"Portrayal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and brilliant piece of work in STRIFE is Galsworthy's portrayal of the mob, its fickleness, and lack of backbone. One moment they applaud old Thomas, who speaks of the power of God and religion and admonishes the men against rebellion; the next instant they are carried away by a walking delegate, who pleads the cause of ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... A relentless portrayal of the career of a man who comes under the influence of a beautiful but evil woman; how she lures him on and on, how he struggles, falls and rises, only to fall again into her net, make a story ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... then, consists in his portrayal of the social ideal of the French aristocracy in the twelfth century. So far as we know he was the first to create in the vulgar tongues a vast court, where men and women lived in conformity with the rules of courtesy, where the truth was told, where generosity was ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... from one method to the other and strike crude discords of phrasing. Of course if you switch methods intelligently and of purpose, that is quite another matter. An abstract discussion may be enlivened by a concrete illustration. A concrete narrative or portrayal may be given weight and rationalized by generalization. Moreover many things lie on the borderland between the two domains and may properly be attached to either. Thus the abstraction is legitimate when you say or write: "A man wishes to acquire the comforts and luxuries, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Kenny in a painter's smock intent upon a palette, vividly, whimsically, delightfully Kenny. There was tenderness and sympathy in Sid's portrayal. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... word; but assumes an appearance of unfathomable vacuity that is inimitable. There are still two theatres outside the city walls: the one, the Tivoli, devoted to farces and vaudevilles; the other consecrated to the portrayal of the deeply sentimental, and the fearfully tragic—with poison, dagger-blades, convulsions and ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... considering the usual subject-matter of poetry, is perhaps only saying that the poet must be sincere. The mathematician is most sincere when he uses his intellect exclusively, but a reasoned portrayal of passion is bound to falsify, for it leads one insensibly either to understate, or to burlesque, or to indulge in a psychopathic analysis of emotion. [Footnote: Of the latter type of poetry a good example is Edgar Lee Masters' ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... the prophet. Throughout these narratives he is portrayed as the dominant figure, moulding the history as God's representative. Abraham and Moses are here conceived of as prophets, and the Ephraimite history of their age is largely devoted to a portrayal of ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... martial enthusiasm and fatalistic courage were all aglow, when the recital of their fathers' deeds had stirred their blood and the portrayal of their own victories filled them again with the fierce joy of conflict, when the mountain of stone that arched the Columbia had risen before them in assurance of dominion as eternal as itself,—now, ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... draperies swayed like veils in a soft breeze. And then, with a fleeting glance and smile at Farnsworth, Patty plucked apple blossoms from overhanging boughs, and tossed them to the audience. There were no trees, and there were no blossoms, but so exquisite was her portrayal of blossom time, and so lovely her swaying arms and tossing hair that many were ready to declare they could even detect the fragrance of the flowers. But when Patty essayed to stop, the riotous applause that followed ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... from them by dying. The postures and graces and contrivances of Mr. Cable's Creoles are traditional to all the little aristocracies surviving, in fiction, from some more substantial day. Yet in spite of these conventions his better novels have a texture of genuine vividness and beauty. In their portrayal of the manners of New Orleans they have many points of quiet satire and censure that betray a critical intelligence working seriously behind them. That critical disposition in Mr. Cable led him to disagree with the majority of Southerners regarding ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... richness, the marvellous ingenuity of plot, the power and subtlety of the portrayal of character, the charm of the romantic environment,—the entire atmosphere, indeed,—rank this novel at once among the ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... A vivid portrayal of the experience of an Eastern author, among the cowboys of the West, in search of "local color" for a new novel. "Bud" Thurston learns many a lesson while following "the lure of the dim trails" but the hardest, and probably ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... his address of the "Liberty Party of Pennsylvania, to the people of the State," issued in 1844, may stand as a sample. It is a vivid portrayal of the slave power's insidious encroachments, and of its monopolized guidance of the Government. It gathers up the national statistics into groups, shows how new meaning is reflected from them thus related, that all unite to illustrate the single ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... plot which, though not dramatically flawless, has movement and energy and stir. The sweetness and modesty of his disposition lends itself to his portrayal of the more gracious aspects of human life, especially as seen in the humours and oddities of very simple and ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... estimate. Shakespeare is never shocked at anything that happens in the world; he knows the world too well for that. He offends the Puritan in us by his indifference; he is therefore probably the best kind of reading for Puritans. Shakespeare is romantic in his literary methods, but in his portrayal of character he is an unsurpassed realist. If life were all thought and achievement, Shakespeare would be the last word in literature; but there is another side, the side which the Puritan represents, with which Shakespeare is but imperfectly sympathetic. His message accordingly needs to be supplemented; ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... fight in depicting the firing of the brig on the approaching row-boats of the enemy. This he has accomplished with consummate skill. He has herein, as in all his other battle scenes on the water, avoided the portrayal of carnage and destruction of human life in lurid colors as is the custom with most painters. He has left these abhorrent scenes to the imagination, and has thereby rendered his pictures, while suggesting all the dreadful accompaniments of ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... of any faith but ideal reiteration and prolongation of happy experiences remembered—the dream of dead days resurrected for us, and made eternal? And if you think this Japanese ideal too simple, too naive, if you say there are experiences of the material life more worthy of portrayal in a picture of heaven than any memory of days passed in Japanese gardens and temples and tea- houses, it is perhaps because you do not know Japan, the soft, sweet blue of its sky, the tender colour of its waters, the gentle splendour of its sunny ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... and he did it as well as Claude, but no better. He never got beyond the stage of microscopic portrayal; if he painted a dewdrop he painted it, and his blades of grass, swaying lily-stems, and spider-webs ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... of the myth, which must have represented the descent as forced and not voluntary, has been modified by the introduction of a new factor,—the search for her dead consort, Tammuz. The character of Ishtar as the goddess of war[1167] may also have influenced this portrayal of her rage. In her violence, she threatens a conflict between the dead and the living. The former will destroy[1168] the latter, as a victorious army butchers the hostile host. The watchman endeavors to pacify ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... account of those terrible days in Ireland is a fascinating if often gruesome study, and may be recommended as a vivid, if not perhaps calmly impartial, portrayal by an eye-witness of ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... sound of silver trumpets; the heart-throb of the strings was missing. Mary was neither morbid nor introspective, but at this time her whole being was keyed to more than normal comprehension. Watching the picture, seeing that it was a portrayal not of her but of his love for her, she wondered if any woman could long endure the arduousness of such deification, or if a man who had visioned a goddess could long content himself ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... head was full of that curious performance, Der Weisse Konig, which occupied many of the leisure moments of his life, being dictated to his former writing-master, Marcus Sauerwein. He had already designed the portrayal of his father as the old white king, and himself as the young white king, in a series of woodcuts illustrating the narrative which culminated in the one romance of his life, his brief happy marriage with Mary of Burgundy; and he continued eagerly to talk to ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... so great consequences to this country and to humanity has made such progress as the movement for woman suffrage. Denunciation will not much longer answer for arguments by the opponents of this measure. The portrayal of the evils to flow from woman suffrage such as we have heard pictured to-day by the Senator from Georgia, the loss of harmony between husband and wife, and the consequent instability of the marriage relation, the neglect of husband and children by wives and mothers for the performance ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... embroidered with a tapestry of vivid groups. Nothing is more manifest than the superiority of the English genius over the Italian in all dramatic qualities of intense passion, profound analysis, and living portrayal of character in action. The mere rough detail of Shakspere's 'Othello' is to be found in Cinthio's Collection of Novelle; but let an unprejudiced reader peruse the original, and he will be no more deeply affected by it than ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... kindly, charitable heart, found inspiration for those dainty creations, so picturesque, so subtle, and so fascinating that they have never ceased to charm, perhaps less truly creations than sketches of the society about him, although no other writer has been able to handle his elusive pen in the portrayal of ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... There is not a character in the play really worth while, with the exception of the old agent. The rest, at best, are not a particular adornment to society, and the strength of the play lies in its true portrayal of the sordid type of life which it expressed. As it is more or less purely photographic, I do not think it should be given the credit of an inspiration—it is rather devilishly clever, but a great ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... there, and go with singing to Zion. But in the furthest flights of inspired imagination, the prophet never dreamed that God Himself would stoop to become the trodden path to Himself, and that the way of holiness was no other than that Divine Servant who so often stood before Him for portrayal. "I ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... replied Jonathan. There was a certain dignity or sadness in his answer which reminded Helen of Colonel Zane's portrayal of a borderman's life. It struck her keenly. Here was this young giant standing erect and handsome before her, as rugged as one of the ash trees of his beloved forest. Who could tell when his strong life might be ended by ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... as an unknown spy at your wife's side, except from his magnificent version of HIS part in it? How else should I have known the story of your discovery of the Californian conspiracy, except from his supreme portrayal of it, with himself as the hero? No, you must not forget to thank Mr. Hooker when you meet him. Miss Faulkner is at present more accessible; she is calling on some members of my family in the next room. Shall ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... now in progress in Nurnberg-and those soon to begin in Tokyo—bring before the bar of international justice those individuals who are charged with the responsibility for the sufferings of the past six years. We have high hope that this public portrayal of the guilt of these evildoers will bring wholesale and permanent revulsion on the part of the masses of our former enemies against war, militarism, aggression, and notions ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... imagination open up to him just conceptions; so that in the field of both healthy and morbid mental action his 'intuitive' knowledge was unerring. 'The Fall of the House of Usher' is so true to the real in conception, and so consummate in portrayal, that the more one knows about the mind, the more he inclines to wonder whether these compositions might not have been aided by actual personal experience. Yet these delineations are purely imaginative. Take 'The Imp of the Perverse, The Tell-Tale Heart,' and similar of his stories, not ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... Stephens took his own environment, the anecdotes he heard, the persons whom he met and the friends whom he knew, and he treated them as the writers of short stories in France twenty years ago treated their own Parisian environment. He made an incident the means of illustrating a portrayal of character. Later he was to construct elaborate plots for dramas ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the portrayal of sensuous emotion into the realms of poetry. The wild spirit of the Gypsy, captivating, fresh and invigorating and compelling as the winds of the mighty Sierras and plains of the land she inhabited, enveloped and animated her. The ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... land, America, her literature, esthetics, &c., as, substantially, the getting in form, or effusement and statement, of deepest basic elements and loftiest final meanings, of history and man—and the portrayal, (under the eternal laws and conditions of beauty,) of our own physiognomy, the subjective tie and expression of the objective, as from our own combination, continuation, and points of view—and the deposit and record of the national ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... which are always mutually illustrative to a degree not often attained in any species of modern art. . . . His language, though extraordinarily accurate, is always light and free. . . . We know of nothing equal to it, in its way [the portrayal of Dimmesdale], in the whole circle of English literature;' and much more in ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... particular material, renders them independent and separate means of realizing different artistic functions, as far as each type finds its definite character in some one definite external material whose mode of portrayal determines its adequate realization. Furthermore, the general types of art correspond to the several particular arts, so that they (the particular arts) belong each of them specifically to one of the general types of art. It is these particular arts which give adequate and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... they have on a mid-sea island, where Mark, pagan, pirate, pearl-hunter, is found, are absorbing. Hidden treasure, mutinies, tropic love, all these are here. The book thrills with its incident and arouses admiration for its splendid character portrayal. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... refuge of lo castizo. It has been a theatre of manners and local types and customs, of observation and natural history, where a rather specialized well-trained audience accustomed to satire as the tone of daily conversation was tickled by any portrayal of its quips and cranks. A tradition of character-acting grew up nearer that of the Yiddish theatre than of any other stage we know in America. Benavente and the brothers Quintero have been the playwrights who most typified the school that has been in vogue since the going out of the drame passionel ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... gives a portrayal of the noblest of Indians—Hiawatha. It follows established facts, and bares to the reader the heart of his race. ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... sketch among them all that will not afford pleasure to the reader for its genial humor, artistic local coloring, and admirable portrayal of character."—Boston Home Journal. ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... of figure and speech. Some of our best comedians found attraction in the ri?1/2le, yet, though Charles Burke and James A. Herne are recalled, by those who remember back so far, for the very Dutch lifelikeness of the genial old drunkard, Joseph Jefferson overtops all memories by his classic portrayal. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke
... is necessary if the story is to take rank above other stories. The true artist will seek to shape this living substance into the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skillful selection and arrangement of his material, and by the most direct and appealing presentation of it in portrayal and characterization. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... sitting one day while in this state at an angle of the garden trying to devote his entire mind to the portrayal of a tree-fern, and vainly endeavouring to prevent Hester Sommers from coming between him and the paper, when he was summoned to attend upon Ben-Ahmed. As this was an event of by no means uncommon occurrence, he listlessly gathered ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... life, are a beclouding hindrance. The little band of missionaries we have sent are hopelessly inadequate to the task and plead for reinforcements with a pathos that almost breaks our hearts. Oh, do not some of us, as we have followed the portrayal of the needs of South America, like Isaiah of old, hear the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send and who will go for us?" God grant that some of us may respond as he did, "Lord, ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... portrayal of characters in an old New England town. Dr. Lavendar's fine, kindly wisdom is brought to bear upon the lives of all, permeating the whole volume like the pungent odor of pine, healthful and life giving. "Old Chester Tales" will surely be among the ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... pictures we see a serpent coiled around 92:12 the tree of knowledge and speaking to Adam and Eve. This represents the serpent in the act of commending to our first parents the knowl- 92:15 edge of good and evil, a knowledge gained from matter, or evil, instead of from Spirit. The portrayal is still graphically accurate, for the common conception of mor- 92:18 tal man - a burlesque of God's man - is an outgrowth of human knowledge or sensuality, a mere offshoot of ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... newly awakened taste for realism and fact. The drama which in the hands of Ben Jonson had attacked folly and wickedness proper to no place or time, descended to the drawing-rooms of the day, and Congreve occupied himself with the portrayal of the social frauds and foolishnesses perpetrated by actual living men and women of fashion in contemporary London. Satire ceased to be a mere expression of a vague discontent, and became a weapon against opposing men and policies. The new generation of readers ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... achieved his most remarkable triumphs; and the fact that so subtle and penetrating a critic as M. Lemaitre has chosen to devote the greater part of a volume to the discussion of his characters shows clearly enough that Racine's portrayal of human nature has lost nothing of its freshness and vitality with the passage of time. On the contrary, his admirers are now tending more and more to lay stress upon the brilliance of his portraits, the combined vigour and intimacy of his painting, his amazing ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... story within a story, and will appeal to all; childhood and youth will devour it with a keen interest, and the maturer mind will detect in the simple, light, fantastic wording a portrayal of the deepest passion to which the human heart is susceptible. Thus it is a story for all, and will be read by all with a zest and interest which will neither flag nor grow dim from the title to the finale. There are few characters, and the story is simply told, and while the reader is following ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... to excite the King to envy and jealousy of his Premier—whereupon Wolsey gave it outright to the monarch, who gave him the manor of Richmond in requital. Wolsey's disgrace, downfall and death soon followed; but I leave their portrayal to Hume and Shakspeare. This palace became a favorite residence of Henry VIII. Edward VI. was born here; Queen Mary spent her honeymoon here, after her marriage with Philip of Spain; Queen Elizabeth held many great festivals here; James I. lived and Queen Anne his wife died here; Charles I. retired ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... no more faithful portrayal of New England life than that which Mrs. Stowe gives in "The Pearl ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... exhibit high mumming talent. In the railroad battalion there was an eccentric negro who was a very king of jesters. From the Sirdar and the Khalifa downwards—for he was an ex-dervish and had played pranks in Omdurman—none escaped a parodying portrayal of their mannerisms. He imitated the tones of their voice and twisted and contorted his face and body to resemble the originals. Nothing was sacred from that mimic any more than from a sapper. He showed us Osman Digna's ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... luxuriant vegetation, its light-hearted, witty populace, and she wrote of them with rare insight and exquisite tenderness. Tasked with having idealized them, she replied:—"Many years of unremitting study, pursued con amore, justify me in assuring those who find fault with my portrayal of popular life that they are less acquainted with them than I am." And in another place she says:—"It is amongst the people that we find the poetry of Spain and of her chronicles. Their faith, their character, their sentiment, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... glowing words of Renan, with their fine spiritual interpretations and descriptive eloquence, the judgments of an eminent contemporary Jewish scholar, and Newman's learned yet simple portrayal of the Church as it took form in its early environment, and as it was seen through the media of contemporary governments, customs, and criticisms, it is believed that readers will derive satisfaction, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... about Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest masters, so famous for his portrayal of subtile emotion, and were wonderfully interested in his life and work; had been to the Academy to see the Baptism of Christ, painted by his master, Andrea Verrocchio, and were very positive that the angel on the left, who holds ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... shake our faith in the humorous portrait of old Nestor, or make us suppose that the sympathetic mockery of the poet is the sycophantic adulation of the editor to his statesman employer, Pisistratus. If any question may be left to literary discrimination it is the authentic originality of the portrayal of Nestor. ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... pervaded with that peace only known to the soul that is in complete harmony with the divine power. The Holy Father has taken the tiara from his head and it lies before him on the cushion on which he kneels. Although the entire portrayal of the figure reveals that devotion expressed in the solemn and searching words of the church service, "And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... sympathetic. Strafford's devotion to his King had in it not only the element of loyalty to the liege, but an element of personal love which would make an especial appeal to Browning. He, in consequence, seizes upon this trait as the key-note of his portrayal of Strafford. ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... once to be convened, should be promulgated on the subject of the penalty of death. The effects of this decree, as it sped on the lightning's wings, like a saving angel, all over France, may be imagined perhaps, but portrayal is impossible! Who can imagine even the joy, the rapture it brought to many a dungeon-prisoner, who was counting the hours that yet remained to him of life and preceded his awful doom, or to those who sorrowed over his untimely—perchance his ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... calculation, record, tab; registry, register; recital, relation, narrative, report, delineation, description, portrayal, explanation; reason, ground, consideration, motive, sake; estimate, valuation, judgment, estimation, opinion; importance, consequence, value, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... have grown indifferent to all of earth. What an array of them there are, too! The bare catalogue of their names would fill a volume, and it would not be bad reading to the genuine Dickens lover,—recalling, as each name would, so much of vivid portrayal, and starting so many associations in the mind. But there is no need to repeat the names; the big, dull old world long ago learned them by heart. Nor will they soon be relegated to the shades. While the tide of English speech ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... life, training up a large family in the limited accommodations afforded by a common shoe, we cannot but feel a twinge of compassion for the singular Mrs. HUBBARD and her lovely dog, who "had none," only to have those tears chased away by the arch and guileless portrayal ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... itself the conclusions I drew from it were as follows: the real faults in the work, which I have already mentioned incidentally, lay in the sketchy and clumsy portrayal of the part of Venus, and consequently of the whole of the introductory scene of the first act. In consequence of this defect the drama never even rose to the level of genuine warmth, still less did it attain to the heights of passion which, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... that such evocations of facts poignantly vital to her personally, were devastatingly more troubling to her facial calm than any most sickening picture in d'Annunzio's portrayal of small-town humanity in which she was trying to take the proper, shocked interest. Despite all her effort to remain tranquil she would guess by the stir of her pulses that probably she had lost control of herself again, and going to the mirror would catch her face all ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... soon learnt how vile such service may be in the studios of any of the canaglia poor Rosina knew, but Camille, that sheep in wolf's clothing, was safe enough. What there was in him of perversity, of brute force, he expended in the portrayal of his subtly beautiful furies. His art was feverishly decadent, and those who judge a man by his work might suppose him to be a monster of iniquity. He was, in fact, an extremely clever and rather worldly-wise boy who loved violets and stone-pines and moonlight with poetical fervour, who preferred ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... her finger on the pulse of Massachusetts, should yet be no less intensely than circuitously present through the whole thing, should be no less felt as to be reckoned with than the most direct exhibition, the finest portrayal at first hand could make her, such a sign of artistic good faith, I say, once it's unmistakeably there, takes on again an actuality not too much impaired by the comparative dimness of the particular ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... who had ever taken her to the theater and if he failed her, she was sure that she would never go again, and she sobbed out incoherently that she "couldn't live at all without it." Apparently the blankness and grayness of life itself had been broken for her only by the portrayal of ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... fragmentary, its rhythm as distorted and broken, its diction as peculiar, its sequences as disconnected. Yet we think it shows gleams of higher poetic talent than anything he has yet published. It contains eighteen poems. 'A Death in the Desert' is an imaginary portrayal of the death of St. John in his old age in a cave, to which he had been taken by some faithful adherents to save him from persecution. It is a sketch of power and originality. St. John is supposed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and their hearts had drawn heroic courage from his heart. Others still had been captivated by the boyish and unstudied drollery of Walter Scott, only to be swept away by a whirlwind of passionate appeal and terrible invective, or to be melted with the tenderness of his portrayal of the love of Jesus. And all these came to Kansas bearing a great cause in their hearts, and determined to build up here such churches as they had left behind them. But this was not all. Here were not only people among the most refined, well informed, and pious in the ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... of cruelty in his nature. Patricia Whipple listened impatiently to this and other sinister revelations. She had not learned palm reading, but now resolved to. Meantime, she could and did stem the flood of character portrayal by a suggestion of tennis. Patricia was still freckled, though not so obtrusively as in the days of her lawlessness. Her skirt and her hair were longer, the latter being what Wilbur Cowan later called rusty. She ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... on hugging and kissing her like this—" Billy went into an ecstasy of portrayal. Suddenly, however, he reeled into sanity, for Jude had struck him across the cheek with the back of a hand trembling ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... admirably for a portrayal of the Bell telephone, except that it mentions distinctly the use of the make-and-break method (i. e., where the circuit is necessarily opened and closed as in telegraphy, although, of course, at an enormously higher rate), which ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... thought would give weight and distinction to the book. So the Prince's philosophic demoralization is described at tedious length and the story drops out of sight for a long time. Then it is taken up again and the Prince falls in love with a beautiful Greek religieuse. The portrayal of this woman aroused another flicker of interest on Schiller's part, though she too was finally to be unmasked as one of the conspirators. Then he seems to have tired of 'The Ghostseer' altogether; at any rate he choked it off suddenly with a 'Farewell', in which nothing is ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... there stand out Morse's scholarly and serious account (in the American Statesmen series) of Lincoln's public policy; the vivid portrayal of Lincoln's adroitness as a politician by Col. McClure in Abraham Lincoln and Men of War Times; Whitney's Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, with its fund of entertaining anecdotes; Abraham Lincoln, an Essay by Carl Schurz; James Morgan's "short and simple annals" of Abraham Lincoln ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... class of society is represented, from the vagabond to the noble lord. Richardson, in describing the shifts and subterfuges of Mr. B—and the elaborate intrigue of Lovelace, moves within a narrow circle, devoting himself, not to the portrayal of character, but to the minute analysis of a woman's heart. The sentiment of Richardson descends to Mrs. Radcliffe. Her heroines are fashioned in the likeness of Clarissa Harlowe; her heroes inherit many of the traits of the immaculate Grandison. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... Maurier, the quiet incisiveness of his satire, and his inimitable skill at the portrayal of social types are delightfully manifested in this series of one hundred plates, ending up with the melodramatic ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... writing 'Maggie' Mr. Crane has made for himself a permanent place in literature.... Zola himself scarcely has surpassed its tremendous portrayal of throbbing, breathing, moving life."—New York Mail ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... is that I was never so impressed in all my life with the greatness of the price that was paid for the redemption of the human race. The suffering depicted was so awful that I cannot now understand how I could have endured looking upon its portrayal. It is amazing that thousands in the audience did not faint into a swoon as complete as that of the soldiers who fell on the stage at the Lord's ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... study of the Middle West—which is the 'Valley' indicated—a portrayal of its people, its life, and its activities so vivid as to have almost the effect of a moving ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... thing about both these accounts is that they agree in showing Patrick Henry's first speech in Congress to have been not, as has been represented, an impassioned portrayal of "general grievances," but a plain and quiet handling of a mere "detail of business." In the discussion he was followed by John Sullivan, who merely observed that "a little colony had its all at stake as well as a great ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... poignant is this expiation! In all literature there is nothing like the portrayal of the punishment of Helene Grandjean. Helene and little Jeanne are reversions of type. The old "neurosis," seen in earlier branches of the family, reappears in these characters. Readers of the series ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... dignified; the arches rest on roughly carved capitals, and the outer rectangle of the piers is displaced for half a column. The rehearsal of these most simple details seems but the writing of "the letter which killeth," and not the portrayal of the spirit that seems to live within these walls. Details which seem so poorly few when read, are nobly so when seen. This small old church has a true religious stateliness, and it seemed as if a priest should bring the Sanctuary-light ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... well-known vinegar manufacturers, have undertaken to provide the necessary plant for illustration of the famous exploit of splitting the rocks with that disintegrating condiment, and Messrs. Rappin and Jebb, the famous cutlers, have been approached with a view to furnish the necessary implements for the portrayal of the tragedy of the Caudine Forks. Professor Chollop, who is superintending the taking of the pictures of the battle of Cannae and the subsequent period of repose at Capua in their proper atmosphere, states that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... longer than about one hundred and sixty years—at about that age most of us decide to pass. When this tapestry wall is finished, it will not be simply form and color, as it is now. It will be a portrayal of the history of Norlamin from the first cooling of the planet. It will, in all probability, require thousands of years for its completion. You see, time is of little importance to us, and workmanship is everything. ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... necessary as a measure of war." The plea of 1864 was the same as the plea of 1914. In a vivid sketch of Sherman's March, Prof. HENRY E. SHEPHERD, whose North Carolina home, Fayetteville, lay in the track of the invaders (Battles and Leaders, 4, 678) winds up by saying that the portrayal of it "baffles all the resources of literary art and the affluence even of our English speech," and those who know Professor SHEPHERD'S resources and affluence will recognize the desperate nature of the task. As for the Valley, I have before me a protest against the erection of a monument ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... Village" is an amusing and clear portrayal of the manners and customs of the inhabitants of a village in the Madras Presidency. The author first depicts his little community, and then proceeds to describe the avocations of all the leading personages. As Kelambakam may be taken as a type of thousands of such villages, the book will be found ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna
... that the surpassing interest which fiction, whether in poetry or prose, possesses for most minds arises mainly from the biographic element which it contains. Homer's "Iliad "owes its marvelous popularity to the genius which its author displayed in the portrayal of heroic character. Yet he does not so much describe his personages in detail as make them develop themselves by their actions. "There are in Homer," said Dr. Johnson, "such characters of heroes and combination of qualities of heroes, that the ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... also what the composer had in mind when he wrote. Then he learns to express these emotions in his own voice and action, through the imaginative power, which will color his tones, influence his action, render his portrayal instinct with life. Imagination in some form is generally inherent in all of us. If it lies dormant, it can be cultivated and brought to bear upon the singer's work. This is ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... success with the Sellers play and his itch to follow it up, Mark Twain realized what he believed to be his literary limitations. All his life he was inclined to consider himself wanting in the finer gifts of character-shading and delicate portrayal. Remembering Huck Finn, and the rare presentation of Joan of Arc, we may not altogether agree with him. Certainly, he was never qualified to delineate those fine artificialities of life which we are likely to associate with culture, and perhaps it was something of this sort that caused the hesitation ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from the fiercest of South American deserts, and the gold which measures American commerce is mined in the arctic wilds of Alaska or in the almost inaccessible scarps of the western highlands. The description of these regions and the portrayal of their relation to the rest of the world is the purpose of Part ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... portrayal of scenes, incidents, and celebrated people in the highest perfection of the photographers', engravers' and ...
— Wholesale Price List of Newspapers and Periodicals • D. D. Cottrell's Subscription Agency
... unable to partake of his meals, which were meager enough, especially during his student life in Zurich; yet he had felt ashamed of partaking of such a luxury as a cup of coffee even. I had to admit that I could not share his hopes of the influence of an artistic portrayal of the sufferings of the weavers upon the people of wealth. Self-satisfied virtue is hard to move. Rather did I believe that a great work of art, treating of the life of the masses, was bound to rouse their ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... that cannot be recorded! facts too startling, and at the same time, too delicately intricate, to admit a public portrayal, or meet the public gaze; But the cheek can blush in secret at the true images which memory evokes, and the oppressed mind shrinks back, in horror, from the dark shadows which have saddened and overwhelmed ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... adequate portrayal of the services rendered by the women of this country during the Civil War, but none will deny that, according to their opportunities, they were as faithful and self-sacrificing as were the men. A comparison of values is impossible, but women's labors ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... character of a very loving wife brought out by a simple incident in her life,—the expected return of her husband. Some of these songs also have been written by poetesses, such as Lady Nairn's exquisite "Land of the Leal;" and really there is such delicacy, such minute accuracy in the portrayal of a woman's feelings in "Are ye sure the news is true?" that one cannot help thinking it must have been written by Jean Adams, or some ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... idle to speculate how he would have concluded the volume if he had lived to complete it. But no one will read the fascinating description of the Northern Lights without feeling a poetical appropriateness in the fact that his last work ends with a portrayal of the auroras—one of those phenomena which elsewhere he described as "the most glorious of all the terrestrial manifestations ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... structure, their paucity of female roles, their mixture of comic and tragic, their reliance on disguise and mistaken identity as motives, their use of improbable or absurd stories; they are Elizabethan also in the qualities of their greatness, their variety of subject, their intense interest in the portrayal of character, the flexibility and audacity of their language, their noble and opulent verse, the exquisite idealism of their romantic love, and their profound analysis of the sources of ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... of Shakespeare's work carries him from the youthful efforts at dramatic construction to such mastery of dramatic technique and of original portrayal of life as raise him, when aided by his supreme poetic art, above all other living dramatists. It was chiefly a period in which the young poet, full of ambition, curious of his own talents, and eager for ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... performances were a delight to me. I had been charmed as much only by Michael Wiehe and Johanne Luise Heiberg in my salad days when they played together in Hertz's Ninon. But my artistic enjoyment went deeper here, for the character portrayal was very much more true to life. The best impressions I had brought with me of Danish art were supremely romantic, Michael Wiehe as Henrik in The Fairies, as the Chevalier in Ninon, as Mortimer in Schiller's Mary Stuart. But this ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... maternal grandfather, Balfour, was a Professor of Moral Philosophy, who lived to be ninety years old. There was, therefore, a combination of Lux et Veritas in the blood of young Louis Stevenson, which in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde took the form of a luminous portrayal of ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Liza," is a writer of whom Russia may well be proud.[A] And that, not only because he is a consummate artist,—entitled as he is to take high rank among those of European fame, so accurate is he in his portrayal of character, and so quick to seize and to fix even its most fleeting expression; so vividly does he depict by a few rapid touches the appearance of the figures whom he introduces upon his canvas, the nature of the scenes among which they move,—he has other and even ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... men to match them I would have some corking characters to begin with. But no kind of pen-and-ink picture of Elizabeth would do her justice. Her sweetness of speech when she is particularly nasty is beyond the power of human portrayal. I got in bed quick when she said she wanted to talk, because I was afraid I might have to hit something, and the pillow was the only thing I could manage without sound. I put it where I could give it a ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... appreciative, for the book stamps Thackeray as a fine impressionist, as an artist who skilfully mixes the colours of reality and imagination into a composition of striking scenes and the effective portrayal of character. With extraordinary ability and consistency to the type he works out the gradual evolution of a wild Irish boy, hot-headed in love and fighting, full of daring impetuosity and ignorant vanity, into ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Washington, and the equestrian statue of General Grant for the city of Chicago. Its cost, which, exclusive of the pedestal, is twenty-seven thousand dollars, is paid by the city. Mr. Rebisso has given a portrayal of Harrison unlike any of the more familiar pictures. These usually present a decrepit old man, from whose eye have vanished that fire of youth and flash of soul which made Harrison a leader of men. The Rebisso statue, as will be seen by the reproduction of it ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various |
