"Impersonation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Harcourt was busy in preparing the supper, to which they all did ample justice. In her white apron, faultless neck handkerchief and nicely fitting, but plain dress, Mrs. Harcourt looked the impersonation of contented happiness. Sorrow had left deep furrows upon her kindly face, but for awhile the shadows seemed to have been lifted from her life and she was the pleasant hostess, forgetting her own sorrows in contributing to the enjoyment of others. Supper being ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... my eyes I could have sworn it was Miss Atkins," laughed Grace. "Even she herself couldn't fail to recognize that impersonation. It's ridiculously funny, Elfreda, but I wish you wouldn't do it." As Grace and Elfreda were standing with their backs directly away from the door neither girl saw the tense little figure that stood rigid, one hand on the door casing, listening with eyebrows drawn fiercely together. An instant ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... untarnished name, he had always a pleasant, if pompous greeting for every one, and he preached and lived like a gentleman. He was well-dressed and amiable, and his only display of temper or touchiness took the rather curious form of adopting some impersonation not in accordance with the circumstances in which for the moment ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... catching his train though he were to perish of the attempt. And this despite a suspicion that he played to a limited audience of one, and that one unappreciative of the finer phases of everyday histrionic impersonation: an audience answering to the name of Milly, whose lowly station of life was that of housemaid-in-lodgings and whose imagination was as ill-nourished and sluggish as might be expected of one whose wages were two-and-six ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... in the picture which represents the Christ-child borne by two attendant cherubs in exemplification of the psalmist's words, "They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." The Madonna stands before the Divine Babe, with hands clasped in adoration, a lovely impersonation of the ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... Banks was about right as to John Emery; he was an actor of the first-class, and has never been replaced in his peculiar line. I have seen Emery play Tyke in the "School of Reform." It was a wonderful impersonation. I have seen ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... opening her eyes and standing, the impersonation of conscious guilt. She felt disgraced. She felt the silence. She felt she could not meet the eyes of the other little girls. And she felt sick. Her throat was sore. In the Third Reader one's face burned from the red-hot stove so near by, while one shivered from ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... He pawed the basket feebly again and, upon another outburst from on high, prostrated himself flat. Again threatened, he gave a superb impersonation of ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... sunshine and flowers. Yet I believe I had one once"—in ineffably mournful accents—"but two men killed it; and yet, neither intended the blow! O Miriam! I understand at last what Coleridge meant by his 'life in death.' There is such a thing—and that great necromancer found it out! I am the breathing impersonation of that loathly thing, I believe. Listen"—and she sat up with one raised finger and gave the ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... vessel through the long crystal day. Never before this journey into Hidden Creek had time meant anything to Sheila but a series of incidents, occupations, or emotions; now first she understood the Greek impersonation of the dancing hours. She had watched the varying faces the day turns to those who fold their hands and still their minds to watch its progress. She had seen the gradual heightening of brilliance ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... gang of course varied according to circumstances, and the form they took was sometimes highly ingenious. A not uncommon stratagem was the impersonation of a recruiting party beating up for volunteers. With cockades in their hats, drums rolling and fifes shrilling, the gangsmen, who of course had their arms concealed, marched ostentatiously through the high-street of some sizable country town and so into ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... CHARIS, grace, which plainly signified so much to them? A word, the root-meaning of which was neither more nor less than a certain heathen goddess, or goddesses—the inspirer of beauty in art, the impersonation of all that is pure, charming, winning, bountiful—in one word, of all that is graceful and gracious in the human character. The fact is strange, but the fact is there; and being there, we must face it and explain it. Of course, the Apostles use the word grace in ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... H—— is the very impersonation of sound practical sense. The next morning he coolly broke in upon my raptures over the beauty of the Oravicza ladies by saying, "You want to ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... between whom, especially on the side of the latter, strong professional jealousy existed. Bowen, a low comedian of "some talent and more conceit," taunted Quin with being tame in a certain role, and Quin retorted in kind, declaring that Bowen's impersonation of a character in "The Libertine" was much inferior to that of another actor. Bowen seems to have had an ill-balanced mind; he was so affected by Jeremy Collier's "Short View" that he left the stage and opened a ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... the second is the enquiry into the nature of Not-being, which occupies the middle part of the work. For 'Not-being' is the hole or division of the dialectical net in which the Sophist has hidden himself. He is the imaginary impersonation of false opinion. Yet he denies the possibility of false opinion; for falsehood is that which is not, and therefore has no existence. At length the difficulty is solved; the answer, in the language of the Republic, appears 'tumbling out at our feet.' Acknowledging that ...
— Sophist • Plato
... Tenderloin station, where we'll lodge this gentleman for the night. No use to disturb Mrs. Magnus till morning," he added, with a glance at the gloomy house. "Then we'll have Jemmy give us a special performance of his impersonation of the ghost of ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... miraculous works? "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also." In the light of the general principle laid down, that God is the actual fulness of truth and love and light and blessedness; that Christ, the Logos, is the manifested impersonation of them; and that all men who receive him partake of their Divine substance and enjoy their prerogative, the texts just cited, and numerous other similar ones, are transparent. It is difficult to see ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... York is the metropolis of a great nation,—the heart whence arterial supplies go forth, and to which all returning channels converge; the cosmopolitan centre of a New World. Berlin is the increasingly important capital of the German Empire,—growing rapidly, but still the royal impersonation of Prussia and the Hohenzollerns; seated in something of mediaeval costume and quiet beside the river Spree; as content to cast a satisfied glance backward to Frederick the Great and the Electors of Brandenburg as to look forward to imperial ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... was only necessary to accept the invitation in the name of her present hostess, and attend the great society function as Princess von Steinheimer. Yet she hesitated, not so much on account of the manifest danger of discovery, but because she had grown to like the Princess, and this impersonation, if it came to the knowledge of the one most intimately concerned, as it was almost sure to do, would doubtless be regarded as an unpardonable liberty. As she swayed gently back and forth in the gaudy rocking-chair, ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... which Mr. Merivale has drawn of Cato does not meet with the approval of those persons who admire old Roman virtue, of which Cato was the impersonation; but they would find it difficult to show that he has done that stubborn Stoic any injustice. Cato modelled himself on his great-grandfather, Cato the Censor, a mean fellow, who sold his old slaves in order that they might not become a charge upon him; but, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... success as Romeo. This resulted in his leaving Drury Lane for Covent Garden in 1750, accompanied by Mrs Cibber, his Juliet. Both houses now at once put on Romeo and Juliet for a series of rival performances, and Barry's impersonation was preferred by the critics to Garrick's. In 1758 Barry built the Crow Street theatre, Dublin, and later a new theatre in Cork, but he was not successful as a manager and returned to London to play at the Haymarket, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... "Waverley") the striking effect produced by her resemblance to her brother, William Murray, in the last scene of "Twelfth Night;" and in many pieces founded upon the fate and fortune of Mary Stuart she gave an unrivaled impersonation of the "enchanting ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... relative force of different appeals to those characters, in order that the responsive voice may have the convincing ring which expresses the psychology of the character represented, and not merely the mannerisms and externalities of impersonation. ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... state will now interrupt your comedy. Some other day perhaps I may have the pleasure of hearing the rest of it." He smiled in the gracious fashion which made all who came within his personal influence forget his faults and remember him only as the impersonation of ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... we have perhaps the highest conception of deity to which the Greek mind had attained in the early times. In the Veda, Athene is nothing but the dawn; but in the Greek mythology, while the merely sensuous glories of daybreak are assigned to Eos, Athene becomes the impersonation of the illuminating and knowledge-giving light of the sky. As the dawn, she is daughter of Zeus, the sky, and in mythic language springs from his forehead; but, according to the Greek conception, this imagery signifies ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... there. We never could make out why she was included in one of the duchess's 'best parties,' except that the dear duchess vastly enjoyed taking her off, and telling stories about her; and we could not appreciate the cleverness of the impersonation, unless we had seen the original. She was rather pretty, in a fussy, curling-tongs, wax-doll sort of way; but she never could let her appearance alone, or allow people to forget it. Almost every sentence she spoke, drew attention to it. We got very sick of it, and asked ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... very impersonation of goodness itself, Nanny dear?" said Honor. She was standing with her back to the door, watching her old nurse undoing their valises, when ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... Derayeh, which she rode in the fashion of Zenobia. To Tancred, with her inspired brow, her cheek slightly flushed, her undulating figure, her eye proud of its dominion over the beautiful animal which moved its head with haughty satisfaction at its destiny, Eva seemed the impersonation of some young classic hero going forth to ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... real and native product of a 'situation where the essential passions of the heart find a better soil, in which they can attain their maturity and speak a plainer and more emphatic language', as it is an impersonation of an instinct abandoned by judgement. Hence the two following charges seem to me not wholly groundless: at least, they are the only plausible objections, which I have heard to that fine poem. The one is, that the author ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... it might play out this comedy of errors by hunting down Rakhal, and all my troubles would be over. For a while, at least, until Evarin found out what had happened. I didn't deceive myself that I could carry the impersonation ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... the spirit and manners of his country and his age. Thus all the individuals of a nation represent, in a greater or less degree, the spirit of the nation. They who do this most perfectly are the great men of that nation, because they are at once both the product and the impersonation of their country and their age. "We allow ourselves to think of Shakspeare, or of Raphael, or of Phidias as having accomplished their work by the power of their individual genius, but greatness like theirs is never more than the highest degree of perfection which prevails widely around ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... in this place are magnificent cedars of Lebanon, which bring to mind the expression in Psalms, "Excellent as the cedars." They are the very impersonation of kingly majesty, and are fitted to grace the old feudal stronghold of Warwick the king maker. These trees, standing as they do amid magnificent sweeps and undulations of lawn, throwing out their mighty arms with such majestic breadth and freedom of outline, are ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... Janina crossed it a few times with the stately stride of a heroine, then again, with the light, graceful airiness of an ingenue, or with the quick feverish step of a woman who carries with her death and destruction; and with each new impersonation, her face assumed the appropriate expression, her eyes glowed with the flame of the Eumenides, with storm, desire, conflict, or, kindling with the mood of love, longing, anxiety they shone like ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... decent feeling and intelligence. Again, when the study of religious origins first began in modern times to be seriously taken up—say in the earlier part of last century—there was a great boom in Sungods. Every divinity in the Pantheon was an impersonation of the Sun—unless indeed (if feminine) of the Moon. Apollo was a sungod, of course; Hercules was a sungod; Samson was a sungod; Indra and Krishna, and even Christ, the same. C. F. Dupuis in France (Origine de tous les Cultes, 1795), F. ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... poet has preserved the popular belief with regard to Merlin, who is generally supposed to have been a contemporary of Vortigern. Opinion is divided as to whether he were a real personage, or a mere impersonation, formed by the poetic fancy of a credulous people. It seems most probable that such a man did exist, and that, possessing knowledge as much above the comprehension of his age, as that possessed by Friar Bacon was beyond the reach ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... by the insupportable name of Miserrimus Dexter. Stevenson, however, has used the effect so often, and with such telling results, that he may be said to have made it his own. To say nothing of Hyde, who was the very impersonation of deformity, there is the horrid blind Pew, Black Dog with two fingers missing, Long John with his one leg, and the sinister catechist who is blind but shoots by ear, and smites about him with his staff. In "The Black Arrow," too, there is another dreadful ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... farthest from woods and meads. Here, nevertheless, there came back to me this old thought born in the midst of flowers and wind-rustled leaves, and I saw that with it the statue before me was in concord. The living original of this work was the human impersonation of the secret influence which had beckoned me on in the forest and by running streams. She expressed in loveliness of form the colour and light of sunny days; she expressed the deep aspiring desire of the soul for ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... same peculiarity? When Armado tells the 'country lass' he is wooing, that he will 'tell her wonders,' she exclaims,—'skittish female' that she is,—'What, with that face?' And when Holofernes, nettled with the ridicule showered on his abortive impersonation of Judas Maccabaeus, says, 'I will not be put out of countenance,'—Byron replies, 'Because thou hast no face.' The indignant pedant justifies, and, pointing to his physiognomy, inquires, 'What is this?' Whereupon the waggish courtiers proceed to define it: ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... of the haughtiness and the stern repellent demeanor of our Hebe's sister. I have seen her too, and I think that her image might be set up in the Stoa as a happy impersonation of the severest virtue: and yet children generally resemble their parents, and her father was the veriest peculator and the most cunning rascal that ever came in my way, and was sent off to the gold-mines for very sufficient reasons. And for the sake ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... done nothing in mitigating her sorrow. The younger lady, on the other hand, who was Lady Errol's sister,— Heavens! what a spirit of joy and festal pleasure radiated from her eyes, her step, her voice, her manner! She was Irish, and the very impersonation of innocent gayety, such as we find oftener, perhaps, amongst Irish women than those of any other country. Mourning, I have said, she wore; from sisterly consideration, the deepest mourning; that sole expression there was about her of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... a rehearsal for the celestial choir, and the whole assembly was most deeply moved. Dr. Palmer was short in stature, but his erect form and habit of brushing his hair high over his forehead gave him a commanding look. He was the impersonation of genuine enthusiasm. Some of his letters I shall always prize. They were the outpourings of his own warm heart on paper. He fell asleep just before he reached a round four score, and of our many hymn-writers no one has yet ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... paragraph marked as number two," directed Mr. Paulson. "Mister, the 'Bazoo' in your left hand. Thrust your right hand in under the front of your blouse and strike the attitude popularly ascribed to Daniel Webster. No comedy, either, mister; give us a serious impersonation, sir!" ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... in 'Putnam' does not go into these small matters, but he attempts a criticism on acting, to which I am not entirely a convert. He maintains that if an actor should really show a character in such light that we could not tell the impersonation from the reality, the stage would lose its interest. I do not think so. We should draw back, of course, from physical suffering; but yet we should be charmed to suppose anything real, which we had desired to see. If we felt that we ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... a silent, reserved man, disliked by persons who met him casually in society, but to those who inhabited with him the quarters at the Palace he stood as the impersonation of the grim spirit of the Guard. He drew away from the table ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... a page, the gallant lady who ransomed her diamond necklace by dancing a coranto with a highwayman on a moonlit heath, and "Buskirk's girl" who joined the Sons and Daughters of Temperance "just to see what was into it;" and in each impersonation she was so thoroughly the thing impersonated that it was a matter of surprise to us when she emerged from each our own familiar Story ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... disguised their vices and their weaknesses,—he has not endowed them with incompatible virtues; but, just favouring them charitably, so as to take off the edge of our dislike, has exhibited them nearly as they must necessarily have been. The same discretion is observable in his impersonation of those equivocal characters in humble life which he has invested with an interest hitherto unknown. Meg Merrilies, Madge Wildfire, Ratclifte, and the Smuggler in Redgauntlet, are characters in whom are found redeeming traits of the best feeling, and which, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... afforded new incentives for other actors. Mrs. Clive, Mrs. Cibber, and Mrs. Pritchard were among the women who acted with Garrick. Macklin, by his revival of Shylock as a tragic character, Henderson by his impersonation of Falstaff, and John Palmer in secondary characters, as Iago, Mercutio, Touchstone, and Sir Toby, were his contemporaries most famous in ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... flattery, and mellowed by the wine, Trimalchio was just about drunk. "Why hasn't one of you asked my Fortunata to dance?" he demanded, "There's no one can do a better cancan, believe me," and he himself raised his arms above his head and favored us with an impersonation of Syrus the actor; the ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... an opportunity to pose in the limelight, and so you are not to hear that Don pulled off any brilliant feats that afternoon. What he did do was to very thoroughly vindicate Mr. Robey's selection of him for Gafferty's position by giving an excellent impersonation of a concrete block on defence and by doing rather better than he had ever done before when his side had the ball. Don had actually speeded up considerably, much as Tim had assured him he could, and while he was still by no means the snappiest man in the line, nor was ever likely to be, he ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Klingsor at the Parsifal Festival, in 1882, was one of these exceptions. He reflected the spirit of the gruesome text assigned to him so admirably that Wagner was delighted; but afterward he complained that Hill's fine impersonation was not so widely appreciated as it deserved to be; and why? Apparently, because Klingsor's melodic intervals were not pleasing, ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... last of seven sons—six have died in the army, and the doctor says he must die to-night.' The flash of life passed from her face as suddenly as it came, her arms folded over her breast, she sank in her chair, and became as before, the rigid impersonation of agony. As I passed through another hospital ward, I noticed a man whose dejected figure said plainly, 'he had turned his face to the wall to die.' His limb had been amputated, and he had just been told his doom. Human nature rebelled. He cried out, 'I am willing ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... was, there was a power in his tone of command which Mary was unable to resist. She felt very sure that he was imbecile or mad. She knew that madmen are apt to imagine themselves great personages, and to take upon themselves, with a wonderful power of impersonation, the dignity and authority of their imaginary rank; and she supposed that it must be thus with this strange old man. She struggled against her sense of terror. After all there could be no real danger, in the broad daylight, within the precincts of her own home, ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the real play so well, playing to the big world this role of escaped nun, I would have taken it up long ago. The little stage of the theater is nothing to the grand stage of the world, where a whole nation applauds; and men like the Bishop take it for the real thing, this impersonation of mine. But since I am shut out ... and my curse on this Arthur Dillon ... no, no, I take that back ... he's a fine fellow, working according to his nature ... since he will shut me out I must take to the imitation stage. Ah, but the part is fine! ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... already said respecting the characters who figure in this representation, and we may add that although Simplicity, who here performs even a more prominent and important part than in "The three Ladies of London," must be reckoned the impersonation of a quality, and the representative of a class, so much individuality is given to him, particularly in his capacity of a ballad-singer, that it is impossible not to take a strong interest in all that he says, and in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... despite the praise the fair ones gave of my impersonation of 'The Fashionable Lover,' that I am not so good an actor as either Garrick or Barry. I forget, and I lose my temper. So, a bond-servant should cut his throat," he continued, as he swung lightly into the saddle. "I fear 't is the only ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... the Irishman is a born actor; all the Celts are famed for "the beautiful speaking"; for eloquence; for powers of impersonation; for quick changes of mood; for ease in running the gamut of the emotions. Of these things come art of the stage, and these things are the Irishman's in fullest measure. The Abbey Players have, however, gone abroad for some elements of their art, perhaps ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... knows what he looks like, though," Preston answered, laughing—he was thinking of his impersonation of the Earl, and his wonderful make-up. "I am not invited either, professionally or otherwise, so that Mr. Berrington and I had better go to Bedlington and put our heads together there, for something is going to happen at Eldon Hall, Osborne, you may take ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... arrived at Melbourne), and every way suitable for our necessities,—a thing of beauty, a white-winged Angel set a-floating by the pennies of the children to bear the Gospel to these sin-darkened but sun-lit Southern Isles. To me she became a sort of living thing, the impersonation of a living and throbbing love in the heart of thousands of "shareholders"; and I said, with a deep, indestructible faith,—"The Lord has ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... to go back over and over the scenes of that cathedral; to look up those arches that seem to me, in their buoyant lightness, to have not been made with hands, but to have shot up like an enchantment—to have risen like an aspiration, an impersonation of the upward sweep of the soul, in its loftiest moods of divine communion. There were about five minutes of feeling, worth all the discomforts of getting here; and it is only for some such short time that we can ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... out to the last grain, I put it in my pocket and went slowly up to the nursery, trying to feel as much like that impersonation of a bear which would inevitably be demanded of me as is possible to a man of mild temperament. But I had alarmed myself unnecessarily. There was no demand for bears. Each child lay on its front, engrossed in a volume of The Children's ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... a few words in an undertone with Mrs. Malplaquet, "this is my house. That is sufficient explanation for my presence here, I imagine. But I confess I am curious to know what this person"—he indicated Desmond—"is doing in my clothes, if I mistake not, giving what I take to be a very successful impersonation of myself." ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... N. imitation; copying &c v.; transcription; repetition, duplication, reduplication; quotation; reproduction; mimeograph, xerox, facsimile; reprint, offprint. mockery, mimicry; simulation, impersonation, personation; representation &c 554; semblance; copy &c 21; assimilation. paraphrase, parody, take-off, lampoon, caricature &c 21. plagiarism; forgery, counterfeit &c (falsehood) 544; celluloid. imitator, echo, cuckoo^, parrot, ape, monkey, mocking bird, mime; copyist, copycat; plagiarist, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... embodiment of pluck. The thing in feathers of which he is afraid has yet to be evolved. Like the mediaeval knight, he goes about seeking those on whom he can perform some small feat of arms. In certain parts of India he is known as the kotwal—the official who stands forth to the poor as the impersonation of the might and majesty ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... house again before I put in an appearance. I'll look them over when I arrive to be sure that there's no wolf in sheep's clothing amongst them. With a fellow like that, a diabolical rascal with a diabolical gift for impersonation, one can't be too careful. Meantime, it is just as well not to have confided this news to your daughters, who, naturally, would be nervous and upset; but I assume that you have taken some one of the servants into your confidence, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... speak until I am out of hearing," he growled. "You have got into the skin of the actual assassin and have spoken most convincingly. One might almost think that the man who killed Remington Kara was actually standing before us. For that piece of impersonation we are all very grateful;" he glared round over his spectacles at his understanding colleagues and ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... was played by bodily actors; the other, originally known as Semiramis: a Tragedy, I have observed on bookstalls under the alias of "Prince Otto." But enough has been said to show by what arts of impersonation and in what purely ventriloquial efforts I first saw my words ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Ives, in exactly that sort of manner and bearing which so honorably and gracefully distinguished Mrs. Wentworth. The lady was not, of course, named, but she was clearly indicated. "Your gift, your precious gift," cried the curate, apostrophizing the impersonation of sympathy, "is given to you, not for your profit, but for mine. It is yours, but it is a trust to be used for me. It is yours, in fact, to share with me." At this climax, which must have struck upon her ear with a certain familiarity, Miss Trix Queenborough, notwithstanding ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... sparkling champagne, she related to her son-in-law some passages of domestic interest concerning her papa, she infused into the narrative such Arctic suggestions of her having been an unappreciated blessing to mankind, since her papa's days, and also of that gentleman's having been a frosty impersonation of a frosty race, as struck cold to the very soles of the feet of the hearers. The Inexhaustible being produced, staring, and evidently intending a weak and washy smile shortly, no sooner beheld her, than ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... noces to the Sieur de Bulkeley, from whom, as every one knows, the Dukes of Cheshire are lineally descended. Accordingly, he made arrangements for appearing to Virginia's little lover in his celebrated impersonation of 'The Vampire Monk, or, the Bloodless Benedictine,' a performance so horrible that when old Lady Startup saw it, which she did on one fatal New Year's Eve, in the year 1764, she went off into the most piercing shrieks, which culminated in violent apoplexy, and died in three days, after ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... makes a thoroughly oriental type of Issachar, and it is within an ace of being a grand impersonation. What that ace exactly is, it is somewhat difficult to say, but what is wanting is wanting in his great scene with his daughter. If the dramatist had given him such another final chance as I have already suggested, the character might have been dramatically ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... station and his toil, since Robbie Burns had shared and had sung them. He awoke a sympathy for them in many a heart that otherwise would never have known it. In looking up to him, the Scottish people have seen an impersonation of themselves on a large scale—of themselves, both in their virtues and in ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... little Susan's letter there was some allusion to a bust of Innocence which the young artist had begun, but of which he had said nothing in his answer to her. He had roughed out a block of marble for that impersonation; sculpture was a delight to him, though secondary to his main pursuit. After his memorable adventure, the image of the girl he had rescued so haunted him that the pale ideal which was to work itself out in the bust faded ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Plaindealer first began to attract notice. In 1860 he came to New York and joined the staff of Vanity Fair, a comic weekly of much brightness, which ran a short career and perished for want of capital. When Browne began to appear as a public lecturer, people who had formed an idea of him from his impersonation of the shrewd and vulgar old showman were surprised to find him a gentlemanly-looking young man, who came upon the platform in correct evening dress, and "spoke his piece" in a quiet and somewhat mournful manner, stopping in apparent surprise when any one in the audience laughed at ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... merely an adopted opinion, a conviction imposed upon his understanding; it was of the essence of his spiritual constitution, one of the conditions of his rational existence. To him, the Supreme Being was no vague, mystical source of light and truth, or an impersonation of goodness and truth themselves; nor, on the other hand, a cold rationalistic notion of an unapproachable executor of natural and moral laws. His spirit rested in the faith of a sympathetic God. His belief was in a Being as infinitely minute and sympathetic ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... refused to trust them. If she thought him a gentleman, she should find him one. That was owed to her. We give the world its own valuation of us. This is humanity. It is therefore wisest to think well of a man. Those who think badly will find themselves surrounded by the impersonation of their own minds. It is wisest to think well, for even thinking has its unconscious effects. But say evil of a man, tell him to his face, without thought of punishment, merely in candid criticism that you find him ill and, ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... impersonation, became sufficiently soft and tremulous to give Mrs. Baxter a fair idea of the tender yearning of the original. "'OH, MY BABY-TALK LADY!'" cooed the ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... legal cognizance been taken of this evil, though it may sometimes be included under the general charge of "vagrancy" or "imposture." In a few states there have been special enactments, as in New York[111] and Minnesota,[112] in the former the impersonation of a deaf man being expressly added to the offenses that constitute imposture, and in the latter ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... Ephesus, the centre of the mingling opinions of the East and West, which were gradually growing up into Gnosticism. (See Matter. Hist. du Gnosticisme, vol. i. p. 154.) St. John's sense of the Logos seems as far removed from the simple allegory ascribed to the Palestinian Jews as from the Oriental impersonation of the Alexandrian. The simple truth may be that St. John took the familiar term, and, as it were infused into it the peculiar and Christian sense in which it is used in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... petrified impersonation of astonishment had been a possibility, Oliver Trembath would, on that occasion, have presented the phenomenon. He sat, or rather lay, extended for at least half a minute with his eyes wide and his mouth partly open, bereft alike of the powers ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... tale with such a perfect naturalness that allegories become living things, that the Slough of Despond and Doubting Castle are as real to us as places we see every day, that we know Mr. Legality and Mr. Worldly Wiseman as if we had met them in the street. It is in this amazing reality of impersonation that Bunyan's imaginative genius specially displays itself. But this is far from being his only excellence. In its range, in its directness, in its simple grace, in the ease with which it changes from lively dialogue to dramatic action, from simple pathos to passionate earnestness, ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... stand, are perfectly severe and accurate, utterly uninfluenced by the firmly governed emotion of the writer. Even the word "mock" is hardly an exception, as it may stand merely for "deceive" or "defeat," without implying any impersonation of the waves. ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... to vibrate. Splashed with water, her arms almost chilled by the stream, she seemed to send forth from herself the purity and clearness of these living springs which rushed from the mossy woods. She was an impersonation of health, joy, and freshness, in the full sunlight. One could easily fancy that she might be a careful housekeeper and a queen withal as she was there, in her working dress, with her slender waist, her regal neck, her oval face, such as one reads ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... look softened Juliet's heart toward the priest. For the first time in her life, she began to think he might be something beside an impersonation of evil. To John he had been a father and a friend; might not she have confidence in one he had so ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... matter, and to ascribe to Him a transcendental degree of whatever perfection our notion of spirit may involve, than to classify Him, or to predicate of Him that finite nature which we call a spirit. God is neither a spirit nor a body; but rather like Ndengei of the Fijians: "an impersonation of the abstract idea of eternal existence;" one who is to be "regarded as a deathless Being, no question of 'spirit' being raised;" so that the first intuition of the unsophisticated mind is found ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... distinctly indicated in Mr. Wills's play, which is used by Mr. Irving, than in any other play upon this subject that has been presented. This result, an approximate fidelity to the original, is due in part to the preservation of the witch scenes, in part to Mr. Irving's subtle and significant impersonation of Mephistopheles, and in part to a weird investiture of spiritual mystery with which he has artfully environed the whole production. The substance of the piece is the love story of Faust and Margaret, yet beyond this is a background of infinity, and over and ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... undulating to the beats of the tom-tom; but all these embodiments had been endowed with a certain smartness, either of the flesh or spirit: some with wit, a few with talent, and even genius. But the new impersonation had apparently nothing beyond sex and prettiness. She knew not how to sport a fan or handkerchief, hardly how to pull on ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... away her tears, and turning an eager face towards the witch-like old woman, who in her silk gown, hooped and looped up, her fine lace cap and mittens, and her ebony stick with its ivory head, looked the impersonation of a fairy godmother, "this is my brother Joseph, and he comes with welcome tidings. My brother Reuben is not dead, albeit he has in truth been smitten by the plague. Joseph found him yesterday in the pest house just beyond Clerkenwell; and he ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... curious fantasies, imaginings, and make-believes—the pleasure of listening to marvellous and impossible tales, and of hearing odd and unpronounceable words or combination of words —the love of acting, and of disguises—of the impersonation of inanimate objects—of seeing things as they are not, and of creating and giving reality to what has no existence except in their own minds—are all the gambollings and frolics, so to speak, of the embryo faculties just becoming conscious of their ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... Greek; and finally he became unusually learned for his rank, but the most absolute and undistinguishing pedant that perhaps literature has to show. He sneers continually at the regular built academic pedant; but he himself, though no academic, was essentially the very impersonation of pedantry. No thought however beautiful, no image however magnificent, could conciliate his praise as long as it was clothed in English; but present him with the most trivial common-places in Greek, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... gives one time to be remindful of others. Last January, during a brief and glorious ten days' leave, I went to a matinee at the Coliseum. Vesta Tilley was doing an extraordinarily funny impersonation of a Tommy just home from the comfort of the trenches; her sketch depicted the terrible discomforts of a fighting man on leave in Blighty. If I remember rightly the refrain of her song ran ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... mind is whole;" he may be called the pure Idea (as subjective) uttering the Idea (as objective, as principle of the world). For he beholds the truth of things as they are in their essence, he himself being the impersonation of Truth. Thus he looks through the Future and foretells; he knows that Neptune will avenge the deed done to Polyphemus, that the Oxen of the Sun constitute a great danger, that Ulysses will punish the Suitors; then he prophesies the peace and final harmony of Ulysses after ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... were not in this world of ours much more frequent than congruity) a mild, pensive, interesting, fair-haired beauty, tall, pale, and slender;—I found a Hebe, an Euphrosyne,—a round, rosy, joyous creature, the very impersonation of youth, health, sweetness, and gaiety, laughter flashing from her hazel eyes, smiles dimpling round her coral lips, and the rich curls of her chestnut hair,—for having been fourteen months a widow, she had, of course, laid aside the peculiar ...
— Country Lodgings • Mary Russell Mitford
... In THE IDIOT BOY, indeed, the mother's character is not so much the real and native product of a "situation where the essential passions of the heart find a better soil, in which they can attain their maturity and speak a plainer and more emphatic language," as it is an impersonation of an instinct abandoned by judgment. Hence the two following charges seem to me not wholly groundless: at least, they are the only plausible objections, which I have heard to that fine poem. The one is, that the author has not, in the poem itself, taken sufficient care to ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Cromwell, the eldest daughter of Oliver, was, at that time, a bride of twenty-six years of age; having married, in 1647, the saintly Henry Ireton, Lord Deputy of Ireland. Bridget was the pattern heroine of the 'unco guid,' the quintessence of all propriety; the impersonation of sanctity; an ultra republican, who scarcely accorded to her father the modest title of Protector. She was esteemed by her party a 'personage of sublime growth:' 'humbled, not exalted,' according to Mrs. Hutchinson, by her elevation: 'nevertheless,' says that excellent lady, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... omniscience of the Simorg in Southey, transferred this right of mere necessity to the individuals of the whole human race. For where else could it have been lodged? Any attempt in any other direction was but to restore the Papal power in a new impersonation. Every man, therefore, suddenly obtained the right of interpreting the Bible for himself. But the word 'right' obtained a new sense. Every man has the right, under the Queen's Bench, of publishing an unlimited number of metaphysical systems; and, under favor of the same ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey |
