic influence of a beautiful diction, it will always be found that it consists in this happy relation between external freedom and internal necessity. The principal features that contribute to this freedom of the imagination are the individualizing of objects and the figurative or inexact expression of a thing; the former employed to give force to its sensuousness, the latter to produce it where it does not exist. When we express a species or kind by an individual, and portray a conception in a single case, we remove from fancy the chains which the understanding ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... it; 'for everything that is made manifest is light.' Observe that Paul here speaks of 'light,' not 'the light,'—that is, he is speaking now not of Christian character, which he had likened to light, but of physical light to which he had likened it, and is backing up his figurative statement as to the reproving and manifesting effects of the former, by the plain fact as to the latter, that, when daylight shines on anything, it is revealed, and, as it were, becomes light. He clenches his exhortation by quoting probably ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... an interesting form, the fall of a man whose great bad actions have cast a disastrous lustre on his name. In the execution of the work, as intricacy of plot could not have been attempted without a gross violation of recent facts, it has been my sole aim to imitate the impassioned and highly figurative language of the French Orators, and to develop the characters of the chief actors on a vast ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... application. exaggeration, hyperbole &c 549. association, association of ideas (analogy) 514.1 V. employ a metaphor &c n.; personify, allegorize, adumbrate, shadow forth, apply, allude to. Adj. metaphorical, figurative, catachrestical^, typical, tralatitious^, parabolic, allegorical, allusive, anagogical^; ironical; colloquial; tropical. Adv. so to speak, so to say, so to express oneself; as it were. Phr. mutato nomine de ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... perfection, so that the first stage-coach over the new road could arrive upon the completed town. "We don't want to show up in a 'b'iled shirt' and a plug hat, and our trousers stuck in our boots," said a figurative speaker. Nevertheless, practical necessity compelled them to build the hotel first for their own occupation, pending the erection of their private dwellings on allotted sites. The hotel, a really elaborate structure for the locality and ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte |
