"Figuratively" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... energy, but deficient in knowledge and business tact, and he wastes his force in tremendous efforts at the accomplishment of small matters. He puts as much mental force into opening a can of oysters as would suffice to destroy a building. Figuratively speaking he loads a cannon to kill a mosquito, the result is a great waste of energy and vitality. By proper cultivation of knowledge, and adaptation to pursuits employing his splendid energies with large enterprise, a character of this description is brought into harmony ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... yar[e]ach are masculine words; lebanah is feminine. But nowhere throughout the Old Testament is the moon personified, and in only one instance is it used figuratively to represent a person. This is in the case of Jacob's reading of Joseph's dream, already ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... the present instance does our Savior alter His language when He finds His words taken in the literal sense? Does He tell His hearers that He has spoken figuratively? Does He soften the tone of His expression? Far from weakening the force of His words He repeats what He said before, and in language more emphatic: "Amen, amen, I say unto you, Unless ye eat the flesh of the ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... very nature stupid. It is stupid because the aim of life (I use the expression only figuratively, and I could just as well speak of the essence of life, or of the world) is to gain a knowledge of our own bad will, so that our will may become an object for us, and that we may undergo an inward conversion. Our body is itself our will objectified; it is one of the first and foremost of objects, ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... embrace you," said the burgher; and I believe he was on the point of doing it, literally as well as figuratively. "I, for my part, whatever they make of me, am at least an Alsatian. But I am half ashamed to talk to an American. On the 29th I went to see our troops evacuate the city by the Faubourg National. I found myself elbow to elbow in the throng with the consul from the United States: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... air that week, literally and figuratively, for the work was heavy. The high winds which had kept the British squadrons to the ground, petered out to gentle breezes, and the air was alive with craft. Bombing raid, photographic reconnaissance and long-distance scouting ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... the ever-enlarging vistas opening before me as I progressed deeper in my knowledge of the country. Often, also, when I had thought myself to a standstill over the tangled-up affairs of the Republic, I would, figuratively speaking, pack my bag, rush away from Sulaco for a change of air and write a few pages of the "Mirror of the Sea." But generally, as I've said before, my sojourn on the Continent of Latin America, famed for its hospitality, lasted for about two ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... remind him of the moral and electrifying properties of the different species of cane which Nature has so thoughtfully provided nearly everywhere in India. The consequence is that my chuprassies do not soil their hands with spurious gratifications, and figuratively describe me as ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... mental disease, and by cooperation of others under the same aberration makes a mania.[465] The explanation lies in autosuggestion or fixed ideas with the development loosely ranged under hysteria, which is the contagious form of nervous affection. The term "epidemic" can be applied only figuratively. "Mental disease occurs only on the ground of a specific constitutional and generally hereditary predisposition. It cannot therefore be spread epidemically, any more than diabetes or gout."[466] The epidemic element is due to hysterical ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Savannah this sense of comfort became stronger. Jane seemed in better spirits. She was always obedient, but now she began to seem almost cheerful, to speak, and even laugh occasionally just as she used to. Captain Zelotes patted himself on the back, figuratively. His scheme ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the book had been considered there was a literary earthquake! Professor Macadam reviewed it, and sought to tear it, figuratively, limb from limb! He was ably supported by other pundits everywhere. The point upon which the debate hinged was ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... place by the General as the Emperor's representative, a high position and great responsibility for so young a soldier. They made a hasty breakfast and broke camp. Indeed, there was little to break. The words are only used figuratively, since they had no tents. In half an hour after Marteau had left the Emperor's headquarters, the squadrons were formed. Nansouty, attended by his staff and the young officer, galloped to the head of the column, gave the word of command ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the opposite in the 'Timaeus' (28B), though possibly there the account of the beginning of the world in time is to be understood figuratively, not literally. See Jowett, vol. iii., ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... person of another, like Ovid, but in his own: he relates almost all things as from himself, and thereby gains more liberty than the other, to express his thoughts with all the graces of elocution, to write more figuratively, and to confess as well the labour as the force of his imagination. Though he describes his Dido well and naturally, in the violence of her passions, yet he must yield in that to the Myrrha, the Biblis, the Althaea, of Ovid; for as great an admirer of him as I am, I must acknowledge, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... make it clear that for the purpose of Human Engineering the old concepts of matter, space and time are sufficient to start with; they are sufficient in much the same way as they have been sufficient in the old science of mechanics. Figuratively speaking Human Engineering is a higher order of bridge engineering—it aims at the spanning of a gap in practical life as well as in knowledge. The old meanings of matter, space and time were good enough to prevent the collapse of a bridge; the same understanding of ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... boy had hurled a dynamite bomb at him the result could have been no more surprising. The lank, sallow man went up into the air, figuratively. He went up a mile or more, and on the way down he reached his hand inside the kitchen door and brought it forth enveloping the barrel of ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... "if you speak figuratively, I have already told you that I have neither the means nor the skill sufficient to temper these religious heats. But if you design to say that there has been an actual apparition of the devil, I presume to think that you, with your doctrine and your learning, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... Buck, to assume the secretaryship of the company which she had served faithfully for ten years, she had set an example for the entire establishment. She was the pacemaker. Every day of her life she figuratively pressed the electric button that set the wheels to whirring. At nine A.M., sharp, she appeared, erect, brisk, alert, vibrating energy. Usually, the office staff had not yet swung into its gait. In a desultory ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... almost to an ache! This, and the fact of being the only one, I feel sure partly accounted for it that I became ill. According to the doctor I ought to have been in a proper hospital, and then once again the difficulty arose of finding one to go to. Boards and committees sat on me figuratively and almost literally, too, but could come to no conclusion. Though I could be in a military hospital in France it was somehow not to be thought of in England. Finally I heard a W.A.A.C.'s ward had been ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... have grown up into such an impertinent, two-edged-tongued young scrub, I don't believe she'd have died and left you in my charge. I suppose you meant that to be very witty, sir. Please understand that I was only speaking figuratively. Now we will just spend about an hour over those specimens, and then, as it is so beautiful and fine, we will be off on to the moor again. You will take your ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... back to Mexico! Some say that this retrograde march is in consequence of a movement made in Mexico by General Valencia—others that it has been caused by a message received from General Paredes. We paid a visit in the evening to the old curate, who was pretty much in the dark, morally and figuratively, in a very large hall, where were assembled a number of females, and one tallow candle. Of course all were talking politics, and especially discoursing of the visit of the president the preceding ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... been calculated beforehand by the conspirators, to make sure that no absence of malice aforethought should degrade the grand malignity of settled purpose into the trivial effervescence of transient passion, the torch which was literally to launch the first missile, figuratively, to "fire the southern heart" and light the flame of civil war, was given into the trembling hand of an old white-headed man, the wretched incendiary whom history will handcuff in eternal infamy with the temple-burner of ancient ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... "Literally and figuratively, my friend Roland has me on the hip, for my hip-pocket contains no money, and it is impossible for me to refund. I imagine, if the truth were told, we are all more or less in the same condition, for we have had equipment ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... corner of the cart-shed, and his brother and sister make pretence, to tear him limb from limb. Zadkiel defends himself gallantly, but has to succumb at last, for he is fairly rolled on his back, and in a few minutes is, figuratively speaking, turned inside out. Then they espy the good-natured admiring face of their mother, peering at them over the corner of the straw, and at her they all rush. They make believe that she is a fox, and her life is accordingly ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... figuratively. I meant hustle about and work in the open air. The sort of life you are leading now is what millionaires pay hundreds of dollars for at these physical-culture places. It has been the ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... really existed; signing off this asset and that; disposing of this thing and that; stripping himself bare of all the properties on his life's stage, in such a manner as might have been his had he been receiving gifts and not yielding up all he owned. He chatted as his belongings were, figuratively speaking, being carried away—as though they were mechanical, formal things to be done as he had done them every day of a fairly long life; as a clerk would check off the boxes or parcels carried past him by the porters. M. Fille could hardly bear to see him in this ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... at their white kids without feeling sick at heart; white waistcoats became a terror; the sight of an august neckcloth, bowing its solemn attentions to me, depressed my very soul. The folding-doors, on golden hinges turning,—figuratively, at least, if not literally, like those of Milton's heaven,—grated as horrible discords on my secret ear as the gates of Milton's other place. It was my gold that helped to make those hinges. And this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... of China, which, both figuratively and literally, enclosed its civilization, and fenced off that of the outer ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... marriage ceremony was over the clergyman administered the Holy Communion—all who were present partaking with the General; and solemn indeed was the thought that filled the mind of each, that ere long, perhaps, one of their number might be—not figuratively, but literally—"with angels and archangels, and ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... but his feet were harsh on the floors, and, strangely, when he had in a couple of minutes become aware of this, it counted somehow for help. He couldn't have spoken, the tone of his voice would have scared him, and the common conceit or resource of "whistling in the dark" (whether literally or figuratively) have appeared basely vulgar; yet he liked none the less to hear himself go, and when he had reached his first landing—taking it all with no rush, but quite steadily—that stage of success drew from him a ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplications, and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn." Jehovah speaks figuratively of the opposition shown to Himself and His servants as piercing Him with pain, just as we say of an insult that it cuts to the heart. But in the death of Jesus the figure became a fact: against the sacred person ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... minute or two after, they were talking as lively as two young magpies. They had figuratively ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... appearance in England, you would call somewhere in her teens; but, hereaway they are so precocious that one is constantly deceived in guessing their age. She would have been pretty if she had been clean; and was abundantly and expensively ornamented. Sometimes we hear it figuratively said of a domestic coquette, that she carries all her property on her back. These Greeks must be well off, if it may not sometimes be so said with propriety of them. They have a plan of advertising a young lady's assets, in a manner that must be most satisfactory ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... suis bien tente de te bailler une quinte major. Quinte major is a term of piquet. It is here employed figuratively. Compare its use in 'Les Facheux,' ...
— The Jealousy of le Barbouille - (La Jalousie du Barbouille) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... figuratively speaking, stripped of my material here piece by piece, and I would finally stand before you with hardly a loin cloth of an idea which I ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... is evident that the manufacture of soap is of very ancient origin; indeed, Jeremiah figuratively mentions it—"For though thou wash thee with natron, and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... chuvy; in the numeral system of the Cakchiquels a chuvy is 8000, but the expression is frequently, as here, to be taken figuratively, like ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... uniform. Among the latter was a certain Captain Trevelyan, the heir-apparent of an English nobleman, who was, of course the eligible young gentleman of the season. Most of the ladies openly courted Captain Trevelyan and, figuratively speaking, laid themselves at his feet; but Lillian D'Alton was too little versed in such matters to know the triumph she had achieved in being sought after as a partner by the much-admired Captain, and, when he asked her ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... remembered them. I am accused, and I am not guilty." (The interpreter translated each sentence as it was delivered, and gave it as nearly verbatim as possible—observe, the pronoun I is here used figuratively, for his party, and for the tribe). "I thought I would come down to see my red-headed father, to hold a talk with him.—I come across the line (boundary)—I see the cattle of my white brother dead—I see the Sauk kill them in great numbers—I said that there would be trouble—I turn ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... ever so much. A long silence now ensued, during which the clack of seven pairs of active jaws was the only sound that broke upon the ear. It might have been observed, however, that all eyes were fixed more or less wonderingly on the stranger. Big Waller in particular looked him, figuratively speaking, through and through. He did not remove his eyes off him for an instant, but devoured his food with somewhat the expression of a dog that expects his bone ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... now being cleaned and made ready for the fall term. Globes, maps, blackboards, collections of minerals, electric machines, patent desks, dining-room, and dormitory passed before them in rapid succession, figuratively speaking; afterward they went up to the cupola to see the view, and finally settled themselves on the large front ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... with all others, and assigned it an honorable place in their scheme of life. Katharine felt this beneath the roughness of his manner; and a world entrusted to the guardianship of Mary Datchet and Mr. Basnett seemed to her a good world, although not a romantic or beautiful place or, to put it figuratively, a place where any line of blue mist softly linked tree to tree upon the horizon. For a moment she thought she saw in his face, bent now over the fire, the features of that original man whom we still recall every now and then, although we ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... actors alike were offended by such insanity of rant and that Schiller himself soon saw the folly of it. He had got the idea that when a man is figuratively 'beside himself', the most effective way to portray his state of feeling is to make him talk and act like a veritable madman. He had yet to learn the profound wisdom, for poets as well as actors, of Hamlet's rule to "acquire and beget, in ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... like the twinkle in a pair of keen blue eyes that were supposed to be figuratively weeping for her fate in far-off New York. But instantly he changed ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... reproach himself with showing more than he felt, for he had no occasion. The feeling he had given expression to was entirely genuine, and possibly deeper than he knew, although he shook his head, figuratively, at himself as ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... are bordered and screened, figuratively and literally, with bush and trees of his own selection, setting out and cultivation—shelters of the familiar, the habitual, ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... Aidoneus, king of Epirus, or Orcus king of the Molossians. Aidoneus is supposed to have wrought mines in his kingdom, and, as the entrance into it was over a river called Acheron, that prince has often been confounded with Pluto; Epirus too, which was situate very low, may have been figuratively described as the Infernal Regions; for which reason, the journeys of Theseus and Hercules into Epirus may have been spoken of as descents into the Stygian abodes. Le Clerc supposes that Ceres was reigning in Sicily at the time when Aidoneus was king ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... visible token of the escape from death which might be achieved by all men who, with God's aid, should succeed in freeing themselves from the burden of sin which had encumbered all the children of Adam. The end of the world was at hand, and they who would live with Christ must figuratively die with Christ, must become dead to sin. Thus to the pure and spiritual ethics contained in the teachings of Jesus, Paul added an incalculably powerful incentive to right action, and a theory of life calculated to satisfy the speculative necessities ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... to say, that in Arabic there is the like metaphor, of the sun's rays to a deer's horns. R. adds, that the Jews also attributed horns to Moses in another sense, figuratively for ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... practical Mr. Layard says somewhere in the account of his uncoveries, 'They literally bathed my shoes with their tears!' Idem, sed quantum mutatus ab illo! I am almost tempted to the ambiguous wish that he might have slipped in literally to one of the many graves he robbed figuratively. ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... emotional. This one was, and had no gift at hiding his feelings; or if he had it he took no trouble to exercise it. He carried his soul's prevailing weather in his face, and when he entered a room the parasols or the umbrellas went up—figuratively speaking—according to the indications. When the soft light was in his eye it meant approval, and delivered a benediction; when he came with a frown he lowered the temperature ten degrees. He was a well-beloved man in the house of his friends, but ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... satisfaction, imbibing a liquid as hot almost as the surrounding air, and so insipid that I have tasted medicines far more palatable. Opportunely I call to mind a proverb of our Spanish friends yonder, "The sailor who would caulk his boat must not turn up his nose at pitch;" and as, figuratively speaking, I want to caulk mine, I make a virtue of necessity, and the ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... action made Dick's heart sink, figuratively speaking, to his shoes. How could a fellow hope to play and win with his girl cutting him like that? But then of a sudden he ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... suppose a good many tolerable reasons might be adduced by persons who have that preference. They do not often say very wise or very witty things, I dare say; but neither do they tread on one's feet or poke their elbows into one's side (figuratively speaking) in their conversation, or commit the numerous solecisms of manner of less well-bred people. For myself, my social position does not entitle me to mix with the superior class of human beings generally designated as "fine people." My father's indolence renders their society ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... cobble stones of old, there is a modern floor of wood. On one of the windows of the church, there is a fine old bronze bell that exists as a relic of Culdee times. Some profane person once laid hands on this bell and carried it off to Perth; but it would not ring away from Speyside. To speak figuratively, the bell was broken-hearted: from its metallic tongue, night and day, came the mournful wail, "Tom Eunan, Tom Eunan." I am happy to say that it was brought back ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... without conscious effort, and thenceforth pursued my difficult way with a subjective discontent which, I fear, did little honour to my philosophy; thinking, to confess the truth, what an advantage it would be if man, figuratively a mopoke, could become one in reality when all the advantage lay in that direction; also, feeling prepared to wager my official dignity against a pair of —— that Longfellow would never have apostrophised the welcome, the thrice-prayed-for, the most ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... do you think it will take?" asked Robin. She was nearing sixteen—bursting into glowing blossom—a radiant, touching thing whom one only could visualize in flowering gardens, in charming, enclosing rooms, figuratively embraced by every mature and kind arm within reach of her. This presented itself before Mademoiselle Valle with such vividness that it was necessary for ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... used the word "exile" advisedly with regard to Madame Grambeau, and not figuratively at all. She was, I had been told, a bourgeoise, of good class, who had taken part in the early revolution, but who, when the canaille triumphed and drenched the land in blood, in the second phase of that fearful outburst of volcanic feeling, had fled before the whirlwind ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... a consequence of opposite determinations) alone makes the intuition of change possible. For, in order to make even internal change cognitable, we require to represent time, as the form of the internal sense, figuratively by a line, and the internal change by the drawing of that line (motion), and consequently are obliged to employ external intuition to be able to represent the successive existence of ourselves in different states. The proper ground of this fact ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... to it, then?' he said, giving her a pleasant look from his twinkling, almost kindly eyes. She looked down at him and turned aside. She looked down on him both literally and figuratively. Still ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... Figuratively speaking, for more than a century was yet to elapse ere George Fox founded the Society of Friends, it might be said that Custance [Note 2] Tremayne was born a Quakeress. It had hitherto proved impossible, through all the annals of the family experience, ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... might make them more ashamed") does not refer merely to the slavery of working in mines, but to the circumstance of their digging up iron, the substance by means of which they might acquire freedom and independence. This is quite in the manner of Tacitus. The word iron was figuratively used by the ancients to signify military force in general. Thus Solon, in his well-known answer to Croesus, observed to him, that the nation which possessed more iron would be master of all ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... a week of poking along in the rain of an evening when his work was done, threw up his hands, figuratively, and bought him an umbrella, hoping devoutly they would never get to hear of it in Dry Lake. He stood for two minutes in the deep doorway of the store before he found nerve to open the awkward thing, and when he did so he glanced ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... great victory over Fate, here he had put his enemies under his feet, and if innocent simpletons had wandered into the company of these foes, it mattered not a whit to him that they also had been crushed. Figuratively, he turned his back upon them now; he left them, slain and trampled, in the Board Room behind him. They no ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... was suddenly arrested, and, figuratively speaking, Miss Pritty's blood curdled in her veins and her heart ceased to beat, for, without an instant's warning, the woods resounded with a terrific salvo of artillery; grape and canister shot came tearing, hissing, and crashing through the ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... that character which is most in accord with the player's own character. This is so important that it cannot be overemphasized. And when finally the correct part is chosen for him, he must learn his lines so thoroughly that he will be able, figuratively, to ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... in reaction from the Arctic douche to which his emotional self had been subjected. He was, figuratively speaking, blue with the cold, but trying valiantly ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... indicative of certain localities only, but, as they were not remunerative from a pecuniary point of view, were to be avoided by the sagacious woodman. It was clear, therefore, that Mr. Bowers's visit to Green Springs was not professional, and that he did not even figuratively accept the omen. ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... "Only figuratively, papa," she replied with a pensive smile stealing over her fine intellectual features. "Have no fear for me on that score, for depend upon it, with so much natural beauty to interest, it will be my own fault, ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... one of reaching out for ultimate relations. She wanted to know the worst; and for her, as she saw in a flash, the worst of it was the core of fatality in what had happened. She shrank from her own way of putting it—nor was it even figuratively true that she had ever felt, under faith in Denis, any such doubt as the perception implied. But that was merely because her imagination had never put him to the test. She was fond of exposing herself ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... He reared and pranced, jerking the sulky back and forth, its wheels still wedged in the ruts. Bailey sprang to the ground to pick up the reins. He seized them, but fell as he did so. The tug at his bits turned Henry's head, literally and figuratively. He reared and whirled about. The sulky rose on two wheels. The screaming Mrs. Beasley collapsed against its downward side. Another moment, and the whole upper half of the sulky—body, seat, curtains, and Debby—tilted ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Figuratively, they licked each other's wounds awhile. Yorke had grown very silent. Chin in hands and rocking very slightly to and fro, all huddled up in his fur coat, he gazed unseeingly into the beyond. His face was clouded with such hopeless, bitter, ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... first meeting to partake of port, epitaph, backgammon, beef, and salad. Mr. Sapsea has been received at the gatehouse with kindred hospitality; and on that occasion Mr. Jasper seated himself at the piano, and sang to him, tickling his ears—figuratively—long enough to present a considerable area for tickling. What Mr. Sapsea likes in that young man is, that he is always ready to profit by the wisdom of his elders, and that he is sound, sir, at the core. In proof of which, he sang to Mr. Sapsea that evening, no kickshaw ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... liable to comparing God with other things; and such circumlocutions as the Kalamistic "Living without life," and so on, do not help matters, for they are contradictory, and take away with one hand what they give with the other. The Biblical expressions must be taken figuratively; and the most important point to remember is that God's essence cannot be known at all. The manner in which we arrive at the divine attributes is by transferring them from God's effects in nature to his own essence. All this we have already found in Bahya much better expressed, and Bahya is ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... of Dora and Miss Panney there came, simultaneously, this idea: that no matter how much or how often Miriam might wear that gown, she would not be the first one whom it had figuratively invested with the prerogatives ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... into which idealism gets itself is that of solipsism. According to its rigidly argued principles, "mind is separated from mind by a barrier which is, not figuratively, but literally impassable. It is impossible for any ego to leap this barrier and enter into the experience of any other ego." It is not an abstract self-in-general, but my one solitary concrete self for which all experience exists. There is no room for any other ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... him, which if he neglects to fulfil, he will certainly suffer sickness or death, though they are not revealed with sufficient perspicuity to ascertain their meaning: To interpret his dream, therefore, he taxes his wits to the uttermost, and if, by taking it literally or figuratively, directly or by contraries, he can put no explanation upon it that perfectly satisfies him, he has recourse to the cawin, or priest, who assists him with a comment and illustrations, and perfectly reveals ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... smiled, without knowing what strong-spirited meant, but that night she asked her husband. "My dear," he answered, "the s-strongest s-spirit that I know of is ammonia. My f-friend must have s-spoken f-figuratively." ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... son, "we'd be made ridiculous. That's the long and short of it. Even if she HANDED it to us on a silver plate,—figuratively speaking, Uncle George,—we'd be made to ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... day and the morning of the next, everybody in the camp worked hard and did what could be done to help the captain prepare for his voyage, and even Ralph, figuratively speaking, put his hand to ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... whatever. He might nevertheless have been so urbanely filling up gaps, at present, for the very reason that his instinct, sharper than the expression of his face, had sufficiently served him—made him aware of the thin ice, figuratively speaking, and of prolongations of tension, round about him, mostly foreign to the circles in which luxury was akin to virtue. Some day in some happier season, she would confess to him that she hadn't confessed, though taking so much on her conscience; but just now she was carrying ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... often been said figuratively, that marriage is a lottery; but we do not recollect to have met with a practical illustration of the truth of the simile before the following, which is a free translation of an Advertisement in ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... does he know about us?" It was here that she sniffed, not figuratively but actually. That is to say she held up her nose, on pretence of looking at me, and audibly ... well, sniffed. There's no other word for it. Then she cried triumphantly, "What is the use, Noll, of telling our story ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... theatre ticket; but more he did not seek. He disliked the Empire and the Emperor particularly, but this was a trifle; he disliked most the French mind. To save himself the trouble of drawing up a long list of all that he disliked, he disapproved of the whole, once for all, and shut them figuratively out of his life. France was not serious, and he was ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... of the great coming earthquake," said Carker, "you know I'm talking figuratively. But you haven't answered my question. Where did ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... "Not at all. Figuratively speaking it has been whitewashed. It's become a show place—a monument historique. This is interesting information which Fenton sends, but if it came from any one else, I should say he had dreamed it. He may be giving us the chance of an important coup. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... meeting. And that understanding would never permit me to think twice about him. He is a cheerful companion; but—no, auntie, count him out. As for the others—no, thanks. The man I marry will have to be a man, some one who, when I do wrong, can figuratively take me across his knee. The man I marry must be my master, auntie. Don't be shocked. I mean it. And I haven't met such a man under your roof. You see all my ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... Figuratively, the specimen lies before us, upon the bench. Make it any native bird your fancy desires. The following notes will be found to cover ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... is used in two senses in the Bible: figuratively, as denoting existence which may have a beginning, but will have no end, e. g., angels, the human soul; literally, denoting an existence which has neither beginning nor ending, like that of God. Time has past, ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... Figuratively speaking, that is to say; for the arms of Mr Chick were full of his newspaper. Neither did that gentleman address his eyes towards his wife otherwise than by stealth. Neither did he offer any consolation whatever. In short, he sat reading, and humming fag ends of tunes, and sometimes glancing ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... achievement. But we are to consider it as the strength of the parties brought man to man, and contending for the issue. The Bastille was to be either the prize or the prison of the assailants. The downfall of it included the idea of the downfall of despotism, and this compounded image was become as figuratively united as Bunyan's ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... "metamorphosis," as exemplified in the vertebral theory of the skull and the theory of the plant appendage, and shows how, on the hypothesis of descent with modification, "metamorphosis" may now be interpreted literally, and no longer figuratively ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... day after a festival, a tiresome day for every one, and above all for the magistrate who is charged with sweeping away all the filth, properly and figuratively speaking, which a festival day produces in Paris. And then he had to hold a sitting at the Grand Chatelet. Now, we have noticed that judges in general so arrange matters that their day of audience shall also be their day of bad humor, so that they may always have some one upon whom to ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... his glance simply paralyze her—not figuratively, but positively. Her physical power to move towards him, to make a further appeal to him, is gone. Speech is dried upon her lips, wiped from them as a handkerchief passed over them might take ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... these new Mess-Johns in robes and coronets should keep some sort of bounds in the democratic and levelling principles which are expected from their titled pulpits. The new evangelists will, I dare say, disappoint the hopes that are conceived of them. They will not become, literally as well as figuratively, polemic divines,—nor be disposed so to drill their congregations, that they may, as in former blessed times, preach their doctrines to regiments of dragoons and corps of infantry and artillery. Such arrangements, however favorable to the cause of compulsory ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... am willing to tell where I have been shipwrecked, and who stole my clothes. "Don't tell me of your successes," said a great physician to his colleague, "tell me of your blunders; tell me of the people you've killed." I am ready to do this, figuratively of course, for they were all ladies; and more, I will make no attempt to screen myself from the ridicule that may attach to an absurd situation, nor conceal those experiences which may ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... not know,—I do not know anything about her. I merely spoke figuratively when I said I could show you,—for I certainly could not, at this moment; but I allude to the most peerless being that ever captivated the eyes of man. In her, indeed, one could realize ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... third Hohenzollern whom we mark as a conspicuous acquirer in the Hohenzollern family, this Friedrich IV., builder of the second story of the House. If Conrad, original Burggraf, founded the House, then (figuratively speaking) the able Friedrich III., who was Rudolf of Hapsburg's friend, built it one story high; and here is a new Friedrich, his Son, who has added a second story. It is astonishing, says Dryasdust, how many feudal superiorities the Anspach and Baireuth ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... Day appointed, the King, plac'd in a Balcony belonging to the House of the Earl of Peterborow, appear'd ready to honour the Show. The Ceremonial, to speak nothing figuratively, was very fine and grand: Those of the first Rank made their Appearance in decent Order, and upon fine Horses; and others under Arms, and in Companies, march'd with native Gravity and Grandeur, all saluting his Majesty as they ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... and at all such functions Richard and I ate our luncheon in the pantry, and when the great meal was nearly over in the dining-room we were allowed to come in in time for the ice-cream and to sit, figuratively, at the feet of the honored guest and generally, literally, on his or her knees. Young as I was in those days I can readily recall one of those lunch-parties when the contrast between Booth and ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... is Origen's general canon of interpretation—"and would wish to keep himself also from being imposed on by them, will exercise his judgment as to what statements he will give his assent to, and what he will accept figuratively, seeking to discover the meaning of the authors of such inventions, and from what statements he will withhold his beliefs, as having been written for the gratification of certain individuals. And we have said this by way of anticipation respecting the whole history related in the Gospels ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... audience in the stable-yard. By-and-by he was left severely alone, and for the impudence of him, and his courage, and his endurance, and his general cockiness, and his extraordinary ingenuity in mischief, he was called "Speug," which is Scotch for a sparrow, and figuratively expressed ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... God is called man as a bronze figure is called man if it has the figure of a man. So, too, those who held that Christ's body and soul were not united, could not say that God is true man, but that He is figuratively called man by reason of the parts. Now both these opinions were disproved above (Q. 2, A. 5; ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... insist, however, on my reader's believing is, that it showed, in a youth like Robert, not less but more love that he could go against love's sweetness for the sake of love's greatness. Literally, not figuratively, Robert would kiss the place where her foot had trod; but I know that once he rose from such a kiss 'to trace the hyperbola by means ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... the existence of God—'the Eternal God.' Can we limit the word when applied to him? Because occasionally used in a limited sense, we must not infer it is always so. 'Everlasting' plainly means in Scripture 'without end;' it is only to be explained figuratively when it is evident it cannot be interpreted in any ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Desiderique temperare poculum, not figuratively, however, like Anacreon, but importng the love-philtres of the witches. By "cups of kisses" our poet may allude to a favorite gallantry among the ancients, of drinking when the lips of their ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al |
